After Gutenberg

If we cross the melting Arctic tipping point, then we are basically farked.

We have passed the tipping point 10 years ahead of schedule.

Therefore, we are farked, the children really farked, and, if there is anything left in the Treasury, we ought to build a porcelain Bush memorial for the grandkids.

This blog has oft repeated the first part of the above syllogism, most recently for the benefit of the Republican vice president candidate. I don’t think she saw it. At least, she didn’t comment on it.

Perhaps, my albedo warning was screened by her beauty consultant. Don’t want to cause unneccessary worry lines, donnchakno. And, she probably did not get the really worrisome word from Professor Romm, i.e., the tundra feedback, coupled with the climate-carbon-cycle feedbacks that the IPCC models, could easily take us to the unmitigated catastrophe of 1000 ppm. Bottom Line: we lose a livable climate.

While this blog previously has elaborated upon the second part of the syllogism, the conclusion — the Arctic is melting faster than the doomsday scenarios — became even more evident with recent, ominous news from NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center). NSIDC scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world. They found evidence at least a decade before climate models predicted that such a phenomenon would occur.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

As Romm notes in a post at ClimateProgress.org, until now researchers had been unable to detect a predicted temperature signal that they could link with greenhouse-gas emissions.

Satellite photography in August 2008 shows the extent of sea ice less than historical.

The well-documented, catastrophic loss of sea ice during the summer months over the past 20 years has been an indicator. Indeed, ClimateProgress jorleh attests that in Finland they have known this warm sea effect for the past 30 years:

The Baltic sea no longer gets its heavy ice cover; last winter there was no ice. Ice breaker ships have no more work, thirty years ago there were a dozen of powerful 100 000 tonne ice breakers working four or five months during the winter.

And the snow. No more snow in the Southern Finland. And its was halve a meter for months thirty years ago. And the melting has happened year by year, every year less ice on the sea and less snow on the land.

Resarchers now have detected something more definitive. In parts of the region, such as the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, air temperatures were 7C higher than normal for the season. The climate-change researchers summarized their major findings:

• 1) starting in the mid 1990s and relative to the 1979-2007 time period, Arctic Ocean SAT anomalies depicted in the NCEP reanalysis turned positive in autumn and have subsequently grown;
• 2) consistent with an anomalous surface heating source, development of the autumn warming pattern aligns with the observed reduction in September sea ice extent, and increases from the lower troposphere to the surface;
• 3) recent autumn warming is stronger in the Arctic than in lower latitudes;
• 4) recent low level warming over the Arctic Ocean is less pronounced in winter by which time most open water areas have refrozen;
• 5) there is no enhanced surface warming in summer.

The model used by Mark C. Serreze and Andrew P. Barrett of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, predicts that with continued summer ice loss and more ocean heat gain, Arctic amplification should subsequently emerge in winter, and eventually into early spring. Research results have yet to confirm this stage of amplification.

Recommended References from Climate Science on Arctic amplification

Graversen, R.G., T. Mauritsen, M. Tjernstrom, E. Kallen, and G. Svensson (2008), Vertical structure of recent Arctic warming, Nature, 451, 53-56.

Holland, M.M, and C.M. Bitz (2003), Polar amplification of climate change in coupled models, Clim. Dyn., 21, 221-232.

Kalnay, E., et al. (1996), The NCEP/NCAR 40-year reanalysis project, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 77, 437-471.

Onogi, K., H. Koide, M. Sakamoti, S. Kobayashi, et al. (2005), JRA-25: Japanese 25-year re-analysis project – progress and status, Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol Soc., 131, 3259-3268.

Serreze, M.C., and J. A. Francis (2006), The Arctic amplification debate, Climatic Change, 76, 241-264.

Serreze, M.C., A.P. Barrett, A.J. Slater, M. Steele, J. Zhang, and K.E. Trenberth (2007), The large-scale energy budget of the Arctic, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D11122, doi:10.1029/2006JD008230.

Serreze, M.C., A.P. Barrett, J.C. Stroeve, D.N. Kindig and M.M. Holland (2008), The emergence of surface-based Arctic amplification, The Cryosphere (awaiting final acceptance).

Stroeve, J., M.M. Holland, W. Meier, T. Scambos, and M. Serreze (2007), Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L09501, doi:10.1029/2007GL029703.

Uppala, S., et al. (2005), The ERA-40 re-analysis, Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc., 131, 2961-3102.