Arctic Sea Ice

Arctic time bombs

While keeping an eye on day-to-day data and speculating about whether 2013 is going to overcome the odds and break last year's records, one tends to forget about the wider implications and what this actually is all about. A tree is incredibly interesting, but in the end it's all about the forest.

It's important to remember that the situation isn't looking good in the Arctic. Not good at all. We're witnessing things that were supposed to happen decades from now. Instead we're looking at a change that is hard to fathom, but takes place during our lifetimes, not on a geological timescale.

Last year Kevin McKinney and I wrote a piece about the potential consequences of all this, and I'll be sure to get back to it at the end of this melting season (and the next, and the...), but in the meantime here's what Gareth Renowden of the Hot Topic blog, one of the first bloggers to pay attention to the Arctic situation, has to say about it:

This should be headline news. It should be plastered all over the front pages of newspapers and web sites around the world. TV pundits should be demanding action from the politicians who have put action on emissions reductions in the “too hard” basket. The evidence is beginning to suggest that Wally Broecker’s angry beast, fed up with being prodded with ever bigger sticks, is going to bite back hard — and bite back soon. Is there time to stop all this happening? Perhaps — but it will take a huge effort, a wartime response when the world is being led by billionaires, ideologues and their appeasers intent on denying reality. We’re sleepwalking to disaster. By the time we wake up, it will be too late.

This was Gareth's conclusion. Here's what led him to it:

The cracks of dawn

I was hesitating whether I should write about this (besides my personal combination of busy/lazy) for a couple of days, because the Arctic is such an amazing place that it's easy to get carried away. When you see something for the first time, it's tempting to go: "Oh my Gawd, that haz got to be the first time!" That happens to me a lot, especially during winter. It's only logical as we are seeing a lot of things for the first time, or for the first time since a very long time. But there still remains a very fine line between 'unique' and 'unusual, but not unique'. A line that can sometimes be difficult to tread.

For instance last year at the start of February I wrote about the spectacular lack of ice in the Kara and Barentsz Seas, notably around Novaya Zemlya. I had a hunch that this was pretty much unprecedented during the satellite era and said as much in a guest post for Climate Progress. I was mildly criticized for it by the NSIDC's Walt Meier via Climate Central (and I will never forgive him for it ;-) ). Now the hunch turned out to be reasonably correct - although there had been a similar retreat of ice at a later date in 2011, caused by wind patterns - but I didn't invest the time to make sure it was.

This year things are calm in the Kara and Barentsz Seas. At the surface that is, with not even a breeze towards the coast to show how strong or weak the ice is. But as usual, when it's calm on one side of the Arctic, something is going on on the other side. Some commenters have been keeping a sharp eye on this, and I think it now merits a blog post of its own, if only because of the possible implications this event might have for the ice pack once the melting season gets underway. And it's big time spectacular.

Last week, on February 22nd commenter A-Team - who has really been animating the blog lately, figuratively and literally speaking - made the animation you see on top of the post, showing massive cracking in the Beaufort Sea. In the following days fellow commenter Jim Hunt picked up on that and wrote a blog post on his Econnexus blog called Arctic Sea Ice is Cracking Under the Strain with a spectacular image of the ice pack in the Beaufort Sea on February 27th.

Meanwhile over on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum commenter BornFromTheVoid remarked that a similar thing occured last year in April. A-Team was quick to turn that event into an animation (that I had to edit a bit to cut down on size):

Arctic methane: Why the sea ice matters

Here's a video from the Arctic News blog, which is run by the people from AMEG (Arctic Methane Emergency Group). I'm not a big fan of geo-engineering, especially if it supports the continuation of business-as-usual, but as this video has some good speakers that dare speak of worst-case scenarios, and it is not an ad for geo-engineering (that will be part 2, I surmise), I think it's worth a watch:

I'm not sure how imminent a methane clathrate collapse is, but I'm not ruling anything out. As long as methane concentrations. global as well as Arctic, are not shooting up dramatically we're in the 'safe' zone (were it not for CO2, of course).

Don't forget, if you want to have regular updates on the situation with regards to methane, you can go to Apocalypse4You's website and the ESRL Data Visualization page for Barrow (or any other sites you want).

Let's make this a sort of open thread where everyone can discuss solutions if they so wish. I haven't changed my opinion that the neoclassical economic concept that drives our economies, societies and cultures needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Maybe the brainwashing of economy students needs to stop first for that to happen.

Edit: In light of my last remark, Gareth Wyn Jones asked me to link to his article called Overshooting Limits (download document by clicking this link). I read it this summer and it gets to the core of the matter very nicely. Explaining the Galbraithian Dilemma was an eye opener for me.

Cyclone warning!

I have postponed this post until I was sure that what follows is going to happen.

Remember the term 'flash melting'? That's when from one day to the next large swathes of ice disappear on the University of Bremen sea ice concentration maps. We witnessed one such instance last year when a relatively large and intense low-pressure area moved in from Alaska over the ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Sea regions (see blog post). It lasted about a day or two and then quickly faded, but the effects were spectacular.

Well, it looks like we have something bigger coming up this year. This is the ECMWF weather forecast for the coming four days (click for a bigger version):

Not only does this low-pressure area, or cyclone, look bigger, more intense and longer-lasting than the one from last year, the ice also seems to be in a weaker state than ever, as evidenced by the fact that 2012 trend lines on both sea ice area and sea ice extent graphs track lower than previous record years, despite weather that until recently would completely stall the decline.

There are many things that cyclones do to cause flash melting:

Arctic methane: Russian researchers report

I vowed not to talk about this because it literally makes me sick to my stomach, but it's too important to deny. We all know about the vast deposits of methane clathrates on the Siberian continental shelf. They are kept in place by pressure and low temperatures. However, the temperatures (SAT as well as SST) are getting less and less low in the Arctic, so in theory it could mean that these deposits come loose and leave the ocean floor to end up in the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and some extinction events in the distant past have been linked to the deadly feedback of warming->methane release->more warming->more methane release->etc.

No one is really sure what is going on exactly with those methane deposits, but in the past years there has been much speculation (undoubtedly caused by the spectacular retreat of summer sea ice in the region) and reporting of a probable increase of methane bubbling up from the Siberian continental shelf. And so the results of this year's Russian research mission were eagerly awaited. Mind you, not by me.

It seems the results are in and were reported at AGU last week.
The Independent reports with this article:

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface

Flash melting

I introduced the term 'flash melting' in a recent SIE update. It was a pun on the term 'flash flooding' where lots of rain falls out of the sky in a short amount of time, causing creeks and rivers to flood very fast. I based the concept on the state of large parts of the ice pack in the Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian Seas that looks like slush puppie on the satellite images. It seems so weak that one can't help but wonder if it will all "just melt away quite suddenly", to quote Professor Peter Wadhams from this 2007 BBC interview (as I did in the piece CAPIE hits record low).

In the last two days something weird has happened on the sea ice concentration maps of the University of Bremen, with large swathes of ice suddenly disappearing from the radar (the full animation from August 6th-22nd can be watched here) on the upper left of the image:

Update August 24th: Added yesterday's image. Could be the sensor is picking up ice again.

Update August 25th: Added yesterday's image. No more flash melting (thank God).

---

This looks so spectacular that it could just be a fluke, a deceived satellite sensor. Flash melting is a nice term for fast melting, but it can never be as fast as flash flooding. It ought to occur more on a time scale of say one week (which is very fast in the Arctic). Because however weak the slush puppie ice may be, it still takes large amounts of energy to make it disappear completely.

On the other hand IJIS extent took a bit of a nosedive with a reported melt of 98K square km for yesterday's date, and there's a huge cyclone battering the ice as we speak:

Arctic scientist suspended

Following a comment in the latest SIE update comment section, I draw attention to this article on the Guardian website:

Arctic scientist who exposed climate threat to polar bear is suspended

US government conducts 'integrity inquiry' on federal biologist amid lobbying by oil firms for Arctic permits

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.

But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.

Read the rest of the article here.

I have to admit that I'm not really up-to-date when it comes to polar bear research, so I can't judge the accusation of scientific misconduct. Of course, the potential extinction of polar bears has been used by environmental organisations to keep the Arctic the pristine place that it is. And rightly so, in my opinion. I believe some organisations are a bit too eager to plunder the Arctic's mineral riches. But would they go as far as eliminating scientists in this way? I guess so, and I guess Barack 'Yes, we can' Obama is proving again he's nothing more than a puppet.

But first I'd like to know if there is any truth to these scientific misconduct charges. Does anyone here have a better overview of polar bear research?

UPDATE: In the Guardian article mention is made of a complaint filed by a group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

Run, rabbit, run

The sun looks to be getting lower:

 

Run, rabbit, run

Dig that hole

Forget the sun

;-)

Maybe now the great Eli will finally honour me with a visit...

How's this for alarmism?

I consider myself to be quite an alarmist, but this video from Supreme Master Ching Hai...

I'm not sure I agree with the format or the conclusion, but the science bits are interesting in themselves.