From the University of Southern Denmark. This is a bit of a surprise, and may well be true, but I’m not too keen on the first couple of paragraphs. Summer sea ice extent has most surely reduced, winter sea ice the last couple of years has been near normal.
Climate change is a fact, and most of the warming is caused by human activity. The Arctic is now so warm that the extent of sea ice has decreased by about 30 pct. in summer and in winter, sea ice is getting thinner. New research has shown that sea ice removes CO2 from the atmosphere. If Arctic sea ice is reduced, we may therefore be facing an increase of atmospheric concentration of CO2, researchers warn.
Due to global warming, larger and larger areas of sea ice melt in the summer and when sea ice freezes over in the winter it is thinner and more reduced. As the Arctic summers are getting warmer we may see an acceleration of global warming, because reduced sea ice in the Arctic will remove less CO2 from the atmosphere, Danish scientists report. “If our results are representative, then sea ice plays a greater role than expected, and we should take this into account in future global CO2 budgets”, says Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard, PhD Fellow, Nordic Center for Earth Evolution, University of Southern Denmark and the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Nuuk.
![Dorte%20Haubjerg%20S%C3%B8gaard%20studying%20sea%20ice%20in%20Greenland%20LOW[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/dorte20haubjerg20sc3b8gaard20studying20sea20ice20in20greenland20low1.jpg)
Sea ice draws CO2 from the atmosphereOnly recently scientists have realized that sea ice has an impact on the planet’s CO2 balance.”We have long known that the Earth’s oceans are able to absorb huge amounts of CO2. But we also thought that this did not apply to ocean areas covered by ice, because the ice was considered impenetrable. However, this is not true: New research shows that sea ice in the Arctic draws large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean”, says Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard.Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard has just completed her studies of sea ice in Greenland. The studies show that sea ice may have a major impact on the global carbon cycle, and that chemical processes have a much greater impact on the sea ice’s ability to remove CO2 than biological processes. The research is published as a series of articles in scientific journals.”The chemical removal of CO2 in sea ice occurs in two phases. First crystals of calcium carbonate are formed in sea ice in winter. During this formation CO2 splits off and is dissolved in a heavy cold brine, which gets squeezed out of the ice and sinks into the deeper parts of the ocean. Calcium carbonate cannot move as freely as CO2 and therefore it stays in the sea ice. In summer, when the sea ice melts, calcium carbonate dissolves, and CO2 is needed for this process. Thus, CO2 gets drawn from the atmosphere into the ocean – and therefore CO2 gets removed from the atmosphere”, explains Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard.
The biological removal of CO2 is done by algae binding of carbon in organic material.
Frost flowers also contribute
Another important discovery is that every winter flower-like ice formations are formed on the surface of newly formed sea ice. They are called frost flowers. Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard has discovered that these frost flowers hold extremely high concentrations of calcium carbonate, which can have a further significant impact on the potential CO2 uptake in the Arctic.
Photo top: Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard from University of Denmark/Grønlands Naturinstitut studies how sea ice removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Photo: Søren Rysgaard.
Photo below: A frost flower has emerged on new sea ice. Photo: David Barber.
Contact Ph.d. Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard, Tel: +299321200 and doso@natur.gl.
Ref:
The relative contributions of biological and abiotic processes to carbon dynamics in subarctic sea ice, Polar Biology: Dorte Haubjerg Søgaard, David N. Thomas, Søren Rysgaard, Ronnie Nøhr Glud, Louiza Norman, Hermanni Kaartokallio, Thomas Juul-Pedersen, Nicolas-Xavier Geilfus. doi 10.1007/s00300-013-1396-3.
“Climate change is a fact….”
————
Stop the presses!!!
The climate used to never change. ever. ever. Fact.
(PS “Fact” is the new “/sarc”)
Funny wording too…Would be more consistent as
Problem, of course, is that it hasn’t warmed in a long time. Or, one could have
but then, it’s just sort of a vague “change”, and not scary “warming”, I guess.
Have you ever noticed that in climate porn, the money shot is always in the first few paragraphs? It’s almost like the people who give grants only read the first few lines, make some ooooo’s and aaaaaahs, then roll over and have a ciggy.
premature interjection
the money shot is always in the first few paragraphs?
That’s because once global warming / climate change has died, these same papers will have the first paragraph or two deleted and the paper will still stand!
Sounds logical to me!
I need to see the data.
Why should they show you their data when you just want to find something wrong with it? Right?
Wrong, I want to see if I can find something right.
mpainter September 22, 2014 at 4:00 pm
Maybe, but they don’t know that.
Per the Sogaard paper, “Knowledge on the relative effects of biological activity and precipitation/dissolution of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in influencing the air-ice CO2 exchange in sea-ice-covered season is currently lacking.” Does this throw into doubt the entire method of ice core sampling-historic CO2 correlation? How accurate is it when they can’t get a measurement that reflects actual atmospheric concentrations?
“Does this throw into doubt the entire method of ice core sampling-historic CO2 correlation?”
It absolutely should discard absolute measures of CO2, but there may still be some value in relative measures… but perhaps not. The ice cores do show troubling stable CO2 concentrations at times.
“Does this throw into doubt the entire method of ice core sampling-historic CO2 correlation?”
Aren’t ice cores taken from glacial ice, and not sea ice? The calcium and concentrated brine required for CO2 removal are present in sea water, but would be mostly absent from glacial ice.
That’s one thing that came to mind for me as well (ice core accuracy) plus another thought…
Could this help explain a causal link between temperature and atmospheric CO2 content. There is significant evidence that CO2 LAGS temperature. With warming temps and decreasing sea ice, does atmospheric CO2 go up because there’s not as much ice to suck it out. Then when temperatures drop (sun, or other unknown factors) and sea ice is on the rise, CO2 then drops as the increasing sea ice “absorbs” it.
Just a thought.
Indeed there is a huge difference between sea ice and glacial ice, which has much less sea-salts incorporated. Coastal glacial ice somewhat more than inland Antarctic ice, due to wind transport. Bacteria are omnipresent also more in coastal cores than in inland cores, but they just survive the extreme cold (-40°C) inland ice cores like Vostok and Dome C. All that the bacteria do is using some CO2 as carbon source for DNA repair, which gives a “loss” of ~0.1 ppmv CO2 over hundred thousands of years. But the bacteria survive…
Looncraz: absolute CO2 values from ice cores are valid, but reflect a weighted average of several years to several centuries, depending of snow accumulation rate, which gives the speed at which the air bubbles are sealed from the atmosphere.
The smallest resolution is from two coastal Law Dome ice cores: ~10 years over the past 150 years, including a 20 year overlap (1960-1980) with direct measurements at the South Pole for the same average gas age.
The longest resolutions are for Vostok (~600 year over 420 kyear) and Dome C (~560 years over 800 kyear).
Boulder Skeptic, the total sea ice area is currently at record level for the past 30 years of satellite measurements, thus if the ice area is a significant CO2 player, then the CO2 levels should decrease, not the steady increase we see over the past 55 year…
“…thus if the ice area is a significant CO2 player, then the CO2 levels should decrease, not the steady increase we see over the past 55 year…”
Another falacious, circular argument. Let me fix it for you: “…thus if the ice area is a significant CO2 player, then the CO2 levels should decrease relative to what they otherwise would be doing“.
Since you do not know what they otherwise would be doing, you can reach no conclusion on this basis.
You always do this, Ferdinand. You assume your answer a priori, implicitly factor it into your logic, and seem to think it conclusory when, mirabile dictu, you end up “proving” the answer you assumed at the beginning.
Meant to say “fallacious”…
Bart, I was reacting on what Boulder Skeptic said. I don’t see that this plays a huge role in the carbon cycle: seasonal happens the opposite of what the researchers have found: more CO2 for more ice (thanks to vegetation). Over middle long periods, the opposite happens too: record global sea ice cover and record CO2 levels. Which proves that sea ice is not a dominant player in the carbon cycle and certainly not the cause of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere…
That’s a good idea, why didn’t they think of that? (And publish?)
This was for ‘mpainter’
The clue is in the heading: It is Arctic ice.
Everyone knows that Antarctic ice behaves diffferently!
/sarc
What about Antarctic sea ice – surely the same thing happens there AND Antarctic sea ice is increasing and breaking all records.
I agree David and the Arctic ice is at similar levels to last year, don’t these people read the news
Yeah, but they need to say the magic words to guarantee funding and publication. /sarc
Current global anomaly is about +0.5 million km². Currently, there wouldn’t appear to be a problem.
“Summer sea ice extent has most surely reduced, winter sea ice has been near normal.”
In the Arctic. I guess this phenomenon does not occur at the South Pole. I wonder how the ice knows which pole it is at?
It’s grammatically awkward, but I think this is what is meant:
sea ice has decreased by about 30 pct. in summer
and in winter, sea ice is getting thinner.
This seems to indicate that melting of ice is the important phase that pulls atmospheric carbon dioxide into the ocean. Thus it would seem the more freezing and melting the more is removed from the atmosphere. So if there was less melting and refreezing as in the early eighties, there would he less pulled from the atmosphere.
I don’t think so, the main seasonal variation is in the NH, where the extra-tropical forests are the dominant cause: δ13C and CO2 go in opposite ways:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_d13C_MLO_BRW.jpg
There is far less seasonal variation in the SH.
As the winter ice area in the Arctic remained more stable than the summer ice area, the melting and refreezing in the past decades was larger than in previous decades…
With Arctic Sea Ice decreasing and total Arctic Sea Ice ammount also slightly decreasing thien this could be a problem for the overall Global CO2 sink process. Problem with the Science presented is thet the Overall Global Sea Ice levels are increasing. Antarctic Sea Ice levels are (probably) at greater levels than ever recorded in Human History (if they can use the term to prove global warming then it is OK to use them to disprove it), and are increasing on an annual basis at a rate that is faster than the Arctic Ice is deminishing.
Nature working in balance like nautre always does.
One should expect these reactions to occur, but once the sea ice thickens there will be little transport of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean. This sink rate is at a minimum when the ice thickness and extent are at their maximum. It is at a maximum when the extent is at a minimum.
That’s what I’m thinking. Ice is static; water is dynamic and can carry CO2 deeper. I believe the transport rate of CO2 through ice is orders of magnitude slower than through water. The addition of “frost flowers,” algae, and CaCO3 to the mix appears to be just razzle-dazzle to obscure ice’s poor CO2 transport rate and relatively fast surface saturation.
One more entry in the long march of “here’s another part of the carbon cycle we formerly knew nothing about, but we’re sure humans control atmospheric concentration anyway.”
Even if nothing was known of any part of the carbon cycle, the net result is known and the net natural variability over the past 55 years is known: about +/- 1 ppmv year by year variability over an increase of 0.5-2 ppmv net sink rate.
As there is not the slightest indication that the natural cycle increased in intensity, the human emissions are the sole cause of the increase.
@ferdinand meeus. The net result is known. The individual sources are guestimates with error bars greater than the human contribution. Scientists find “new” sources every year. Since the smoking gun of carbon isotopes doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, I don’t know how anyone can claim with a straight face how much CO2 in the atmosphere comes from humans.
Johnny, it doesn’t matter how many new natural sources the researchers find, the natural sinks outnumber the natural sources in quantity for each year in the past 55 years.
That is something most housewives with a strict household budget seem to understand, but some skeptics refuse to accept…
I know that the carbon isotopic composition of vegetation and fossil fuel burning are similar, but the oxygen budget shows that the biosphere as a whole (vegetation growth + decay/bacteria/molds + insects + animals) is a net source of O2, thus a net sink for CO2 and thus preferably 12CO2, thus not the cause of the 13C/12C ratio decline. Only humans are, as all other sources (oceans, volcanoes, rock weathering) have a higher 13C/12C ratio than the atmosphere…
Because it’s the stupid, circular “mass balance” argument again, Ferdinand.
There are ocean currents that flow beneath the ice over all or most of the Arctic. So it makes very little difference whether or not CO2 gets into the water below via the ice. In the end, the amount of CO2 in the ocean will be essentially the same. ie, the amount of Arctic ice is completely or almost completely irrelevant to the amount of CO2 in the ocean. Especially given that absence of ice gives atmospheric CO2 direct access to the water (ie, the fact that CO2 can enter via ice doesn’t mean that the ocean collects more CO2 if there is ice). And the Arcitic is a small enough area that it wouldn’t make any significant difference anyway.
Where does the calcium come from on the surface of old multiyear sea ice?
… and what happens to the CaO when the CO2 ‘splits off’???
I’ve now skimmed a couple of the papers. The calcium is in the water and CaCO3.6H20 (ikaite) crystallizes out of the seawater at -2.2°C so it is abundant (relatively speaking!) in the surface layer of sea ice. Other salts crystallize at much lower temperatures. See the second listed reference above.
So doesn’t this mean the more ice area that melts (and re-freezes) the more CO2 gets sucked into the ocean? I’m not understanding the problem in the arctic. Anyone?
That’s what I first thought when I read that. Perhaps someone more learned can explain.
The scientific problem, it seems to me, is that there is so much we don’t know and that we know so little about what we know.
The political problem is that we have acted so much based on wrong scientific conclusions.
The first step freezing, creates the heavy brine which pulls CO2 down to benthic depths. The second step, melting, draws atmospheric CO2 into the melted ice to dissolve the CaCO2. This is an application of Le Chatelier’s Principle with a change of concentration of a solute.
But is not “melted ice” water? And do not CaCO3 crystals sink? It seems to be incomprehensible, meaning the study.
I’m not saying it is right, but that is how I interpret what the authors are proposing. As the ice melts, it releases CaCO2 crystals which then to dissolve back into solution take additional CO2 drawn from the atmosphere. What this would mean if it is correct is that the physical ice formation process itself acts as a sink to sequester CO2 to the deep ocean, and the melting and release of CaCO2 crystals re-primes the pump using CO2 from the air.
The part I find hard to accept that that deep CO2 briny ocean water should eventually upwell and release its CO2 back to the surface, i.e. the AMOC. So overall it is zero net.
“So overall it is zero net.”
Perhaps, averaged over geologic time. But, transport phenomena cannot be so easily taken for granted over finite time. There can be standing waves in the steady state, and traveling waves with unsteady boundary conditions.
Furthermore if, as this article indicates, we have significant gaps in our knowledge of effects at the surface where we can easily investigate them, what confidence can we have that we know everything that happens to the flows in the deeps of the oceans?
So, if there is more freezing and melting going on, why isn’t that pulling in more CO2. If area doesn’t melt, the CACO2 sits in the ice, not sucking CO2 into the water.
To those still reading this, I asked the author, and here is her response. I think it’s exactly right: it’s hard to know!
“I hope this answers your question”
No, but it tells me what all of us know: It’s complex!!!!!
The frost flowers contain a high concentration of microbes, which I suspect may have something to do with their formation.
If this is true, I would expect to see discernible effects of changing arctic sea ice on atmospheric CO2 concentration, as measured at Mona Loa. Or maybe not since in the past decade antarctic sea is has been increasing while arctic sea is has been decreasing.
“Due to global warming, larger and larger areas of sea ice melt in the summer and when sea ice freezes over in the winter it is thinner and more reduced. As the Arctic summers are getting warmer we may see an acceleration of global warming, because reduced sea ice in the Arctic will remove less CO2 from the atmosphere, Danish scientists report.”
Well, that explains the recent pause in atmospheric warming.
Oh, wait… no, it doesn’t.
???
New user and fairly recent covert to the “dark side”.
I’ve been reading a lot on this site over the last few weeks, and the comments section is as enlightening as the posts. I don’t understand all that’s posted, but the more I read convinces me of the misleading facts in the MSM.
Anyway, can someone explain or point me to any articles which give a fair representation of what’s happening with the land ice at Antarctica. I’ve seen posts/articles in the news saying about some of the ice sheets breaking away and the potential to impact sea level by up to 4 feet. But other comments have implied that the land ice is actually increasing.
Thanks.
Keith You might find this interesting.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH: SOLID EARTH, VOL. 118, 3126–3141, 2013
Antarctic contribution to sea level rise observed by GRACE with improved GIA correction
Erik R. Ivins, Thomas S. James, John Wahr, Ernst J. O. Schrama, Felix W. Landerer,
and Karen M. Simon.
“The new estimate for Antarctic mass balance by GRACE during 2003.0–2012.0 is –57 +/-34 Gt/yr with the improved IJ05_R2-GIA correction. Similar conclusions concerning the lower Antarctic contribution to sea level rise during the GRACE era have also followed from the implementation of the W12a model by King et al.[2012] and by Sasgen et al. [2012], who used a hybrid GPS-GIA model. The reduction in mass contribution to sea level rise from Antarctica is notable.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrb.50208/pdf
Note: Total Antarctic ice is on the order of 26.5 million cub. km. One gigaton of ice is equivalent to roughly one cub. km., making 57 Gt. 0.0002% of total Antarctic ice.
For a brief discussion of the current range of estimates see
http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/antarctic-ice-sheet-surface-mass-balance/
Thanks Dennis.
Arctic sea ice has turned past minimum (in case anyone is interested). For the second year in a row the minimum has grown from the previous year. This may not mean much but it does make next year interesting.
We have long known that the Earth’s oceans are able to absorb huge amounts of CO2. But we also thought …
This is a strange use of the word “huge”. To the oceans the total CO2 in the atmosphere is tiny.
But we also thought …
No. You may think you thought but you did not. You parroted a learned text. You recited a religious liturgy. You ranted a tribal slogan.
But for you thinking lies only in the future, if at all.
+1
If you thought you knew it all before, and were wrong, why should we believe you now?
This is clutching at straws
What does this finding mean for ice core records? More specifically, does this finding change the interpretation of CO2 levels in ice core records?
That was the thought that occurred to me first when reading this. I recall a comment discussion some while ago regarding the reliability of ice core CO2 readings where, when I expresed my dubiousness that CO2 encapsulated in microscopic ice bubbles and subjected to massive hydraulic and mechanical forces, pressurizations and depressurizations, contaminations, and other perturbations would preserve a perfect copy of atmospheric air for a hundred thousand years or more, another commentor assured me that it had been established conclusively that the walls of those micro bubbles in the ice were completely impermeable to the gases contained within them.
I’ve always admitted to being very much an epistemological hardcase, i.e. I don’t claim to “know” much at all, but my own confirmation bias leads me to suspect that these lads are closer to an understanding of reality than those folks who fill their lives with endless days of grinding up ice cores. On the other hand, the logic and hypothesis they suggest is hardly snare drum tight either. It just shows to go ya, the only place in science where the oft ballyhooed 97% deserves to appear is in discussions of the more than 97% of the “known” universe which we pretend to understand just a little by calling it Dark matter and Dark energy
https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4674/the-dark-side-of-our-universe
“Ninety-seven-and-a-half per cent of the universe is invisible. This has got to be one of the most extraordinary discoveries in the history of science. Yet it still hasn’t trickled into the consciousness of most scientists. They still have not woken up to the shocking fact that everything they have been studying – everything science has been looking at over the past 350 years – is no more than a minor contaminant of the universe, like the frosting of snow on a mountaintop.”
Dave, there are some alternative proxies (sediments) which show similar values as CO2 in the ice cores.
The main reason I find that ice cores CO2 levels are reliable is the fact that CO2 levels follow temperature (proxy) levels at a quite constant ratio of ~8 ppmv/K between glacials and interglacials. If there was any distortion of the gas bubbles or diffusion of CO2, the ratio would fade away for each glacial 100 kyear back in time over 8 interglacials, which isn’t the case…
They must be ecstatic about the Antarctic then.
Well, knock me down with a feather. Who would’a thought ice sequestered CO2? Like the Pleistocene glaciation never happened. Like atmospheric CO2 never fell to less than 200ppm because of the last glacial max. The ice melts and releases the CO2 back into the atmosphere. Who could have imagined that? Where exactly did they think the 97% of CO2 that wasn’t the result of ‘human activity’TM added to the atmosphere came from? Fairy dust?
I’ve just glanced through the first of the Søgaard papers in the list. Maybe I missed something, but nowhere could I find anything that even remotely implies “Climate change is a fact, and most of the warming is caused by human activity.”
Has anyone found it in the other papers?
First, the Antarctic has about 10X the volume of ice that the Arctic has. With that in mind, see here. You can see that the Antarctic more than makes up for any Arctic loss. The polar see-saw explains the difference.
Next, the Arctic has been ice free in the past, during our current Holocene. That has happened when human emitted CO2 was non-existent. Per the Null Hypothesis, what is being observed now is simply naltural climate variability, nothing more.
Next, global sea ice is above its long term average.
Next, older Arctic ice is beginning to build up to former levels. At the same time, Antarctic ice has reached record highs.
Finally, for those new to the subject, there is nowhere better to learn the basics of Arctic ice than here at John Daly’s excellent site.
Despite the usual hand-waving over every minor fluctuation in ice cover, there is nothing happening that cannot be fully explained by natural variability. And of course, CO2 has nothing whatever to do with polar ice.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. I believe any calcium or CO2 they are finding in the ice is from what was already in the sea water & it returns to the sea water when the ice melts.
If this process were so as they present it (presuming an atmospheric influence), it (the process) should be able to be reproduced with fresh water or even distilled water. Freeze that & see how much calcium carbonate/CO2 is in it…
Just my HO – FWIW
Jeff
also…
“Sea ice draws CO2 from the atmosphere…”
Does that also mean the Greenland / Antarctic ice caps “draw CO2 from the atmosphere” as well? If sea ice does it, why wouldn’t other ice creation do it as well. Wouldn’t that kind-of throw a wrench into the whole CO2 in ice core issue?
Again, just some thoughts – FWIW
Jeff
The problem is with the skimpy information given in the posting. We are left trying to figure what the authors meant.
No, sea ice and glacial ice are completely different. Glacial ice is formed by the compression of snow under its own weight. That contains far less sea salts than sea-ice.
Haven’t the last few summers been the coldest on record for the Arctic?
How many significant factors in the CO2 budget are not well considered by the climate modeling consensus?
Soil, ice, land use, fresh water systems, etc. etc.
Since world sea ice levels are high and CO2 is a well mixed gas, this has large implications that the cliamte obsessed have not even considered. Yet for them the science is settled.
As to the authors bit of self-policing, that is no more than when scientists were discovering things that falsified the young earth of biblical interpretation and felt the need to make pro-forma nods to the Church.
‘As the Arctic summers are getting warmer we may see an acceleration of global warming, because reduced sea ice in the Arctic will remove less CO2 from the atmosphere, Danish scientists report.’
Meanwhile, other Danish scientists report-
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2014.png
Talk about left hand not knowing what the right hand’s doing.
I was thinking the same thing, and also remembering that last years Arctic summer temperatures were also below average:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2013.png
Well climate has been changing ever since the big bang, which actually was a very tiny bang.
But as to this icy CO2 thing, it is well known that the seasonal cycle of CO2 in the Arctic, is more than three times the amplitude of the ML cycle, and the south polar amplitude is almost zero.
Now years ago, I proposed that the cause of the big arctic cycle (there’s no trees in the arctic ocean), was the segregation coefficient of CO2 between water and ice in the freeze / melt cycle. The same thing that causes the ice to be fresh water rather than salt (besides those brines).
That idea was pooh-poohed by someone who is a CO2 expert, at Scripps as I recall (seemed like a nice chap).
But I don’t see plant growth explaining the 18-20 ppm of CO2 cycle in the north polar region.
Now I dunno, whether this new study either supports, or refutes MY theory, but it is interesting, and obvious from the first few paragraphs, that the author(s) were clearly intoxicated at the time of writing that.
There is a large exchange of air masses between the mid-latitudes and the high North via the Ferrel cells.
The seasonal variation at Schauinsland, Southern Germany is as big as at Barrow. Anyway, it is plant growing that is dominant, even at Barrow, as the opposite δ13C and CO2 changes show (see the graph above).
That will also make the oceans under the ice less alkaline if co2 reduces PH. So with retreating ice you must see an increase in PH. And with recovering ice we will see a reduction. So the acidification of the oceans must be a sign of recovery then since the sea ice is increasing !
It seems to me that if the melting of sea ice filled with calcium carbonate requires CO2 from the atmosphere, then the conclusion that the melting of Arctic sea ice (lower winter limits) will not create the result claimed by the authors.
The claimed effect is only available if the ice melts. There is NO reason to think that having thicker multi-year ice will increase the drawdown of CO2 from the atmosphere. Quite the opposite.
Suppose the Arctic ice melted entirely each summer. Then the melting would be complete each year. At the moment only a portion of the ice melts. With the entire sea ice cap melted, that would give the extraction of the maximum amount of CO2 possible.
In winter the water would freeze again and the process would continue, presumably with a lower total extent depending on the severity of the winter. Fine. What is the total mass involved?
The cycling of the mass of ice (Delta ICE) from melting to freezing is the key, not the temperature at which it takes place or the extent of sea ice in any one year. The idea that if it was thicker when it melted means that the summer temps should be higher than usual, and melt more, and that winters should be colder and freeze more. That is the only way to increase the pumping through the system. The only way to decrease the pumping is to re-freeze and re-melt a smaller total mass, which is not yet evident, is it? Any ice-free Arctic winter days yet?
The analysis fails on this point. In general the claim is that having a reduced extent (limit) means having less mass of ice that is cycled through the melt-freeze process. But if it melts back father, there is the same Delta Ice and there is no change in CO2 pumping.
On the other hand long-frozen sea ice stuck to the sea floor in Antarctica might melt and result in a permanent, once-off pumping of CO2 into the ocean, after which it will cycle in the same way as the Arctic, resulting in a much great drawdown than before.
Pardon me for asking such a stupid question but how would a melting ice cap prove that co2 is responsible for warming the planet uncontrollably in the first place?
In the good news department I have discovered what has so far been a flawless predictor of impending rain. I observed large numbers of people walking down my street and noticed that every time they pull out and open umbrellas or cover their heads with newspapers the rain begins immediately. When the umbrellas start closing and the newspapers come down the rain invariably stops. Clearly, based on the evidence, umbrellas and newspapers regulate precipitation.
I deserve a Nobel Peace prize for this discovery.
“Pardon me for asking such a stupid question but how would a melting ice cap prove that co2 is responsible for warming the planet uncontrollably in the first place?”
It doesn’t. In fact, the only means by which CO2 is claimed to facilitate Arctic melt if by temperature increase. But the temperatures during the melt season have decreased. Winter temperatures, however, have increased slightly at the same time (and at a higher rate). The temperatures, though, aren’t likely to be responsible for the increased melt – unless, of course, you are talking about a reduction in evaporation which results in great exposure to the sun for melting… a result of lower temperatures.
These effects, however, are quite possible due to CO2. But not, necessarily, by any radiative qualities it possesses, but by its specific heat alone. You’d expect warmer lows and lower highs as a result of CO2, with the delta of change being greater at lower temperatures (relative to Earth’s conditions – Venus is another story).
A) There was no comparison of CO2 uptake for whole season cycle. I mean open sea compared to time to time ice covered and melting sea.
B) There was no measurement of CO2 outflow at freezing process. High concentration of ikaite in frost flowers is sign of CO2 outflow.
C) Claims concerning global CO2 are not directly found in publications but in the press release.
D) It seems that mainly the increase of CO2 uptake at melting process is more or less compensation of slower uptake of ice covered sea.
E) You can read more in plain Finnish here:
http://roskasaitti.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/miksi-jaatutkimukset-uutisoitiin-harhauttavasti/