Arctic Sea Ice

1000 Forum members

As Arctic sea ice declines, more and more people learn about it and want to know more. It explains the relative success of this blog ever since its inception in 2010. The spectacular, iconic image of Arctic sea ice loss, as well as the realization of its potential consequences, automatically leads one to think about AGW in general, and the economic system and culture causing it.

Increasing traffic to the blog inevitably led to noise in comment threads, decreasing the focus on Arctic sea ice. And thus, in February 2013, with the help of early commenter Fred (who also inspired me to set up the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website ), I decided to set up the Arctic Sea Ice Forum where commenters could start discussions on every issue related to Arctic sea ice.

Now, three and a half years, more than 1400 topics, almost 85 thousand comments and over 30 million page views later, the 1000th member registered to the Forum yesterday! I had expected the forum would soon become viable, but never thought so many people would take the time and make the effort to register, read and contribute.

With separate categories on everything related to the Cryosphere (Arctic sea ice, Greenland, Antarctica, glaciers) and AGW in general (science, weather events, politics, renewable energy, individual action) an amazing amount of info, knowledge and thought has been collected by the community. People watching Greenland glaciers, others creating their own graphs and maps to track Arctic sea ice, yet others posting links to news articles on renewable and sustainable technologies. The list goes on and the forum is still growing steadily. It gives me hope that together we may be able to overcome all hurdles and solve the predicament we're in.

Thank you, everyone! 

Public knowledge and perceptions about the Arctic

University of New Hampshire professor of sociology and occasional guest blogger on the Arctic Sea Ice Blog, Lawrence 'Larry' Hamilton, is doing ongoing research into the public perception of what's going on in the Arctic (I've written about his work previously here and here).

In anticipation of a new research paper that is about to be published in Polar Geography, Larry has written an article for ARCUS to explain what it's about:

Tracking Public Knowledge and Perceptions About the Arctic

By: Lawrence C. Hamilton, Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire

The U.S. public knows that something is happening in the Arctic. It involves melting ice, because that has been mentioned in so many news accounts and scientific reports. But where exactly is that ice? Is it still melting? What might that mean for people who live far away? On such points public awareness becomes fuzzy, with some people's perceptions shaped by their ideology instead of geographic or scientific knowledge. These findings emerge from research that has been asking Arctic knowledge questions alongside the usual public opinion or political items on national or statewide surveys.

The first research of this type involved the General Social Survey (GSS), a flagship nationwide instrument supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. In 2006 and again in 2010, the GSS carried a "polar module" of questions assessing levels of public knowledge about polar regions, and concern about polar climate change. Analysis of those surveys found that knowledge improved slightly from 2006 to 2010, while levels of concern stayed about the same—and were strongly divided in terms of ideology (Hamilton 2008; Hamilton, Cutler and Schaefer 2012a). Ideological divisions prove to be so strong they actually reverse the effects of objectively tested science literacy. Concern about polar climate change tends to increase as science literacy rises among people who self-identify as liberal or moderate. Among the most conservative, however, concern about polar climate change tends to decrease as science literacy rises (Hamilton, Cutler and Schaefer 2012b).

The GSS results inspired a second generation of polar survey research asking more specific questions. In this note we look at one example about Arctic ice:

Which of the following three statements do you think is more accurate? Over the past few years, the ice on the Arctic Ocean in late summer...

• Covers less area than it did 30 years ago.
• Declined but then recovered to about the same area it had 30 years ago.
• Covers more area than it did 30 years ago.
• Don't know/no answer.

New Hampshire surveys from 2011 to 2015 tracking public awareness of Arctic sea ice area decline: (A) all respondents, and (B) separated by beliefs about climate change. Image courtesy of L. Hamilton.

Sixty-eight percent of those responding to a 2011 national version of the Community and Environment in Rural America survey (NCERA) knew or guessed the correct answer—ice area has declined. In fact, since 2007 the extent of Arctic sea-ice in September remains over a million square kilometers lower than it was 30 years before. Public recognition of this striking change, however, varies with political orientation and with beliefs about climate change. For example, 80 percent of the NCERA respondents who personally agree with the scientific consensus that climate change is happening now, caused mainly by human activities, answered the sea ice question correctly. On the other hand, only 32 percent of those who think climate change is not happening answered this question correctly. On this and other factual questions, it seems likely that many people chose answers derived from their more general beliefs about climate change (Hamilton 2012).

Read the rest of the article here.

In memoriam: Albert A. Bartlett

This is only indirectly linked to Arctic sea ice, and something I found out today, but a little over two months ago emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Albert Allen Bartlett, passed away at the age of 90.

Bartlett was famous for the following quote: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." This quote was part of a talk called Arithmetic, Population and Energy that he gave 1,742 times in 49 states and seven other countries. At the time, back in 1969, when Bartlett first held his talk,
world population was about 3.7 billion.

“Arithmetic, Population and Energy” to a group of CU students on Sept. 19, 1969, the world population was about 3.7 billion. He proceeded to give it another 1,741 times in 49 states and seven other countries to corporations, government agencies, professional groups and students from junior high school through college. - See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/09/09/cu-boulder-campus-mourns-death-longtime-celebrated-physics-professor-al#sthash.Bxefv8Ja.dpuf

You might have been behind one of the 5 million views on Youtube, but if you haven't, I highly recommend watching the talk, appropriately called "the most important video you'll ever see":

 

People like Bartlett produce people like Bartlett.

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” - See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/09/09/cu-boulder-campus-mourns-death-longtime-celebrated-physics-professor-al#sthash.Bxefv8Ja.dpuf

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” - See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/09/09/cu-boulder-campus-mourns-death-longtime-celebrated-physics-professor-al#sthash.Bxefv8Ja.dpuf

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” - See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/09/09/cu-boulder-campus-mourns-death-longtime-celebrated-physics-professor-al#sthash.Bxefv8Ja.dpuf

Perception of the Arctic 2

Like I've written in the previous blog post with the same title, I'm not just interested in the science/ observation of Arctic sea ice and the consequences of its loss, but also in the question how and how far these events are finding their way to the collective consciousness. Are people becoming more aware of what's going on up North? Does the realization start to kick in that it might have consequences for them, their loved ones and their communities? And not some time far off in the future, but perhaps
in the decades to come?

That's what I have to think of every time the Arctic makes it into the mainstream news, or even better, popular culture. Take for instance last week's Colbert Report (hat-tip to Lennartvdl):

Arctic ice loss and armchair scientists

John Abraham, known as the dragon that slew the Viscount and an excellent climate science communicator, approached me a while ago with a couple of questions concerning the blog and Arctic sea ice in general. He turned it into this ego-inflating article on the Guardian website:

Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

Armchair scientist Neven provides valuable insights into the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice

Arctic sea ice image from NASA. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

As humans put more and more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, the Earth's climate changes; we all know that. Some of the trickier questions are, how fast is it changing, what can we expect in the future, what are the costs of slowing emissions (compared to the costs of doing nothing), and what changes are we already observing that give us such confidence in our predictions?

Perhaps the poster child of climate change is in the Arctic, where sea ice has been declining at an astonishing rate. Over the past few decades, satellite information has been gathered which shows huge declines in ice extent (the area covered by ice). The declines are enough that it is possible that in a few years, there will be little or no ice left in the Arctic at the end of the melt season.

If the loss of ice area wasn't bad enough, the volume of ice has decreased faster than the area. By some measures, the volume of ice has decreased approximately 75% over the past 3 decades, since adequate records began to be kept.

For climate nerds like me, internet bookmarks are essential for organizations like the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) or IARC-JAXA which provide updated and high-quality information about Arctic conditions.

Summer Arctic ice extent, National Snow and Ice Data Center

While these institutions gather and make available important Arctic information, a wider community has taken a very active role in interpreting the data. These "armchair" scientists play a particularly important role in telling the rest of us what the data actually means for our future.

Perhaps the best example is the Arctic Sea Ice blog which was started in 2010 by Neven, a 38 year old freelance writer who set up the blog to draw more attention to the Arctic and create a central place for the exchange of information and ideas concerning Arctic sea ice. He also set up the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website that is a collection of graphs, maps and other pieces of information regarding Arctic sea ice, and he formed a forum to allow community discussion.

Neven, like many other armchair scientists has little formal training. But, he makes up for that with a doggedness that would impress anyone. While he describes his blog as basically weather reports, many publishing researchers turn to him for a comprehensive view of current conditions. Do you want to know what the short term ice conditions will likely be? Ask Neven. Interested in learning about impacts of current conditions on the atmosphere? Ask Neven.

Not only is he a great resource, but the commenters provide insightful thoughts as well. And very often, they are not in agreement with each other. It is refreshing to see people engage in polite yet candid discussions of various views of our Arctic.

Ice sheet melt pond – John Maurer NSIDC

So, what is the view of the current Arctic conditions? Well, let's hear from Neven himself.

Read the rest over at John Abraham's Guardian blog.

Collaborative Arctic Sea Ice Presentation Project

Last week I received an e-mail from commenter Terry Moran, also know as Twemoran or TerryM. In the past couple of weeks he has been working on a talk called The Demise of Arctic Sea Ice that he recently held for a small audience in Canada (here is the original presentation on Google Docs, and here is a modified version). Here's the text he sent me, I will add
some of my thoughts below:

On May 4th I gave a presentation (linked above) to a group of not particularly concerned Mensans at the Canadian Mensa Annual Gathering in Niagara Falls. The response exceeded my wildest expectations so I'm providing the Google Presentation and notes that I worked from to others who may have the opportunity to address other groups. One of the offshoots has been that I've been asked to provide a video of the talk for an educational group that works with Canada's First Nation peoples.