Steve Bloom wrote:
> Eric, regarding a comment you made a couple of posts ago, IIRC the
> expectation is that after the initial summer sea ice loss it will reform in
> the winter because winter air temps will remain damned cold. That reformed
> ice will be thin stuff and very prone to disappearing quickly the following
> summer, but still will be thick enough to allow the Arctic Ocean to retain
> much of the heat gained via the summer open water.
Yes, I would most certainly expect that new sea-ice would form during
the cold and dark of winter.
But, once the so-called multi-year ice is gone, then the new, first
year sea-ice that would replace it would have different
characteristics overall. I was suggesting that the net effect would
be a tendency toward more rapid motion and/or breakup for the complete
mass of the ice cap. I think the multi-year sea-ice has provided a
bit of stability which will disappear once that thicker ice is gone.
And, once gone, we may find that it does not often return, depending,
of course on the variability in weather. As the Greenhouse Effect is
expected to continue to strengthen, we should expect that there will
come a time after which there will never be any multi-year sea-ice,
that is, all the sea-ice would be gone at the end of the summer melt
season every year.
This would be a threshold kind of event, i.e., one of those "tipping
points" frequently talked about these days. Given the rapid decline
in minimum sea-ice extent (or area) which we are seeing, it appears to
be something we can expect to witness in the very near future. Just
how near is anybody's guess.
E. S.
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