Extreme weather: Arctic ice at lowest point in a million years
A map showing Arctic sea ice on August 26 2012, the line on the image shows the average minimum ice cover from 1979-2010, as measured by satellites
Credits:
NASA
Noted sea ice geophysicist and climatologistProfessor John Yackel from the University of Calgary has delivered a bombshell: He recently declared after the latest Arctic ice melt that, "This is the smallest minimum ice extent we've ever had, and not just in the satellite record, but probably in the last million years."
Although satellite records only go back to 1979, there has been a disturbing trend in the Arctic region: Satellite imagery is showing that the Arctic ice region is melting at an alarming rate, far faster than even climatologists expected.
This is further bad news for the planet asextreme weather events have already caused over 55 billion dollars of damage in the U.S. alone this year. Record drought conditions, record wildfires and storms along with hurricanes are not only making an impact in the U.S., but around the world.
The depleting Arctic ice cover will have serious ramifications for the planet. Arctic ice acts as a reflector of sunlight, helping regulate the Earth’s temperature, cooling the climate. Further ice melting in the Arctic will only exacerbate the warming process and cause even more severe weather around the world.
“When there’s no longer that sea ice below the air mass and it's just open ocean, that’s when more moisture off the ocean’s surface gets into the atmosphere and the water vapor in the atmosphere makes for more violent storms,” said Yackel.
Some scientists and climatologists feel that we may have reached a “tipping point” on the planet, and that at the extreme, so much methane gas will be released into the atmosphere as the permafrost melts that life on earth will be extinct by the end of the century. Others are worried that once past the tipping point, an avalanche of disasters will occur that will take the world centuries or even millenniums to recover.
According to Frank J. Dinan, an emeritus professor of chemistry at Canisius College, "The GWP of methane gas combined with the rapid warming of the Arctic will give rise to a potentially disastrous positive feedback loop. As the Arctic's permafrost regions warm, methane gas is released. Methane's high GWP assures that the Earth will warm even more rapidly as the gas enters our atmosphere. This increased warming will result in methane being released even more rapidly, thereby establishing a snowballing feedback cycle leading to increasingly rapid climate change."
Research documents show that 48 million tons of methane are entering our atmosphere from eastern Siberian permafrost alone each year. That amount is sure to grow.
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