Polar Explorer - Arctic Ice Disappearing At "Incredible" Rate - Reuters

OTTAWA, May 17 (Reuters) - "Summer temperatures in the Arctic have risen at an incredible rate over the past three years and large patches of what should be ice are now open water, a British polar explorer said on Monday. Ben Saunders, forced by the warm weather to abandon an attempt to ski solo from northern Russia across the North Pole to Canada, said he had been amazed at how much of the ice had melted.

"It's obvious to me that things are changing a lot and changing very quickly," a sunburnt Saunders told Reuters less than two days after being rescued from the thinning ice sheet close to the North Pole. "I do know it's happening because that was my third time in the Arctic (in the last three years)," said Saunders, who explored the region in 2001 and 2003.

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"The temperatures were incredibly warm ... I had days when I could ski with no gloves and no hat at all, just in bare hands, because I was too hot," said Saunders. Logs from an expedition in 2001 showed the average Arctic temperature at this time of year was minus 15 to minus 20 degrees Celsius (plus 5 to to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Saunders said the average temperature this time was just minus 5 to minus 7 degrees Celsius (23 to 19 degrees Fahrenheit). "I saw open water every single day of the expedition, which is not what I was expecting," said Saunders, who had to don a special thermal suit and drag his sled across open patches of water nine times during the 71 days he spent alone. He covered a total of 965 km (600 miles) before giving up."

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N17179210.htm

...real estate for beach-front properties. Just drop all environmental protection programs, let global warming speed up the melting of the poles and vola! New waterfront real estate they can sell. Anyone have a link on Arctic and Antarctic futures trading of waterfront property?

and things keep progressing the way they seem to be, there'll be oceanfront property in the middle of Pennsylvania. There's a whole lot of ice melting, and that water has to go somewhere. But, then again, these are real scientists saying these things, not the shills that the administration employs.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html

skip across the pond and have a ski-holiday?
dp

I like winter, I really do, but... This is some scary stuff. Even if we don't get a full-fledged ice age, the change in the climate is going to be disastrous.

Ice requires a lot of heat to melt. The phase change from ice at 0 degrees C. to water at 0 degrees C. requires 79.7 cal/gm. To heat one gram of water one degree centigrade requires 1 cal/gm. So that melting ice is soaking up lots of excess heat.

In other words, the heat required to melt one gram of ice is sufficient to heat one gram of liquid water from 0 degrees C. up to 79.7 degrees C.

I don't think my figures are wrong...are they? I checked here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/phase.html


What happens when the ice is all melted? What soaks up that excess heat? Us?

After the phase transition the water can keep absorbing energy, it's temperature just increases. And if it gets hot enough (100 degrees C at 1 bar) then it can go through ANOTHER phase transition, and become steam!

All these calculations get really tricky though when you try to include convection and radiation in your heat transfer models.

This increases evaporation -- which we've seen -- and it changes the weather -- which we've also seen.

It means less sunlight -- confirmed -- and more clouds/rain/storms -- yep, we have them, too.

Eventually, all that heat will "collect" in the troposphere and create an abnormal temperature inversion layer with warmer-than-usual air near the surface, and much colder than usual air in the stratosphere (check). The troposphere will appear to exapand to infrared instruments in space (check).

If, at the same time, one or more of the major branches of Thermohaline Circulation "collapses", differential areas of warmer, saltier water and colder, less salty water will accumulate, and a temperature gradient will form which will drive even more changes in weather.

Keep in mind that other global-scale changes are happening at the same time: die-offs, desertification, changing agricultural conditions, warfare, etc.

Now, think about what would happen when the dynamics of these changes exceeds the capacity of the systems. The released energy would force a "catastrophic" (in the topological model sense) re-balancing.

Not necessarily The Day After Tomorrow. But not too pleasant, either.

--bkl

Because once the ice is gone the process will accelerate a lot. As you so aptly point out, we're already seeing all this. As the ice melts, but the heat continues to build, we really might get some very sudden changes.

Yikes!

The semi-scientific premise The Day After Tomorrow uses is the idea of a "Global Superstorm" -- that all the displaced energy in the atmosphere and ocean will seek equilibrium all at once. When the extremely warm, wet tropospheric air clashes with supercold stratospheric air, a huge storm will engulf both temperate and polar regions of the Earth, and continue until the systems reach a new stable, or stadial, condition.

It ought to make for a hell of a good disaster film, but I think a single-year scenario is a bit far-fetched.

I personally think that the snap-back will take longer than a few weeks; I'd say five to ten years. Wallace Broecker, one of the scientists who have been working on this new model of climatology (mainly at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Center), thinks it will be more like 50 years. I would err on the side Dr. Broecker is taking.

When the snap-back will happen is anybody's guess, but as you point out, the problematic changes have been accelerating. Dramatically. I expect this summer to easily be the hottest on record -- the past winter in the polar areas was much warmer than normal, by as much as 40F in some parts, and stratospheric temperatures have been decreasing since the 1980s.

The good news? A little advance planning could save the world a lot of grief if and when the fit hits the shan.

The bad news? Betting on the grief is usually the safer bet.

--bkl