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Sea ice in Arctic shrinks to second lowest level on record

By SETH BORENSTEIN

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level since scientists started to monitor it by satellite, with scientists saying it is another ominous signal of global warming.

 

The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said the sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 1.6 million square miles (4.14 million square kilometers). That's behind only the mark set in 2012, 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).

 

Center director Mark Serreze said this year's level technically was 3,800 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) less than 2007, but that's so close the two years are essentially tied.

 

Even though this year didn't set a record, "we have reinforced the overall downward trend. There is no evidence of recovery here," Serreze said. "We've always known that the Arctic is going to be the early warning system for climate change. What we've seen this year is reinforcing that."

 

This year's minimum level is nearly 1 million square miles (2.56 million square kilometers) smaller than the 1979 to 2000 average. That's the size of Alaska and Texas combined.

 

"It's a tremendous loss that we're looking at here," Serreze said.

 

It was an unusual year for sea ice in the Arctic, Serreze said. In the winter, levels were among their lowest ever for the cold season, but then there were more storms than usual over the Arctic during the summer. Those storms normally keep the Arctic cloudy and cooler, but that didn't keep the sea ice from melting this year, he said.

 

"Summer weather patterns don't matter as much as they used to, so we're kind of entering a new regime," Serreze said.

 

Serreze said he wouldn't be surprised if the Arctic was essentially ice free in the summer by 2030, something that will affect international security.

 

"The trend is clear and ominous," National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientist Kevin Trenberth said in an email. "This is indeed why the polar bear is a poster child for human-induced climate change, but the effects are not just in the Arctic."

 

One recent theory divides climate scientists: Melting sea ice in the Arctic may change the jet stream and weather further south, especially in winter.

 

"What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic," Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said. "It looks increasingly likely that the dramatic decrease in Arctic sea ice is impacting weather in mid-latitudes and may be at least partly responsible for the more dramatic, persistent and damaging weather anomalies we've seen so many of in recent years."

 

-- © Associated Press 2016-09-16

[ukrules]

Second lowest level on record, ok sure.

 

I have a feeling that during the last ice age there was more but I guess this is not on record so it doesn't count right ?

 

Since the last ice age things have been warming up and this was a very, vey long time ago. We're talking geological timescales here.

[canuckamuck]

It was very strong el Nino year and it still wasn't the lowest level of Ice in the Arctic Since records began. Seems like a good news item and not a scaaarrrry one.

[DoctorG]

As usual, no mention of the antarctic ice field GROWING.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/alatheia-nielsen/2015/11/12/antarctic-ice-growing-even-hit-record-evening-news-shows

[gregk0543]

The good news is it is not game over yet, but it is mighty close.

 

The impact of humans on the environment is at dangerous levels and at some point it will break with painful consequences. The writing is already on the wall it is just a matter of when not if.  

The rate of change is also increasing so it is sooner rather than later.

At best 100 years at worst 15 before we lose the capacity to feed ourselves and industrial civilisation which has only been going for 200 years and is the necessary support for all of us is not going to make it to the end of this 100 years with this many people on board.

 

This is just one of many indicators that we are headed for worse times ahead and not better. Our civilisation is going to go bankrupt from the overdrawing of credit from the natural resources of the planet.

 

And this is not a natural cycle it is a human induced change. 

 

 

[PremiumLane]

59 minutes ago, DoctorG said:

As usual, no mention of the antarctic ice field GROWING.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/alatheia-nielsen/2015/11/12/antarctic-ice-growing-even-hit-record-evening-news-shows

 

Oh dear, linking to a right wing nut-job website - I think I will listen to the actual scientists.

 

Funny how the media groups, think tanks etc. who go on about the 'myth' of global warming are usually connected of funded by oil corporations etc. - weird that...

[i claudius]

Wonder why the last ice age occured , and why it was so cold in Victorian England the river Thames froze over ,and of course hundreds of years ago it was warm enough for grapes to be grown in Britain , but then ,they didn't know about "global warming,cooling ,climate change ,<deleted>" in those days .

[RPCVguy]

The usual comments about past ice ages and the Antarctic continue to state facts out of context.

Past Ice Ages (on about a 100,000 year cycle) are known to have come and gone due to orbital and axial tilt shifts of the Earth known as Milankovitch cycles. If nothing else had changed, the planet would be headed gradually back into an Ice cycle. The past Milankovitch cycles triggered responses in the atmospheric levels of CO2 - which resulted in CO2 concentrations of about 180ppm during the depths of the Ice Ages and 280ppm during the warmer Inter-Glacial periods.

Those where orbital pattern caused changes to the net balance of energy the planet absorbed vs energy radiated back into space. CO2 was part of the overall planetary equilibrium, but not the leading cause... until now. This time it is the amplitude of the CO2 growth that is pushing the equilibrium.

What is happening now is human extraction/burning of coal, oil and gas has taken the carbon sequestered by decaying plants accumulated and buried over a hundred million years and released half of it back into the atmosphere in barely a century. (half the total has been since 1988) The oceans and tropical rainforests did help extract much of the atmospheric CO2 each year, but it has been a losing battle midst so many people wanting the benefits of the energy those deposits could deliver. The atmospheric CO2 is now over 400ppm. This is a 42% surplus over anything in HUMANITY'S 235,000 year HISTORY. The rate of change is 10x faster than what drove the Permian extinction (via volcanic and the Siberian basalt lava flows) of 250 million years ago that killed off over 95% of all varieties of life on the planet.

What humans are doing today is triggering our own planetary mass extinction event. No, it won't happen in a generation or two, but it is happening. The dinosaurs that died off from an asteroid collision might not have been smart as  we humans term intelligence, but they did not trigger their own extinction. Our species calls itself wise (homo sapiens) but collectively I find the term is totally misused. Our addiction to energy and ways of accessing it, let alone the trinkets for which it is often used, show a gap in the societal wisdom. Denying the chemistry of CO2 (or other greenhouse gases - each of which have vibrational frequencies of their molecular bonds that absorb infrared spectrum radiation that when re-emitted multidirectionally serve to insulate /slow the net levels of the planet's energy radiation back into space. More greenhouse gases thus means more insulation, which results in a warming planet.

The Arctic and Antarctic respond differently because while the Arctic is a shallow sea surrounded by land, the Antarctic is a land mass surrounded by oceans. For the Arctic, the sea is warming and the ice is melting. Some years more than others, but the trend is consistently less ice mass.
For the Antarctic, the trend is also less Ice Mass but the ice on the land mass of Antarctica results in more very cold fresh water on the sea surface surrounding the continent, and fresh water freezes more easily than saltier sea water. Also, more atmospheric moisture does allow more to precipitate on the continent. Despite these benefits, the concern is that the rate of calving and the mass of water at risk of calving from Antarctic glaciers is the big question mark as to when and by how much sea levels will rise.

I'll copy one image from a recent post about climate trends


Around and around goes this discussion.
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/933671-hot-mess-earth-on-track-for-hottest-year-on-record/?page=2#comment-11134475
 

I post to assist those still looking into the topic with an open mind - that they will have access to commentary beyond the wisecracks.

Edited September 16, 2016 by RPCVguy

[bark]

2 hours ago, RPCVguy said:

The usual comments about past ice ages and the Antarctic continue to state facts out of context.

Past Ice Ages (on about a 100,000 year cycle) are known to have come and gone due to orbital and axial tilt shifts of the Earth known as Milankovitch cycles. If nothing else had changed, the planet would be headed gradually back into an Ice cycle. The past Milankovitch cycles triggered responses in the atmospheric levels of CO2 - which resulted in CO2 concentrations of about 180ppm during the depths of the Ice Ages and 280ppm during the warmer Inter-Glacial periods.

Those where orbital pattern caused changes to the net balance of energy the planet absorbed vs energy radiated back into space. CO2 was part of the overall planetary equilibrium, but not the leading cause... until now. This time it is the amplitude of the CO2 growth that is pushing the equilibrium.

What is happening now is human extraction/burning of coal, oil and gas has taken the carbon sequestered by decaying plants accumulated and buried over a hundred million years and released half of it back into the atmosphere in barely a century. (half the total has been since 1988) The oceans and tropical rainforests did help extract much of the atmospheric CO2 each year, but it has been a losing battle midst so many people wanting the benefits of the energy those deposits could deliver. The atmospheric CO2 is now over 400ppm. This is a 42% surplus over anything in HUMANITY'S 235,000 year HISTORY. The rate of change is 10x faster than what drove the Permian extinction (via volcanic and the Siberian basalt lava flows) of 250 million years ago that killed off over 95% of all varieties of life on the planet.

What humans are doing today is triggering our own planetary mass extinction event. No, it won't happen in a generation or two, but it is happening. The dinosaurs that died off from an asteroid collision might not have been smart as  we humans term intelligence, but they did not trigger their own extinction. Our species calls itself wise (homo sapiens) but collectively I find the term is totally misused. Our addiction to energy and ways of accessing it, let alone the trinkets for which it is often used, show a gap in the societal wisdom. Denying the chemistry of CO2 (or other greenhouse gases - each of which have vibrational frequencies of their molecular bonds that absorb infrared spectrum radiation that when re-emitted multidirectionally serve to insulate /slow the net levels of the planet's energy radiation back into space. More greenhouse gases thus means more insulation, which results in a warming planet.

The Arctic and Antarctic respond differently because while the Arctic is a shallow sea surrounded by land, the Antarctic is a land mass surrounded by oceans. For the Arctic, the sea is warming and the ice is melting. Some years more than others, but the trend is consistently less ice mass.
For the Antarctic, the trend is also less Ice Mass but the ice on the land mass of Antarctica results in more very cold fresh water on the sea surface surrounding the continent, and fresh water freezes more easily than saltier sea water. Also, more atmospheric moisture does allow more to precipitate on the continent. Despite these benefits, the concern is that the rate of calving and the mass of water at risk of calving from Antarctic glaciers is the big question mark as to when and by how much sea levels will rise.

I'll copy one image from a recent post about climate trends


Around and around goes this discussion.
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/933671-hot-mess-earth-on-track-for-hottest-year-on-record/?page=2#comment-11134475
 

I post to assist those still looking into the topic with an open mind - that they will have access to commentary beyond the wisecracks.

You Crack me up ! You are reading from books.

I lived through the last Ice Age; and I didn't even wear my long underwear.

No big deal. But I will say that some mornings the toilet seat was cold on my butt.

[RickBradford]

Global cooling was well attested in the scientific literature during the 1960s and 1970s, not just the media. The CIA took it seriously enough to write a bleak report about possible knock-on effects on US national security (food shortages in the Third World, unrest, migration etc).

 

 

Of course, the usual set of Green/Left alarmists (including Michael 'Piltdown' Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Thomas Peterson and William Connolley) tried to rewrite history to erase these unpalatable facts, which are at odds with their pet computer models.

 

As always with the Green/Left, if facts collide with their theories, it's the facts that have to be altered.

[DM07]

Yeah...it snowed last year, near my house!

Global warming my @$$!

All those "scientists" all they have are theories...like theory of gravity...

[manfredtillmann]

2 hours ago, RPCVguy said:

The usual comments about past ice ages and the Antarctic continue to state facts out of context.

Past Ice Ages (on about a 100,000 year cycle) are known to have come and gone due to orbital and axial tilt shifts of the Earth known as Milankovitch cycles. If nothing else had changed, the planet would be headed gradually back into an Ice cycle. The past Milankovitch cycles triggered responses in the atmospheric levels of CO2 - which resulted in CO2 concentrations of about 180ppm during the depths of the Ice Ages and 280ppm during the warmer Inter-Glacial periods.

Those where orbital pattern caused changes to the net balance of energy the planet absorbed vs energy radiated back into space. CO2 was part of the overall planetary equilibrium, but not the leading cause... until now. This time it is the amplitude of the CO2 growth that is pushing the equilibrium.

What is happening now is human extraction/burning of coal, oil and gas has taken the carbon sequestered by decaying plants accumulated and buried over a hundred million years and released half of it back into the atmosphere in barely a century. (half the total has been since 1988) The oceans and tropical rainforests did help extract much of the atmospheric CO2 each year, but it has been a losing battle midst so many people wanting the benefits of the energy those deposits could deliver. The atmospheric CO2 is now over 400ppm. This is a 42% surplus over anything in HUMANITY'S 235,000 year HISTORY. The rate of change is 10x faster than what drove the Permian extinction (via volcanic and the Siberian basalt lava flows) of 250 million years ago that killed off over 95% of all varieties of life on the planet.

What humans are doing today is triggering our own planetary mass extinction event. No, it won't happen in a generation or two, but it is happening. The dinosaurs that died off from an asteroid collision might not have been smart as  we humans term intelligence, but they did not trigger their own extinction. Our species calls itself wise (homo sapiens) but collectively I find the term is totally misused. Our addiction to energy and ways of accessing it, let alone the trinkets for which it is often used, show a gap in the societal wisdom. Denying the chemistry of CO2 (or other greenhouse gases - each of which have vibrational frequencies of their molecular bonds that absorb infrared spectrum radiation that when re-emitted multidirectionally serve to insulate /slow the net levels of the planet's energy radiation back into space. More greenhouse gases thus means more insulation, which results in a warming planet.

The Arctic and Antarctic respond differently because while the Arctic is a shallow sea surrounded by land, the Antarctic is a land mass surrounded by oceans. For the Arctic, the sea is warming and the ice is melting. Some years more than others, but the trend is consistently less ice mass.
For the Antarctic, the trend is also less Ice Mass but the ice on the land mass of Antarctica results in more very cold fresh water on the sea surface surrounding the continent, and fresh water freezes more easily than saltier sea water. Also, more atmospheric moisture does allow more to precipitate on the continent. Despite these benefits, the concern is that the rate of calving and the mass of water at risk of calving from Antarctic glaciers is the big question mark as to when and by how much sea levels will rise.

I'll copy one image from a recent post about climate trends


Around and around goes this discussion.
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/933671-hot-mess-earth-on-track-for-hottest-year-on-record/?page=2#comment-11134475
 

I post to assist those still looking into the topic with an open mind - that they will have access to commentary beyond the wisecracks.

thanking you for this concise and convincing summary.

but the 'ostriches' will not learn...

[red roger]

8 hours ago, ukrules said:

Second lowest level on record, ok sure.

 

I have a feeling that during the last ice age there was more but I guess this is not on record so it doesn't count right ?

 

Since the last ice age things have been warming up and this was a very, vey long time ago. We're talking geological timescales here.

No it doesn't count because the last Ice Age occurred before the Industrial Revolution so there's no like for like comparison although climate change deniers have been clinging to this for a while

Must rush, I'm late for my monthly meeting of the "Flat Earth Society "

[djlest]

well if populations are increasing, china is growing, russia is growing and those Muslim baby machines keep at it....
What do you all expect is going to happen?
Evidently another great flood will be required to rid us of the excess...

[manfredtillmann]

3 minutes ago, djlest said:

well if populations are increasing, china is growing, russia is growing and those Muslim baby machines keep at it....
What do you all expect is going to happen?
Evidently another great flood will be required to rid us of the excess...

i just 100% love this post. so much insight, so much vision...

 

[RPCVguy]

3 hours ago, RickBradford said:

Global cooling was well attested in the scientific literature during the 1960s and 1970s, not just the media. The CIA took it seriously enough to write a bleak report about possible knock-on effects on US national security (food shortages in the Third World, unrest, migration etc).

 

 

Of course, the usual set of Green/Left alarmists (including Michael 'Piltdown' Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Thomas Peterson and William Connolley) tried to rewrite history to erase these unpalatable facts, which are at odds with their pet computer models.

 

As always with the Green/Left, if facts collide with their theories, it's the facts that have to be altered.

Which is part of the testimony to the dedication of scientists to follow the data. The theoretical possibilities of slipping back towards an Ice Age (compounded by threat of a nuclear winter) was simultaneously being investigated with the awareness that CO2 produced a greenhouse effect.
(See image from the Nixon Library)



Scientific measurements had inconsistencies that needed to be examined and worked out - often for lack of enough measurements. The 60s were at the beginning of the era of global measurements done with international scientific cooperation (hard to recall now just how separated different research centers and nations were before the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY) 

Quote

"The 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY) was an international effort to coordinate the collection of geophysical data from around the world. It marked the beginning of a new era of scientific discovery at a time when many innovative technologies were appearing. The IGY still lives today in many NOAA programs, databases, and participation in international collaborations. Not only does 2007 mark NOAA's 200th anniversary, it is also the 50th anniversary of the IGY." http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/magazine/igy/welcome.html

While the use of fossil fuels began in earnest with the steam engine, the planet takes time to warm (about 40 years for the first half of the warming, centuries for the rest) AND measurements were not precise enough early on to make obvious what would be the net effect... cooling of warming.
We now have enough data on land and sea, around the globe to be able to spot the differences between what causes cooling (solar patterns, volcanic aerosols, and greenhouse gases.) Shown here, the broad signals overlapped until the 70s and have not merged since. CO2 (human additions to the natural planet's balances) have been the change that has accounted for the temperature changes. This set of graphs document the differences found and reported in the 2007 IPCC . The various hypothesis up until the 70s required data to sort out, but we now see that the CO2 warming effects have vastly dominated the alternatives.

 

The data is now even more clearly separated and explained as seen easily by scrolling down this link from Bloomberg news that combines the different effects in an animated graphic.
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

There has been a conspiracy, but it was similar to the Tobacco Industry conspiracy to hide effects of tobacco use. Exxon was at the forefront of the early research in the 60s, and it began hiding results of their research sometime in the 70s, certainly by the early 80s. That effort was uncovered last year in a series of investigative reports now earning the company and the industry a number of lawsuits. Articles covering this include:

• http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-house-science-committees-anti-science-rampage?mbid=social_twitter
• http://insideclimatenews.org/news/18092015/exxon-confirmed-global-warming-consensus-in-1982-with-in-house-climate-models
• http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/climate-deception-dossiers-fossil-fuel-industry-memos#.VbWp6bWC5PX

So, for those still doubting or attempting to deny planetary warming, climate change and the human causation of these effects - you've been duped by a highly funded propaganda campaign started by Exxon and now most championed by Koch Industries.


 

 

 

Edited September 16, 2016 by RPCVguy

[KBsinter]

I read that the Iceland volcano eruption negated every thing the world had done

to fight Global Warming in the 10 yrs previous to its eruption,not many people

know that.......lol

[RPCVguy]

8 hours ago, KBsinter said:

I read that the Iceland volcano eruption negated every thing the world had done

to fight Global Warming in the 10 yrs previous to its eruption,not many people

know that.......lol

I wouldn't doubt that you read such - it is part of the propaganda machine info I wrote of above. It would help though if you might provide some source so people can track the information.
Example, this is a quote from
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=5&t=236&a=28

Quote

 

"Published reviews of the scientific literature by Mörner and Etiope (2002) and Kerrick (2001) report a minimum-maximum range of emission of 65 to 319 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Counter claims that volcanoes, especially submarine volcanoes, produce vastly greater amounts of CO2 than these estimates are not supported by any papers published by the scientists who study the subject. 

The burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide, according to the EIA. The fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes. Our understanding of volcanic discharges would have to be shown to be very mistaken before volcanic CO2 discharges could be considered anything but a bit player in contributing to the recent changes observed in the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere."

 

We CAN track emissions by calculating the amount of carbon in the coal, oil and gas extracted and sold each year... but are we not tracking the vast amounts of volcanic CO2? According to the link I just provided, volcanic CO2 is only 1% of the annual human generated emissions. That would also mean that human efforts have not even eliminated 0.1% of CO2 ("negated every thing the world had done to fight Global Warming in the 10 yrs previous") which is pretty poor results indeed.

How can we track who is right? It turns out the Carbon from volcanoes has a different mixture of carbon isotopes than either what is in the atmosphere generally, or which is from burning fossil fuels... and we can now measure the mix of isotopes to answer that last question.
Short video - and ooops, it's human activity that is the source of getting us so much higher than a million years of Ice Ages ever experienced.

 

 

[cumgranosalum]

On 9/16/2016 at 8:47 AM, DoctorG said:

As usual, no mention of the antarctic ice field GROWING.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/alatheia-nielsen/2015/11/12/antarctic-ice-growing-even-hit-record-evening-news-shows

A particularly inane comment - the latest on the Antarctica is that is has fluctuated a lot over the last 100 years and research on those records shows little or no permanent change. however to suggest that because one report about one pole suggests that it is different form the other is just a total non sequitur. it shows the poster has no idea of how scientific research works.

the latest report does not regard this as evidence against man-made climate change and points out that it is a vey short period in terms of climate change analysis.

 

 

[cumgranosalum]

the above posts are tripe - of course we track volcanic emissions and their are very good ways of separating various causes and effects.

The underlying rate is only explicable by manmade interference - and yes is actually takes minute amounts to change the balance.

One very reliable way is to take ice samples from the poles.........when raised up from the ice they serve as a perfect record of atmosphere and pollutants in layers in the ice - it is actually very easy to tell the difference between a volcanic eruption and other similar chemicals...it also BTW detects such things as algae and pollens which tell us a lot about the biosphere over many periods.

 

people are acutely aware of fluctuations in climate and what causes them, what is different now is the chemistry and the rate of change. citing one small volcanoe is hjust a childish interpretation on what is in reality a very complicated but well established science.