Progressive News Feeds

Earlier this month, we reported on a new study by Marcott et al. in  Science :  Recent Warming Is ‘Amazing And Atypical’ And Poised To Destroy Stable Climate That Enabled Civilization .

Tags: antarctica, author, auto, carbon, health, knowledge, media, politics

by Rob Painting, via Skeptical Science Although sea level rise might, at first glance, seem to be a relatively easy subject to grasp, much of the misunderstanding that exists in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) can be put down to the flawed notion that the sea behaves like water in a swimming pool, or bathtub. In reality the Earth’s surface ( lithosphere ) is elastic and deformable which contributes to a complicated picture where  local sea level might be somewhat different than the global sea level trend. In order to make sense of this it’s necessary to cover some of the fundamentals of sea level rise — starting with Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA)

Tags: antarctica, author, climate, global-warming, health, lgbt, painting, security

NASA’s James Hansen has been accurately warning about the dangers of global warming for more than three decades .

Tags: alternet, antarctica, beach, climate progress, energy, health, media, texas, united-states, white house

by Michael D. Lemonick, via Climate Central A new analysis released Thursday in the journal Science implies that the seas could rise dramatically higher over the next few centuries than scientists previously thought — somewhere between 18-to-29 feet above current levels, rather than the 13-to-20 feet they were talking about just a few years ago.

Tags: antarctica, australian, climate progress, earth, election, environment, feeds, politics, science

Arctic sea ice area for June in recent years. Source: Cryosphere Today By Neven Acropolis If you want to mislead people into thinking that there is nothing weird going on in the Arctic, you have to do it during winter. In winter things almost look normal on some graphs, with gaps between trend lines and long-term averages not as ridiculously big as during spring and summer. If you’re lucky, anomalous weather patterns can make those trend lines come real close to the long-term average, and you’ll have a couple of weeks of shouting ‘recovery’, ridiculing scientists and suggesting graphs are being cooked. It’s an annual ritual on pseudo-skeptic blogs, which is only logical. The Arctic is becoming ever more problematic for their life work, ie denying AGW could ever be a problem and thus delaying any meaningful action on mitigating the consequences of AGW. Thank God water still freezes in winter. Sea ice extent maximum on the left and how it looks now on the right (source: NSIDC ) But what happens in winter is only interesting in so far as it influences the melting season that comes after it. The fact that this year saw a late finish to the freezing season, with an extreme expansion of sea ice into the Bering Sea, was far from irrelevant, but it didn’t tell the whole story either. Another part of that story was covered in a guest blog on ClimateProgress in February ( Arctic Sea Ice Update: Spectacular and Ominous ), and the whole story as I saw it was told in the 2011/2012 Winter Analysis on the Arctic Sea Ice blog. It quite simply came down to this: “Sea ice on the Atlantic side of the Arctic looks vulnerable, sea ice on the Pacific side should be thicker.” The melting season is well underway now and in the last two weeks sea ice has been disappearing so fast that 2012 is leading all other years on practically all sea ice extent and area graphs . Take for instance the top graph I’ve made, based on Cryosphere Today sea ice area data . That looks pretty spectacular, doesn’t it? Sea ice area has never been so low for this date in the satellite record, not even close to it. 2012 has over half a million of square kilometres less ice than record minimum years 2007 and 2011. There was a distinct possibility this would happen, although I didn’t expect it to happen quite this early. But now that it has happened, it’s not difficult to see what the causes are. First of all, the extra ice in the Bering Sea that caused the late maximum, was wafer-thin and so has now virtually disappeared (I compared this year’s situation with previous years in this post on the ASI blog). All the easy ice is as gone as the easy oil. Second, that vulnerability on the Siberian side of the Arctic is becoming ever more visible, with the Northern Sea Route possibly opening up for commercial shipping very early this year . Here’s a comparison to previous years for the western part of the Northern Sea Route (the eastern side doesn’t look so great either): A third reason for the recent rapid decline is the widespread formation of melt ponds on ice floes. These are fooling satellite sensors into believing that there is open water where there actually isn’t, causing sea ice area to go down faster than sea ice extent. The NSIDC FAQ page explains it well: A simplified way to think of extent versus area is to imagine a slice of Swiss cheese. Extent would be a measure of the edges of the slice of cheese and all of the space inside it. Area would be the measure of where there is cheese only, not including the holes. That is why if you compare extent and area in the same time period, extent is always bigger. One could say those melt ponds are making the trend lines artificially low, especially on sea ice area graphs. Although this is true, it isn’t the only reason for the recent nosedive and at the same time it’s an indication of how much the Sun is beating down on the Arctic right now. We are approaching Summer Solstice, meaning that the Sun shines practically all day in these northern latitudes, and thus heat will accumulate everywhere where there are clear skies and no ice to reflect the incoming sunshine. This effect has started to become visible on the sea surface temperature anomalies all around the Arctic: Source: Danish Meteorological Institute The water seems to be warming up big time in the polynyas that recently opened up, especially in the Kara and Barents Seas, that are ‘coincidentally’ thought to be a source for some of the blocking patterns that cause outbursts of cold air to spill out from the Arctic and cause extreme winter conditions further down on the Northern Hemisphere (also known as WACC , Warm Arctic Cold Continents). One could also say that the stage is being set for the latter part of the melting season, as sea surface temperatures play a big role in the final outcome of the melting season. But that’s a worry for later. What can we expect in the short-term? Will trend lines continue to plummet? Short answer: I don’t think they will. The weather conditions that let all that built-up melting potential come to fruition, are in the process of switching. And although this means that those Siberian Seas are also going to get a good dose of sunshine, and the Northwest Passage (which is still chock-full of ice right now) will start opening up as well, the speed of the decline will probably level off a bit on those sea ice extent and area graphs. Until weather conditions switch again, of course. Because if one thing is clear after the first phase of the melting season, it’s that there’s a very high chance of records being broken again if this year’s weather conditions resemble those of last year or 2010. If they resemble those of 2007, the year of the perfect storm, it will become clearer than ever that something weird and potentially dangerous is going on in the Arctic. I’ll report again if and when something worthwhile happens. In the meantime go to the Arctic Sea Ice blog if you want to read more regular and detailed updates. And check the daily updated graphs, maps and webcams on the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website . – by Neven Acropolis, who oversees the  Arctic Sea Ice blog . Related Post: The New Arctic Abnormal: Record Low Sea Ice Volume, Area and Extent*  

Tags: action, antarctica, article, climate progress, economy, flying, global-warming, health, lgbt, mitt-romney, tweets

In a January 20 Washington Times column , Robert Knight wrote that President Obama’s administration “has manfully undertaken the task of turning America into a Constitution-free Third World country in need of international adult guidance.” Knight also accused the president of “treacherous action against” the United States and of “dismantling our military before our very eyes.” From the Times :  I’ve thought of only one good thing so far that could result from killing the pipeline: Legions of Occupy Wall Street protesters just might leave their filthy squatter encampments in our cities and gather in coastal areas to watch the seas subside as Mr. Obama promised. Sorry about you coastal home dwellers. Welcome to our world.  Mr. Obama’s reckless disregard for America’s needs particularly pleases his socialist friends in Europe, who have long thought that America needs a comeuppance. They’ve been cheering his every treacherous action against his own country, and this one’s a doozy. It might not please the Russians, however, whose own burgeoning oil and gas industries will face competition from Canada. But you can’t please everyone. Maybe it will be enough for the Russians that Mr. Obama is dismantling our military before our very eyes.  By the way, if you criticize Mr. Obama for any of this, you must be a racist.  I prefer being an optimist and thinking that things will turn out OK — even while watching pipelines being killed, gasoline prices rising and Republican presidential hopefuls providing enough sound bites to fill 1,000 Obama campaign ads in November.  Actually, we’ve been getting used to watching horrors for three years as the Obama administration has manfully undertaken the task of turning America into a Constitution-free Third World country in need of international adult guidance. Previously:   Wash. Times : Obama’s Appointment Of Consumer Protection Chief Cordray Is “Lawless,” “Tyranny”

Tags: america, antarctica, article, author, breaking news, christian, fire, jobs, middle-east

Upwelling seawater along parts of Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf has carved out caves in the ice. A new study links CO2 and Antarctica glaciation. The news release for a new Science study, “ The Role of Carbon Dioxide During the Onset of Antarctic Glaciation ” (subs. req’d), explains: A drop in carbon dioxide appears to be the driving force that led to the Antarctic ice sheet’s formation, according to a recent study led by scientists at Yale and Purdue universities of molecules from ancient algae found in deep-sea core samples.The key role of the greenhouse gas in one of the biggest climate events in Earth’s history supports carbon dioxide’s importance in past climate change and implicates it as a significant force in present and future climate…. “ The evidence falls in line with what we would expect if carbon dioxide is the main dial that governs global climate; if we crank it up or down there are dramatic changes ,” [co-author Matthew} Huber said. "We went from a warm world without ice to a cooler world with an ice sheet overnight, in geologic terms, because of fluctuations in carbon dioxide levels." We know from earlier study this year led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that polar ice sheet mass loss is speeding up and on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050 : The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study — the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass — suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth’s mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted. Recent modeling work suggests we are approaching the tipping point for irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would, ultimately, represent 20 feet of sea level rise (see New study of Greenland under “more realistic forcings” concludes “collapse of the ice-sheet was found to occur between 400 and 560 ppm” of CO2 ). And we know from paleoclimate studies that the Antarctic ice sheet (which contains 90% of the ice on the planet) is vulnerable to modest warming from current levels, particularly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (see Science: CO2 levels haven’t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5° to 10°F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher -- “ We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm ”). While the new study  firms up our understanding that CO2 is the "main dial that governs global climate," it does not appear to tell us what the tipping point is for full deglaciation: The team found the tipping point in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for cooling that initiates ice sheet formation is about 600 parts per million. Prior to the levels dropping this low, it was too warm for the ice sheet to form. At the Earth's current level of around 390 parts per million, the environment is such that an ice sheet remains, but carbon dioxide levels and temperatures are increasing. The world will likely reach levels between 550 and 1,000 parts per million by 2100. Melting an ice sheet is a different process than its initiation, and it is not known what level would cause the ice sheet to melt away completely, Huber said. "The system is not linear and there may be a different threshold for melting the ice sheet, but if we continue on our current path of warming we will eventually reach that tipping point," he said. "Of course after we cross that threshold it will still take many thousands of years to melt an ice sheet." It would no doubt take a long time to fully melt an ice sheet, but we are headed toward some serious polar warming (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F ).  That study projects some 13°F warming over Antarctica in the 2090s. And a study from earlier this year suggests we are headed toward far higher warming post-2100 (see Science : On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter ; Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models ”). Back in October, Climate Progress interviewed Rice University oceanographer John Anderson, a leading expert on sea level rise with more than 200 publications, (see Flood-Gate: Perry Officials Try to Hide Sea Level Rise from Texans with “Clear-Cut Unadulterated Censorship” ). Anderson explained that he's been working in Antarctica for 4 decades, that they've found unprecedented warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, and that "I am quite concerned about the potential of catastrophic contribution to  sea level rise from ice sheet collapse." Indeed, he said " if people say that ice sheets react slowly, they are not familiar with what we know about ice sheets. There is clear evidence that that ice sheets behave catastrophically. " He was specifically worried about the "weak underbelly" of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the Pine Island Glacier.  For two recent discussions of PIG, see Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: “Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier.” Ocean Currents Speed Melting of Antarctic Ice, as “Seawater Appear[s] to Boil on the Surface Like a Kettle on the Stove” That’s why so many leading experts on the subject agree with the recent scientific literature that as long as we stay anywhere near our current emissions path, we are headed toward a meter or more of sea level rise by century’s end — and then 6+ inches of sea level rise a decade for a long, long time. Related Posts: Eight Must-Have Charts Summarize the Evidence for a “Human Fingerprint” on Recent Climate Change 10 indicators of a human fingerprint on climate change In must-see AGU video, Richard Alley explains “The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History” How carbon dioxide controls earth’s temperature — NASA’s Lacis: “There is no viable alternative to counteract global warming except through direct human effort to reduce the atmospheric CO2 level.”

Tags: antarctica, climate-progress, donate, economy, facebook, green, lgbt, media, science, thinkprogress