79% OF ARTIC SEA HAS MELTED SINCE 1979

[kpete]

Thu May 19, 2011 at 08:02 PM PDT
eSci: 78% of Arctic Sea Ice Melted Since 1979
by FishOutofWater for Climate Hawks

No where on earth is global warming more rapid and more shocking than in the Arctic. The most rapid and the most shocking change has been the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Polar bears have been forced to swim over a hundred miles to land. Walruses have been beached by the thousands in late summer in northern Alaska because ice has retreated hundreds of miles poleward. Rapid shoreline wave erosion has hit Arctic shores previously protected by sea ice. Ongoing data reports show that September sea ice volume has declined 78% since 1979.

MUCH MORE:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/19/977559/-eSci:-78-of-Arctic-Sea-Ice-Melted-Since-1979

[Systematic Chaos]

1. What's even scarier about that graph, if you take a few moments to really analyze it...

...is that the real rate of change has little to do with the purple line and gray bands.

It's more of a curve which gets alarmingly steeper as you go through the nineties and up to the present day.

We'll have ice free summers very soon.

[geckosfeet]

2. "Monthly average Arctic Ice Volume for Sept 78% below the 1979 maximum" is what the article says

The model mean seasonal cycle of sea ice volume ranges from 28,600 km3 in April to 13,400 km3 in September. The blue line represents the trend calculated from January 1 1979 to the most recent date indicated on the figure. Monthly average Arctic Ice Volume for Sept 2010 was 4,000 km3, the lowest over the 1979-2010 period, 78% below the 1979 maximum and 9,400 km3 or 70% below its mean for the 1979-2009 period.

Arctic Sea Ice Volume Anomaly

Not minimizing the implications of the study but I think it is important (for credibility) to portray it accurately.

[Systematic Chaos]

3. You'd have something there if you were talking about 10%, 18% and 19%.

But when we've got a situation like this, being off by a percentage point or two in the header (probably a typo?) doesn't affect credibility much at all.

That ice isn't coming back in our lifetimes, nor 100 generations from now most likely.

[geckosfeet]

4. 1% of the artic ice volume is a lot. The next person will round it up to 80%.

Pretty soon it turns into urban legend instead of a scientific study.

If we could get 1% a year back, that would be good. But as the study indicates, we are rapidly going in the other direction.

[ItNerd4life]

5. Um, why haven't see levels risen by 10's of feet like was predicted?

I don't get it. The water from all that ice melt has to go somewhere and scientists were
saying it would cause the sea levels to rise by 10's of feet.

[DCBob]

6. The Arctic ice cap floats and it displaces the same volume as the water it contains

like an ice cube in a glass of water. However, the ice in Greenland and Antarctica are mostly on land.. when those melt look out!

[Distant Observer]

7. Major Sea level rise will take decades, but even a few inches will impact coastal dammage.

[Overseas]

8. K&R.

[Fumesucker]

9. Here's the thing...

Ice absorbs a great deal of heat energy as it melts, once it's done melting the temperature is going to soar..

There are at least billions of tons of methane clathrates (methane bound with ice crystals) on the floor of the arctic ocean, if the temperature rises too much they will start to melt and the methane will bubble to the surface as a gas.

Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, much worse than carbon dioxide.