Posted on 04/28/2008 7:53:09 AM PDT by Abathar
You know when climate change is biting hard when instead of a vast expanse of snow the North Pole is a vast expanse of water. This year, for the first time, Arctic scientists are preparing for that possibility.
"The set-up for this summer is disturbing," says Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). A number of factors have this year led to most of the Arctic ice being thin and vulnerable as it enters its summer melting season.
In September 2007, Arctic sea ice reached a record low, opening up the fabled North-West passage that runs from Greenland to Alaska.
The ice expanded again over the winter and in March 2008 covered a greater area than it had in March 2007. Although this was billed as good news in many media sources, the trend since 1978 is on the decline.
Arctic ice at its maximum in March, but that maximum is declining by 44,000 km2 per year on average, the NSIDC has calculated. That corresponds to an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey.
What is more, the extent of the ice is only half the picture. Satellite images show that most of the Arctic ice at the moment is thin, young ice that has only been around since last autumn.
Thin ice is far more vulnerable than thick ice that has piled up over several years.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Good, probably be easier to drill for oil there now.
Darn, what will I put with my Jack Daniels? Horrors!
Yes, but what will Santa Claus and all of the endangered elves do?
WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!
Am I dreaming? I thought this happened about 4 years ago -- open water at the North Pole!! Never happened before! We're gonna die!
And I think it may have happened 2 years ago too -- open water at the North Pole!! Never happened before! We're gonna die!
Well, now I guess it might happen (again) in 2008. Huh. First time for everything, I guess.
That's right. Marco Polo was the last to sail the Northwest Passage, under contract with China.
“Satellite images show that most of the Arctic ice at the moment is thin, young ice that has only been around since last autumn.”
That is always the case in April, when the winter ice-over is still at near maximum extent.
Is it me hallucinating? Or them?
You just brought to mind a disturbing image.
How much you want to bet that the eco nuts will have Santa flying around with pontoons on his sleigh to protest the loss of ice?
They would love to scare little kids into thinking that if mommy drives her SUV to soccer practice then Santa and the elves will drown.
That old nestorian goat is living 12 miles southeast of Fairbanks, safe and sound, high and dry. Don't know what happened to the elves.
So let me get this straight: The is MORE ice this year than last, but THIS year is shaping up to be worse because ON AVERAGE over several years the ice cover is DOWN.
Wow, talk about convoluted thinking!!!
That’s a lot of ice...
HELPPPPP!!!!!..........
A prettier sight would be a killer whale surfacing with the green Santa in its mouth.
This is good news.
Now let’s get busy and start drilling for oil up there.
I suppose these fools have decided to take this nonsense into the ground, in spite of everything! I've had it with them. Question for freepers: How much does the disassociation with popular culture in the US affect the rest of your life? For me, it gives a profound sense of dislocation, regardless that so many believe like me. It is a constant struggle to maintain equalibrium with my values threatened at every turn. I compensate by withdrawing from society, but, darn it, I am tired of being AGAINST so much! Conservatives need a champion, alas that our nation is so bereft of LEADERS! Freepers please comment.
Who was to blame the last time the N/W Passage was open?
Great! Let’s start drilling!!
Climate crisis cancels Christmas!
Ping for reference in September!!
You want to drive this Ship of Fools go ahead, nobody seems to have the helm, nobody is is the wheelhouse, step right up.
No, I remember it well. The New York Times did a big front page story on "Open water at the North Pole for the first time ever!"
A few days later, after a big outcry, they rescinded the story with a two sentence correction, stranded and lonely like marooned polar bears, somewhere near page 23.
What kind of preparations could they possibly need to do? Getting their wetsuits cleaned?
Gosh, the last time this happened was in the 1200’s during the Medieval Warm Period, China has records that say they circumnavigated the ice-free pole back then, and Polo may have too.
All the polar bears drowned, too, never to be seen again.
Why would you worry about stepping away from “popular culture”?
“Popular culture” is vile and mulish. It teems with perverse influences. It celebrates death and depravity.
You can be confidant that there are tens of millions of Americans who join you daily in resisting the lemming-like charge of the gullible population.
Notice these morons never go up and study the ice in January, they always wait until July to go up there.
Anchorage digs out after record snowfall
are they using the computer models again to make predictions?? The models are only as accurate as are the error prone humans entering data. Reliability factor is suspect.
Does this mean that they are going to enlist even more Russian ice breakers to carve up the polar ice cap than they did last year?
Not a direct response to your question, but -- have you seen the nearby thread about a man who bought a lemonade from a vendor and gave it to his 7-year-old son? They were walking around in public until someone noticed the kid drinking "Mike's Hard Lemonade". Apparently, Dad doesn't watch TV and had no idea that this was an alcoholic beverage. Lost custody of his son because he wasn't in tune with popular culture.
Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
Interesting choice of starting point for the "analysis", since it ignores the cold periods during the 1940s and 1960s, as well as the much warmer period of the 1930s. Crap, crap, and more crap. Short-term trends are meaningless in climatology, which is pretty much what you hear from Warmists when you point out to them that the last 4 years have seen global temperatures trending down, and significantly so last year. They only select data that "proves" their hypothesis, which is based more in religion than in science.
Polo, of course, lived right at the fag-end of the Mediaeval Warm Period so there's every chance that the passage closed up right after him. I wouldn't be surprised if the NWP has been briefly opening and closing ever since 1900 - the Modern Warm Period has been about as warm as the Mediaeval Warm Period.
I don’t think eco nuts celebrate Christmas. They certainly don’t believe in God and wouldn’t push the ‘greed’ and ‘commercialism’ of Santa Claus.
Their god is Gaia. All hail Mother Earth!
Here is the problem. They are "calculating" instead of actually measuring anything. We ought to be highly suspicious when ever Govt Bureaucrats who depend on the hysteria about "Global Warming" to keep their budget nice and fat stop actually measuring and start "calculating" their finds. If they fudge the data a bit they can find any result they want.
They are messing with the data to validate their preconceived notions and someone should lose their job because of that fraud.
“In September 2007, Arctic sea ice reached a record low, opening up the fabled North-West passage that runs from Greenland to Alaska. “
Ok, and where did this fable come from? Could it be that the Northwest passage was open a long time ago? Did they have global warming back then?
Idiots.
I’ll take some global warming please. It’s 45* and raining here today.
I have done the same to a couple of friends, now I have to do it with my daughter who is in 7th grade. She came home telling me what her teacher is teaching about global warming and I got livid, dragged her to the computer and had to refute everything she had been taught about the subject.
If it can happen, you can be absolutely certain it is not the "first time". More likely it would be something like the 56,000th time since the oceans existed.
We have leaders. To bad for us they all are in business or talk radio making a mint of money rather then Govt.
If that includes NY City then hallelujah!
A lot of brainwashing going on in this country these days. The schools really scare me with what they are teaching now. I wish most parents were more like you.
I’m with you, 52 deg just to the west of you and a cold front moving in with a frost advisory tonight.
It’s been a long, cold winter here in Indiana.
Good point. I’m waiting to see when the coast goes under water.
It’s just like when ice melts in my soda before I drink any and it completely overflowst the cup!!!
Don’t worry. All three of the Presidential candidates are planning to fix this.
I live in a small, very conservative town just south of Indianapolis.
To be honest this is the first time I have ever caught them doing stuff like this. Heck my son is in third grade and they take him to a non-denominational bible study at a church across the street every week, the whole class goes.
It about shocked the heck out of me that a public school still can make decent decisions about important things correctly.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Arctic_Ice_More_Vulnerable_To_Sunny_Weather_999.html
Boulder CO (SPX) Apr 28, 2008
The shrinking expanse of Arctic sea ice is increasingly vulnerable to summer sunshine, new research concludes. The study, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Colorado State University (CSU), finds that unusually sunny weather contributed to last summer’s record loss of Arctic ice, while similar weather conditions in past summers do not appear to have had comparable impacts.
The study, which draws on observations from instruments on a new group of NASA satellites known as the “A-Train,” will be published tomorrow in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR’s principal sponsor.
“In a warmer world, the thinner sea ice is becoming increasingly sensitive to year-to-year variations in weather and cloud patterns,” says NCAR’s Jennifer Kay, the lead author. “A single unusually clear summer can now have a dramatic impact.”
Haven’t seen the sun here in the subarctic for a couple weeks, but who knows maybe it will be out tomorrow and all the ice will vanish immediately.
What is bizarre is the South Pole/Antartica now has more Ice than ever.
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2002/jan/science/ws_antarctic.html
I have not seen any attempt to explain this.
Anyone heard anything?
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