There has been a great deal of speculation about the possibility that the arctic sea ice could, at the worst case, melt entirely, or more realistic, possibly break the record sea ice melt set last year.
Judge for yourself. This photo with 1 kilometer/pixel resolution was taken yesterday July 12th at 17:05 UTC:
Click for full size image – link to original source image is here
Note that the image above has been rotated, and the annotation for date/time added to make it easier to present here. There is some cloud cover, but if you look carefully, you can determine what is cloud cover and what is sea ice.
Here is the area covered by the AQUA/MODIS satellite on this photo:
The North Pole is visible in the satellite image, and I’ve marked it on the image with a “N” and crosshair.
Now compare to a similar photo from ten days ago:
Image rotated- click for source image.
I’d say we have a ways to go yet before the sea ice melts completely.
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2
0000/4500000000, factor by 2:=1/225,000
ratio: how long ago NYC was covered by a mile high pile of snow divided by guess at how the earth is.
So in the geologic instant of 20,000 years, 1/225,000th of age of earth ago, we had snow from NYCity to Portland, under which nothing grew or lived or saw the sun. Then some blowhard ancester of Al Gore began boring the cave dwellers and the ice has been retreated ever since. In those days, he was griping about flint I think, and the dangers of fireplaces.
oops, insert ‘old’ where applicable.
All y’alls comments are encouraging.
Sadly, “news” stopped being news. Now opinion is “news”.
More sad is how readily culture accepts opinion as news.
Reason and critical thought have been demonized.
Another step on road to tyrany. Beware.
Peaceful journeys.
The ice does melt “bottom up” when it gets less than 4-6feet thick. Algae grow in it in the saewater/ice interface region. The absorb the sunlight and melt the ice.
Its been seen melting to open water in -15C ambient air temp because of this.
This is the biggest reason the arctic-melt modeling predictions have been so inadequate.
The Climate has changed rapidly b4 of course. Theres 3 rapid “meltwater pulses” of rapid warming and sealevel rise in the last 20000years alone. Ice cores have given us a very accurate season resolution record of temp and atmos composition going back 100’s of thousands of years. The correlations between CO2 and temp are tight.
The scary bit is that compared to ALL the previous climate shifts, eg the 10.5Ka pulse (10500yrs ago), where sealevels rose at up to 1 foot per year for 500years…..
THE RATE OF UPWARD CHANGE IN TEMP AND CO2 IN THE LAST 3 DECADES IS ABOUT 2000 TIMES FASTER!
Anyway the solution is very simple and easy and profitable. About $1 million per year will fund the halt of GW and profits of over 10000% can be made. Biggest prob is the climate scientists are so addicted to being listened to for the first time in their lives right now that they don’t want it done.
Anyone know what I’m talking about?
There are “ocean deserts” in the sth/nth pacific/atlantic, and sth indian ocean.
the centres of these oceanic “gyres”- whirlpools with very low nutrient levels -have biological production as low as the desert regions on land.
The main reason for this is lack of the trace nutrient Iron. Required for phytoplankton.
Many trials have been done showing that 1 ton of finely ground iron powder will produce a plankton bloom of up to 1000 sq km, lasting several mths. Around 500 000 to 5 million ton of carbon sinks to the ocean floor as dead Plankton. “sequestered”.
The carbon credit payout for doing this is very lucrative.
The rest of the bloom is a huge boon for the marine foodchain.
If we also netted up the blooms with converted trawlers, the plankton would be an easy substitute for fossil oil for diesel, ethanol, plastic/chemical production.
And 1 ton of iron powder could produce 10’s of millions of tons of fuel.
Not a happy thought for big energy moguls tho- they could not monopolise and control the supply of fuel and feedstocks like they are used to doing with oil because Oil has enourmous costs to get into. Algaefuel doesn’t.
They’d much rather bring us planet destroying breeder nukes with millions of times worse than chernobyls millions dead result inevitable, and high tech/cost hydrogen. -Monopolisable energy economy.
[…] Ice Check – Still a lot of ice up there 30 07 2008 During our last check in, we had a look at northern Canada from the Arctic Circle to the North pole, and found we had quite a ways to go before we see an “ice free arctic” this year as […]
[…] Written by Watts up with that Blog; During our last check in, we had a look at northern Canada from the Arctic Circle to the North pole, and found we had quite a ways to go before we see an “ice free arctic” this year as some have […]
[…] | Tags: Polar Ice Check – Still a lot of ice up there | During our last check in, we had a look at northern Canada from the Arctic Circle to the North pole, and found we had quite a ways to go before we see an “ice free arctic” this year as some have […]
We are in uncharted territory with the way this is unfolding. There is currently 0.25 million km more area of sea ice in the arctic than this date last year. More fractured and thinner than then. Certainly less multiyear ice, and the opening of clear water around the top of Greenland and the nth Canadian islands is significant.
The most significant factor on how this season will unfold is probably the effect on the gulf streams drawing of warmer water to the arctic thru the nth sea that the current scenario will have. Either:
-The current will slow or stall, subduction blocked by a surface pool of fresher, lighter water from the ice melt. A cooler euro-summer and possible temporary reversal in the arctic melting trend resulting.
-Or the Meltwater may become insignificant on the thermo-haline density gradient if the ice has dropped below the volume where the extensive wind/wave mixing now happening all over the polar basin eliminates haline density differences. The gulfstream could then accelerate, driven by the anticlockwise polar wind circulation. If this happens then we might see an arctic whirlpool, with the currents subducting “plughole style” at the nth pole. This happened for around 24hrs a month ago. If that became established there would be a dramatic polar, nthern warming from the increased heat transfer nth on the currents and a big risk that the buffering of sea level that the deep ocean side of the circulation system(water around 4C, warming causes contraction, offseting the expansion of warming surface waters) provides. If deep ocean water starts getting over 5C then rapid and unstable sealevel change as has been standard in some past epochs is probable.
This image is clearly useless.
The source link doesnt work.
See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25917328/ for details of ongoing breakups in Arctic ice.
There’s been an acceleration in melting in the last 2 weeks.
We are now back to very near the same total arctic sea ice area as this date last year.
Still more fractured, spread out, thinner and less mass of ice than last year this date.
Clark said on 13/7/08
“Climate audit had a fascinating post last week pointing out that the key melts in past years normally occur right now in the cycle. If there’s not a ton of melting now, no way we match last year.”
Turns out now (4/09/08) we are virtually level pegging for a repeat record melt on last year. Looks like Clark’s assertion (based on Climate Audit) that “if there’s not a ton of melting now, no way we match last year” was hollow. Well I hope that maybe Clark would like to take Neilo’s advice from 13/07/08:
“Why is it, then, that a person can yell “The ice caps are melting” or “temperatures are rising” or “sea levels are rising”, and when it doesn’t happen there is a collective shrug and no one is charges with (at least) causing a public mischief?”
Presumably Neilo thinks that the converse should also be true. So, Clark, you are in grave danger of having comitted a public mischief and Neillo is not going to be happy with you or Climate Audit.
Climate change is to allegory as statues are to birdshit 🙂
Come on guys and gals, get your heads out of the sand. Let the people who actually know something about ice do their job without defamation of character.
Robsterillo