Posted on 07/01/2011 6:46:52 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at eyeonthearctic.rcinet.ca ...
Guess we won’t be seeing a Arctic Sea Ice Road Trucker show anytime soon.
That's it for Simon...no more research grants on the causes of AGW. He's toast.
Now that science is political, we’ll never know...for sure.
I take it we’re all still going to die?
Just need to buy some seaside property on the arctic ocean and I’m all set :)
This is going to do wonders for world trade when the ice is significantly gone.
You know what? I don’t care how fast sea ice melts. I just want US oil companies to start drilling on the north slope so maybe I can afford a gallon or two of gas now and then. Oh yeah, make it 100% petroleum gas, no ethanol please.
Wait......Are we doomed?
I am not very sure that the arctic ice really is melting away as they tell us. The reason why, is that the north-west passage is still iced up. We were told that it would open all year around, because of global warming, but in recent years, it has only had a few weeks open in summer. And some years, frozen solid all through the year.
One well known factoid about predictions is that by this time (2011) Greenland should have been pretty much cleared of ice.
Obviously that's not what has happened. It's still covered with ice.
Their prediction: http://www.ec.gc.ca/EnviroZine/images/Issue48/melt_e_l.gif
“If you live long enough, something will eventually kill you.”
- Yogi Berra
Summer time.
The ice in the drink in front of me is all gone, I had expected it to last much longer. So, I guess I'll have to agree with these climate scientwits, and be alarmed too.
Could be undersea volcanoes.
Anyone ever notice that the more skeptical people become about anthropogenic global warming/climate change, the more alarmist the articles describing the effects of AGW/CC become?
The ground under Yellowstone is lifting, and I don’t think anyone knows what that means. Volcanoes erupt, the earth quakes, the magnetic poles move and sometimes switch, and we still don’t understand exactly how. That we don’t understand the geologic influences on the melting of arctic ice is not surprising.
The latest prototype weather control machine from Rovenschmirtz Evil Inc?
Which isn't happening anyway, so that excuse is real weak.
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