Scientists Warn: "North Pole Ice Free in Five Years"

Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013. Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska's Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic.

Scientists are saying that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year's record loss, when more than a million square kilometers melted as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic, a landscape vastly different from that found by explorer Robert Peary at the North Pole on April 6, 1909.

'It is a neck-and-neck race between 2007 and this year over the issue of ice loss,' said Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. 'We thought Arctic ice cover might recover after last year's unprecedented melting - and indeed the picture didn't look too bad last month. Cover was significantly below normal, but at least it was up on last year.

'But the Beaufort Sea storms triggered steep ice losses and it now looks as if it will be a very close call indeed whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for ice cover over the Arctic. We will only find out when the cover reaches its minimum in mid-September.'

This startling loss of Arctic sea ice has major meteorological, environmental and ecological implications. The region acts like a giant refrigerator that has a strong effect on the northern hemisphere's meteorology. Without its cooling influence, weather patterns will be badly disrupted, including storms set to sweep over Britain.

Arctic wildlife such as polar bears and seals - which use sea ice for hunting and resting - face major threats. Similarly, coastlines will no longer be insulated by ice from wave damage and will suffer erosion, which has started in Alaska. Without sea ice to bolster them, glaciers could slide into the ocean and raise global sea levels, threatening many low-lying areas, including Bangladesh and scores of Pacific islands. In addition, the disappearance of reflective ice over the Arctic means that solar radiation would no longer be bounced back into space, thus heating the planet even further. On top of these issues, there are serious concerns that water released by the melting caps will disrupt the Gulf Stream.

What really rattles the world scientific community is their inability to forecast precisely what is happening in the Arctic, the part of the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming.

"When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic's summer ice cover would last until around 2070,"  said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. "It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic's summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct."

The most important of these computer studies of ice cover was carried out a few months ago by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Using US navy supercomputers, his team produced a forecast which indicated that by 2013 there will be no ice in the Arctic - other than a few outcrops on islands near Greenland and Canada - between mid-July and mid-September.

"It does not really matter whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for Arctic ice,' Maslowski said. 'The crucial point is that ice is clearly not building up enough over winter to restore cover and that when you combine current estimates of ice thickness with the extent of the ice cap, you get a very clear indication that the Arctic is going to be ice-free in summer in five years. And when that happens, there will be consequences."

Serreze added that "'The trouble is that sea ice is now disappearing from the Arctic faster than our ability to develop new computer models and to understand what is happening there. We always knew it would be the first region on Earth to feel the impact of climate change, but not at anything like this speed. What is happening now indicates that global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected."

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Source:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/10/climatechange.arctic

Comments

[Craig]

So when it IS ice free, it will be easy to find the opening that goes into the center of our Hollow Earth?
Right?

ahem...

[hahajohnnyb]

You know I have seen this article floating around the web, damned thing is, that while there was a "big" melt due to a weather event, the ice still far exceeds last year's. More, I wonder why anyone would think that it would matter a whit if all of that ice did melt in late summer, by mid August the melting has peaked and by the beginning of September it starts to freeze again. Already, the sun is setting in places like Barrow Alaska which is losing about an hour and a half of sunlight every week, and the sunlight that it does recieve grows weaker and less direct by the day.

Still, last year's melt and the recent melting event were both caused by weather, not Global Temperature. 1998 was the hottest year on record, but the current year is much cooler yet the melting of the arctic is greater. Strangely enough, Alaska is having its coolest summer on record. While Eastern Siberia has been warm. Looking at the map where most of the melting occured it seems that most of it happened North of Eastern Siberia. If it were a global phenomenon, then why would it be localized to Siberia and not also include Alaska?

[truth]

I would bet my left nut that this will not happen within our lifetime. Enough of this bullshit already. Go hide in a cave if you're so scared. I'll be burning fuel and cutting trees in a nature reserve and slicing the tires of hybrids. I'm going to come collect your recycling and throw it in the trash.

[solaris]

Do only idiots and PR reps respond to this post? Although these comments hardly warrant response, some basic points do need to be made;
-hahajohnnyb - weather is a global phenomenum. climate change means changes in weather patterns around the globe - this operates on both local and global scales. a word of caution in expecting highly complex weather systems to follow your simplistic predictions of what should happen. As the article points out even the most sophisticated models we have struggle to predict the exact nature and patterns of change. There is however NO question that widespread global change is occuring. and i don't think there is any doubt that this should not be happening.
-truth - whose truth? industry's PR truth? The only cave that is being hidden in mate is that of denialism - and it seems that thats already well occupied. I'll match your left nut with my right arm (which i suspect is worth considerably more) and expect payment come 2013.

[silhouette]

hahajohnnyb, 1998 was NOT the hottest year on record. NASA found a y2k bug in their computers that caused that result. if you don't belive me look it up. The hottest year on record was in 1934.

So i have to ask, why did the entire north pole not melt in the 1920s-1930s??

check it out
http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm