Massive surge in disappearance of Arctic sea ice sparks global warning
In the UK The Independent is warning Massive surge in disappearance of Arctic sea ice sparks global warning.
Arctic meltdown is speeding up… sea ice is vanishing faster than ever before… polar bears face extinction… and America’s top climate scientist warns we only have a decade to save the planet
The melting of the sea ice in the Arctic, the clearest sign so far of global warming, has taken a sudden and enormous leap forward, in one of the most ominous developments yet in the onset of climate change.
Two separate studies by Nasa, using different satellite monitoring technologies, both show a great surge in the disappearance of Arctic ice cover in the last two years.
One, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, shows that Arctic perennial sea ice, which normally survives the summer melt season and remains year-round, shrank by 14 per cent in just 12 months between 2004 and 2005.
The overall decrease in the ice cover was 720,000 sq km (280,000 sq miles) - an area almost the size of Turkey, gone in a single year.
The other study, from the Goddard Space Flight Centre, in Maryland, shows that the perennial ice melting rate, which has averaged 0.15 per cent a year since satellite observations began in 1979, has suddenly accelerated hugely. In the past two winters the rate has increased to six per cent a year - that is, it has got more than 30 times faster.
The changes are alarming scientists and environmentalists, because they far exceed the rate at which supercomputer models of climate change predict the Arctic ice will melt under the influence of global warming - which is rapid enough.
If climate change is not checked, the Arctic ice will all be gone by 2070, and people will be able to sail to the North Pole. But if these new rates of melting are maintained, the Arctic ice will all be gone decades before that.
The implications are colossal. It will mean extinction in the wild - in the lifetime of children alive today - for one of the world’s most majestic creatures, the polar bear, which needs the ice to hunt seals.
The article has plenty more details and reiterates James Hansen’s warning that we have less than a decade to make a realistic change. See also the NASA page on this topic with some interesting animations. — DS
Technorati Tags: Arctic, climate change, CO2, eco, environment, extinction, global warming, James Hansen, meltdown, NASA, tipping point
