Hi again,
I've always wondered whether there has been a seasonably ice-free Arctic
Ocean in recent interglacial periods, and an answer (no) came in a
plenary lecture at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference
in June by Professor David Barber, about 21 minutes into his talk:
http://video.hint.no/mmt201v10/osc/?vid=55
He says he has "downcast" his forecast for a seasonably ice free Arctic
to between 2013 and 2030. Then he says it's a long time since there's
been a seaonsably ice free Arctic, and "one can debate whether that's 1
million years or 14 million years."
During the next minutes he describes how they discovered thin, rotten
ice where there was supposed to be multi-year ice. So satellite data
cannot always be trusted!
At 40 minutes he comes to something that's new to me: that CO2 is an
important part of the sea ice formation process. He even likens the sea
ice to a rain forest!
Later on, around 45 minutes, he discusses the importance of opinions of
Inuit peoples and how they see the effect of global warming in their
daily lives.
So there's lots of interesting stuff about the sea ice - but there's
nothing about what we should do about its decline. His conclusion -
just continue research for another decade.
Cheers,
John
---
John Nissen wrote:
Hi all,
Here's a posting on Climate Progress that I missed in June:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/06/arctic-death-spiral-maslowski-ice-free-arctic-watts-goddard-wattsupwiththat/#more-26815
This refers (1) to a presentation by Maslowski here:
http://soa.arcus.org/sites/soa.arcus.org/files/sessions/1-1-advances-understanding-arctic-system-components/pdf/1-1-7-maslowski-wieslaw.pdf
and (2) to a study by a team from Ohio State University:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/sedcore.htm
I wonder what the Hadley Centre make of this. Surely it lends weight
to the argument for urgent geoengineering to cool the Arctic (and
waters entering the Arctic) in order to try and prevent inexorable
deterioration of the situation towards catastrophic methane release
from permafrost and catastrophic sea level rise from Greenland ice
sheet disintegration.
Cheers,
John
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