Posted by John Goetz
CNN posted an AP story tonight on their website regarding the separation in early August of a 19-square-mile ice shelf from Elsmere Island. It starts:
TORONTO, Ontario (AP) — A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada’s northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.
It sure sounds impressive and scary, but then most people probably think of New York City when they hear “Manhattan”. They might even think of the greater NYC Metro Area. But in reality, Manhattan is but one of the five Boroughs in NYC. And 19 square miles is roughly 4.4 x 4.4 miles. Is it really that impressive or alarming? It is actually smaller than the town limits of the little community I live in.
Furthermore, the ice did not actually melt. The article states that it is adrift in the arctic.
Here is the rest of the article:
“The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,” said Muller.
Muller also said that two large sections of ice detached from the Serson Ice Shelf, shrinking that ice feature by 47 square miles — or 60 percent — and that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has also continued to break up, losing an additional eight square miles.
Muller reported last month that seven square miles of the 170-square-mile and 130-feet-thick Ward Hunt shelf had broken off.
This comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. And earlier this year a 160-square mile chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated.
“Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer,” said Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa. “And extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years.”
Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean’s surface but are connected to land.
Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s. All that is left today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 299 square miles.
Martin Jeffries of the U.S. National Science Foundation and University of Alaska Fairbanks said in a statement Tuesday that the summer’s ice shelf loss is equivalent to over three times the area of Manhattan, totaling 82 square miles — losses that have reduced Arctic Ocean ice cover to its second-biggest retreat since satellite measurements began 30 years ago.
“These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present,” said Muller.
During the last century, when ice shelves would break off, thick sea ice would eventually reform in their place.
“But today, warmer temperatures and a changing climate means there’s no hope for regrowth. A scary scenario,” said Muller.
The loss of these ice shelves means that rare ecosystems that depend on them are on the brink of extinction, said Warwick Vincent, director of Laval University’s Centre for Northern Studies and a researcher in the program ArcticNet.
“The Markham Ice Shelf had half the biomass for the entire Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf ecosystem as a habitat for cold, tolerant microbial life; algae that sit on top of the ice shelf and photosynthesis like plants would. Now that it’s disappeared, we’re looking at ecosystems on the verge of distinction,’ said Muller.
Along with decimating ecosystems, drifting ice shelves and warmer temperatures that will cause further melting ice pose a hazard to populated shipping routes in the Arctic region — a phenomenon that Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to welcome.
Harper announced last week that he plans to expand exploration of the region’s known oil and mineral deposits, a possibility that has become more evident as a result of melting sea ice. It is the burning of oil and other fossil fuels that scientists say is the chief cause of manmade warming and melting ice.
Harper also said Canada would toughen reporting requirements for ships entering its waters in the Far North, where some of those territorial claims are disputed by the United States and other countries.
I really like the comment “we’re looking at ecosystems on the verge of distinction“
This is the time of year when Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum. Yes, right now it stands at the second lowest level measured in nearly thirty years. But is what we find reported in this article truly alarming and out of the ordinary? I don’t know. I’m asking.
Talk amongst yourselves.
TTY there does appear to be glaciers on Ellesmere Island.
Did you look at the original article? http://www.madzu.com/ellesmere/News/Entries/2008/9/2_Massive_Ice_Shelf_Loss_During_Summer_2008.html
Also from Wikipedia:
“Large portions of Ellesmere Island are covered with glaciers and ice, with Manson Icefield and Sydkap in the south; Prince of Wales Icefield and Agassiz Ice Cap along the central-east side of the island, along with substantial ice cover in Northern Ellesmere Island. The northwest coast of Ellesmere Island was covered by a massive, 500 km (310 mi) long ice shelf until the 20th century. The Ellesmere Ice Shelf was reduced by 90 percent in the twentieth century due to global warming, leaving the separate Alfred Ernest, Ayles, Milne, Ward Hunt, and Markham Ice Shelves.[10] A 1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that 48 km2 (19 sq mi) 3.3 km3 (0.79 cu mi) of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974.[8] The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest remaining section of thick (>10 m, >30 ft) landfast sea ice along the northern coastline of Ellesmere Island, lost 600 km (370 mi) of ice in a massive calving in 1961-1962.[11] It further decreased by 27% in thickness (13 m (43 ft)) between 1967 and 1999.[12]
The breakup of the Ellesmere Ice Shelves has continued in the 21st century: the Ward Ice Shelf experienced a major breakup during summer 2002;[13] the Ayles Ice Shelf calved entirely on August 13, 2005; the largest breakoff of the ice shelf in 25 years, it may pose a threat to the oil industry in the Beaufort Sea. The piece is 66 km2 (25 sq mi).[14] In April 2008, it was discovered that the Ward Hunt shelf was fractured into dozens of deep, multi-faceted cracks [15] and in September 2008 the Markham shelf (50 sq km / 20 sq miles) completely broke off to become floating sea-ice. [16] It seems likely the shelf is disintegrating.”
Pamela, Here in Australia we have the same sort of system as Canada. Blue Blood Conservatives and well ……. The True Believers – (The Reds). WE do have a fair proportion of watermelons also. One anomaly here is that the Conservatives are named the Liberal Party. The Left’ Centrist are Labor (Trade Union party)(ala Britain).
The most conservative people in Australia are actually the “Liberal” voting working class. They know where their bread is buttered. They want a constant stable government with the most important thing – Job security. The last thing required is a radical unstable economy driven by Zealots.
The voting age in Australia is eighteen up and we have compulsory voting. Don’t vote and you get fined. The “liberal” left wing Labour Government gets voted in by the younger voters and a small amount of swinging voters.
Any wonder that the AGW agenda is being flogged to death in schools, and on TV ads primed to the desired audience during their demographic watching period.
Pamela,
In that list of things that you believe in, I can’t find a single issue that would be considered conservative.
Pamela,
In regards to your friend, do you understand the difference between anecdote and data?
Do you deny that the vast majority of people who are pushing the AGW meme are left to far left?
Yes there are exceptions, but that doesn’t invalidate the point.
The Canadian Ice Service shows ice all the way up to the Alaskan Coast today.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/Ice_Can/CMMBCTCA.gif
No more swimming for the Polar Bears.
It turns out that microwave sounding, which is relied on for all the ice readings is not trustworthy. NSIDC states on their web site that microwave sounding underestimates ice during the summer.
The upshot is that NSIDC/CT/Bremen maps are missing a lot of ice around the edges, so comparisons versus the historical record of sailors are useless.
Bobby Lane (00:03:42) :
Yep, it’s “the destructive power of hurricanes has generally increased since the mid-1970s” because that’s the period most touted as demonstrating AGW. 🙂
The references to “Characteristics of an active multi-decadal signal in the Atlantic” refer to the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” whose warm phases (like the current on started about 1995) correlate with increased tropical activity (like the current period since about 1995).”
Lines like “there is no long-term trend in the number of landfalling hurricanes since 1900” suggest that Chris Landsea had a role in the report, he studied under Bill Gray and has initiated a task to review and fix errors in the hurricane record. Hmm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Landsea is decent.
BTW, the Colorado State Klotzbach/Gray hurricane forecast for September is out at http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts/2008/sep2008/sep2008.pdf . They’re expecting a very active month, but their forecast of five named storms will be exceeded if things keep up a they have.
Pamela Gray
Nice Rant! Hope you do feel better!…..and no, that is not a saracasm…it is quite serious. The total, overwhelling stupidity that all of us see in the AGW issue is enough to make any normal person want to scream and bang their head against the wall occationally. Good for you…you were able to get it out of your system, here, among friends.
Others have commented on your posts, and certainly have portions of a much larger truth. On the August RSS thread, Bobby Lane has a good handle on the situation.
As a dedicated independant, and professional environmentalist [it says so right here in my job title] who has been watching the radicals on both extremes, here is my take. There are well intentioned environmentalists, who seriously believe that we are doing irreparable harm to the planet…and who believe that only the government can force the rest of us to behave in what they feel is an environmentaly responcible manner…and if it wrecks lives and the economy, well, the ends justify the means. At the same time, there are the socialists, who will use any excuse to increase governmental powers…and AGW makes a really nice excuse. Both groups are very vocal, dedicated, and from where I sit, dead wrong….but their very high visibility makes it look like the all liberals hold the same veiws…tarred by the same brush.
Thankfully, this site is about the science, not the politics…but politics is part and parcel of human life, so we have to work around it, while trying to concentrate on understanding the very interesting climate changes we can all see happening.
This site is home to a very interesting and well informed group of individuals, who have a great deal of interesting information, that we all want to share…without the personal attacks so common elsewhere…and with only an occational nod to the politics of the situation. Thank you one and all!
cdl
I first saw this article at MSNBC and quickly dismissed it as GW media hype. I would classify this as journalistic sensationalism to to the hilt. Furhtermore, it is poorly written, lacks credible documentation and explanation and fails to leave the reader with a clear understanding of what actually occurred.
I don’t agree that these ice shelves built up from long frozen sea ice and snow. They are all at the end of glacial valleys and would have been fed at some point in the recent 6,000 year past by the glacial ice sheet from the middle highlands of Ellesmere Island.
The existence of 3,000 year old driftwood could just be the result of the Holocene Optimum temps when Arctic sea ice would have been lower than today.
Here is a good high resolution sat picture of Ellesmere showing the middle highlands, glacial valleys and ice shelves on the north end of the island.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/EllesmereIsland.jpg
Nathan/Bill Illis:
Certainly there are glaciers on Ellesmere Island, but they are in the mountains well inland and have nothing to do with the shelf ice. That the Ellesmere shelf ice is sea ice is well established and described in many places in the litterature (see here for example:
http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/papers2/bradley2008.pdf)
The presence of glacial valleys only shows that the ice once reached the sea, probably last during the last glaciation.
Of course the driftwood is from a warmer period (though 3,000 BP is a bit late for the Holocene optimum). However the point is that the driftwood is on the beach inland of the shelf ice, and therefore shows that there was no shelf ice then, since the driftwood hardly walked across the ice on its own.
Like I said to my readers, I hope those guys have an ‘ice day’! :]
If the named ice shelf broke off, can we give a new name when we discover a new ice shelf at the same location? There are some obvious names to use.
I get the terrible feeling that those who buy into the fear that the northern ice cap is actually on the road to uncontrollable melt think that in the almost 5 or 6 months of arctic winter, under almost total darkness and bone breaking cold that…….shudder….. the ice cap CONTINUES to melt in an agony of meltdown.
I mean, do these people have a clue what goes on when winter blankets the area above the Arctic Circle? Do they actually think that any more is melting during the winter months? I just have a feeling that some actually think that melting goes on 24/7/365. A quick way to end this is to send the most rabid fear mongering of them all (Gore?) up to the North Pole to report back to us on lets say January 2’nd, with a web cam and microphone and just tell us what they see? Oh, I forgot, it will be totally dark…..tisk, tisk.
Fred,
I’d also give him a candle to see by. He’ll also need it to keep from freezing his butt off.
What I find striking in all these reports of melting ice and calving ice sheets and glaciers is the underlying idea that some folks think that ice has never melted before. Just a little logic would tell them that if that were the case, all of the world’s water would be piled up at the poles, not just the bit that’s there now, all of it. Ok, so a tiny bit would be frozen out on a few mountains around the globe.
People really need to get out more.
I’ve changed my name so that I can make some political comments!
As a Brit, a dedicated conservationist, working ecologist, and one time further left than Mao Tse Tung (when I was a student and we didn’t get to hear about the downside of all those happy smiling equal people in blue dungarees!) – its great to hear about how the different colours relate to AGW – in the US, Canada and Australia. Over here – the left-liberal press are the real guardians of civil liberty – our socialist government (red) has proven the nastiest authoritarian liberty taker in living memory – but they BOTH believe in AGW and support renewable energy – blindly – for example, a plant is being built that will process the whole of our annual export of wheat- for ethanol to put in the petrol tank (EU required) without any thought for the impact on world food supplies.
Recently, the director of Ecotricity – having just built a turbine against the wishes of the local elected government, but overuled by the central in the name of national need – opined that ‘we can build a better world, yes, but democracy as we know it won’t do it’. So Green is the new Black.
Only the true Blue conservatives hold out any hope. Dear Boris – the new blue Mayor of London – replacing Red Ken, a previous [snip, SKEPTIC subsituted ~ charles the moderator], has now signed up to AGW, but I don’t think he BELIEVES. The Blues just might come round when they see the damage that turbine fever, tidal barrages, biofuels and nuclear reactors can do – but somehow I doubt it.
There is, I think, something else going on – I haven’t got its name or colour – except that it IS dark. Its global. Al Gore has its number – and so do the Carbon Banks he promotes. Maybe its the need to believe itself – and not to question…..
I just gave a talk to a small group at a local festival (fair) – on what is really happening to the climate (cycles, periods, spotless suns) and up jumped the local Friend of the Earth and in a rude and highly intimidating way called me a liar and a charlatan – the audience gave him short shrift – they were rainbowheads with some respect for protocol – and they, along with the 9/11 ‘truth movement’ have always had a gut feeling about AGW – we got on fine with all the science, and the FOE went off to plot my downfall.
We live in interesting times, indeed.
Here’s another local “global warming” story. I wanted to e-mail it straight to Anthony Watts, but can’t find his address.
Asian soot, smog may boost global warming in US
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_sc/sci_overlooked_warming;_ylt=Auvj4fqkZ4ZNtrdwR6dQGqCs0NUE
Is it just me or do I see a plank in the republican platform? And does it not say “global climate change”? I must be seeing things. The good ol’ American red folks are all rank and file natural variability folks, or at least the vast majority of them say that. It can’t be true that their own platform has something on climate change in it. Afterall, they are the true believers in science and refute this political-religious nonsense, while the left side of the isle blithely believes in CO2 spirits and the Messiah Gore.
hmmmmmm
There is something vaguely familiar about my argument. Can’t quite put my finger on it.
Sorry about the above post, but it gets my dander up when one side of the isle accuses the other of being more willing to be bamboozeled into believing in something that is not based on solid science and will believe in it so much that it is willing to stuff it down the throats of people who do not believe thus. BOTH sides of the red/blue divide sleep with that bed partner.
Shall we skip calling the kettle black?
Excellent summary of the project on the Speedo website:
“He wants to alert people to the fact that the Arctic ice is melting faster than predicted by scientific models. He also wants to send a message of peace by placing 192 flags from every nation onto the North Pole…”
Anyone think that his next announcement will be that perhaps the Arctic isn’t melting quite as fast as we’ve been lead to believe?
Given that he’s 1) Got stuck almost as soon as he started and is still rather a long distance from the pole and 2) Forgotten at least 1 flag (that of his colleague) I’m inclined to agree with a post above that this must be one of the most poorly planned expeditions ever.
All those diesel particulates they are spewing out whilst bobbing around pointlessly up there must really be helping the environment.
Can’t be much longer now until they give up and admit that perhaps, maybe, they shouldn’t have taken all of the hysteria quite so seriously.
Pamela, read and compare the planks in the two platforms.
Just because one says we need to be concerned doesn’t mean that one is a dyed in the wool warmer.
Global Climate Change is quite simply the industrialization of much of the world. This is a problem that will solve itself as China, India and others become rich enough to clean up their own back yard.
Whoever takes the White House must recognize this simple fact, so that the climate war does not drain the world of it’s wealth.
OT, but In the eyes of most of our world leaders AGW has morphed into a convenient root of all evil that’s really easy to sell. It’s exactly the simplification that they were looking for.
Pamela Grey
lol…as always, I enjoyed your posts….
The republicans have been toying with a climate change plank for several weeks…and I beleive it was Monday when the settled on the final version.
OK, the republicans, being political critters, have yelled “Me TOO!” and have agreed to hold hands with the democrats while all of them jump off of the same cliff. I can’t imagine why this is a good thing…but it IS politics….
Since they are all products of our stellar education system, why should any of us really be supprised….
Pot…kettle…black….
Maybe.
Hell…handbasket….
Seems more timely….
Excuse me for a moment while I finish screaming and go beat my head against the wall….
[sigh]
cdl
Isn’t it more likely that the shelf broke off because of ice pushing it from the glacier behind?
Pamela, I respect your opinion and enjoy your posts very much.
Here’s my take on the Republican Climate change stance.
First off we are in a two party system. The Greens have to lump in with the Democrats and the Libertarians have to lump in with the Republicans on Presidential ellections. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader have shown us that by voting for your ideal representitive (if there is one) you can ruin the chance of the one of the two most likely to be elected. They will lose votes to someone whom has no chance of being elected.
That’s something everyone (practically everyone) knows. The republicans know (assume) they have the ultra-conservatives in their pocket. Why not then pander to the fence sitting liberals and conservatives?
Yes, it’s dirty but that’s Politics.
I envy the voters that have a candidate that is exactly what they want. Most of us have to hold our noses at the polls and pick the less stinky piece of poo.