Oops we broke it
The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer.
This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a climate-change driven heatwave in the northern hemisphere.
One meteorologist described the loss of ice as “scary”. Others said it could force scientists to revise their theories about which part of the Arctic will withstand warming the longest.
In other words it’s happening much faster than the most pessimistic predictions.
The sea off the north coast of Greenland is normally so frozen that it was referred to, until recently, as “the last ice area” because it was assumed that this would be the final northern holdout against the melting effects of a hotter planet.
Oops.
As well as reducing ice cover, the ocean intrusion raises concerns of feedbacks, which could tip the Earth towards a hothouse state.
Freakish Arctic temperatures have alarmed climate scientists since the beginning of the year. During the sunless winter, a heatwave raised concerns that the polar vortex may be eroding.
This includes the Gulf Stream, which is at its weakest level in 1,600 years due to melting Greenland ice and ocean warming. With lower circulation of water and air, weather systems tend to linger longer.
A dormant hot front has been blamed for record temperatures in Laplandand forest fires in Siberia, much of Scandinavia and elsewhere in the Arctic circle.
As they say…scary.
H/t Acolyte of Sagan in Miscellany Room
At my former place of employ, a couple of years ago, we had twice-monthly lunches at which guests were invited to speak (including employees; I gave an introduction to quantum physics once that was lukewarmly received). This post reminded me of one in particular, in which a local academic kook of an archaeologist peddled climate-change denial and her bizarre fiction written from the point of view of polar bears. The whole episode was strange, and we didn’t really understand the subtext of her presentation until partway through.
At the end, I asked her about retreating ice, and she said some cockamamie thing about how ‘scientists have proven that there’ll always be ice up around Greenland for the polar bears to retreat to in summer, and it’ll re-freeze down to the northern coast in the winter, so it’s nothing to worry about’. I never accepted that, and never really understood where it came from.
Now I know. Too bad it was just as wrong as the rest of her nonsense.
(And there are forest fires a lot further south than the Arctic; since I returned from Europe, my city and much of several provinces have been more-or-less blanketed in smoke from the extensive forest fires. It would be alarming if it weren’t so predictable, and depressing.)
For a bit more information, there was a post about this a week ago on “Arctic Sea Ice Blog”:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2018/08/circumnavigating-greenland.html
Interesting, and with nice time-lapse photos.