Melting Sea Ice
Senior Energy Analyst Glenn Doty writes:
Sadly, a perfectly legitimate response to this (see larger graph below) is curling into a fetal position and sobbing for a while…
There is no hope to forestall the first Blue Ocean Event at the North Pole in human history. It’s certain to happen within the next 3-5 years. It is looking like a stronger chance that it will happen this year (though it’s still well below 50%).
We are in the middle of what is BY FAR the greatest tipping point in the ongoing crisis of global warming. We can still work to mitigate or even permanently forestall future – greater – tipping points, but this one is happening, and this one matters. A lot.
The 2007 IPCC report – the most widely cited resource on this issue – had an average expected time frame for this to occur at ~2040. That should give some impression of how optimistic that report should be viewed at this point.
The monthly piomas report is here:
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
There are a lot of issues to consider in order to understand how much worse of a position we are in now as opposed to 2012 – from ice thickness, compaction, melt pond fraction, higher ocean temperatures, sustained high pressure sitting over most of Greenland and the Arctic Basin, and extremely high temperature anomalies in the Arctic Circle..
(You can see that >90% of the Arctic Circle is between 3 and 10 C above average):
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
It’s looking bad up there. It’s certain we’ll see a new record low, now it’s only a question of how low that will ultimately be… or even if there is any ice left at all in the basin itself.
Craig,
I’m curious, how does one get to assume the important sounding title ” Senior Energy Analyst” to bolster pronouncements ?
I wonder what makes someone “senior” ,.. age perhaps? Status ? (A distinguished academic record?)or is this just a self-assumed title? Hmm… the na again, what about the “Energy” bit? What sort of energy? What qualifications do you really need for such an imposing title?
Yesterday, I got rung by a firm of “energy analysts” trying to get me to switch utility plans. The telephone sales lady described her position as an “energy Analyst”. Then I met two young guys in a bar, who informed me they were “energy Analysts” while their boss was a “senior energy analyst”.
In fact, they were just solar power salesmen. The “senior Energy Analyst ” acquired his title ’cause his Dad owned the sales company. (sound familiar)
Hmmmm, alright let’s take ol’ Glenn at face value and examine his claims. Glenn is alarmed by his estimation the arctic sea ice will irreversibly disappear this year, or certainly within 3-5 years.
In these alarming predictions, Glenn is not alone. Here a just a few examples:
1) Researchers for the US Navy predicted a sea-ice-free Arctic by the summer of 2016.
2) In 2012 “Climate Scientist” Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University predicted the Arctic would be ice-free in the summer by 2016 ( plus or minus 3 years).
3) IPCC Climate Systems Scientist Dr Paul Beckwith, produced a “graph’ conclusively proving the arctic would be Ice free by 2022 (originally, revised from 2016, 2012, 2008).
4) Dr. Peter Wadham, credited by the IPCC as the leading authority on Arctic sea ice, wrote in his book,’A Farewell to Ice’ happily confirmed the artic would virtually disappear by 2018, certainly by 2022. However, he refuses to be drawn into why his earlier prediction of an ice free Arctic Ocean as early as 2009 failed to occur.
5) Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, predicts the “Collapse of Capitalist Industrial Civilization”. The tipping point for her was the “Blue Ocean Effect”. She was most concerned with the predicted massive bloom’s of algae resulting from the loss of the polar ice cap.
Elizabeth Kolbert is just a futurist author and her fantasies would have remained just those, but for the IPCC endorsing her prediction, claiming no debate was necessary since a ‘consensus of scientists” agreed with the prediction!
When asked about the life or habit of algea, and the easy methods of dealing with outbreaks, the IPCC scientist failed to respond.
When Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies tried to explain the fallacies and errors resulting from a misinterpretation of NASA data, he was dismissed as a climate denier.
He was trying to correct an interview in the Guardian, which claimed he said,
“Most people expect this year will see a record low in the Arctic’s summer sea-ice cover. Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer and by that I mean the central Arctic will be ice-free. You will be able to cross over the north pole by ship. …Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018.”
Dr Schmidt tried to explain he was quoted out of context and this was not a prediction, merely one in wide spectrum of possible scenario’s.
I’ll guess we must wait and see over the next 3-5 years.
5)