Melting Ice Makes The Arctic A Much Worse Heat-Magnet Than Scientists Feared

[G_j]

Last edited Sun Apr 6, 2014, 11:51 PM - Edit history (1)

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/18/3302341/arctic-sea-ice-melt-ocean-absorbs-heat/#
By Ari Phillips on February 18, 2014

Arctic ice provides more than just homes for fish and mammals — it also slows global warming.

Dwindling sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is creating large areas of relatively dark ocean surface that reduce the albedo, or reflectivity, of the polar region. More open water causes the Earth to absorb more of the sun’s solar energy rather than reflect it back into the atmosphere. A new study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, has found that the impact this phenomenon is having on global warming has likely been substantially underestimated.

“It’s fairly intuitive to expect that replacing white, reflective sea ice with a dark ocean surface would increase the amount of solar heating,” Kristina Pistone, a graduate student at Scripps who participated in the research, said in a statement.
However, the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used direct satellite measurements for the first time rather than computer models to determine that the magnitude of surface darkening has been two to three times as large as found in previous studies.

“Scientists have talked about Arctic melting and albedo decrease for nearly 50 years,” Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a distinguished professor of climate and atmospheric sciences, said. “This is the first time this darkening effect has been documented on the scale of the entire Arctic.”



According to the researchers, the Arctic has warmed by 2°C (3.6°F) since the 1970s, with the summer minimum Arctic sea ice extent decreasing by 40 percent during the same interval. The study found that the Arctic grew 8 percent darker between 1979 and 2011.

“That extra absorbed energy is so big that it measures about one-quarter of the entire heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide,” the study’s lead author, Ian Eisenman, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told the Associated Press.

At its peak melt in September, Arctic ice has shrunk on average by nearly 35,000 square miles per year since 1979, an annual
decrease of nearly the size of Maine.

..more..

[seveneyes]

1. 533,000 more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/And-global-COOLING-Return-Arctic-ice-cap-grows-29-year.html

A chilly Arctic summer has left 533,000 more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 29 per cent.

The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.

Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.
<snip>

dailymail and thinkprogress should maybe get together. I'm doing all I can to help make fusion power a reality.

[AgingAmerican]

3. Right wing tabloid

denies climate change. That's why we get our info from scientists, not tabloids.

[progressoid]

5. A single year does not a trend make.

[HereSince1628]

7. But still left the ice loss anomoly at over 1 million sq kilometers

[pscot]

8. The big red arrow is your clue

[hatrack]

12. Two points:

1. Even assuming the Daily Mail has it right, so what? 2012 is the record to date for low ice extent. Imagine that, it's not a record low every year, with the trend stacking up in a nice straight line . ..

2. Anything in the Daily Mail article about Arctic sea ice volume? Yeah, I didn't think so either . . .

[BelgianMadCow]

2. Thanks, G_j.

It's starting to become clear we have entered a new, non-linear phase in global warming. And whilst the US froze, winter has totally skipped this year here, we're on track for the warmest winter on record and the growing seasons are about two months off. Otherwise, everything is normal

[John1956PA]

4. Jan. 14, 2014, article from "The Alaska Dispatch" says Dec. 2013 coverage was 4th lowest in 36 years

From The Alaska Dispatch:

Arctic ice growing slower than average so far this winter
January 14, 2014

Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean grew slowly over the past month, giving December the fourth-lowest coverage in 36 years of satellite records, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Areas of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 percent ice -- the center’s definition for ice coverage -- totaled 4.78 million square miles in December, some 270,300 square miles below the average measured in the years between 1981 and 2010, the Boulder-based ice center said.

The relatively slow ice growth – with young and thin ice forming up – might be setting up conditions for a big summer melt, said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze.

. . .

Arctic ice coverage reached its lowest-measured extent in September 2012, when it shrank to 1.32 million square miles, a level 18 percent lower than the previous record, set in 2007, according to the center.

Though summer sea ice rebounded in 2013, there remains a long-term trend toward less ice and more open water in summer and fall seasons, Serreze said.


More at http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140114/arctic-ice-growing-slower-average-so-far-winter

Here is hoping that there will be no big summer melt and that the September 2014 sea ice coverage will be even larger than the September 2013 coverage.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Current ice area is roughly equal lowest ever for this time of year, with 2005, 2006, 2011 and 2012

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html

I think it's the lowest ever, just, but it's hard to be sure at that scale (2014 is the yellow line).

[G_j]

14. --

thanks for that

[flamingdem]

6. The icecaps

never looked so beautiful, never know what you have until they're gone.

[Laelth]

9. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[redqueen]

10. At this point, might it not make sense to assume modeled forecasts of this nature

are at least one order of magnitude too optimistic? And just adjust the estimates accordingly? How many studies have come out the other way?

You know how scientists say that Earth could never turn out like Venus? How many of these little surprises would it take before that scenario entered the realm of possibility? How many positive feedback loops have we yet to discover?

[fleabiscuit]

13. Et tu Sara?

For your historical amusement.
http://www.themudflats.net/archives/35683

“Here’s another reason why Sarah Palin was a better governor than Sean Parnell.

(SPOILER ALERT: He killed an entire sub-cabinet, and never bothered to tell the public)

Remember that special group Palin created to address the warming of Alaska due to climate change, and the threats this poses to Alaska’s coastal communities? It’s easy to forget, but it was 2007 when the Palin administration created that group, after she expressed her concern over the unwelcome changes that global warming was bringing to the state. They even had an “Immediate Action Plan” for the most at-risk from sea level rise, loss of sea ice, erosion and other climate related issues.
All that happened before the VP madness, when Palin suddenly went from a populist governor who would work across the aisle and wasn’t completely insane, to the Tea Party’s angry celebrity Joan of Arc, and shrieking climate change denier…."

[John1956PA]

15. Title of a 04-06-2014 DU Thread: "Arctic sea ice falls to fifth lowest level on record."

An excerpt from said 04-06-2014 thread which can be found at http://www.democraticunderground.com/112767603 :

Arctic sea ice remained on its death spiral on Wednesday, with the amount of winter ice cover falling to its fifth lowest on the satellite record, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The scientists said Arctic sea ice extent for March averaged 14.80m sq km. That's 730,000 sq km below the 1981-2010 satellite average.

The latest findings reinforce a trend that could see the Arctic losing all of its ice cover in the summer months within decades.

The world's leading scientists this week admitted that Arctic sea ice was disappearing much faster than expected.

“The decline of Arctic sea ice in summer is occurring at a rate that exceeds most model projections,” the United Nations' intergovernment panel on climate change said in releasing its first report since 2007.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/02/arctic-sea-ice-fall-lowest-levels?CMP=twt_gu