NSIDC - Scientists May Have Underestimated Arctic Sea Ice Loss Rate - ABC

[hatrack]

EDIT

The scientists say global warming means that summer melt backs are now dumping polar bears on land three weeks earlier each summer than in the mid-'70s, which means more hungry bears on land and more trouble for humans. "But sea-ice volume is what we really need to know," Serreze said. "It's the Holy Grail" for sea-ice experts, he says, adding that the news here is probably worse than any we've heard about sea-ice extent.

News from NASA that Arctic summer sea ice melted back 30 percent in the last 30 years — and could well be gone completely by about the year 2070 — made headlines in the summer of 2005. But those findings measured only the loss of surface area, not the thickness — thus the volume — of the ice. Satellites are close to being able to measure ice thickness accurately, Serreze said. New techniques are closing in on how to measure the amount of ice "freeboard" floating above the surface, which with a little fancy math can tell scientists the volume of the ice.

EDIT

Serreze cites work by Wieslaw Maslowski of the U.S. Navy Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., that strongly suggests it's not only Earth's warming atmosphere that is melting the Arctic ice from above.

"Wieslaw is saying it's also the warming sea currents melting the sea ice from below. He's been arguing that 2070 is way too far out in the future — way too conservative. I suspect he may be right," Serreze said.

EDIT

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id=2399066&page=1

[opihimoimoi]

1. This bodes ill for the Planet and for the GOP CROP. They have consistently

avoided/denied GW is real....they wish to do nothing...that is one of their downfalls...ignorance to the Nth Degree.

[grizmaster]

2. from 11' average to 4' average ice thickness in a couple decades

that is NOT good news

[Jackpine Radical]

3. And I would suspect that the volumetric melt rate follows an

accelerated curve.

[grizmaster]

5. if you'll pardon the expression- it's a slippery slope

As Hardy Harhar used to say "Lippy, we're all doomed"

[hatrack]

4. Yeah, as I find myself saying a lot these days . . .

Oops!

If 2070 is indeed way too conservative, we are seriously screwed.

[phantom power]

6. Our new law still holds...

it's always worse than the models predicted.

[hatrack]

7. Check this out - polynya N. of the Bering Strait about 350 miles long

Then there's this from the National Snow & Ice Data Center:

Current sea ice conditions: September 5, 2006

Figure 1 shows current sea ice extent. Compared to the last report, extent has declined only slightly. Over the past few days, extent has hovered around 6 million square kilometers (3.7 million square miles).



The unusual polynya in the Beaufort sea is still present. A number of polynyas tend to form in the same place every year, perhaps the best-known being the “Northwater Polynya” in Baffin Bay. Such features are also common along the north coast of Canada. Often, such polynyas form because of upwelling of warm water to the surface. This could be possible here; however, it is more likely caused by atmospheric circulation forcing a local divergence of ice. We have never seen a large polynya in the Beaufort Sea, and it is not entirely clear how it formed. (Ed. - emphasis added)

White indicates areas where sea ice is present. Areas in blue are open ocean, while gray indicates land masses. The pink line shows the average ice extent for September, the end of the summer melt season. The September average is calculated from 1979 through 2000.

EDIT

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2006_seaiceminimum/20060816_arcticseaicenews.html

[phantom power]

8. Gee, another big, inexplicable, *bad* thing.

I've got climate apocalypse fatigue. My adrenaline signal saturated sometime last year.