Global warming creates 'new normal' in Arctic

[cal04]

'It is troubling how fast the change is proceeding,' scientist says
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45521029/ns/world_news-christian_science_monitor/

Global warming has brought a "new normal" to the Arctic, with warmer air and ocean temperatures, thinner and less expansive summer sea ice, and greener vegetation in coastal regions abutting the open water.

In addition, longer periods of open water during the annual sea-ice melt season is allowing the ocean to take up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, leading to seasonal bouts of ocean acidification in some areas.

These broad observations, along with more-detailed looks at some 32 environmental indicators, appear in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2011 Arctic Report Card, released Thursday. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/

The changes have wide implications, from opening new sources of offshore oil, gas, and minerals to speeding the release of heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere as permafrost melts.

[PETRUS]

1. Net recommendation: 0 votes (Your vote: +1)

Lurking deniers?

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Ditto. nt

[pscot]

3. Probably piecework

They get paid by the unrecc.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Arctic has taken a turn for the warmer

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/336669/title/Arctic_has_taken_a_turn_for_the_warmer

Arctic has taken a turn for the warmer

Scientists see pervasive and permanent changes in the last five years

By Janet Raloff
Web edition : Friday, December 2nd, 2011

The northern polar region’s climate has materially changed over the past five years, a team of 121 scientists from 14 nations concludes in a December 1 Arctic report card. Compared with 2006 and earlier, they note, the Arctic is warmer and less icy.

Sufficient observational data now exist “to indicate a shift in the Arctic Ocean system since 2006,” says Jacqueline Richter-Menge of the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., a coeditor of the new analysis. “This shift is characterized by the persistent decline in the thickness and summer extent of sea-ice cover and by a warmer, less salty upper ocean.”

Triggering that turning point, Richter-Menge says, were unusually warm Arctic temperatures in 2006 together with a persistent weather pattern that pushed ice across the Arctic and into the North Atlantic through the Fram Strait east of Greenland: “We like to call it the perfect storm of the Arctic.”

Once extreme events foster the loss of old, multi-year ice, “we seldom go back to where we were before,” says James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

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