Arctic Ice in Death Spiral - Yahoo! News - 0 views
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dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet,
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the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It's not going to recover," he said.
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ecause
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aid Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and a world expert on permafrost.
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takes much longer to re-freeze
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emits huge volumes of additional heat energy into the atmosphere
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srupting the weather patterns of the northern hemisp
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Paradoxically, a warmer Arctic means "future cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception
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Overland told IPS.
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average temperatures are now three to five degrees C warmer than they were 30 years ago
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nderway is a rapid warming of the coastal regions of the Arcti
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f the global average temperature increases from the present 0.8 C to two degrees C, as seems likely
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possibly eight degrees due to a series of processes and feedbacks called Arctic amplification.
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half of the world's permafrost will likely thaw,
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depth of a few metres,
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eleasing most of the carbon and methane accumulated ther
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emendous amounts of extra heat are added every summer to the region as more than 2.5 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean have been opened up to the heat of the 24-hour summer sun
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25 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2).
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Methane is
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catastrophic for human civilisatio
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spans 13 million square kilometres of the land in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe
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Present pledges by governments to reduce emissions will still result in a global average temperature increase of 3.5 to 3.9 C by 2100,
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hree times more carbon than all of the worlds' forests contain.
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consistently across the entire region since the 1980s,
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southernmost permafrost limit had retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years in Quebec’s James Bay region.
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r by the undersea permafrost that acts as a cap over unknown quantities of methane hydrates (a type of frozen methane) along the Arctic Ocean shelf, he said.
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eight million tonnes of methane emissions are bubbling to the surface from the shallow East Siberian Arctic shelf every year
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If just one percent of the Arctic undersea methane reaches the atmosphere, it could quadruple the amount of methane currently in the atmosphere.
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releasing huge amounts of global warming gases.
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ould rapidly accelerate in a few decad
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we could lose much of the permafros
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because of rapid feedbacks.
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contains at least twice as much carbon as is currently present in the atmosphere –
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Arctic that's 10 to 16 degrees C warme
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asing most of the permafrost carbon and methane and unknown quantities of methane hydrates.
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climate scientists are calling for a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels
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still a 50-percent probability of exceeding two degrees C
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decline three per cent per year
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the emissions peak is delayed until 2025
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rctic will be eight to 10 degrees warmer and the world will lose most its permafrost.
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emperatures will rise three degrees
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has the potential to eliminate burning coal and oil to generate electric
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governments have the political will to fully embrace green technologies.
