Arctic ice melting more rapidly ...
From an Article by Jon Queally, Common Dreams, April 8, 2019
“Never have so many Arctic indicators been brought together in a single paper.” And the findings spell trouble for the entire planet.
A new research paper by American and European climate scientists focused on Arctic warming published Monday reveals that the “smoking gun” when it comes to changes in the world’s northern polar region is rapidly warming air temperatures that are having—and will continue to have—massive and negative impacts across the globe.
The new paper—titled “Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017″—is the work of scientists at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen (GUES).
“The Arctic system is trending away from its 20th century state and into an unprecedented state, with implications not only within but beyond the Arctic,” said Jason Box of the GUES, lead author of the study. “Because the Arctic atmosphere is warming faster than the rest of the world, weather patterns across Europe, North America, and Asia are becoming more persistent, leading to extreme weather conditions. Another example is the disruption of the ocean circulation that can further destabilize climate: for example, cooling across northwestern Europe and strengthening of storms.”
John Walsh, chief scientist at AUF’s research center, was the one who called arctic air tempertures the “smoking gun” discovered during the research—a finding the team did not necessarily anticipate.
“I didn’t expect the tie-in with temperature to be as strong as it was,” Walsh said. “All the variables are connected with temperature. All components of the Arctic system are involved in this change.”
The study, published Monday as the flagship piece in a special issue on Arctic climate change indicators published by the journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first of its kind to combine observations of physical climate indicators—such as snow cover, rainfall, and seasonal measurements of sea ice extent—with biological impacts, such as a mismatch in the timing of flowers blooming and pollinators working. According to Walsh, “Never have so many Arctic indicators been brought together in a single paper.”
This three-and-a-half minute video put together by the research team, explains its methodology and findings in detail:
The new study comes as temperature records in the polar regions continue to break record after record. Last week, climatologists said Alaska experienced the highest March temperatures ever recorded.Statewide temperatures averaged 27°F degrees last month, a full 4 degrees higher than the record set in 1965. Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist with the International Arctic Research Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks, told the Anchorage Daily News, “We’re not just eking past records. This is obliterating records.”
Also last month, as Common Dreams reported, the UN Environment Programme (ENUP) warned in a far-reaching report that winter temperatures in the Arctic are already “locked in” in such a way that significant sea level increases are now inevitable this century.
Rising temperatures, along with ocean acidification, pollution, and thawing permafrost threaten the Arctic and the more than four million people who inhabit it, including 10 percent who are Indigenous. But, as UNEP acting executive director Joyce Msuya noted at the time, “What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.”
That warning was echoed by the researchers behind the new study out Monday. Their hope, they said, is that the findings about air temperatures and the delicate interconnections between the climate and other natural systems in the Artic will “provide a foundation for a more integrated understanding of the Arctic and its role in the dynamics of the Earth’s biogeophysical systems.”
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Glacier in Russian Arctic Goes From Moving 60 Feet a Year to 60 Feet a Day
From an Article by Ron Brackett, Weather.com, April 8, 2019
The cold-based glacier at the Vavilov Ice Cap in Russia suddenly surged after 2013. Changes there have scientists rethinking how rapidly glaciers in cold, dry areas can move.
The cold-based glacier at the Vavilov Ice Cap in Russia suddenly surged after 2013. Changes there have scientists rethinking how rapidly glaciers in cold, dry areas can move.
(NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin and Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and topographic information from the ArcticDEM Project at the Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota.)
The outlet glacier on the Vavilov Ice Cap used to move about 60 feet a day. After 2013, it accelerated to about 60 feet a day. This may signal a change in how fast global warming is affecting glaciers in cold, dry areas.
Satellite images of dramatic changes in a glacier in the Russian High Arctic is forcing scientists to rethink how cold-based glaciers work.
Cold-based glaciers exist at high latitudes that receive little snow or rain. They rarely move more than a few yards per year.
University of Colorado Boulder glaciologist Michael Willis was studying the Vavilov Ice Cap on October Revolution Island in the Kara Sea north of Siberia when he discovered the glacier began sliding dozens of times faster than is typical, according to a blog post from NASA.
“The fact that an apparently stable, cold-based glacier suddenly went from moving 20 meters per year to 20 meters per day was extremely unusual, perhaps unprecedented,” Willis said. “The numbers here are simply nuts. Before this happened, as far as I knew, cold-based glaciers simply didn’t do that … couldn’t do that.”
(MORE: Profound New Study Shows Global Warming is Changing Arctic in Unprecedented Ways)
The change is clear in Landsat satellite imagery that has been collected since 1985, according to NASA. From 2000 to 2013, the glacier continued to creep toward the sea.
After 2013, the glacier took off. By 2018, the glacier’s ice shelf over the Kara Sea had more than doubled. On land, the glacier was also thinning rapidly.
The exact cause for the increased spreading isn’t yet known. However, the surge raises concern for all cold-based glaciers, Willis said.
“This event has forced us to rethink how cold-based glaciers work,” Willis said. “It may be that they can respond more quickly to warming climate or changes at their bases than we have thought.”
https://weather.com/news/news/2019-04-08-russian-glacier-moving-much-faster/