By 2040: an Arctic with no ice

[Random_Task]

By 2040: an Arctic with no ice?
Times Online Link

Ice is melting so fast in the Arctic that the North Pole will be in the open sea in 30 years, according to leading climatologists.

Ships will be able to sail over the top of the world and tourists will be able visit what was, until climate change, one of planet’s most inaccessible landscapes.

American researchers, assessing the impact of carbon emissions on world climate have calculated that late summer in the Arctic will be ice-free by 2040 or earlier, well within a lifetime.

Some ice would still be found on coastlines, notably Greenland and Ellesmere Island, but the rest of the Arctic Ocean, including the pole, would be open water.

The researchers, who were funded by Nasa, said that the ice retreat is likely to remain fairly constant until 2024 when there will be a sudden speeding up of the process.

 

[putteesinmyhands]

Will this have an adverse effect on the Arctic Convoy Veterans centenary?

 

[PassingBells]

No one who has seen how glaciers have receeded in the last x years can be surprised by this.

PB

 

[armchair_jihad]

It really is time to start building Dutch style sea defences, when the Arctic goes Greenlands ice will follow and so will maps as we know them.

 

[stoatman]

More alarmist bollocks. Given that Greenland and most of Antarctica are actually gaining ice mass at the moment (although the "leading climatologists" will only tell you about the very small bits which are losing it).

It is clear that piece is based on a computer model -- when the current computer models can accurately predict the actual changes which have occurred since 1950 (which none of them can do -- they all overestimate hugely -- and they cannot even agree to within 5° what the temperature today should be so the results are "fudged"), then I will have some truck with their predictions for the future.

Given that according to the climate research Centre at the University of East Anglia, the global mean temperature has been stable since 1998, these computer model based predictions of catastrophe by Thursday next are starting to wear a little thin...

 

[armchair_jihad]

I see your boosting your income Stoatman - how do I get on that Petro Dollar / Dick Cheney gravy train?

 

[drain_sniffer]

More alarmist balls. Given that Greenland and most of Antarctica are actually gaining ice mass at the moment (although the "leading climatologists" will only tell you about the very small bits which are losing it).
It is clear that piece is based on a computer model -- when the current computer models can accurately predict the actual changes which have occurred since 1950 (which none of them can do -- they all overestimate hugely -- and they cannot even agree to within 5° what the temperature today should be so the results are "fudged"), then I will have some truck with their predictions for the future.

Given that according to the climate research Centre at the University of East Anglia, the global mean temperature has been stable since 1998, these computer model based predictions of catastrophe by Thursday next are starting to wear a little thin...

And your evidence of this is where?

 

[Steven]

More alarmist balls. Given that Greenland and most of Antarctica are actually gaining ice mass at the moment (although the "leading climatologists" will only tell you about the very small bits which are losing it).
It is clear that piece is based on a computer model -- when the current computer models can accurately predict the actual changes which have occurred since 1950 (which none of them can do -- they all overestimate hugely -- and they cannot even agree to within 5° what the temperature today should be so the results are "fudged"), then I will have some truck with their predictions for the future.

Given that according to the climate research Centre at the University of East Anglia, the global mean temperature has been stable since 1998, these computer model based predictions of catastrophe by Thursday next are starting to wear a little thin...

And your evidence of this is where?

Well as with all these disaster is coming stories there is always something left out.

While the edges of the glaciers are melting, the ice sheets in Greenland's interior are getting thicker, according to satellite data collected over the last 11 years. On average the ice sheets have got thicker by about six centimetres each year, the researchers say.

The researchers, based at Norway's Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC), say that this is probably because snowfall in the region has increased, due to a weather pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Finding out whether or not the Greenland ice sheet is shrinking overall is important because it is so large. While plenty of data has been collected on the retreating glaciers and thinning edges of the ice sheets, much less in known about the interior

Now finding that report was not easy, the first 5 pages of Google hits are all of the same "the sky is falling" reports about how the Greenland ice cover is dissappearing at an alarming rate.

As for the Antarctic regions_

New research has found that parts of the ice sheet that covers West Antarctica may be getting thicker, not thinner, as scientists have feared.

The ice sheet has been retreating for the last few thousand years, but we think the end of this retreat has come

Dr Ian Joughin
The long-term future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been the focus of much concern. While the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is considered relatively safe, there have been fears that climate change could cause the WAIS to disintegrate, raising global sea levels by as much as five metres.

That could have a catastrophic effect on coastal communities.

Most researchers are agreed that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been retreating over the last 10,000 years, but the new findings, published in the journal Science, could be evidence that that this trend is about to be reversed.
Dr Ian Joughin, of the American space agency's (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Slawed Tulaczyk, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, say they have found "strong evidence" that the ice sheet in the Ross Sea area is growing, by 26.8 gigatons per year

So are we all about to drown or is the ice just shifting position?

I don't know but all these "doom and gloom we are all going to die" media reports are not helping.

 

[drain_sniffer]

I agree that its not as bad as all the media make it out to be, but I do believe that there is a shift in weather patterns that will lead to some uncomfortable times ahead.

 

[stoatman]

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820southseaice.html
http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers/6341044 Hot & Cold Media.pdf
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N13/EDIT.jsp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/05/warm-refs.pdf

THOMPSON, D.W.J., et al. 2002. Interpretation of recent Southern Hemisphere climate change.
Science 295: 895-899.

LIU, J, et al. 2004. Interpretation of recent Antarctic sea-ice variability. Geophysical Research Letters
31: 10:1029/2003 GLO18732.

DORAN, P.T., Priscu, J.C., Lyons, W.B., Walsh, J.E., Fountain, A.G., McKnight, D.M., Moorheat,
D.L., Virginia, R.A., Wall, D.H., Clow, G.D., Fritsen, C.H., McKay, C.P. and Parsons, A.N. 2002.
Antarctic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response. Nature, 415, 517-520.

ANDERSON, J.B., and Andrews, J.T. 1999. Radiocarbon constraints on ice sheet advance and retreat
in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. Geology 27: 179-182.

JOUGHIN, I., et al. 2002. Positive mass balance of the Ross ice streams, West Antarctica. Science,
295, 476-480. (West Antarctic ice sheet growing at an estimated 26.8 gigatons per year)

CHYLEK, P., et al. 2004. Global warming and the Greenland ice sheet. Climatic Change 63: 201-221. and JOHANNESSEN, O.M., et al. 2005. Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland,
Sciencexpress, 20 October 2005.

And so on and so on... the references are discussed in detail here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2006/11/05/warm-refs.pdf


Do not confuse predictions coming out of computer models with reality, especially when the same models cannot even retroactively predict what has already happened.

 

[Speedy]

Whilst I belive that we need to cut down on pollution and emissions as they are A Bad Thing, I also think that many of these stories are not looking at the historical perspective either. The Roman empire for example was largely successful in its expansion and settling of other lands partly due to several hundred years of very clement weather (vinyards in Britains for example) and funnily enough when things got colder again the empire began to fall.
I also belive that whist we can currently see what is going on we have a great deal of difficulty seeing how this fits into the Earths natural cycle over several thousand years. You have to remeber that volcnic activity and natural forest fires have put vastly more elements into the atmosphere in the past than we currently do. I'm in an open mind about all of this. In the mean time I will enjoy drinking a nice whiskey at 21:30 on my patio in August with my feet bare.

 

[the_guru]

Stoatman is on the money. Global warming is a over egged pudding. Try reading the picture as opposed to selective facts. The climate of this planet is an ever changing beast. Where do you think the deserts and morraines in the ground under your feet came from? Environmentalists are scaring the public. Because we need to have something to be scared of. No surprise that this has become the boom industry since the Soviets dropped off.

I am all for green energy and efficiency, but that is what it is. Efficiency

 

[Gundulph]

The whole World is being affected, as odd as it sounded to explorers in the early 1800's, The snowy peak of Mt. Kenya was first sighted by an outsider in 1849 - the missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf - although the idea that there could be snow on the Equator was not believed until the British geographer Halford John Mackinder reached the summit in 1899.

I was on Mt. Kenya with 3 other lads from my Unit back in 92, it appears we were very fortunate to have seen (and been on) Mackinder's Glacier, this lies off to one side of the main Lewis Glacier as far as I remember, it had shrunk over the years to about 15m in length so may actually be gone now has anyone been up on Kenya in recent years and seen what is left of mackinder's, if indeed, there is anything left?!






Gundulph




.

 

[milsum]

More alarmist balls. Given that Greenland and most of Antarctica are actually gaining ice mass at the moment (although the "leading climatologists" will only tell you about the very small bits which are losing it).

It is clear that piece is based on a computer model -- when the current computer models can accurately predict the actual changes which have occurred since 1950 (which none of them can do -- they all overestimate hugely -- and they cannot even agree to within 5° what the temperature today should be so the results are "fudged"), then I will have some truck with their predictions for the future.

Given that according to the climate research Centre at the University of East Anglia, the global mean temperature has been stable since 1998, these computer model based predictions of catastrophe by Thursday next are starting to wear a little thin...

Stoatman, wind your neck in fella. I appreciate the need for a balanced debate and an open review of the facts, but don't you realise that you're doing exactly the same thing as the doom-and-gloom scaremongers? That is, presenting every little fact out of context and subjectively giving some more weight than others, not to mention how arrogent it sounds for you to spout that the experts have all got it wrong and you and the references you've found are actually the only truth? I don't mean to be arguementative

Also, don't you just love UEA!! Try UReading, NCAR, NASA, ECMWF, BAS, UCam,UOx, UEdinburgh and most other learned places of environmental research for a change - look at the concensus.

Might just add though that the first thing I thought when I heard this was "model based? Believe it when I see it". However, I've seen it in Alaska, and not forgetting that last year was the first in living memory people failed to make it back on foot walking to and from the North Pole becuase the ice had melted?

 

[Bravo2nothing]

It really is time to start building Dutch style sea defences, when the Arctic goes Greenlands ice will follow and so will maps as we know them.

How so? When you have a glass containing a liquid and ice, the ice melts, the glass doesn't overflow does it? The ice is simply displacing the water. The only rise will be from the ice pack in Greenland (which isn't displacing water).

 

[armchair_jihad]

It really is time to start building Dutch style sea defences, when the Arctic goes Greenlands ice will follow and so will maps as we know them.

How so? When you have a glass containing a liquid and ice, the ice melts, the glass doesn't overflow does it? The ice is simply displacing the water. The only rise will be from the ice pack in Greenland (which isn't displacing water).

Hence my mentioning Greenland in my post, you did read my post? - I too have seen Al Gores documentary - only on a long haul flight I may add (full carbon fare ).

 

[stoatman]

^ ^ ^

Did you notice that he is still pushing the long since discredited "hockey stick" graph ? I really do have to wonder about people who have to use things which have demonstrably been proved wrong to make their points.