Every year in October the National Snow and Ice Data Center (www.nsidc.org) releases a report on the minimum sea ice extent for the current year. This year the NSIDC announced that the minimum summer sea ice extent for 2014 was 5.02 million square kilometers. OK, so what?
NASA satellites started monitoring sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean back in 1979. Satellite data are downloaded each day and sent sent to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for analysis. Thirty-five years of these data are now painting a sobering picture. Though there is a significant amount of year-to-year variability among the data, a strong trend is emerging.
Average Monthly Sea Ice Extent September 1979-2014.
Data courtesy of NSIDC.org
The data show that there is significantly less sea ice in the Arctic now than there was only a few decades ago. The upper end of the trend line tops out around 7.9 million square kilometers of sea ice, and the bottom end of the line reached about 4.9 million square kilometers of sea ice. The difference? About 3 million square kilometers of sea ice gone missing. How much is that? That's about the same surface area as India, the 7th largest country in the world.
NSIDC also reports that we are currently losing on average 13.3% of sea ice cover per decade and that the ten Septembers with the lowest extents happened in the last ten years!
Bottom line? We are progressively losing more sea ice in the Arctic.
10 for 10? The last ten years, the ten lowest sea ice extents, and sadly at this rate it's not likely to get better before it gets even worse.
We are near the traditional end of the Arctic sea ice melt season, so I thought I'd check in and post a quick update. Two years ago, 2012 set the the all-time recorded sea ice melt record (so far) with a minimum sea ice extent over 3 million square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average. By comparison the 2014 Arctic sea ice melt season looks fairly tame, but don't be fooled, the current sea ice extend is creeping up on 1.5 million square kilometers below the long-term average, and it's still declining.
This year's minimum sea ice extend will almost certainly not reach the record set in 2012, but it was a significant melt all the same. This melt qualifies 2014 to be the 6th largest Arctic sea ice melt year on record, exceeded only by 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012. The other years, 2009 and 2013 were just shy of this year's mark. This also means that the eight years with the greatest Arctic se ice melt were the past 8 years. It looks like a trend is forming....the bottom line, the sea ice melt is becoming more extensive as time goes on.
(Graphs courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Univ of Colorado at Boulder, NSIDC.org)
Every summer some of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean melts. And, it's once again that time of year. The Arctic sea ice melt is on!
There is no way to know how much sea ice will be left at the end of any melt season, but there's one thing we can be pretty sure of, and that's that there will be less sea ice up there at the end of this melt season than the 1981-2010 average of 6.3 million square kilometers.
2001 was the last year the sea ice minimum was greater than long-term average.
The data below show the annual minimum sea ice extent for the Arctic Ocean between 1979 and 2013 (data courtesy of the NSIDC.org). There is a lot of variability in the data (which is normal for any natural system), but the interesting and worrisome thing is that on average the amount of sea ice remaining at the end of the summer melt season is dropping at an increasing rate (see the trend line through the data).
The increasing steepness of the slope is what worries me. These data indicate that not only do we have a trend of increasing sea ice melt in the Arctic, but that the rate ice is melting is accelerating.
Climatologists have long projected that the effects of global climate change will be observed earliest and most clearly in the Arctic. The rate of melting sea ice is just one of those indicators, but it's a powerful one!
Global warming is not just some wild-eyed idea; the reality of global warming is a scientific conclusion based on decades of multiple lines of evidence.
Will we see a new record Arctic sea ice minimal this summer? No one can know this, but science can with a high degree of confidence predict that there will be less ice on average this summer than we've seen in the past.
The data below show the current sea ice extent and recent extent history comparing 2014 and 2012, the year with the current minimum sea ice extent) so far.
So what!?
The answer to the so what question is this. Global warming is real, and unless we get busy doing what we can to mitigate the effects of climate change we are in for some serious trouble.
America...the alarm clock is ringing. Are you waking up?
I know, I know, ANOTHER posting on Arctic sea ice!? No, it's more than that.
I guess I just can't help myself, plus the sea ice melt is currently on record pace. The all time record Arctic sea ice melt so far occurred in 2007, but right now there is somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 square kilometers more open water in the Arctic today than there was at this time in 2007!
The melt is really taking off north of Siberia, in Baffin Bay west of Greenland, and in the Beaufort Sea north of the Canadian Yukon, Northwest Territories, and eastern Alaska. Plus Hudson Bay will soon be ice free, well ahead of historical average melt dates. If this keeps up we will see a new record for ice melt in the Arctic later this summer.
This graph shows the comparison between the area of sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean between historical averages (1979-2000 - dark gray line), the 2007 record sea ice melt year (dotted green line) and current sea ice cover (blue line).
OK, so what? What can we do to mitigate what is going on with global climate change. While I encourage everyone out there to drive less, walk or bike more, and emit as little carbon as possible, the bottom line is that as individuals we can do little to mitigate the problem. What is desperately needed NOW is for everyone to put pressure on their local, state, and national leaders to take steps to mandate change. It's clear that the small grassroots effort that has been going on for the past few decades is not going to do the job. We need large-scale investment in cleaner, more efficient energy, reductions in carbon emissions, and transportation options.
The science is in, and no matter how much nay-sayers or skeptics want to think or say otherwise, humans are driving the current trend of global warming.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administrations's Climatic Data Center just released data showing that the months of January through June of 2012 was the warmest ever in the 118 year history of national weather statistics.
This map shows state-by-state rankings of average temperature compared to all other years of Jan-June temperature averages since the late 1800s. A score of "1" means it was the coldest average temperature in the record. A score of "118" means it was the warmest in the temperature record.
This map shows that only two states, Washington and Oregon, showed near normal average temperatures, while the rest of the country experienced above normal to record warmest temperatures. In fact, 30 states reported record warmest temperatures for this 6-month period.
Washington and Oregon were kept cool by Pacific storms that moved onshore, brought cooler temperatures, and much higher than average precipitation. The rest of the country baked.
The national average for precipitation for Jan-June 2012 scored a "16", which means that it was the 16th driest Jan-June on record. A few areas had near record precipitation, such as Coastal Washington, Oregon, northern California, and Minnesota. The Pacific storms explain the rainfall in the NW, and if you recall, there were torrential rainfalls and massive flooding in MN in June. Nevada, the four-corners states, and Wyoming in the meantime experienced near record low precipitation. That's not that surprising - it's an arid part of the country anyway, but look at the Ohio River Valley. These states routinely enjoy storm front after storm front bringing rain needed for agriculture, etc. This Jan-June, however, rainfall was WAY down.
When are we going to wake up? The individual action of a few people here and is simply not enough to make a difference when it comes to mitigating climate change.
This is our time. This is our watch. I believe that our children and grandchildren will rightly hold us responsible for our lack of action, regardless of what any other country or people do.
Carbon emissions are a responsibility of the rich. The rich are the only ones with enough wealth to emit significant amounts of carbon. And when I say rich, I mean people who earn more than $40-50K per year. Where did this number come from? This threshold was identified by two researchers, Pacala and Socolo, of Princeton University. You can learn more about their work by watching this seminar by Dr. Pacala, given a few years ago at Stanford University. It's about an hour long, but it's incredibly fascinating, and their conclusions bear consideration.
The people above the $40-50K personal wealth mark are the people rich enough to own a car, own a house, be materialistic consumers, etc. This is not something we want to hear or like to hear, but it's a serious reality. Economists looking at the emissions of anthropogenic carbon have discovered that the richest 500 million people on the planet, and that the poorest half of the global population (now over 3.5 billion people) are so poor that they emit almost nothing.
Carbon emission is a problem generated by the rich. It is a problem that needs to be shouldered by the rich.
I am sadly convinced that based on what we are doing and on what we are not doing right now, we will not be heroes in future history books. We will be branded as the generation(s) who were more concerned with short-term profits, personal wealth, and lavish lifestyle (i.e., greed) than we were with taking responsibility to be worthy stewards and caretakers of the planet for the benefit of future generations.
