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John Ryden
Global Warming Examiner
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Showing entries for Category: Arctic
Arctic sea ice second lowest coverage on record
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NASA (Note Greenland in Upper Right of Picture)
This year the sea ice was the second lowest on record. The record low as recorded last year (2007). The Arctic ice is made up of perennial ice and seasonal ice. The perennial ice, which remains all year covered less then 30% of the Arctic, down from 50 to 60% when NASA first started recording data in 1979.
The increased melting of the Arctic ice is setting up a positive feedback loop that could accelerate the amount of melting in future years. By exposing more water in the summer months, more solar radiation will be absorbed by the ocean. This will melt more ice, which will then expose more ocean to absorb more heat.
A warmer Arctic could also cause more positive feedback loops. There is a lot of organic carbon trapped in permafrost in the north. Warming that melts this permafrost could release this methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas(GHG). There are also large deposits of methane hydrates near the surface in the Arctic. These methane deposits have existed for millions of years. They stay frozen in place by the low temperatures and high pressure where they exist. Rising temperatures could release this gas into the atmosphere starting even more positive feedback loops to raise global temperatures.
Some aspects of global warming will be positive. Looking at the video from NASA clearly shows that a summer sea lane is opening across northern Russia that will cut the length of shipping cargo from Asia to Europe.
Some aspects of global warming will be negative. Climate models project that the jet stream will shift north in the Northern Hemisphere. This will result in dryer conditions in the subtropics. Areas such as the Southwestern United States could see dryer conditions. It is possible that droughts could become longer and more persistent in farming areas of the high plains. Southeastern Colorado is currently suffering from a multi-year drought that is causing huge losses to cattle ranches and some farmers.
More intense storms, melting glaciers and ice fields, rising sea levels will all extract an economic cost. We should be spending money now to counteract some of these changes. If global warming starts causing positive feedback loops that accelerate the process, then the present value of the economic cost could start rising very fast.
Topics: Global Warming , Greenhouse , Arctic , Methane
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