Giant Hole Melts In Northern Ice (Bering Strait Polynya I've Posted About)

[hatrack]

Something unusual is going on in the Beaufort Sea, a remote part of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. Over the past six weeks, a huge “lake” bigger than the state of Indiana has melted out of the sea ice.

Within the past week, this “polynya” – a Russian word for any open water surrounded by sea ice – finally melted through a part of the ice that separated it from the open ocean, forming a kind of bay in the planet’s northern ice cap. “The reason we’re tracking it is because we had never seen anything like that before,” said Mark C. Serreze, senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, in Boulder, Colo.

Polynyas occur every year in certain parts of the Arctic where warm currents and persistent winds clear swaths of sea ice. But this one, covering 38,000 square miles, is unique in the memory of scientists who watch the Arctic ice closely because they see it as a bellwether for the effects of global warming. They’ve found that the area of the summer ice cap has been shrinking for at least three decades, and it’s getting thinner, too.

Last year, scientists at NASA and the NSIDC reported the most extensive summer meltdown of Arctic sea ice on record, and an acceleration in the rate of its long-term decline. In a new study reported last week, NASA researcher Josefino Comiso found that the Arctic’s winter ice is also in decline, and at an accelerating rate.

EDIT

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060923/NEWS03/109230013/-1/community

[nam78_two]

1. k&r/nt

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Even that virgin records guy sees the problem here.

The only people who want to do nothing are the republicans.

[babylonsister]

3. I wonder how the supposed "El Nino" will affect this.

I've been told it will be warmer than usual by my DH who thinks he's a weatherman:eyes: and El Nino's typically affect the Pacific coast, no? Lots of rain, mudslides, etc.?

[niallmac]

5. The scary thing to me is that I believe even the experts wonder.

We as a species have never been through whatever it is we are going through now.
How fast will all this warming proceed and how will it affect us?
Computer models can only work with the known data we give them.
Will the Gulf Stream flip?
Will the planet suddenly get colder from cloud cover?
I think many people all over the planet are watching every
twitch in the weather patterns with a new found respect.

[file83]

6. That is a LOT of fresh water being put into the mix - I'd like to see how

the models they have predict what the results will be from this latest and unprecedented melting.

Whatever it is, I have a feeling the weather this Winter and coming year are going to be VERY unusual, even stranger than we've seen the last 5 years.

[Javaman]

23. I wonder if a few of these Polynya's happen then they collapse into the

salt water. A little at a time is okay, pretty much (basically) how ice bergs are made, but a huge amount like this... :scared:

[Mr_Spock]

4. I hope this is not too big a deal

As pissed off as I am about Republican morons who don't believe in science, I am actually more than somewhat concerned about the possible natural disasters that rapid climate change could cause.

[Poll_Blind]

7. I don't want to sound alarmist, but after watching "An Inconvenient...

...Truth", this appears to be...a pretty big deal. If you haven't seen the movie, maybe do some Googleing. These bodies of water eat through the ice, forming huge caves which "swiss cheese" the entire section of ice that they appear to merely "rest on". However, this "swiss-cheesing" effect destabilizes the whole region of ice on which it sits. In fact, once created, the water absorbs more heat than does the ice which reflects most of the light, speeding the melting process.

:(

  I seem to remember melting ice caps having a devastating effect on ocean currents. When this has happened in the past (10's of thousands of years ago) they, the ocean currents, just stopped or behaved erratically. This could cause a huge amount of disruption to weather and sea life which, even working the most-selfish angle, could disrupt or reduce crops grown for food.

  Again, I invite you to do more research on your own and see the movie: It's worth your time.

PB

[Gloria]

8. Yup, Sounds awful similar to what has been going on down in

Antarctica and what was shown in Gore's movie.

This is very scary. It happened very quickly, and unexpectedly sooner, down in Antarctica. It may be doing something similar up in the Arctic.

[file83]

9. There is a great fiction book based on this scenario called

"The Coming Global Superstorm" - it came out in 1999 - it was WAY ahead of it's time.

The movie "The Day After Tommorrow" was loosley based on the basic premise of the book - but the movie sucked. The book was an enlightening read about what seems to be happening today, right now. I just hope it doesn't end they way they predict.

[ramapo]

10. The Day the Oceans Overflowed

This was a great SF book published in the early '60s. I read it dozens of times as a kid (along with Hiroshima, which probably accounts for my view of the world). I found the book last year on eBay and enjoyed reading it again.

The basic premise was that there was a project to gradually melt some ice at the North Pole using atomic power. There was an accident and all the ice melted immediately, generating giant tidal waves that swept down along the coasts, wreaking devastation. The new coastline was many miles inland.

Not quite the same scenario as we're seeing but it was written long before anybody seriously thought the ice cap could melt.

[Dogmudgeon]

13. I thought I was the only one who read that book!

I agree, it was eerily prescient.

So was The Day The Earth Caught Fire, the book AND the movie.

--p!

[phantom power]

15. I read that book too. As I recall, there was another angle...

which was the release of ice-weight from Greenland. The entire subcontinent lifted up after the weight disappeared, making a bad situation much worse.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. It wasn't all fiction

There was actually a good bit of science journalism in The Coming Global Superstorm. The haters of Strieber and Bell were quite frustrated, but it was one of the catalysts for the current generation of environmental concern. I still recall hearing a "Skeptical Environmentalist" (not Lomborg) on the radio "debunking" the book, who avoided addressing the research and constantly made dumb gags about UFOs.

The fiction, written by Strieber, was up to his usual top-notch standards, and we often forget that while Bell is a connoisseur of the absurd, he is no fool. It's still a good book, although the scientific work has progressed greatly at this point, so it's eight years out of date; the fiction is worth reading, even if the climate change scenario is improbably quick.

(And I don't remember there being any UFOs. But maybe they did a Vulcan Mind Wipe on me. After all, the World-Famous Alien Anal Probe wouldn't have far to go to reach my brain. :)

--p!

[Odin2005]

17. Art Bell is a nut.

A thermohaline conveyor belt shuttoff would take place over many years, not a few weeks. His "superstorm" nonsense is a bunch of crap.

[file83]

20. It's a fictional book, Einstein. Not a textbook.

Alice in Wonderland is fiction, but do you call Lewis Carroll a nut?

[Mr_Spock]

21. I have seen the movie!! It was very good.

The problem still arises that no scientist can predict exactly when we will be past a "tipping point". Since Republicans are idiot morons that believe fully in imaginary beings, but not in hard science, there may be no way to stop events once they start. This is why I am hoping that the events occur in an orderly and slow enough fashion so that 1,000,000's of people don't have to die.

[Dead_Parrot]

22. Personally, I think we passed it a while ago

I'm prety sure the permafrost isn't supposed to be melting. But it is, and releasing billions of tons of GH gasses in the process.

My money's on 2004, but we'll have to wait for the post-mortem.

[Boomer]

11. K&R

This report trumps anything else in the news... or should.

[theHandpuppet]

12. Anyone here know where to view a satellite pic of this?

This is scary stuff.

K&R.

[phantom power]

14. Right here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=68093&mesg_id=68093

[hatrack]

18. Note: On PP's post, it's the big blue hole at the TOP of the image

Not the massive wedge of crumbling ice near Greenland.

That's the other enormous region where the ice pack is disintegrating.

[theHandpuppet]

19. Thanks -- took me a while to make some sense of that map

It was not immediately apparent exactly to which area the article was referring.