HOME | BIO | MUSIC | JOURNEYS BY DJ | STUDIO BLOG | POLITICAL BLOG | BOOKING INFO | CONTACT

We are so screwed:

The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off.

Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change far too low.

The glacier at Ilulissat, which supposedly spawned the iceberg that sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.

Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat yesterday: "We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year."

He is visiting Greenland as part of a symposium of religious, scientific, and political leaders to look at the problems of the island, which has an ice cap 3km thick containing enough water to raise worldwide sea levels by seven metres.

Really:

If computer models are correct, by 2050 Arctic sea ice will shrink during late summer by more than twice as much as it does now. The results of a new study by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) add weight to speculation that a northern sea route will open up from Europe to Asia for the first time in recorded history.

The Arctic ice cap remains one of the most variable features of our planet. For many millennia, the frozen areas of the Northern Hemisphere have advanced and retreated while a similar but smaller variation occurs on a seasonal basis. Now, between ice ages and in the midst of an upward trend in average temperatures, the Arctic Ocean's ice is showing signs of unprecedented summer shrinkage. That development could be a boon to international ship commerce but a potentially serious threat to the ecosystems that have emerged within polar environments. Furthermore, the transformation of the reflective white ice into heat-absorbing seawater could further accelerate the warming of the planet...

The 40% figure could be conservative, says ice scientist Waleed Abdalati of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, "as even the best models have historically underestimated the current rate of ice decline." But one thing is clear, he says: "The dramatic losses we are seeing in Arctic ice cover are not expected to slow down." Research scientist Jianli Chen of the University of Texas, Austin, thinks that the planet will experience a "snowball effect." Shrinking sea ice will increase the ocean's heat absorption, he says, which will in turn "further increase the melting of sea ice and contribute to global warming."

No. Really:

Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, even under moderate projections for shrinking summer sea ice caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, government scientists reported on Friday.

The finding is part of a yearlong review of the effects of climate and ice changes on polar bears to help determine whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists estimate the current polar bear population at 22,000.

The report, which the United States Geological Survey released here, offers stark prospects for polar bears as the world grows warmer.

The scientists concluded that, while the bears were not likely to be driven to extinction, they would be largely relegated to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast, where summer sea ice tends to persist even in warm summers like this one, a shrinking that could be enough to reduce the bear population by two-thirds.

The bears would disappear entirely from Alaska, the study said.

Do something, dammit!

Since early August I have been riveted by the National Snow and Ice Data Center's near weekly updates on Arctic sea ice. On August 17, sea ice extent dropped below the previous record low in September 2005 of 5.05 million square miles. As of September 4, sea ice extent had fallen to 4.75 million square miles, fully 250,000 square miles below the previous record low, and the melting is expected to continue into the third week in September.

The status of distant Arctic sea ice is important to all of us for a number of reasons. The sea ice is the basis of an entire ecosystem now at risk of disappearing entirely. The polar bear, the Arctic's top predator, and an icon of the far North, is now the symbol of rapid global warming. Polar bears rely upon the sea ice for all of their essential behaviors, and cannot survive the loss of their habitat. They are indeed already drowning, starving, and resorting to cannibalism due to the loss of sea ice, and will become extinct unless we can slow the warming and stabilize the climate system through deep greenhouse gas reductions.

The Arctic sea ice is also important because it is part of one of the climate system's major feedback loops having to do with the reflectivity of the Earth's surface. Snow and ice reflect about 90% of incoming solar energy back into space, while open water absorbs about 90% of this same energy. Thus, as sea ice declines, Arctic warming accelerates. While melting of sea ice does not substantially contribute to sea level rise, the vicious cycle of additional warming certainly does impact the melting of the land-based ice of Greenland. Melting of the Greenland ice sheet has also accelerated far beyond scientists' projections. If the Greenland ice sheet melts entirely, sea level will rise by about 20 feet. Leading scientists warn that just ten more years of continued greenhouse gas emissions increases will commit us to this amount of sea level rise, as well as the extinction of about a third of the planet's plants and animals.

All of this is indeed horrifying, but it is not cause for despair, but rather a call to action. The good news is that there is still time to save the Arctic, though the window is closing. Our hope lies in a rapid response including both deep and immediate carbon dioxide reductions, as well as a full-court press on other greenhouse pollutants such as methane. While carbon dioxide emissions remain in the atmosphere for about a century, and therefore commit us to long term warming, methane is more powerful but remains for only about a decade. Opportunities to reduce methane from sources like landfills, mining, and agriculture abound, and such reductions would also directly benefit air quality and human health. With such reductions we can still buy ourselves some time.

But we cannot "stay the course" of our current energy consumption, land use, and transportation patterns, without losing the Arctic sea ice, polar bears, and the quality of life we have enjoyed. We must reduce greenhouse gas pollution to a very small fraction of today's levels in the next few decades. We must collectively rise to the challenge. If you are appalled by the current loss of sea ice in the Arctic, take action starting today. Make changes in your own life to reduce your greenhouse gas footprint, but most importantly, hold your elected officials accountable for enacting a solution -immediate mandatory regulation and reduction of greenhouse gas pollution.