Ice Loss Leaves Experts Stunned
I already knew that the ice cap had dropped below record levels this summer, but I had no idea it was as bad as this.
Experts say they are "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.
So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month.
. . .
The new figures show that sea ice extent is currently down to 4.4m square kilometres (1.7m square miles) and still falling.
The previous record low was 5.3m square kilometres in September 2005. From 1979 to 2000 the average sea ice extent was 7.7m square kilometres.
The sea ice usually melts in the Arctic summer and freezes again in the winter. But Dr Serreze said that would be difficult this year.
"This summer we've got all this open water and added heat going into the ocean. That is going to make it much harder for the ice to grow back."
I posted about this a month ago before the sea ice had retreated below record levels. I linked to a story then about a new climate model that took into account short-term climate effects to give an idea of how the Earth would warm or cool over shorter periods rather than the usual climate models that looked at the long term. The significant point bears repeating:
the Hadley Centre researchers said that the influence of natural climatic variations were likely to dampen the effects of emissions from human activities between now and 2009.
But over the decade as a whole, they project the global average temperature in 2014 to be 0.3C warmer than 2004.
Meaning this record sea ice level is during a period where natural cycles are dampening the warming effects of carbon emissions.
The next decade is going to be very interesting.
