Arctic Ice Cap: Too Young, Too Thin

Published April 06, 2009 @ 07:33PM PT

Arctic Sea Ice, geographic extent, April 2009

When it comes to Arctic sea ice, it is indeed possible be too young and too thin.

As the boreal winter was winding down a couple weeks ago, satellite data suggested the geographic extent of the Earth's northern ice cap was continuing to contract.

With some time to crunch the season's data, researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center are confirming that Arctic sea ice is at its fifth smallest extent since satellite tracking began in 1979. (All six record lows have happened since 2004.) "Sea ice extent averaged over the month of March 2009 was 15.16 million square kilometers (5.85 million square miles)," reports the NSIDC. "This was 730,000 square kilometers (282,000 square miles) above the record low of 2006, but 590,000 square kilometers (228,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average."

Coming nearly simultanously with the breakup of the ice bridge securing the Wilkins Ice Sheet to Antarctica, you'd think all this news would throw some cold water on the latest emanations from the misinformers...or at least give the schedulers and editors of the major news outlets a little more discernment when booking them for punditry on the science or economics of global warming. Perhaps some climate scientists could substitute.

Equally dismaying, the level of older ice at the Arctic is at a record low. This is the ice that persists over several summers, and thickens up each winter. It's also the shiny cap that reflects sunlight back into space during the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 6 months a year of sunlight that hits the pole -- a major brake on summer heat in the northern hemisphere.

Prior to 2000, this long-lived ice comprised about 30 percent on average of the northern ice cap. Now it's down to 9.8 percent. The less of this ice capping the planet, the more open ocean to absorb the sun's heat, warming the water...creating more heat, which melts more ice, so there's yet less ice to reflect heat back into space...

Have we already passed a tipping point where the northern ice cap won't be able to recover? Some researchers out of the University of Washington believe that based on the current trends, it could waste away to just a quarter of its current size, around 1 million square kilometers (roughly 620,000 square miles) by 2037.

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Comments (15)

Well sure the ice is melting - the earth is warming. Just as it has been for the past millions and billions of years. It is constantly on a cycle of up and down. I mean Christ, we JUST came out of an ice age! Do you really think what we do has an impact on the earth? Our small, miniscule, carbon bodies? NO! Learn your facts and don't listen to that preposterous idiocy that the liberal media spews at you. Do some research and listen to what ACTUAL scientists are saying.

Posted by Michelle Alexander on 04/07/2009 @ 12:47PM PT
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Have you seen that South Park episode where all the adults are ostriches with their heads in the sand? It's hilarious. Enjoy the view!

Posted by Nancy Cole on 04/11/2009 @ 06:46PM PT
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I apologize, I didn't realize that you are one of those reporters.

Posted by Michelle Alexander on 04/07/2009 @ 12:48PM PT
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Yes, I admit it. I am one of those reporters who reads the source material, judges its quality based on who's providing it and how they gathered and analysed their data, and draws rational conclusions based on consideration of both.

Honestly, I am starting to lose interest in these pedantic, predictable attacks. "Liberal media spews..." "...listen to what actual scientists are saying..." Can't someone get off these hoary old PR flak creations and be more imaginative?

Posted by Emily Gertz on 04/10/2009 @ 05:55AM PT
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Yes, be more imaginative. Yet, as Einstein said, imagination is the servant of our instincts. Climate deniers are being 'imaginative' with the science, following their instinct for comfortable certainties. Climate journalists are imaginatively expressing an instinct to battle the deniers over the territory of climate science. This narrows the debate and the policy; it's like having one foot tangled in the minutiae of the science. Perhaps it would be more imaginative to go right ahead and lose interest in the deniers (who could be invited to go play on some blog set up for the purpose). If this was done we may see a surge of imagination in climate debates. Our imagination might be set free to follow new instincts, of survival and compassion and resurgence of the human spirit. Our thinking might be set free to seek climate solutions with a hope of actually working, not in cramped climate policy silos but amidst a reimagination of what's possible among people determined to make life more liveable for everyone. This only sounds Utopian because it hasn't happened. Afterwards it might seem obvious and simple.

Posted by james greyson on 04/12/2009 @ 10:11AM PT
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Constructive, thoughtful and polite discussion is always welcome. Feel free to comment on the topic of this or other posts about "climate solutions with a hope of actually working."

Posted by Emily Gertz on 04/12/2009 @ 08:32PM PT
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OK, thanks. Most people have heard another quote from Einstein about not being able to solve problems with the same thinking that causes them, yet this is precisely what has happened for decades with climate. I'm no Einstein but if we're getting desperate enough to pursue science-fiction geo-engineering 'solutions' then perhaps it's also worth thinking about our thinking? By convention, problems are solved reductively; big problems are broken down into ever smaller pieces and some pieces are held up for special attention. This convention is so destructive of connections and creative options that everyone assumes the biggest problems, such as climate, are really tough to solve. So we lower expectations, asking just to 'mitigate' change not to reverse it, for cuts in emissions not atmospheric concentrations, for less-worse rather than better. As time passes without progress we propose ever tougher caps and constraints to be imposed by big brother government. Many seek solace in denial or fatalism. The projects and funding to rethink all this professionally don't exist SFAIK.
If such a project did exist I would want to help by looking for a climate solution within an overall global solution, to see climate as a squeaky wheel. Fix the machinery not the squeak, the system not the symptom. What switches can we flick that would change out relations with nature, with resources, with money and with each other? One example would be to switch the physical resource economy from linear to circular, from waste-making to resource-making. Take the practice of cradle-to-cradle design and apply it everywhere (and not just to carbon!). The Chinese have made 'circular economy' a national goal though they are attempting it via central planning rather than markets. I've designed a simple market-based correction that would provide sufficient incentives for all products to end up as new resources for people and nature, rather than as wastes in the air, water and land. This could combine economic, ecological and climate recovery. But it doesn't fit into a climate box.

Posted by james greyson on 04/13/2009 @ 02:48AM PT
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> So we lower expectations, asking just to 'mitigate' change not to reverse it, for cuts in emissions not atmospheric concentrations, for less-worse rather than better.

I find this a little too finely sliced and diced, James. Cutting emissions is the crucial step to cutting atmospheric concentrations. In debating how far to mandate emissions cuts, we're effectively debating how much we will or won't put ourselves out to cut CO2 concentrations.

As for mitigation vs. reversing change, the fact is that barring some fabulous geo-engineering solution that relives the oceans of their stored heat without simply dumping it into the atmosphere instead, we have to talk about and plan for mitigation. The Earth's already warmed due to human-propelled climate change, and it's very likely that nothing can stop it getting hotter still in the coming century.

>>As time passes without progress we propose ever tougher caps and constraints to be imposed by big brother government. Many seek solace in denial or fatalism. The projects and funding to rethink all this professionally don't exist SFAIK. ..I've designed a simple market-based correction that would provide sufficient incentives for all products to end up as new resources for people and nature, rather than as wastes in the air, water and land. This could combine economic, ecological and climate recovery. But it doesn't fit into a climate box.

You're speaking in a lot of generalities, James. 'SFAIK' is the operative qualifier here; off the top of my head I could list a dozen people or projects that are undertaking some facet of the things you're proposing.
(A book I contributed to, "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century," that would be a good place to start learning more about "the projects and funding to rethink all this" that do in fact exist.)

Your ultimate beef seems to be that no one's implementing a solution with the particular qualities of the one you've devised. (Which you have not described.)

Posted by Emily Gertz on 04/13/2009 @ 08:40AM PT
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Thanks for your comments Emily, you're not alone in finding this stuff to be challenging. I would happily respond to your complaints if I could sense that you were curious about the possibility of solutions with a hope of actually working, rather than just defending solutions-as-usual. Yes I've not described the detail of my work (and you've not asked me to) though if you or others are interested a good starting point is my wiser earth solutions page http://www.wiserearth.org/solution/view/fb62167e14809b30029768551d4135f6 This includes links to my academic work (which attracted a UNEP 'climate centurion' trophy), one of my keynote conference presentations and a book I contributed to. Comments are very welcome.
I've previously enjoyed the worldchanging website though it's a compendium, not any kind of guide to what I've discussed. If you do know of relevant projects and funding I would be very curious and grateful to know.

Posted by james greyson on 04/17/2009 @ 05:52AM PT
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My comments were not "complaints" as much as dissections of your broad generalities. (Perhaps you are not used to be challenged in this way.) Certainly you could have started out simply by offering some ideas for problem-solving instead of telling us all how badly we and everyone else are going about things. This would demonstrate interest in creating solutions, rather than positioning the conversation so that you can present yourself as the smartest kid in the room.

Posted by Emily Gertz on 04/18/2009 @ 08:44AM PT
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Sorry, I thought I'd started with a comment on how the debate is narrowed by sceptics. Sorry again if you think my comments were somehow about who's smartest. We're all smart but we curiously apply our intelligence in purposeless arguments like this one. You've neither expressed your curiosity nor responded to mine about the relevant projects/funding you may know of. My wider curiosity is whether there will come a time when the urgency of climate and other global problems triggers something more than just stronger defenses of what we already believe?

Posted by james greyson on 04/18/2009 @ 02:37PM PT
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As I wrote above, "Constructive, thoughtful and polite discussion is always welcome. Feel free to comment on the topic of this or other posts about "climate solutions with a hope of actually working." "

Posted by Emily Gertz on 04/18/2009 @ 03:54PM PT
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Thanks, I did comment but didn't really find any of those qualities here. All the best.

Posted by james greyson on 04/18/2009 @ 11:41PM PT
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Once again, I apologize. I appreciate your comments regarding this. And I am all for the environmental movement. I just feel it's for the wrong reasons. Rather than us simply being more economical and more earth-friendly. It just makes me angry that we need actual reasons to do this (such as your studies and whatnot).
Thanks.

Posted by Michelle Alexander on 04/21/2009 @ 08:11AM PT
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I'm not sure what you mean about "needing actual reasons to do this." Could you tell us more?

Posted by Emily Gertz on 04/23/2009 @ 07:44AM PT
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