here is the transcript of an interview in 2008. You can listen for yourself:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x222118#222137Dr Wieslaw Maslowski predicted a 2013 Ice Free Summer Arctic five years ago - now he says that may have been too conservative
Posted on 24 Mar 2008
We speak to Wieslaw Maslowski about his prediction that by the summer of 2013, we will have completely lost ice cover in the Arctic. Dr. Maslowski says that the complete loss of summer ice may actually happen sooner. The concern we have at Beyond Zero Emissions is that without moving to near zero emissions and drawing down atmospheric carbon as soon as possible, this could cause the irreversible melt of Greenland leading to 5 metre sea level rises this century...
Matthew Wright: Ok. So now, it was reported in The New York Times that you said that 2013 was a possibility, and perhaps you'd actually projected this some years ago, that we could lose the summer sea ice extent - that's in the summer solstice is it?
Dr Wieslaw Maslowski: That is correct. So the minimum in the Arctic ice extent has been typically occurring some time in September, between early September and late September every summer. So, the minimum of ice extent is simply defined as the ice edge of percentage roughly say between 15, maybe at 20%, ice cover. And then everything inside this ice edge position on the Atlantic side and on the Pacific side is considered to be the ice extent so it's not really concentration - it's just the area within the 15% or 20% ice concentration or more. And this ice minimum has been declining quite significantly. The global climate models have predicted, and your audience is probably familiar with this International Panel for Climate Change study, Annual Report IV that has been published and presented quite extensively this year, earlier this year in 2007, and actually the panel together with 'president' Al Gore have won the Nobel Prize nomination, so those studies from this panel, the multi-national climate simulation study have predicted the ice might be disappearing in summer, the northern summer in the Arctic, maybe sometime by the end of this 21st century.
There are some model simulations, single model simulations, that are suggesting that it could possibly occur as early as 2050 or maybe even as early as 2030. Comparing those models simulations predictions with the satellite observations of the Arctic sea ice extent actually shows that most of those models are too conservative predicting the current and the past ice extent changes in the Arctic as has been observed. So the idea is that the climate models - they're underestimating, they are too conservative in their prediction.
What our contribution, our study contribution to this overall topic is that we're saying that the satellite are only observing the 2-dimensional changes in the sea ice in the Arctic in terms of this ice extent. However, we do not have the observations of ice thickness - the third dimension, the vertical dimension - are very limited of the Arctic sea ice. And having those models that we used, we are able to look at the changes associated, not only with the ice extent, but also ice thickness and this way we can eventually calculate and try to understand the changes in the total ice volume in the Arctic. And our studies are suggesting that actually the volume and the thickness is decreasing even faster than the aerial observations from satellites. And this way we're saying that actually if we already have lost probably about 40% volume in the Arctic so far, if we project this trend ongoing for the last 10 - 15 years, we probably will reach zero in summer some time mid next century, mid next decade, I'm sorry.
Original at:
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/media/radio/dr-wieslaw-maslowski-predicted-2013-ice-free-summer-arctic-five-years-ago-now-he-says-ma
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