Download Massive surge in disappearance of Arctic sea ice sparks global

1
4 short articles on Global Warming count as 1 reading for RDP’s
‘We Are Heading Towards an Abyss’
U.N. chief tells 150 governments that time running out on climate change
Published on Thursday, September 3, 2009 by the Associated Press
GENEVA - U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told a meeting of some 150 governments on Thursday that
time is running out for a new climate deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Copenhagen talks in December are looming and little real negotiating time is left "to resolve
some of the most complex issues," the U.N. secretary general told the World Climate
Conference. "We need rapid progress."
Only limited progress in the climate talks has been made for the meeting to hammer out a new
accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Proto
Meanwhile, climate change is advancing.
"Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss," said Ban, warning
that climate change could spell widespread economic disaster.
He noted that he had just visited the Arctic and was alarmed by what he saw.
"The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth," Ban said. "It may be ice-free by
2030."
Not only is the Arctic serving as a warning, the warming there is accelerating global climate
change, he said.
"Instead of reflecting heat, the Arctic is absorbing it as the sea ice diminishes, thus speeding up
global warming," Ban said. "Methane, trapped in permafrost and on the sea bed, is escaping
into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon
dioxide."
He said the increased melt from the Greenland ice-cap threatens to raise sea levels and alter the
flow of the Gulf Stream, essential to keep Europe warm.
Scientists: Planet to Warm by More Than 7
Degrees This Century
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 24, 2009
2
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092402602.html?hpid=topnews
Climate researchers now predict the planet will warm by more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit
by the end of the century even if the world's leaders fulfill their most ambitious climate
pledges, a faster and broader scale of climate change than forecast just two years ago,
according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program.
The new overview of global warming research, aimed at marshalling political support for
a new international climate pact by the end of the year, highlights the extent to which
recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prizewinning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
Robert Correll, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative and reviewed the UNEP report's
scientific findings, said the significant global temperature rise is likely to occur even if
industrialized and developed countries enact every climate policy they've proposed at this
point. That's two times higher than what scientists and world policymakers have
identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert
catastrophic climate change.
"We don't want to go there," said Correll, who heads an international research
consortium.
Correll's team took the upper range targets of nearly 200 nations' climate policies -including President Obama's pledge to cut U.S. emissions 80 percent from 1990
levels by 2050, along with the European Union's identical pledge --and found that
even under that optimistic scenario, the average global temperature was likely to
warm by 7.2 degrees. World leaders at the July G-20 summit in L'Aquila, Italy
pledged they would adopt policies to prevent global temperature from climbing
above 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Correll, who has shared these findings with Obama officials as well as climate
policymakers in China, added that current global carbon emissions are still rising rather
than falling. "It's accelerating," he said. "We're not going in the right direction."
That report declared evidence of human-generated warming in the last half-century was
"unequivocal," and would change the planet dramatically by 2100 unless greenhouse gas
emissions drops sharply by 2050.
Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director, told reporters at the National Press Club
Thursday that the report aims to update the IPCC's finding to reflect both new physical
evidence and a more sophisticated understanding of how earth systems work.
"With every day that passes the underlying trends that science has provided is . . . of such
a dramatic nature that shying away from a major agreement in Copenhagen will probably
be unforgivable, if you look back in history at this moment," Steiner said. Steiner noted
3
that since 2000 alone, the average rate of melting at 30 glaciers in nine separate mountain
ranges has doubled compared to the rate during the previous two decades.
"These are not things that are in dispute in terms of data," he said. "They are actually
physically measurable."
Other findings include the fact that sea level might rise by as much as six feet by 2100
instead of 1.5 feet as the IPCC had projected, and the Arctic may experience a sea-ice
summer by 2030, rather than by the end of the century.
Michael MacCracken, one of the scientific reviewers for the IPCC and the chief scientist
for climate change programs at The Climate Institute, said if either the developed nations
cut their emissions by half and the developing countries continued on their current path,
or vice versa, the world would still experience a roughly 4 degree Fahrenheit by 2050.
"We face a situation where basically everybody has to do everything they can,"
MacCracken said.
Published on Saturday, February 3, 2007 by the lndependent/UK
Global Warming: The Final Warning
Carbon Dioxide Rate is at Highest Level for
650,000 Years
by Steve Connor
Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are at their highest levels for at least 650,000
years and this rise began with the birth of the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago, according to
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming and, in 2005,
concentrations stood at 379 parts per million (ppm). This compares to a pre-industrial level of 278
ppm, and a range over the previous 650,000 years of between 180 and 300 ppm, the report says.
Present levels of carbon dioxide - which continue to rise inexorably each year - are
unprecedented for the long period of geological history that scientists are able to analyse from
gas samples trapped in the frozen bubbles of deep ice cores.
However, the IPCC points to a potentially more sinister development: the rate of increase of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beginning to accelerate. Between 1960 and 2005 the
average rate at which carbon dioxide concentrations increased was 1.4 ppm per year. But when
the figures are analysed more closely, it becomes apparent that there has been a recent rise in
this rate of increase to 1.9 ppm per year between 1995 and 2005.
It is too early to explain this accelerating increase but one fear is that it may indicate a change in
the way the Earth is responding to global warming. In other words, climate feedbacks that
accelerate the rate of change may have kicked in.
4
The IPPC's report points out that,
as the planet gets warmer, the
natural ability of the land and the
oceans to absorb carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere begins to get
weaker.
It is estimated that about half of all
the man-made emissions of
carbon dioxide have been taken
out of the air and absorbed by
natural carbon "sinks" on the land
and in the sea. Many computer
models of the climate predict that
as the Earth continues to get
warmer, these sinks will become
less able to absorb carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere.
This photo from the National Science Foundation shows the shear face of the
massive B-15A iceberg stretches for 150 kms across McMurdo Sound after it
broke off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, 2001. UN scientists delivered their
starkest warning yet about global warming, saying fossil fuel pollution would
raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt
polar sea ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come.
(AFP/NSF-HO/File/Josh Landis)
This means that more carbon
dioxide will be left in the air to
exacerbate the greenhouse effect,
so leading to further temperature
rises and more global warming, which in turn will make the natural carbon sinks of the Earth even
less efficient.
As the IPCC's summary says: "Warming tends to reduce land and ocean uptake of atmospheric
carbon dioxide, increasing the fraction of anthropogenic [man-made] emissions that remain in the
atmosphere."
This is just one of several "positive feedbacks" that could quickly accelerate the rate of global
warming over the coming century. One is a warmer world is causing more evaporation from the
oceans and a rise in water vapour - a powerful greenhouse gas - in the lower atmosphere.
Another is sea ice and snow cover is shrinking at the poles and on mountains, leading to a further
increase in local temperatures.
Global warming: the final warning
According to yesterday's UN report, the world will be a much hotter place by 2100. This will be
the impact ... [Note these temperature degrees are Celsius; about 1.8 degree Fahrenheit /degree
Celsius]
+2.4°: Coral reefs almost extinct
In North America, a new dust-bowl brings deserts to life in the high plains states, centred on
Nebraska, but also wipes out agriculture and cattle ranching as sand dunes appear across five
US states, from Texas in the south to Montana in the north.
Rising sea levels accelerate as the Greenland ice sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging
atoll nations and low-lying deltas. In Peru, disappearing Andean glaciers mean 10 million people
face water shortages. Warming seas wipe out the Great Barrier Reef and make coral reefs
virtually extinct throughout the tropics. Worldwide, a third of all species on the planet face
extinction
5
+3.4°: Rainforest turns to desert
The Amazonian rainforest burns in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity, covering South America
with ash and smoke. Once the smoke clears, the interior of Brazil has become desert, and huge
amounts of extra carbon have entered the atmosphere, further boosting global warming. The
entire Arctic ice-cap disappears in the summer months, leaving the North Pole ice-free for the first
time in 3 million years. Polar bears, walruses and ringed seals all go extinct. Water supplies run
short in California as the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts away. Tens of millions are displaced as
the Kalahari desert expands across southern Africa
+4.4°: Melting ice caps displace millions
Rapidly-rising temperatures in the Arctic put Siberian permafrost in the melt zone, releasing vast
quantities of methane and CO2. Global temperatures keep on rising rapidly in consequence.
Melting ice-caps and sea level rises displace more than 100 million people, particularly in
Bangladesh, the Nile Delta and Shanghai. Heatwaves and drought make much of the sub-tropics
uninhabitable: large-scale migration even takes place within Europe, where deserts are growing
in southern Spain, Italy and Greece. More than half of wild species are wiped out, in the worst
mass extinction since the end of the dinosaurs. Agriculture collapses in Australia
+5.4°: Sea levels rise by five metres
The West Antarctic ice sheet breaks up, eventually adding another five metres to global sea
levels. If these temperatures are sustained, the entire planet will become ice-free, and sea levels
will be 70 metres higher than today. South Asian society collapses due to the disappearance of
glaciers in the Himalayas, drying up the Indus river, while in east India and Bangladesh, monsoon
floods threaten millions. Super-El Niños spark global weather chaos. Most of humanity begins to
seek refuge away from higher temperatures closer to the poles. Tens of millions of refugees force
their way into Scandanavia and the British Isles. World food supplies run out
+6.4°: Most of life is exterminated
Warming seas lead to the possible release of methane hydrates trapped in sub-oceanic
sediments: methane fireballs tear across the sky, causing further warming. The oceans lose their
oxygen and turn stagnant, releasing poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas and destroying the ozone
layer. Deserts extend almost to the Arctic. "Hypercanes" (hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity)
circumnavigate the globe, causing flash floods which strip the land of soil. Humanity reduced to a
few survivors eking out a living in polar refuges. Most of life on Earth has been snuffed out, as
temperatures rise higher than for hundreds of millions of years.
6
Massive surge in disappearance of Arctic
sea ice sparks global warning
Arctic meltdown is speeding up... sea ice is vanishing faster than ever before... polar
bears face extinction... and America's top climate scientist warns we only have a
decade to save the planet
By Michael McCarthy and David Usborne
The Independent (UK) Published: 15 September 2006
The melting of the sea ice in the Arctic, the clearest sign so far of global warming, has
taken a sudden and enormous leap forward, in one of the most ominous developments yet
in the onset of climate change.
Two separate studies by Nasa, using different satellite monitoring technologies, both
show a great surge in the disappearance of Arctic ice cover in the last two years.
One, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, shows that Arctic perennial sea
ice, which normally survives the summer melt season and remains year-round, shrank by
14 per cent in just 12 months between 2004 and 2005.
The overall decrease in the ice cover was 720,000 sq km (280,000 sq miles) - an area
almost the size of Turkey, gone in a single year.
The other study, from the Goddard Space Flight Centre, in Maryland, shows that the
perennial ice melting rate, which has averaged 0.15 per cent a year since satellite
observations began in 1979, has suddenly accelerated hugely. In the past two winters the
rate has increased to six per cent a year - that is, it has got more than 30 times faster.
The changes are alarming scientists and environmentalists, because they far exceed the
rate at which supercomputer models of climate change predict the Arctic ice will melt
under the influence of global warming - which is rapid enough.
If climate change is not checked, the Arctic ice will all be gone by 2070, and people will
be able to sail to the North Pole. But if these new rates of melting are maintained, the
Arctic ice will all be gone decades before that.
The implications are colossal. It will mean extinction in the wild - in the lifetime of
children alive today - for one of the world's most majestic creatures, the polar bear, which
needs the ice to hunt seals.
It means the possibility of a lethal "feedback" mechanism speeding up global warming,
because the dark surface of the open Arctic ocean will absorb the sun's heat, rather than
reflect it as the ice cover does now - and so the world will get even hotter.
7
But most of all, the new developments add to the growing concern that climate change as
a process is starting to happen much faster than scientists considered it would, even five
years ago when the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its last
report.
"These are the latest in a long series of recent studies, all telling us that climate change is
faster and nastier than we thought," said Tom Burke, a former government green adviser
and now a visiting professor at Imperial College London. "An abyss is opening up
between the speed at which the climate is changing and the speed at which governments
are responding.
"We must stop thinking that this is just another environmental problem, to be dealt with
when time and resources allow, and realise that this is an increasingly urgent threat to our
security and prosperity."
Yesterday, Jim Hansen, the leading climatologist and director of the Goddard Institute for
Space Studies, in New York, issued a now-or-never warning to governments around the
world, including his own, telling them they must take radical action to avert a planetary
environmental catastrophe. He said it was no longer viable for nations to adopt a
"business as usual" stance on fossil-fuel consumption.
"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no
longer than a decade, at the most," he said.
Early in his first term, President George Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto Treaty that
is meant to bind nations to lower emissions of warming gases. However, opinion in the
US is starting to change, as evidenced by the huge success of the documentary on climate
change, An Inconvenient Truth, narrated by the former US vice-president Senator Al
Gore.
The two Nasa Arctic studies, released simultaneously, break fresh ground in dealing with
the perennial, or "multi-winter" ice, rather than the "seasonal" ice at the edge of the
icefield, which melts every summer.
Concern about the melting rate has hitherto focused on the seasonal ice, whose summer
disappearance and retreat from the landmasses of Arctic Canada and Siberia is
increasingly obvious. In September 2005, it retreated to the lowest level recorded. Such
rapid shrinkage of the perennial ice has not been shown before. "It is alarming," said Joey
Camiso, who led the Goddard study. "We've witnessed sea ice reduction at 6 per cent per
year over just the last two winters, most likely a result of warming due to greenhouse
gases."
Dr Son Nghiem, who led the team which carried out the Jet Propulsion Laboratory study,
said that in previous years there had some variability in the extent of perennial Arctic ice.
"But it is much smaller and regional," he said. "However, the change we see between
2004 and 2005 is enormous." Britain's Professor Julian Dowdeswell, the director of the
8
Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, agreed the changes shown in the American
studies were "huge", adding: "It remains to be seen whether the rate of change is
maintained in future years."
The melting of the Arctic ice will not itself contribute to global sea-level rise, as the ice
floating in the sea is already displacing its own mass in the water. When the ice cube
melts in your gin and tonic, the liquid in your glass does not rise.
There are great volumes of land-based ice - the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica,
and mountain glaciers - which are subject to exactly the same temperature rises as the
Arctic ice, and which have also started to melt. They will add to sea levels. The West
Antarctic Ice Sheet would, if it were to collapse, raise sea levels around the world by 16ft
(5m), submerging large parts of Bangladesh and Egypt - and London.