How long do we have?

Heat Storm

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Arctic sea ice extent has been at a record low for the time of year for most of 2018, as illustrated by above image. In 2012, extent went below 3.4 million km². The question is what minimum 2018 extent will be.

Arctic News,

17 April, 2018

Arctic sea ice could disappear altogether in 2018. Have a look at the progressive loss of sea ice volume depicted in the image on the right, from an earlier post. Zero sea ice volume by 2018 is within the margins of the trend line contained in the data going back to 1979.

What drives volume decline is the combination of extent loss and especially thickness loss. Sea ice thickness has declined particularly where the ice once was at its thickest, i.e. north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The combination image below shows the decline of the thicker sea ice, by comparing sea ice thickness on April 15 (run April 14) for the years 2015 through to 2018, showing that sea ice this year is entering the melting season with little or no thick sea ice left north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to cope with the influx of warmer water.

The influx of warm water from the Atlantic Ocean and from the Pacific Ocean is melting the sea ice from below, while sunlight is melting the sea ice from above. Furthermore, warm water from rivers that end in the Arctic Ocean also contribute to melting of the sea ice, and there are numerous feedbacks that can dramatically speed up melting.

Disappearance of the sea ice means that the buffer that until now has consumed huge amounts of heat, will be gone and that heat that previously went into melting the sea ice, will instead warm up the Arctic.

Sea ice can be expected to continue its downward spiral, given the continued rise of the temperature of the sea surface in the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Pacific Ocean, as illustrated by the image below.

The sea surface is not necessarily the place where the water is at its warmest. This is illustrated by the image below, showing subsurface ocean heat in the area most relevant to El Niño/La Niña events.

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Indeed, while we're currently still in a La Niña period, it looks like a new El Niño will arrive this summer, as illustrated by the forecast plumes on the right.

This could result in a heat storm in which heat waves could decimate the sea ice, while storms could push the remaining sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean.

This danger is further illustrated by the trend line in the image below, a trend that is contained in NASA LOTI data up to March 2018, adjusted by +0.79°C to better reflect the rise from preindustrial and surface air temperatures, and to better include Arctic temperatures.

[ click on images to enlarge ]

The temperature rise in the Arctic is causing decline of the sea ice extent as well as the extent of the snow cover on land.

The image on the right shows the progressive decline of the spring snow cover on land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Heat waves combined with strong rainfall due to storms could devastate the snow cover in 2018.

Decline of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic comes with a huge loss in albedo, which means that huge amounts of sunlight that were previously reflected back into space instead get absorbed by the Arctic. 

The Buffer has gone, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page

A rapid rise in temperatures in the Arctic will also accelerate changes to jet stream, which can cause huge amounts of heat from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean to enter the Arctic Ocean, further speeding up the temperature rise and threatening to destabilize methane hydrates in sediments under the Arctic Ocean.

The methane will initially be felt most strongly in the Arctic, further speeding up the temperature rise that is already accelerating due to the loss of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic, which makes that less sunlight is reflected back into space and instead adds to warming up the Arctic.

All this shouldn't come unexpected. In the video below, Guy McPherson warns that a rapid temperature rise will affect agriculture across the globe, threatening to cause a collapse of industrial civilization, in turn resulting in an abrupt halt of the sulfates that are currently co-emitted as a result of burning fuel, which will further add to a temperature rise that is already threatening to cause people across the globe to perish at massive scale, due to heatstroke, dehydration and famine, if not perish due to nuclear radiation and further toxic effects of war, as people fight over who controls the last habitable places on Earth.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html
• Feedbacks in the Arctic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html
• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html
• Ten Dangers of Global Warming
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/ten-dangers-of-global-warming.html
• Methane Erupting From Arctic Ocean Seafloor
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/03/methane-erupting-from-arctic-ocean-seafloor.html
• Warning of mass extinction of species, including humans, within one decade
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/02/warning-of-mass-extinction-of-species-including-humans-within-one-decade.html
• Warning Signs
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2018/03/warning-signs.html