Ice cap disappearing 30 years ahead of schedule

[ferrelhadley]

This may be the mechanism the delayers have for getting out of the hole painted for them by the Watts\ Morano types. To acknowledge warming but to then undermine the significance of it.


That said our anti science friends are in a bit of a pickle with the likes of Judith Curry on the BEST team and signing off on the "UHI wot dun it" theory of the astrologers (Watts et al).

 

[ferrelhadley]

A great blogger, Neven has put together this page of about all the arctic images into one. One for the bookmarks if you care.

https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/

Anyone who does actually follow this story would do well to keep tabs this year. Very rapid melting so far.

 

[ferrelhadley]

A great blogger, Neven has put together this page of about all the arctic images into one. One for the bookmarks if you care.

https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/

Anyone who does actually follow this story would do well to keep tabs this year. Very rapid melting so far.

6 weeks left and its neck and neck between 2011 and 2007 for the record low.

 

[Dr Jon]

Second giant ice island set to break off Greenland glacier

New photographs taken of a vast glacier in northern Greenland have revealed the astonishing rate of its breakup, with one scientist saying he was rendered "speechless."

 

[Pingu]

Second giant ice island set to break off Greenland glacier

did he communictae his feeling svia the medium of mime?

 

[dilute micro]

If they can make a spray for receding hair they should be able to come up with something for glaciers.

 

[bi0boy]

Looks like were going to have the uniceiest Arctic Sea since the exceptional 2007: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png

 

[ferrelhadley]

Second giant ice island set to break off Greenland glacier

Here

you can see the break on this image. I have been waiting since you posted for the clouds to clear. Last year the glaciologists were saying that the huge calving would have sent massive pulses of compression waves through the remaining ice and most likely have weakend some of it. I have not noticed it growing over the past couple of months watching but perhaps there is more fracturing in more detailed images.

We are into the final two weeks of the race to the minimum (and may have reached it.) Someone has put together an excellent visualisation of the differing sea ice teams measurements

Jaxa

University of Bremen

Cryosphere today

Get the updates here
https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/

As you can see the different teams use different grid sizes, algorithms to determine ice concentration and other variables. However they all paint a very similar picture, we are in terms of statistical significance, near enough tied with 2007. And that is with far less melt friendly weather patterns.

The volume anomaly tells an even uglier picture

The big US ice breaker, USCG Healy, is in the very high Arctic at the moment. Above 88N, she is cruising at 4 knots

5 years ago she would have need to be breaking thick multiyear ice, 3-6 meters thick. Ramping up on top of the ice then have her weight break the ice to ramp up to the next bit of ice. Now the ice is so thin just 1m thick, she can cruise through at optimal speed for her bathymetry. That far north the refreeze is already underway, the loss will continue at the fringes around 75N for a week or two before the freezing becomes more dominant.

You have all been promised it and there it is. Climate change.

Ice free late summers by 2030 are a very very real possibility for the high Arctic.

And that is conservative.

 

[free spirit]

thanks for the summary, and this thread in general. I really don't have the time to regularly trawl through the web for the data, but this thread has kept me updated better than anything else.

I can't really see how any sane person can come to any other conclusion than you tbh, and I find it nuts that this is even up for debate still when all around me the signs we were being told to watch for when I studied it in the mid 90's are blatantly happening as we watch them. No one change individually can be taken as proof or even evidence of AGW, but the sum of all the changes happening around the world clearly points in only one direction, which combined with a sound scientific understanding of the major processes involved really does leave little room for doubt any more.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Here is a great example of what this thread has been saying.
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/09/more-on-ice-thickness-from-awi.html

The Germans put their best ice breaker up in the high arctic with top notch radars and two helicopters, calibrated with surface measurements and come up with sea ice thickness at 90N of 1m.

In years gone by they would have risked hitting ice so thick they would have gotten stuck and drifted for a while but now its cruising speeds of 4 knots plus.

Uni Bremen and Cryosphere today have already set new records for minimums in the past two days. Most likely all those reporting sea ice Area are going to set new records while those reporting sea ice Extent will not. Much of the ice has been very dispersed so it is thick enough to register as sea with ice in it i.e. part of the sea ice extent, but the area of each block that is covered with ice is low so the area measurements will come in low.

here is a satellite shot of a bit of the Arctic that will register as being part of the ice pack in terms of extent but the area measurements will show as with about 30% or less as having ice in it
http://www.arctic.io/observations/8/2011-09-08/8-N73.102666-W133.587009

 

[Dr Jon]

Arctic sea ice is melting at its fastest pace in almost 40 years

It looks like the positive feedbacks are really starting to kick in now.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Good night in the Arctic as the sun goes down. The melting is over for a year. USCG Healy 79N at 06:01 on the 15/9.

The Canadian ice breaker St Lawrence is in the distance forging the path forward.

 

[ferrelhadley]

NSIDC call the bottom of the melt season.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html

Fat lady is now singing. Second lowest

Conditions in context
The last five years (2007 to 2011) have been the five lowest extents in the continuous satellite record, which extends back to 1979. While the record low year of 2007 was marked by a combination of weather conditions that favored ice loss (including clearer skies, favorable wind patterns, and warm temperatures), this year has shown more typical weather patterns but continued warmth over the Arctic. This supports the idea that the Arctic sea ice cover is continuing to thin. Models and remote sensing data also indicate this is the case. A large area of low concentration ice in the East Siberian Sea, visible in NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery, suggests that the ice cover this year is particularly thin and dispersed this year.

NSIDC record extent not area so large patches of sea with about 50% ice count as 100% extent this is one of the reasons for the difference between them and Bremen who count extent.

 

[free spirit]

I just worked out from those figures that the average for the last 5 years is more than 30% lower than the average for 1979-2000. That's a huge difference over a significant enough period of time to mean that it's highly unlikely to be just a blip, and while it's possible there could be alternative explanations, it's entirely consistent with what would be expected to occur within AGW theory, and the surrounding aid and sea temperature has been measured to be warming significantly, so.........

or to put it another way, when you leave the freezer door ajar by mistake, then find a pool of water on the floor and all your food defrosted, it's possible the fault lies with the freezer mechanism, or some other factor. However, anyone making out that these explanations were more likely than it being the fault of the door being left open would be judged to be attempting to escape the blame for their actions by inventing silly possibilities when the cause of the problem was obvious.

 

[Dr Jon]

Here's a piece in the eeek-onomist

The rapid melting of the Arctic sea ice, then, illuminates the difficulty of modelling the climate—but not in a way that brings much comfort to those who hope that fears about the future climate might prove exaggerated. When reality is changing faster than theory suggests it should, a certain amount of nervousness is a reasonable response.

 

[ferrelhadley]

 

[ferrelhadley]

Greenland ice loss continues to accelerate

The latest measurements continue to measure accelerating mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet. The latest data from the GRACE satellites (noting that it doesn’t include the full 2011 summer season, ending in July 2011) shows that Greenland mass loss has been steadily increasing since satellites began measurements in 2002. The mass loss started spreading up the northwest margin a few years ago.

As the Arctic becomes more ice free the amount of snow falling on Greenland is likely to increase. But inspite of that we are still experiancing mass loss.

 

[two sheds]

What sort of sea level rise is being predicted? And is there a map of the earth for where will be flooded?

 

[Dr Jon]

Himalayas going too...
Rivers of ice: Vanishing glaciers

 

[Crispy]

What sort of sea level rise is being predicted? And is there a map of the earth for where will be flooded?

From the Arctic sea ice melt? Close to zero rise.
From Greenland? If current rates continue, up to half a meter this century.

 

[laptop]

is there a map of the earth for where will be flooded?

Not checked the accuracy of this InteractiveGoogleThingy: http://flood.firetree.net/

 

[two sheds]

Not checked the accuracy of this InteractiveGoogleThingy: http://flood.firetree.net/

Interesting, ta - presumably it is easy enough to make it accurate. Sea defences might be improved around cities in rich countries, though.

I was idly wondering how much ice there is in total - apparently 100 metres is possible (will take a few hundred years), the map gives up to 60 metres. My word that's a fuck load of water.

 

[MikeMcc]

Even that graph for Greenland looks like it has contributed something like 5mm just from that. The biggest contributor is thermal expansion of the oceans. Latest energy curve from Skeptical Science is this (using recent updated data)

 

[ferrelhadley]

Even that graph for Greenland looks like it has contributed something like 5mm just from that. The biggest contributor is thermal expansion of the oceans. Latest energy curve from Skeptical Science is this (using recent updated data)

Melting glaciers and icecaps aren't the only things raising sea levels—so is watering your lawn. According to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, irrigation and other ground water extractions pull immense volumes of water from deep underground and dump it into the oceans via runoff into streams, rivers, and other waterways. Using information gathered worldwide and then extrapolating known trends to regions where data is sparse or missing altogether, one researcher estimates that, over the last century, humans pumped more than 4500 cubic kilometers of water from the ground—enough to boost sea level by 12.6 millimeters, or more than 6% of the overall increase measured during that period. In recent years, when ground water extractions have skyrocketed, the contribution was even larger: From 2000 to 2008, humans pumped on average about 145 cubic kilometers of ground water from aquifers each year—enough to raise sea levels by about 0.4 millimeters annually, or about 13% of the measured amount during that interval. Of the remaining 87% of sea level rise, some studies suggest that about half results from the melting and runoff of land-based ice, with the other half stemming from the thermal expansion of the oceans due to an increase in their temperature, particularly in their surface waters.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/10/scienceshot-irrigation-raises.html

I have seen figures as high as 25% for aquifer sourced sea level rise.

Still a bit up in the air but clearly thermal expansion is a very important component.

In terms of how much will climate change raise sea level? The question is again a very open one. When you model an ice sheet as a large block of fixed ice it takes thousands of years to melt one. But ice sheets are dynamic beasts, they flow, surge, calve and can grow if enough percipitations happens. 2 meters is a figure that is kicked round by the end of Century, but there are doubts round that and it may be lower, as it may be higher.

Last time the world was about 1.5C warmer than today during the Eemian interglacial, the sea level was about 6-10m higher than today. We are aiming (and going to miss) stabilising the climate at 2C warmer. How fast this sea level rise will happen is an open question but we do know it can get rather fast when the big ice sheets start to collapse.

During Meltpulse 1A at the end of the last ice age the sea level rose 20m in between 300 and 500 years. That was under a change in climate at about 0.1C per century. We are currently coasting along at 0.16C per decade and likely to accelerate in the coming decades. Once the ice starts to collapse it may be very fast.

At 3C higher we are likely to enter Miocene-esque conditions with sea level rises somewhere between 20-50m higher. But even at 2C higher we may see enough outgassing of ocean CO2 and from warmer soils to push us up to 3C anyway (2C in theory being about 450ppm 3C perhap around 600ppm). What is in motion now is liable to play out over many hundreds of years to come. And we are likely to be looking at some pretty serious real estate gone.

Remember esturies and deltas are far more vaulnrable than in mere meters, the slowing of the water means the rivers broaden out as they reach the sea, this extra volume will be being pushed back up rivers but with the new flood planes currently some of the most densly populated or heavily farmed land on earth.

 

[two sheds]

Interesting, ta ferrel.

 

[MikeMcc]

Not to forget that Antarctica is also losing ice (in the range of 100 - 350 Gt/yr), roughly 20% of the amount being lost in Greenland. But both rates of ice loss are accelerating (as is the trend in Arctic sea-ice volume).

 

[ferrelhadley]

http://www.norwaypost.no/news/the-arctic-sea-may-be-free-of-ice-in-ten-years-25841.html

The melting of the Arctic sea ice is progressing much faster and more dramatically than earlier estimated, according to new research by the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI).

This means that the Arctic Sea could be free of ice in the summer in ten years time, rather than the 50 to 100 years estimated earlier.
NPI mesurements made by moored sonars show a dramatic reduction in the fraction of ridged sea ice, compared to the 1990s. The vast fields of ridged ice thicker than 5 m, constituting 28 percent of the winter Arctic sea ice cover during the 1990s, is nearly gone.
At the end of winter in 2010, ice thicker than 5 m constituted only 6 percent of the total ice mass observed. The combined effect on late winter mean ice thickness is a reduction from 4.3+-0.4 m during the 1990s to a record low value of 2.0 m in late winter 2010.
NPI researchers speculate that increased ocean heat flux plays an important role in the thinning of the thick ice. With the thickest ice nearly gone and the MY level ice thicknesses close to thicknesses typical for first year sea ice, we are approaching a state where favorable conditions could melt most of the Arctic sea ice cover during one summe

I cant find the paper, apparently its by Dag Vongraven but I will continue to nose around.

Note worthy that again its inward heat flux (ie warmer waters coming in )that does play some role according to them. But this is all very new stuff so subject to change.

Another new bit of research is over cold air inversion in the arctic in winter

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/a-cold-blanket-helps-the-arctic-warm-up.ars

In general, the temperature of the atmosphere decreases with increasing altitude, but there are exceptions. In temperature inversions, warmer air ends up on top of a colder layer. That configuration is inherently stable—cold air doesn’t want to rise, and warm air doesn’t want to sink. This stagnation of atmospheric mixing allows air pollution to accumulate over some cities and create smog.

During the Arctic winter, they form because the extreme cold at the surface cools the lower atmosphere, setting up a stable inversion.

It may seem like cold air sitting stagnant on the surface should counteract warming rather than enhance it, but that’s not the case. A well-mixed atmosphere conveys heat from the surface to the top of the atmosphere, where it can be radiated to space. Since temperature inversions create stable, stratified conditions, the efficiency of that heat transport decreases. That means that what little heat is emitted by the cold Arctic surface can accumulate in the lower atmosphere, raising temperatures there. This matches observations of milder Arctic winters.

The running theory has been that as the arctic becomes more ice free the energy from the open waters will be rapidly transported to the upper troposphere where their is a 'free-er path' for the energy to space, ie there is less gasses that absorb IR. But the very cold arctic surface air may not be acting quite like this.



And on cue the refreeze is pretty slow this year as it has been over the past couple of years (its reached the parts of the arctic ocean that were open for weeks and months so had a chance to accumulate a lot of energy).

And finally

How will Arctic sea ice loss affect the winter?
NOAA's annual Arctic Report Card discussed the fact that recent record sea ice loss in the summer in the Arctic is having major impacts on winter weather over the continents of the Northern Hemisphere. The Report Card states, "There continues to be significant excess heat storage in the Arctic Ocean at the end of summer due to continued near-record sea ice loss. There is evidence that the effect of higher air temperatures in the lower Arctic atmosphere in fall is contributing to changes in the atmospheric circulation in both the Arctic and northern mid-latitudes. Winter 2009 - 2010 showed a new connectivity between mid-latitude extreme cold and snowy weather events and changes in the wind patterns of the Arctic; the so-called Warm Arctic-Cold Continents pattern...With future loss of sea ice, such conditions as winter 2009 - 2010 could happen more often. Thus we have a potential climate change paradox. Rather than a general warming everywhere, the loss of sea ice and a warmer Arctic can increase the impact of the Arctic on lower latitudes, bringing colder weather to southern locations." As a specific example of what the Report Card is talking about, Francis et al. (2009) found that during 1979 - 2006, years that had unusually low summertime Arctic sea ice had a 10 - 20% reduction in the temperature difference between the Equator and North Pole. This resulted in a weaker jet stream with slower winds that lasted a full six months, through fall and winter. The weaker jet caused a weaker Aleutian Low and Icelandic Low during the winter, resulting in a more negative Arctic Oscillation (AO), allowing cold air to spill out of the Arctic and into Europe and the Eastern U.S. Thus, Arctic sea ice loss may have been partially responsible for the record negative AO observed during the winter of 2009 - 2010, and strongly negative AO last winter. If the Arctic Report Card is right, we'll be seeing more of this pattern during coming winters--possibly even during the winter of 2011 - 2012, since Arctic sea ice loss this year was virtually tied with 2007 as the greatest on record.

So we may be in for another cold early winter (and if the pattern continues very mild late winter).

Watching these changes year on year is an amazing experiance.

Quick edit, also to note the ice free Hudson Bay is like a whole new sea appearing in the middle of the American continent and so there is far more moisture available for snow. The US and Canada are quite likely to experiance big increases in snow (as they did last year) sort of like a suped up Great Lakes Effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow

 

[ferrelhadley]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-spike-greenland-ice-loss-bedrock.html

Greenlands geology responds to the dropping ice.

An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons – and large portions of the island's bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response

 

[ferrelhadley]

According to the University of Illinois we actually lost 266 thousand square kilometers on the 10 of June, i.e. the loss of sea ice area for one day exceeded the surface area of the UK.
The melt will slow in a day or so as wind and cloud conditions change but damn, every single monitoring service for the Arctic shows as at a record low for their respective 'day'.

Its almost as if the world is getting warmer or something! (incidently a new el Nino is forming, the models have it as a mid strength one but we can already see the early stages of it on the sea surface temperature anomaly graphics, keep an eye on that and average global temperature anomaly later in the year )

 

[Dr Jon]

Greenland glacier calves iceberg twice the size of Manhattan

This is the second time in less than two years that the Petermann glacier has calved a monstrous ice island. In 2010, it unleashed another massive ice chunk into the sea.