The BBC reports from the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco this week that year-round Arctic ice may well become a thing of the past in (most of) our lifetimes:
The average sea ice extent for the entire month of September this year was 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles). Including 2006, the September rate of sea ice decline is now approximately -8.59% per decade, or 60,421 sq km (23,328 sq miles) per year. At that rate, without the acceleration seen in the new modelling, the Arctic Ocean would have no ice in September by the year 2060.
Cross-posted to ePluribusMedia
Steven Colbert’s Threat Down on bears notwithstanding, this is bad news for polar bears, which may soon be gone from the wild and henceforth limited to theme parks and zoos (check out the video at the link, too):
The bear, who has been named Echo by scientists, should by now be way out on the frozen waters hunting for seals. He has not had a proper meal since the ice broke up in July. He is hungry and losing up to a kilogram in body fat every day. For the past 30 years or so, people living in Canada's north have been noticing a phenomenon that many scientists now believe is a direct result of our planet warming up.
The waters of Hudson Bay - and many other northern seas - are beginning their annual freeze later each year. This November, local residents are saying that the waters are up to a month late in freezing up. Similarly, in spring the ice is breaking up earlier. The net result - polar bears have less time on the solid ice to hunt. Bears can only catch seals on ice. Seals are mammals and therefore need to breathe oxygen.
And there’s a little matter of albedo. Ice reflects solar energy away, whereas open water absorbs more of it, thus setting up a feedback loop for further warming. Recent models incorporating recently observed acceleration move the ice-free September scenario up to 2040 or sooner.
NOT JUST BAD NEWS FOR BEARS: The Melting Permafrost
The effects of melting are not limited to the ocean. Arctic permafrost is melting, too. The New Yorker did a in-depth series of articles on changes already evident on the ground in Alaska, April 2005 (this from Part I):
Any piece of ground that has remained frozen for at least two years is, by definition, permafrost. In some places, like eastern Siberia, permafrost runs nearly a mile deep; in Alaska, it varies from a couple of hundred feet to a couple of thousand feet deep. Fairbanks, which is just below the Arctic Circle, is situated in a region of discontinuous permafrost, meaning that the city is freckled with regions of frozen ground. One of the first stops on Romanovsky’s tour was a hole that had opened up in a patch of permafrost not far from his house. It was about six feet wide and five feet deep. Nearby were the outlines of other, even bigger holes, which, Romanovsky told me, had been filled with gravel by the local public-works department. The holes, known as thermokarsts, had appeared suddenly when the permafrost gave way, like a rotting floorboard. (The technical term for thawed permafrost is talik, from a Russian word meaning "not frozen.") Across the road, Romanovsky pointed out a long trench running into the woods. The trench, he explained, had been formed when a wedge of underground ice had melted. The spruce trees that had been growing next to it, or perhaps on top of it, were now listing at odd angles, as if in a gale. Locally, such trees are called "drunken." A few of the spruces had fallen over. "These are very drunk," Romanovsky said.
...
"Ten years ago, nobody cared about permafrost," he told me. "Now everybody wants to know." Measurements that Romanovsky and his colleagues at the University of Alaska have made around Fairbanks show that the temperature of the permafrost has risen to the point where, in many places, it is now less than one degree below freezing. In places where permafrost has been disturbed, by roads or houses or lawns, much of it is already thawing. Romanovsky has also been monitoring the permafrost on the North Slope and has found that there, too, are regions where the permafrost is very nearly thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. While the age of permafrost is difficult to determine, Romanovsky estimates that most of it in Alaska probably dates back to the beginning of the last glacial cycle. This means that if it thaws it will be doing so for the first time in more than a hundred and twenty thousand years. "It’s really a very interesting time," he said.
The New Yorker series is quite good, and worth reading in its entirety, so here’s links to the second and third in the series.
METHANE, LESSER-KNOWN GREENHOUSE GAS
BBC, 8/11/2005:
A frozen peat bog in Siberia is threatening to release loads of harmful greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, say scientists. The bog, which is the size of France and Germany, is thought to be melting for the first time in 11,000 years.
The thing about the bogs is that since they’re essentially anaerobic, they don’t release carbon dioxide (CO2), but rather methane (CH4). Methane has different spectral qualities, and so adds to the greenhouse effect beyond what carbon dioxide can do alone.
Methane has been described by the United Nations as 23 times more "warming" than carbon dioxide. A UN report reveals that: "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems." The answer, according to scientists at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), is for farmers to alter what they are piling into their cows' front ends.
Primer for additional info on greenhouse gases. About methane:
CH4, a colorless, odorless, flammable, greenhouse gas. It is the simplest of all hydrocarbons with a formula of CH4. Methane is released naturally into the air from anaerobic environments such as marshes, swamps, and rice fields, and from symbiotic microbes in the guts of ruminant animals (such as cattle, sheep, and camels), and sewage sludge. Methane is released from methane producing bacteria (methanogens) that live in these anaerobic places. Methanogens in termite guts are the source of methane released by termites.
None of this is breaking news. Science (subscription, sorry) carried a story to this effect 10 years ago:
Scientists are concerned that this trickle of greenhouse gases may represent the first cracks in a dam, as the arctic tundra stores an estimated 180 billion metric tons of carbon--about a third of the total in the Earth's atmosphere, says Kling. "The concern is what will happen in the future as global warming increases and melting permafrost exposes more of this buried carbon to be respired and released into the atmosphere," he says. As it does, this cold place could turn up the heat on the rest of the planet.
Similar results were reported in 2004 from Swedish bogs, with quantitative data:
As temperatures have risen since the early 1980s, permafrost has completely disappeared from some bogs. To find out the extent of the change, Christensen and colleagues compared aerial photos of the Stordalen mire taken in 1970 and 2000. They tabulated four types of vegetation and checked the accuracy of the 2000 photo with a detailed field survey. The extent of drier plant communities, mainly mosses and shrubs, had declined from 9.2 to 5.9 hectares, the team reported 20 February in Geophysical Research Letters. Meanwhile, sedges and other marshy plants increased more than 50%. "The thing that surprised me is the rate of change," says Christensen. "Almost from year to year, we can see the vegetation changing."
The team also made detailed measurements of methane emissions for each of the plant communities. Wetter conditions lead to anaerobic conditions and more methane from bacteria decomposing organic matter. Extrapolating from the vegetation patterns of 1970 and 2000, they calculated that the shift in plants has caused a rise in methane production between 22% and 66%. The evidence for an increase is backed up by methane measurements made in the early 1970s at Stordalen by team member Bo Svensson of Linköping University in Sweden.
Are well-intentioned efforts to reduce methane emissions from cow farts too little too late? Let’s hope not.
Britain's attempts to get to grips with the issue are in line with a growing trend in research into cows' digestive systems around the world. Scientists at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen have recorded impressive reductions by introducing a mixture of organic sugars and a special bacterium into the animals' diet. Belgian researchers have found that adding fish oil to fodder reduced methane emissions in cattle by up to 80%, while the Australians are even experimenting with a flatulence-reducing vaccine.
And the UK, too, is finally falling into line. In a parliamentary answer politely entitled "Bovine Emissions" last week, farming minister Ian Pearson said "recent research suggests that substantial methane reductions could be achieved by changes to feed regimes".
COASTAL INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Bad news, too for indigenous people of the North. From a NASA press release:
"Some types of snow are better for making an igloo, some better for making tea, some better for traveling over," says Cuomo. "That’s one of the things that’s changing — the quality of the snow is changing." The Inupiaq people use igloos the way people in the mainland use tents. They actually lived in sod houses traditionally, not igloos. "Igloos are your traveling shelter. If you’re traveling and you can’t build an igloo, that’s really dangerous," says Cuomo.
Another danger is the change in the sea ice. "The ice is thinner, so whaling is much more dangerous, precarious. Whaling teams go out on the ice," Cuomo says. "Now the ice breaks up much earlier. There was an incident where a bunch of hunters a few years ago started drifting after a piece of ice broke off unexpectedly."
HILLARY & McCAIN on a TUNDRA JUNKET
Two of the 2008 top contenders for the U.S. Presidency, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, travelled to Alaska’s North Shore on a global warming fact-finding mission three months after the New Yorker series was published. From a contemporaneous report in South Africa’s Sunday Independent:
Hillary face to face with global warming: American politicians on a fact-finding mission discover that Alaska is the canary in the mineshaft of looming disaster
"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action," McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary." Clinton added: "I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science. There are still some hold-outs, but they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."
Other Senators in the delegation were Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC):
"Climate change is different when you come here, because you see the faces of people experiencing it in Alaska," [Graham] said. "If you can go to the native people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, I just think you're not listening." Collins, a Democrat [sic], was even more convinced. She said the evidence in Alaska represented the "canary in the mineshaft of global warming crying out to us to pay attention to the impact".
Alaska’s entire delegation, as well as the Bush Administration, have consistently opposed controls on carbon emissions. Ironically, this trip seems to have been wiped from memory by the time Hurricane Katrina left its indelible mark a scant week later. Both candidates seem to have forgotten the urgency they expressed on the issue just a year and a half ago.
We’ve already taken a crippling blow to a major city. Less noticed are small island and coastal communities around the world being abandoned, including those in Alaska described in the New Yorker. One wonders what it will take for the United States, with 4% of the world’s population and 25% of its greenhouse gas emissions, to take action at the federal level to require reduction in carbon emissions. Certainly, we can’t expect much from the Bush-Cheney Administration. A Democratic majority on both sides of the Congressional aisle likely won’t be enough. While I’m pleased about the improvements we’ll see from Nick Rahall (WV-03) taking over the Chairmanship of the House Natural Resources Committee, he does represent a coal-producing state. Despite McCain’s past efforts on this issue, he’s been morphing himself into something more appealing to the far right in his ongoing quest for the Presidency. The right Democrat in 2008 may be necessary before any meaningful progress is made on the federal level, especially for a robust commitment to alternative, non-carbon based energy.
Fortunately, many American cities and states haven’t been waiting. But that’s a story for another diary, as this one’s already overlong.