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Arctic sea ice at second lowest ever for July - 0 views

  • July sea ice second lowest: oldest ice begins to melt Arctic sea ice extent averaged for July was the second lowest in the satellite record, after 2007. After a slowdown in the rate of ice loss, the old, thick ice that moved into the southern Beaufort Sea last winter is beginning to melt out.
  • Average ice extent for July was 8.39 million square kilometers (3.24 million square miles), 1.71 million square kilometers (660,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 mean, but 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) above the average for July 2007, the lowest July in the thirty-two-year satellite record.
  • The daily rate of decline for July was 77,000 square kilometers (29,700 square miles) per day, close to the 1979 to 2000 average of 84,400 square kilometers (32,600 square miles).
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  • Ice extent for July 2010 was the second lowest in the satellite record for the month. The linear rate of decline of July ice extent over the period 1979 to 2010 is now 6.4% per decade.
  • Older, thicker ice melting in the southern Beaufort Sea This past winter's negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation transported old ice (four, five, and more years old) from an area north of the Canadian Archipelago. The ice was flushed southwards and westward into the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, as noted in our April post. Ice age data show that back in the 1970s and 1980s, old ice drifting into the Beaufort Sea would generally survive the summer melt season. However, the old, thick ice that moved into this region is now beginning to melt out, which could further deplete the Arctic’s remaining store of old, thick ice. The loss of thick ice has been implicated as a major cause of the very low September sea ice minima observed in recent years.
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Global C02 levels approaching tipping point for Arctic - 0 views

  • "Our findings indicate that CO2 levels of approximately 400 parts per million are sufficient to produce mean annual temperatures in the High Arctic of approximately 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees F)," author Ashley Ballantyne said in a release. "As temperatures approach 0 degrees Celsius, it becomes exceedingly difficult to maintain permanent sea and glacial ice in the Arctic. Thus current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere of approximately 390 parts per million may be approaching a tipping point for irreversible ice-free conditions in the Arctic."
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    [Ed. note -The impact of global warming on the Arctic sea ice is watched closely not only because the status of the ice serves as an early warning system, but also because the huge polar ice cap serves as an air conditioner for the planet (via the albedo effect). If the Arctic tips and the sea ices disappears, global warming will accelerate.]
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Arctic sea ice at record low for June - 0 views

  • Average June ice extent was the lowest in the satellite data record, from 1979 to 2010. Arctic air temperatures were higher than normal, and Arctic sea ice continued to decline at a fast pace. June saw the return of the Arctic dipole anomaly, an atmospheric pressure pattern that contributed to the record sea ice loss in 2007.
  • At the end of May 2010, daily ice extent fell below the previous record low for May, recorded in 2006, and during June continued to track at record low levels
  • The linear rate of monthly decline for June over the 1979 to 2010 period is now 3.5% per decade. This year’s daily June rate of decline was the fastest in the satellite record; the previous record for the fastest rate of June decline was set in 1999
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  • Ron Kwok of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) reports that Nares Strait, the narrow passageway between northwest Greenland and Ellesmere Island is clear of the ice “arch" that usually plugs southward transport of the old, thick ice in the Lincoln Sea. Typically the ice arch forms in winter and breaks up in early July. This year the arch formed around March 15th and lasted only 56 days, breaking up in May. In 2007 the ice arch did not form at all, allowing twice as much export through Nares Strait than the annual mean. Although the export of sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean through Nares Strait is very small in comparison to the export through Fram Strait, the Lincoln Sea contains some of the Arctic’s thickest ice.
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Mercury Levels In Arctic Seals May Be Linked To Global Warming - 0 views

  • high mercury levels in certain Arctic seals appear to be linked to vanishing sea ice caused by global warming.
  • The scientists analyzed the mercury content in muscle samples collected from ringed seals between 1973 and 2007. They then compared the levels to the length of the so-called "summer ice-free season," a warm period marked by vanishing sea ice in the seals' habitat. They found that the seals accumulated more mercury during both short (2 months) and long (5 months) ice-free seasons and postulate that this is related to the seals' food supplies. Higher seal mercury concentrations may follow relatively short ice-free seasons due to consumption of older, more highly contaminated Arctic cod while relatively long ice-free seasons may promote higher pelagic productivity and thus increased survival and abundance of Arctic cod with the overall result of more fish consumption and greater exposure to mercury. Longer ice-free seasons resulting from a warming Arctic may therefore result in higher mercury levels in ringed seal populations as well as their predators (polar bears and humans).
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    Science Daily
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Polar heat pushing jet stream south, bringing Harder Winters for U.S./E.U./Japan - 0 views

  • Last winter's big snowfall and cold temperatures in the eastern United States and Europe were likely caused by the loss of Arctic sea ice, researchers concluded at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Norway last week.Climate change has warmed the entire Arctic region, melting 2.5 million square kilometres of sea ice, and that, paradoxically, is producing colder and snowier winters for Europe, Asia and parts of North America. "The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic," said James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States. "In future, cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception" in these regions, Overland told IPS.
  • Temperatures in January were -2C over the water, while the land was -25C, making conditions far windier and producing more snowfall than normal. Heavy snow on the remaining ice insulates it from the cold air, preventing it from thickening during the long winter.
  • This huge mass of warmer air over the Arctic in the late fall not only generates more wind and snow locally, several studies have now documented the impacts on global weather patterns. The winter of 2005-6 was the coldest in 50 years in Japan and eastern Eurasia, reported Meiji Honda, a senior scientist with the Climate Diagnosis Group at Japan's Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. Honda's studies show that the air over the Arctic was quite warm in the fall of 2005, which altered normal wind patterns, pushing the jet stream further south and bringing arctic cold to much of Eurasia and Japan. He also documented the same mechanism for the colder winters of 2007-8 and 2009-10, he told participants. In eastern North America, the same conditions of 2007-8 produced increased precipitation and colder temperatures in the winter. As the sea ice declines, big impacts are likely to be seen in this region, said Sara Strey of the University of Illinois.
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Arctic Sea Ice Volume at Record Low for May - 0 views

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    A graph from the Polar Science Center charting the decline trend of Arctic Sea Ice Volume from 1980 through May, 30, 2010, depicting a record-breaking low for the month of May.
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Arctic sea ice at record low on summer solstice - 0 views

  • Based on satellite measurements taken during a baseline period from 1980-2000, the ice covering the Arctic Ocean ranges from an average late winter peak of about 6 million square miles (more than twice the area of the lower 48 states), to a typical late summer minimum of well less than half of that. The melt is in full swing by the summer solstice each year, when the baseline ice extent averages about 4.6 million square miles. But this year, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center , the melt-back reached that level by June 1, three weeks early, and since that time, has been at record low levels for the period. This is particularly remarkable because throughout April, daily ice extents hovered very close to average baseline levels (as noted at the time by some commentators eager to suggest the globe is not warming). In other words, the ice retreated with exceptional speed this May — a speed close to the average melt rate of July.
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Arctic ocean full up with carbon dioxide - 0 views

  • As climate scientists watched the Arctic's sea-ice cover shrink year after year, they thought there might be a silver lining: an ice-free Arctic Ocean could soak up large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, slowing down the accumulation of greenhouse gases and climate change. But research published in Science today suggests that part of the Arctic Ocean has already mopped up so much CO2 that it could have almost reached its limit1. Wei-Jun Cai, a biogeochemist at the University of Georgia in Athens and an international team sampled the amount of CO2 in the surface waters of the Canada Basin, in the western Arctic Ocean. "We found that ice-free basin areas had rather high CO2 values that approached atmospheric levels," says Cai. "It was not expected." Although the Arctic Ocean accounts for only 3% of the world's ocean surface area and is mostly covered in ice, it takes up 5-14% of all the CO2 absorbed by the planet's oceans. It tends to take in proportionately more CO2 because gases dissolve more easily in cold water. Scientists had previously thought that open water would promote the exchange of CO2 between the air and the ocean and that the increase in light reaching the water would also trigger the microscopic ocean plants called phytoplankton to transfer more CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean through photosynthesis2. But that "prediction was based on observations of either highly productive ocean margins or ice-covered basins prior to a major ice retreat," says Cai. Very few scientists had surveyed CO2 concentrations in offshore waters.
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Ice melt in Northwest Passage a month ahead of schedule - 0 views

  • ISSUED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA ON 01 JULY 2010.
  • Taking all of the above into consideration, the current pack ice pattern in the Western Arctic resembles that normally seen in the last two weeks of July. The consolidated sea ice pattern in the Central Arctic at the end of June resembles conditions normally seen at this time, except for the region spanning Barrow Strait to M'Clure Strait which more closely resembles that seen at the end of July or in early August.
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Arctic ice melt in June fastest ever - 0 views

  • "June is going to be a new record low (for sea ice extent)," said Julienne Stroeve of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The rate ice has been receding is also faster than any other June on record, she said, as was May.
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Grey Whale reaches Spain through ice-free Arctic - 0 views

  • The wandering grey whale that bewildered scientists after appearing off the coast of Israel last month is now paying a visit to northeastern Spain.The sighting near Barcelona Harbour means the whale, believed to be one that would normally swim past Vancouver Island, travelled about 3,000 kilometres since it was last spotted 23 days earlier.
  • Although scientists have not been able to positively identify where the 12-metre whale came from, the most likely scenario is that it's part of the population that would normally swim past Vancouver Island, migrating from birthing lagoons in Mexico to the Bering Sea, and that it swam through the Northwest Passage in an increasingly ice-free Arctic.
  • There is speculation the whale was following food -- some observers say there are signs populations are dropping, possibly because warming waters mean less food. The tiny marine life they thrive on needs cooler temperatures to survive.
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Arctic sea ice at record low volume for March (2010) - 0 views

  • Total Arctic Ice Volume for March 2010 is 20,300 km^3, the lowest over the 1979-2009 period and 38% below the 1979 maximum. September Ice Volume was lowest in 2009 at 5,800 km^3 or 67% below its 1979 maximum.
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Big snow storms not inconsistent with - and may be amplified by - a warming planet - 0 views

  • there was a detailed study of “the relationships of the storm frequencies to seasonal temperature and precipitation conditions” for the years “1901–2000 using data from 1222 stations across the United States.”  The 2006 study, “Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States” (Changnon, Changnon, and Karl [of National Climatic Data Center], 2006) found we are seeing more northern snow storms and that we get more snow storms in warmer years: The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901–2000, with downward 100-yr trends in the lower Midwest, South, and West Coast. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901–2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity…..
  • Results for the November–December period showed that most of the United States had experienced 61%– 80% of the storms in warmer-than-normal years. Assessment of the January–February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%–80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years. In the March–April season 61%–80% of all snowstorms in the central and southern United States had occurred in warmer-than-normal years…. Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901–2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.
  • the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) U.S. Climate Impacts Report from 2009, which reviewed the literature and concluded: Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent.
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  • Large-scale storm systems are the dominant weather phenomenon during the cold season in the United States. Although the analysis of these storms is complicated by a relatively short length of most observational records and by the highly variable nature of strong storms, some clear patterns have emerged.112 [Kunkel et al., 2008] Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes.112 [Kunkel et al., 2008] The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights.68 [Gutowski et al, 2008]
  • The northward shift in storm tracks is reflected in regional changes in the frequency of snowstorms. The South and lower Midwest saw reduced snowstorm frequency during the last century. In contrast, the Northeast and upper Midwest saw increases in snowstorms, although considerable decade-to-decade variations were present in all regions, influenced, for example, by the frequency of El Niño events.112 [Kunkel et al., 2008]
  • Then we have this apparently as yet unpublished research presented by Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at the recent International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference (IPY-OSC) where he was chairing “a session on polar climate feedbacks, amplification and teleconnections, including impacts on mid-latitudes.” “Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception,” says Dr James Overland…. Continued rapid loss of sea ice will be an important driver of major change in the world’s climate system in the years to come…. “While the emerging impact of greenhouse gases is an important factor in the changing Arctic, what was not fully recognised until now is that a combination of an unusual warm period due to natural variability, loss of sea ice reflectivity, ocean heat storage and changing wind patterns working together has disrupted the memory and stability of the Arctic climate system, resulting in greater ice loss than earlier climate models predicted,” says Dr Overland. “The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,” he says.
  • Even though these storms occurred during warmest winter on record, I think the best way to talk about it until Overland publishes his work is the way NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth did on NPR (audio here): RENEE MONTAGNE, host:  With snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes. Climate skeptics built an igloo in Washington, D.C. during last weeks storm and dedicated it to former Vice President Al Gore, who’s become the public face of climate change. There was also a YouTube video called “12 Inches of Global Warming” that showed snowplows driving through a blizzard.For scientists who study the climate, it’s all a bit much. As NPRs Christopher Joyce reports, they’re trying to dig out. CHRISTOPHER JOYCE: Snowed-in Washington is where much of the political debate over climate change happens. So it did not go unnoticed when a Washington think-tank that advocates climate action had to postpone a climate meeting last week because of inclement weather. That kind of irony isnt lost on climate scientists. Most don’t see a contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. Heres Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Mr. KEVIN TRENBERTH (Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research): The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago, means there’s about, on average, 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the 1970s. JOYCE: Warmer water means more water vapor rises up into the air. And what goes up, must come down. Mr. TRENBERTH: So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, D.C., for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow, partly as a consequence of global warming. JOYCE: And Trenberth notes that you don’t need very cold temperatures to get big snow. In fact, when the mercury drops too low, it may be too cold to snow. There’s something else fiddling with the weather this year: a strong El Nino. That’s the weather pattern that, every few years, raises itself up out of the western Pacific Ocean and blows east to the Americas. It brings heavy rains and storms to California and the South and Southeast. It also pushes high-altitude jet streams farther south, which brings colder air with them. Trenberth also says El Nino can lock in weather patterns like a meteorological highway, so that storms keep coming down the same track. True, those storms have been big ones – record breakers. But meteorologist Jeff Masters, with the Web site Weather Underground, says it’s average temperatures — not snowfall — that really measure climate change. There’s more water vapor lurking around the oceans, and whatever the proximate cause of any one snow storm, there is little doubt that global warming means the overwhelming majority of East Coast storms will be sweeping in more moisture and dumping it on the ground.
Hunter Cutting

Families sailing through ice-free Northwest passage - 0 views

  • David Thoreson has sailed to the ends of the Earth and now carries a message, as if gathered from sea winds.The 50-year-old Iowan and the crew of the 64-foot cutter Ocean Watch finished an epic 382-day journey of 27,524 nautical miles around the Americas on June 17, ending on the very dock they started last May in Seattle.
  • On his first attempt to sail through the Northwest Passage in 1994, he was stopped cold by ice; his second trip in 2007 was a rare success. This time, Ocean Watch was among a circus of boats ripping through, the ice a victim of a warming climate, he said."A sure sign that change is afoot was seeing standard-production sailboats with families going through the Northwest Passage."
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U.S. icebreaker construction falling behind opening of Arctic - 0 views

  • The U.S. Coast Guard won't have any heavy icebreakers available for polar operations for at least six months because of mechanical breakdowns in its small, aging fleet, officials say.
  • Until now, the federal government's strategy has been to try to keep its two heavy icebreakers, both built in the 1970s, operating as long as possible.However, this strategy did not take into account how quickly global warming would make Arctic waters more accessible to commercial activities.Construction of a new icebreaker would cost about $1 billion, Goward said.
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Numerous meltwater lakes forming in Greenland - 0 views

  • From NASA’s eyes in the sky, this is a view of the west coast of Greenland downloaded earlier today, looking down on the Ilulissat Icefjord — the outlet for the Jakobshavn Isbrae, the biggest outlet glacier in Greenland and the largest in the northern hemisphere.
  • I’m posting it to show the numerous large lakes of glacial meltwater that have appeared on top of the ice sheet over recent weeks. At the edge of the ice sheet, the winter snow has melted revealing the greyer ice underneath, but as you climb up the ice away from the coast you get back up into unmelted snow (bottom right). And there are lakes like this a very long way up the west coast, all primed to deliver their water down through moulins to the base of the sheet and thence out to sea, or over the surface in glacial rivers.
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Hudson Bay polar bear population dropping with ice loss - 0 views

  • the ice has been melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the autumn, so that the bears are now spending on average three more weeks on land per year, without food, than they did three decades ago, the researchers say. As a consequence, their body weight in that time has dropped by 60lb, females have lost 10 per cent of their body length, and the west Hudson Bay population has declined from 1,200 animals to 900.
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All 10 NOAA climate indicators tracking warming - 0 views

  • The 2009 State of the Climate report released today draws on data for 10 key climate indicators that all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. More than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries contributed to the report, which confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years. Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere.
  • “For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming,”
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Jellyfish blooms proliferating in warmer, saltier oceans - 0 views

  • while weather patterns are some of the most visible indicators of climate change, we are able to look at other patterns in the ecosystem as equally important measurements.  Among these patterns are jellyfish blooms, which are proliferating at an incredible pace. 
  • There are a number of factors contributing to the increase of jellyfish blooms, most of which are linked to global warming.  Jellyfish are thriving due to warmer and saltier waters as well as an increase in plankton growth.  In addition, overfishing has created a niche for jellyfish to exploit.  In years before predators were consuming much more of the ocean’s nutrients.  Now however, there is less competition leaving more for jellyfish.  This is also the case with agricultural runoff, where jellyfish are able to capitalize on the organisms feeding on the bacteria.  The current trend in climate change shows that the ice cover is melting much later in the spring, spawning more rapid and increased amounts of plankton growth.  There are various theories based on this evidence, but perhaps the strongest supports the idea that increased sunlight is favorable for the plankton.  This is especially true in colder regions such as the Bearing Sea, where scientists and fisherman alike have noticed drastic increases in jellyfish blooms.  But despite recent awareness, population control will only be a reality once the global climate patterns stabilize. For most, summer draughts mean hot days and dry gardens.  For jellyfish, however, it means saltier waters.  As rain becomes less frequent there is less fresh water entering the ocean.  Although it’s not the case with all jellyfish, most will benefit from a higher salt content.  This also relates to other predators and fish species, which are less tolerant of the salt increase and will often move from the coast into deeper, less salty waters.  As the ocean gets warmer and the water level rises, the jellyfish survival rate also goes up.  It creates the right conditions for jellyfish blooms to prosper, which results in a longer span of migration.  Now there are jellyfish species that are being labeled invasive.  Beachgoers have to swim with a new element of caution, unable to know which new species has moved in, and which has left. 
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    A report from a commercial jellyfish aquarium manufacturer
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