Arctic Ice in Death Spiral - IPS ipsnews.net
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 20, 2010 (IPS) - The carbon dioxide emissions from burning such fossil fuels have now melted the Arctic sea ice to its lowest volume since before the rise of human civilisation and dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet, climate scientists are reporting.Flashback: Scientists & Science Journalists - Please Grow Up
"The Arctic sea ice has reached its four lowest summer extents (area covered) in the last four years," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado.
The volume - extent and thickness - of ice left in the Arctic likely reached the lowest ever level this month, Serreze told IPS.
"I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It's not going to recover," he said.
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If the global average temperature increases from the present 0.8 C to two degrees C, as seems likely, the entire Arctic region will warm at least four to six degrees and possibly eight degrees due to a series of processes and feedbacks called Arctic amplification.
A similar feverish rise in our body temperatures would put us in hospital if it didn't kill us outright.
"I hate to say it but I think we are committed to a four- to six-degree warmer Arctic," Serreze said.
[June 2010] The "screaming death spiral" scientist now admits he might have overstated the matter.Flashback: Check out this 1993 paper--with Mark Serreze's name on it
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In a piece published this week on Wired.com, Serreze acknowledges that Mother Nature is a complicated gal. "The sea ice system surprises us," he says. Here are a few paragraphs from the story:In 2007, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic declined rapidly. The drop from the previous year was so precipitous that it garnered worldwide attention and media coverage. In the last couple of years, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic...has recovered. This series of events, which underscored the year-to-year variability of the measurement, has made researchers cautious about describing events in the Arctic. [bold added]
“In hindsight, probably too much was read into 2007, and I would take some blame for that,” Serreze said. “There were so many of us that were astounded by what happened, and maybe we read too much into it.”
In particular, we do not observe the large surface warming trends predicted by models; indeed, we detect significant surface cooling trends over the western Arctic Ocean during winter and autumn. This discrepancy suggests that present climate models do not adequately incorporate the physical processes that affect the polar regions.
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2 comments:
""I hate to say it but I think we are committed to a four- to six-degree warmer Arctic," Serreze said."
This is total opinion, probably gleaned from the climate models which are so flawed that a roulette wheel is a better predictor of climate. We have not warmed since 1995 and been cooling since 2002. With the PDO gone to its cooling phase and the Sun going into a quiet stage, it is only in his imagination or his political fog that we have any incipient warming at all in the future.
By the way, the 2007 Arctic ice low point was NOT from warmer air. It was caused by the influx of warm water from the NAO (which is much more effective at melting ice than air, floating consistently, due to its low density, just below the ice) and the prevailing winds blowing the ice OUT of the Arctic circle such that it melted elsewhere. This perfect storm of conditions, with some help from some Arctic sea floor volcanoes even, do not in any way indicate that the Arctic has warmed at all. In fact, Arctic Rim stations have reported no real warming in 50 years.
Furthermore, the Northern Passages have been open 72 years out of the last 112, so they are open more than they are closed. Funny how that is not mentioned, at all. There was no ice at the North Pole in the 40s and 50s such that we took subs up there to surface at the Pole. The Nazis had plans to use these waters for transport and invasion. Panic over the Arctic - not worth the time.
The global warming model requires that the Arctic warm the fastest and this effect is simply not happening. It is only the horribly extrapolated temperature records by GISS, NOAA, and CRU that pretend that it is warming. One of these temperature sets uses a single temperature site, known as the Garden Spot of the Arctic, as it is famously warmer than the surrounding regions. Now, there's a representative data set!
Wow, chuckhigley you sounded so convincing until you told that little white lie about Arctic Rim stations reporting no "real" warming for the past 50 years. Now I wonder if you are correct on anything else.
You should get your facts from Lord Mocked-on.
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