Rapid Melting of Arctic Sea Ice Possibly Explained [new theory?]

eyeonthearctic.rcinet.ca ^ | 28 June 2011 | written by The Canadian Press

[smokingfrog]

Arctic researchers have discovered a clue as to why sea ice in the North is melting so much faster than anyone thought it would.

Scientists have long puzzled over why Arctic sea ice is retreating at up to three times the rate that climate models say it should.

In an effort to answer that question, a group of U.K-based explorers walked more than 500 kilometres of sea ice in the High Arctic, taking temperature readings of the ocean below them.

They found a layer of cold, salty water about 200 metres down that they suspect has come from the melting of first-year ice.

That meltwater has forced the relatively warmer water to the surface, where it's speeding up the decay of more ice. 'Complicated processes'

"We're trying to understand why the ice is melting so fast," said Simon Boxall of the Catlin Arctic Survey. "It's not just down to simple warming. There are more complicated processes."

The speed at which sea ice is disappearing in the Arctic has far exceeded almost all predictions and alarmed climate scientists.

A 2007 paper from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., found that the projections of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were already obsolete three years after they were published.

When projections from the panel were compared with actual observations, the authors found that between 1953 and 2006 the sea ice was retreating three times faster than it should have. Between 1979 and 2006, when satellite data was available, the actual retreat was twice as fast as climate models predicted.

The report concluded that sea ice retreat is 30 years ahead of where scientists thought it would be.

[SatinDoll]

You nailed it. That was known about ten years ago. Marine volcanoes on the Arctic Sea floor.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

DOOMAGE!

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[Gene Eric]

>> The speed at which sea ice is disappearing in the Arctic has far exceeded almost all predictions and alarmed climate scientists.

Thus, the alarmists are indisputably wrong.

[dila813]

Ice Sheets from the last ice age still retreating?

Nah, couldn’t be that....

[I got the rope]

What’s this stuff about Monckton about?

[I got the rope]

Some of your links are stupid.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Posting both sides, where I find them.

[I got the rope]

Well the Monckton attack links are pure stupidity and ad hominems. No need to link to that. Monckton is correct. Remember...sea level numbers are recalculated values. All the effects we are seeing from the sea-level are based on how you treat the data...when you correct post-glacial rebound.

Here's an example of another failed approach.

[lonevoice]

[I got the rope]

Here’s a link showing NASA changing the past data by 15% to show greater sea level rise:

http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/21/nasa-sea-level-update/