[OPE-L] Massive surge in disappearance of Arctic sea ice sparks global warning]

From: Alejandro Valle Baeza (valle@SERVIDOR.UNAM.MX)
Date: Fri Sep 15 2006 - 19:30:06 EDT


The Independent
15 September 2006 17:29

Massive surge in disappearance of Arctic sea ice sparks global warning
Arctic meltdown is speeding up... sea ice is vanishing faster than
ever before... polar bears face extinction... and America's top
climate scientist warns we only have a decade to save the planet By
Michael McCarthy and David Usborne Published: 15 September 2006

The melting of the sea ice in the Arctic, the clearest sign so far of
global warming, has taken a sudden and enormous leap forward, in one
of the most ominous developments yet in the onset of climate change.

Two separate studies by Nasa, using different satellite monitoring
technologies, both show a great surge in the disappearance of Arctic
ice cover in the last two years.

One, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, shows that
Arctic perennial sea ice, which normally survives the summer melt
season and remains year-round, shrank by 14 per cent in just 12 months
between 2004 and 2005.

The overall decrease in the ice cover was 720,000 sq km (280,000 sq
miles) - an area almost the size of Turkey, gone in a single year.

The other study, from the Goddard Space Flight Centre, in Maryland,
shows that the perennial ice melting rate, which has averaged 0.15 per
cent a year since satellite observations began in 1979, has suddenly
accelerated hugely. In the past two winters the rate has increased to
six per cent a year - that is, it has got more than 30 times faster.

The changes are alarming scientists and environmentalists, because
they far exceed the rate at which supercomputer models of climate
change predict the Arctic ice will melt under the influence of global
warming - which is rapid enough.

If climate change is not checked, the Arctic ice will all be gone by
2070, and people will be able to sail to the North Pole. But if these
new rates of melting are maintained, the Arctic ice will all be gone
decades before that.

The implications are colossal. It will mean extinction in the wild -
in the lifetime of children alive today - for one of the world's most
majestic creatures, the polar bear, which needs the ice to hunt seals.

It means the possibility of a lethal "feedback" mechanism speeding up
global warming, because the dark surface of the open Arctic ocean will
absorb the sun's heat, rather than reflect it as the ice cover does
now - and so the world will get even hotter.

But most of all, the new developments add to the growing concern that
climate change as a process is starting to happen much faster than
scientists considered it would, even five years ago when the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its last report.

"These are the latest in a long series of recent studies, all telling
us that climate change is faster and nastier than we thought," said
Tom Burke, a former government green adviser and now a visiting
professor at Imperial College London. "An abyss is opening up between
the speed at which the climate is changing and the speed at which
governments are responding.

"We must stop thinking that this is just another environmental
problem, to be dealt with when time and resources allow, and realise
that this is an increasingly urgent threat to our security and
prosperity."

Yesterday, Jim Hansen, the leading climatologist and director of the
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, issued a
now-or-never warning to governments around the world, including his
own, telling them they must take radical action to avert a planetary
environmental catastrophe. He said it was no longer viable for nations
to adopt a "business as usual" stance on fossil-fuel consumption.

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with
climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most," he said.

Early in his first term, President George Bush pulled the US out of
the Kyoto Treaty that is meant to bind nations to lower emissions of
warming gases. However, opinion in the US is starting to change, as
evidenced by the huge success of the documentary on climate change, An
Inconvenient Truth, narrated by the former US vice-president Senator
Al Gore.

The two Nasa Arctic studies, released simultaneously, break fresh
ground in dealing with the perennial, or "multi-winter" ice, rather
than the "seasonal" ice at the edge of the icefield, which melts every
summer.

Concern about the melting rate has hitherto focused on the seasonal
ice, whose summer disappearance and retreat from the landmasses of
Arctic Canada and Siberia is increasingly obvious. In September 2005,
it retreated to the lowest level recorded. Such rapid shrinkage of the
perennial ice has not been shown before. "It is alarming," said Joey
Camiso, who led the Goddard study. "We've witnessed sea ice reduction
at 6 per cent per year over just the last two winters, most likely a
result of warming due to greenhouse gases."

Dr Son Nghiem, who led the team which carried out the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory study, said that in previous years there had some
variability in the extent of perennial Arctic ice. "But it is much
smaller and regional," he said.

"However, the change we see between 2004 and 2005 is enormous."
Britain's Professor Julian Dowdeswell, the director of the Scott Polar
Research Institute in Cambridge, agreed the changes shown in the
American studies were "huge", adding: "It remains to be seen whether
the rate of change is maintained in future years."

The melting of the Arctic ice will not itself contribute to global
sea-level rise, as the ice floating in the sea is already displacing
its own mass in the water. When the ice cube melts in your gin and
tonic, the liquid in your glass does not rise.

There are great volumes of land-based ice - the ice sheets of
Greenland and Antarctica, and mountain glaciers - which are subject to
exactly the same temperature rises as the Arctic ice, and which have
also started to melt. They will add to sea levels. The West Antarctic
Ice Sheet would, if it were to collapse, raise sea levels around the
world by 16ft (5m), submerging large parts of Bangladesh and Egypt -
and London.

The melting of the sea ice in the Arctic, the clearest sign so far of
global warming, has taken a sudden and enormous leap forward, in one
of the most ominous developments yet in the onset of climate change.
Two separate studies by Nasa, using different satellite monitoring
technologies, both show a great surge in the disappearance of Arctic
ice cover in the last two years.

One, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, shows that
Arctic perennial sea ice, which normally survives the summer melt
season and remains year-round, shrank by 14 per cent in just 12 months
between 2004 and 2005.

The overall decrease in the ice cover was 720,000 sq km (280,000 sq
miles) - an area almost the size of Turkey, gone in a single year.

The other study, from the Goddard Space Flight Centre, in Maryland,
shows that the perennial ice melting rate, which has averaged 0.15 per
cent a year since satellite observations began in 1979, has suddenly
accelerated hugely. In the past two winters the rate has increased to
six per cent a year - that is, it has got more than 30 times faster.

The changes are alarming scientists and environmentalists, because
they far exceed the rate at which supercomputer models of climate
change predict the Arctic ice will melt under the influence of global
warming - which is rapid enough.

If climate change is not checked, the Arctic ice will all be gone by
2070, and people will be able to sail to the North Pole. But if these
new rates of melting are maintained, the Arctic ice will all be gone
decades before that.

The implications are colossal. It will mean extinction in the wild -
in the lifetime of children alive today - for one of the world's most
majestic creatures, the polar bear, which needs the ice to hunt seals.

It means the possibility of a lethal "feedback" mechanism speeding up
global warming, because the dark surface of the open Arctic ocean will
absorb the sun's heat, rather than reflect it as the ice cover does
now - and so the world will get even hotter.

But most of all, the new developments add to the growing concern that
climate change as a process is starting to happen much faster than
scientists considered it would, even five years ago when the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its last report.

"These are the latest in a long series of recent studies, all telling
us that climate change is faster and nastier than we thought," said
Tom Burke, a former government green adviser and now a visiting
professor at Imperial College London. "An abyss is opening up between
the speed at which the climate is changing and the speed at which
governments are responding.

"We must stop thinking that this is just another environmental
problem, to be dealt with when time and resources allow, and realise
that this is an increasingly urgent threat to our security and
prosperity."

Yesterday, Jim Hansen, the leading climatologist and director of the
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, issued a
now-or-never warning to governments around the world, including his
own, telling them they must take radical action to avert a planetary
environmental catastrophe. He said it was no longer viable for nations
to adopt a "business as usual" stance on fossil-fuel consumption.

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with
climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most," he said.

Early in his first term, President George Bush pulled the US out of
the Kyoto Treaty that is meant to bind nations to lower emissions of
warming gases. However, opinion in the US is starting to change, as
evidenced by the huge success of the documentary on climate change, An
Inconvenient Truth, narrated by the former US vice-president Senator
Al Gore.

The two Nasa Arctic studies, released simultaneously, break fresh
ground in dealing with the perennial, or "multi-winter" ice, rather
than the "seasonal" ice at the edge of the icefield, which melts every
summer.

Concern about the melting rate has hitherto focused on the seasonal
ice, whose summer disappearance and retreat from the landmasses of
Arctic Canada and Siberia is increasingly obvious. In September 2005,
it retreated to the lowest level recorded. Such rapid shrinkage of the
perennial ice has not been shown before. "It is alarming," said Joey
Camiso, who led the Goddard study. "We've witnessed sea ice reduction
at 6 per cent per year over just the last two winters, most likely a
result of warming due to greenhouse gases."

Dr Son Nghiem, who led the team which carried out the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory study, said that in previous years there had some
variability in the extent of perennial Arctic ice. "But it is much
smaller and regional," he said.

"However, the change we see between 2004 and 2005 is enormous."
Britain's Professor Julian Dowdeswell, the director of the Scott Polar
Research Institute in Cambridge, agreed the changes shown in the
American studies were "huge", adding: "It remains to be seen whether
the rate of change is maintained in future years."

The melting of the Arctic ice will not itself contribute to global
sea-level rise, as the ice floating in the sea is already displacing
its own mass in the water. When the ice cube melts in your gin and
tonic, the liquid in your glass does not rise.

There are great volumes of land-based ice - the ice sheets of
Greenland and Antarctica, and mountain glaciers - which are subject to
exactly the same temperature rises as the Arctic ice, and which have
also started to melt. They will add to sea levels. The West Antarctic
Ice Sheet would, if it were to collapse, raise sea levels around the
world by 16ft (5m), submerging large parts of Bangladesh and Egypt -
and London.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.




--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.





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