Skip to main content

Arctic sea ice under threat



The above image shows high temperature anomalies over the Arctic on June 3, 2023. 

The above image shows sea surface temperature on the North Atlantic (0-60N, 0-80W) depicted as anomalies, reaching 1.04°C above 1982-2023 on June 8, 2023. The situation is especially critical in the North Atlantic, as vast amounts of ocean heat in the North Atlantic are moving toward the Arctic, threatening to cause rapid melting of Arctic sea ice and thawing of permafrost.


The above image shows the same data for sea surface temperature on the North Atlantic (0-60N, 0-80W) reaching 22.5°C on June 7, 2023 (on the black line), 0.6°C higher than the 21.9°C on June 7, 2022 (on the orange line). 

The comparison with 2022 is important, as the North Atlantic sea surface temperature reached a record 24.9°C on Sept. 4, 2022, even while there was a strong La Niña, suppressing the temperature. This time, we have an El Niño, as illustrated by the NOAA image on the right. 


[ click on images to enlarge ]

The annual Arctic sea ice extent minimum is typically reached in September and the North Atlantic sea surface temperature is critical in regard to melting of the Arctic sea ice. The already high sea surface temperature together with the impact of the El Niño make the outlook for Arctic sea ice for September 2023 look grim.

Sea ice concentration is getting lower in many places and there is open water in parts of the Beaufort Sea and Baffin Bay, as illustrated by the Uni of Bremen image on the right.

Rising temperatures in the Arctic threaten to trigger massive loss of Arctic sea ice over the coming months. 

The image on the right, from polarportal.dk, shows very low Arctic sea ice volume for the time of year on June 8, 2023, already much lower than the volume on the same date for any of the four previous years.


The NASA Worldview image below shows, on the left, that Arctic sea ice is very thin on June 4, 2023, with open water close to the North Pole.



On the right of the image below, the Franz Jozef Archipelago, some 1000 km from the North Pole.






The image below shows the situation on June 6, 2023. 





The image on the right, from the Uni of Bremen, shows Arctic sea ice thickness on June 3, 2023.

On the one hand, it's terrible to see open water close to the North Pole so early in the year, yet on the other hand, this may enable ocean heat to escape to the atmosphere and thus delay eruption of seafloor methane (image below). 

As discussed in earlier posts such as this one, conditions are dire:

• Earth's energy imbalance is at record high

• emissions are at record high

• greenhouse gas concentrations are at record high

• temperatures are very high, especially in the Arctic

• North Atlantic sea surface temperature is at record high

• sea ice is very vulnerable

• the Jet Stream is strongly deformed


The image below shows the extent of the deformation of the Jet Stream on June 6, 2023. No less than 26 circular wind patterns (at 250 hPa) are marked on the image, which also shows sea surface temperature anomalies. The Jet Stream is also crossing the Equator.



Furthermore, there are circumstances that could coincide in a cataclysmic alignment: El Niño is on the way, sunspots are higher than predicted and the Tonga submarine volcano did add large amounts of water vapor high into the atmosphere.


All this looks set to jointly result in massive loss of Arctic sea ice over the coming months, with loss of the latent heat buffer and loss of albedo threatening to trigger eruption of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as has been described many times before, such as in this post, in this post and in this post.


[ Latent heat loss, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page ]

[ see the Extinction page ]
Both loss of Arctic sea ice and eruption of seafloor methane constitute tipping points that threaten to abruptly accelerate the temperature rise in the Arctic, thus also accelerating loss of permafrost in Siberia and North America that threatens to trigger further releases of greenhouse gases.

In addition, there are further events and developments that could unfold and make things even worse.


The upcoming temperature rise on land on the Northern Hemisphere could be of such a severity that much traffic, transport and industrial activity will grind to a halt, resulting in a reduction in cooling aerosols that are now masking the full wrath of global heating. Without these cooling aerosols, the temperature is projected to rise strongly, while there could be an additional temperature rise due to an increase in warming aerosols and gases as a result of more biomass and waste burning and forest fires. Furthermore, as traffic slows down, there will be less nitrogen oxide emissions, which could result in less hydroxyl to curtail methane.



The bar on the right depicts the threat, as discussed at the Extinction page.



In conclusion, the situation is dire and calls for support for a Climate Emergency Declaration.





Links

• Climate Reanalyzer - Daily temperature anomaly

https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/todays-weather/?var_id=t2anom&ortho=1&wt=1

• Climate Reanalyzer - Daily sea surface temperatures 
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily

• NOAA - Climate Prediction Center - ENSO Diagnostic Discussions
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml

• University of Bremen - sea ice concentration and thickness
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/start

• Polar Portal - Arctic sea ice thickness and volume
http://polarportal.dk/en/sea-ice-and-icebergs/sea-ice-thickness-and-volume

• NASA Worldview
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov

• Wetland emission and atmospheric sink changes explain methane growth in 2020 - by Sushi Peng et al. 

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html


• Climate Emergency Declaration
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climate-emergency-declaration.html



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Benefits Of Healthy eating Turmeric every day for the body

One teaspoon of turmeric a day to prevent inflammation, accumulation of toxins, pain, and the outbreak of cancer.  Yes, turmeric has been known since 2.5 centuries ago in India, as a plant anti-inflammatory / inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and also have a good detox properties, now proven to prevent Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Turmeric prevents inflammation:  For people who
Post a Comment
Read more

Women and children overboard

It's the  Catch-22  of clinical trials: to protect pregnant women and children from the risks of untested drugs....we don't test drugs adequately for them. In the last few decades , we've been more concerned about the harms of research than of inadequately tested treatments for everyone, in fact. But for "vulnerable populations,"  like pregnant women and children, the default was to exclude them. And just in case any women might be, or might become, pregnant, it was often easier just to exclude us all from trials. It got so bad, that by the late 1990s, the FDA realized regulations and more for pregnant women - and women generally - had to change. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) took action too. And so few drugs had enough safety and efficacy information for children that, even in official circles, children were being called "therapeutic orphans."  Action began on that, too. There is still a long way to go. But this month there was a sign that
Post a Comment
Read more

Not a word was spoken (but many were learned)

Video is often used in the EFL classroom for listening comprehension activities, facilitating discussions and, of course, language work. But how can you exploit silent films without any language in them? Since developing learners' linguistic resources should be our primary goal (well, at least the blogger behind the blog thinks so), here are four suggestions on how language (grammar and vocabulary) can be generated from silent clips. Split-viewing Split-viewing is an information gap activity where the class is split into groups with one group facing the screen and the other with their back to the screen. The ones facing the screen than report on what they have seen - this can be done WHILE as well as AFTER they watch. Alternatively, students who are not watching (the ones sitting with their backs to the screen) can be send out of the classroom and come up with a list of the questions to ask the 'watching group'. This works particularly well with action or crime scenes with
Post a Comment
Read more