Arctic Degrading Faster than First Thought
New climate change study finds rapid sea ice melt affecting everything from polar bears to microorganisms
Melting ice, Svalbard, Arctic Circle (AP)
David Barber, who helped lead a international expedition in the arctic, says rapid sea ice melt is affecting everything from polar bears to microorganisms.
He says there is more open ice now in the Arctic. That creates more cyclones, which in turn further erodes the sea ice crucial to the region's ecosystem. Scientists on the mission say what is happening in the Arctic is a bellwether of what will eventually happen further south.
Some 300 scientists from 27 countries spent months on an icebreaker studying climate change in the Arctic.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based Pew Environmental Group said it has quantified for the first time the economic costs of the Arctic's warming and it adds up to at least $2.4 trillion over the next 40 years.
Economist Eban Goldstein of Bard College in New York says the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
And he says the combination of melting ice, increased sunlight absorption by darker barren ground and the release of methane as the permafrost thaws will this year warm the earth the equivalent of 40% of total U.S. industrial emissions.
Link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/05/tech/main6178000.shtml
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This paper from Winnipeg Free Press is close to the event. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/arctic-ice-melt-alarms-scientists-83704042.html
I found the Forum web site and asked for a video or barber's powerpoint
Happy to help digging...
Dear Fred,
Thank you as always.
Wondering if you can get into the remss site and copy the figure of the ocean temperatures portrayed over time by latitude -- I think it is roughly Figure 7. The ocean is very warm in the deep southern Pacific, and has been for some months and that should be reflected in that particular graphic by now.
As always, I am blocked out, for some reason.
Roy Spencer's AMSU satellite temperatures site is just about the scariest thing I have seen lately. The signal of warming is rising (nee, spiking!) out of the noise at all altitudes. The site is here:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
You won't see anything at first because you have to click on "redraw" down at the bottom left, then wait for Java to load up -- after that, you can play around all you like.
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