Arctic Ice Melting Facts

There have been numerous news articles about the Arctic ice melting in the last few weeks. All of the coverage has been bad, some very bad; and some of the articles and reports are actually rather scary. Here is an overview of the Arctic ice melting facts:

Recently, a Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, reported on Queen's University studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, showing that the recent Arctic warming is ‘ecologically unique’ and has not occurred for over 200,000 years. They studied fauna and flora in lake sediments, tracing a temperature trail 80,000 years earlier than the data recovered from Greenland ice core samples. This news came just after it was reported in the UK Independent newspaper that Queen’s University field researchers said that it got to 22°C on some days in July and over 15°C for about 12 days on Melville Island in the Arctic. This is bad news.

Why is it bad news? Well, the usual average temperature on Melville Island during this period is around 5°C. Big deal right, just take your parka off and put on some suntan oil. Nope, more like watch out for that melting permafrost as the top soil layers warmed up to a 1m (3ft 4”) deep, twice as much as usual, releasing water to the sub-surface that made the mountain slopes unstable, leading to landslides and blocked rivers. This isn’t supposed to happen in the Arctic, it isn’t good for the Musk Oxen, Caribou, Arctic Foxes, smaller mammals and birds, not to mention the ocean creatures who have to deal with increased temperatures, changing ocean salinity and run-off from the land. This really is bad news.

The bad news doesn’t stop there though. It was also warmer than usual across large parts of northern Siberia, as reported in the same UK Independent story. This means that much of the permafrost is likely to become unstable during the summer and if this warming is a future trend then more melting and the release of methane from the permafrost soils is likely to accelerate climate change. That is very bad news.

Need more – well, for those climate change naysayers, an interesting factoid is that humans have been searching for the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic, across northern Canada, to get to the Pacific from Europe in the shortest possible time. We’ve been searching for that ice-free passage for 500 years. It has only been with reinforced steel, nuclear-powered icebreakers and other specialized ships, that sailors have regularly managed to make this journey. Until just this year that is, when a sailing boat traversed from Nova Scotia to Alaska without assistance.

What do you think is next? Cargo ships of course, followed by oil tankers, oil exploration, the ‘opening-up’ of the last frontier and further environmental catastrophes inflicted upon wild animals. Yes, this is really very bad news.

The icing on the cake, sugar not snow, is that some researchers are also reported it was raining at the North Pole. According to an October 6th 2009, National Snow and Ice Center report, this year’s summer ice coverage was the third smallest on record (2007 was the worst) and compared to the average coverage between 1979-2000, Arctic sea ice is disappearing 11.2% extra every decade.

Doesn’t sound like much does it, until you realize that this year there was 1.68 million sq.kms (649,000 sq. miles) less ice coverage than the average. That isn’t even the worst of it. The actual ice cover has weakened with thin, young ice less than 1 year old making up 49% of what was left at the end of this summer melt. Second-year ice was 32%, it was 21% in 2007 and 9% 2008.

See a pattern anyone?

Researchers found that only 19% was old ice, compared to the 1981-2000 average of 52% and that the ice thickness shrunk 0.68m (2ft 3”) between 2004 and 2008.  This is actually scary.

If you look at the figure above, showing the ice coverage over the years, in terms of age (thickness) and coverage, you can see for yourself what is happening. What you can clearly see is much reduced ice coverage, which is bad news, the loss of older ice (green) and what looks like an improvement in 2009 with more second year ice.

The improvement is actually very bad news not good news, because it means that the Arctic ocean has been warming, more moisture has been evaporating in the summer due to lower ocean salinity as the sea ice has melted and falling as snow in the winter (and maybe as rain in the summer!). It shows that positive feedback effects are already hard at work in the Arctic. It also means, as many reports have recently stated, that summer Arctic sea ice is going to disappear very quickly, anytime within the next decade or two. That’s the really scary news.

Trevor Williams is a University of Victoria Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate specializing in renewable energy, power grid modelling and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He has a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering, a Masters in Management Science and over 23 years international experience in the space industry, having worked on Earth observation and telecommunications satellites. He is the author of the Eco-Geek blog.

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