Thursday, January 17, 2013

Accelerated Arctic Warming

The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the world, as illustrated by the NASA image below.

global temperature anomalies averaged from 2008 through 2012, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The interactive image below (no longer functioning, ed.) shows temperature anomalies for the different latitudional zones over time.

The Arctic shows the strongest warming over time, while accelerating in recent years. The best fit for this warming in the Arctic is a fourth order polynomial trendline, as added to the data on the image below.


This accelerated warming in the Arctic is threatening to destabilize the methane in the seabed and trigger runaway global warming within a decade. Effective action needs to be taken before it's too late!

7 comments:

  1. Facing the situation squarely in order to have possibility of reversing outcome involves acknowledging that perhaps it is too late already.. The fact the big media conglomerates around the world focus elsewhere and concentrate of attention is on economics of man and 'security of man' indicates a mass push to sideswipe attention off..
    The fact the nations couldn't get even a pitiful real agreement with any sort of teeth in it to stop greenhouse advance is similar attention draft.
    It appears the machine that is world economy, 'fiscal parallel universe' is not about to put a damper in the chimney to dampen attention draft.
    Thanks Sam for all your work and the will to live is powerful if directed

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  2. Methane release from Arctic sea floor and melting looks to be triggered. This fully warrants First mention yet Barack won't mention Climate Crisis and what needs doing.
    Shame is it would have been fun to retool to reverse this heat rise in progress; It would zoom up the economy not only of the US but the whole Earth full of Nations.
    Not only that it would be great fun to try and do.
    Earth in limbo. Waiting.. Hoping... On whim of prayer. Hope lies..

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  3. From my limited scientific reading methane release from ocean hydrates and melting permafrost is a very real and ominous problem that appears to be just starting - the methane climate feedback which is just one tipping point that could start runaway climate change.

    The Problem is most people are disconnected with what is happening in the Arctic - it is too far away from them geographically to have much concern. The increase in frequency of extreme weather events like the 2011 Texas drought, 2012 US drought, 2010 Russian Heatwave, 2013 Australian Heatwave and bushfires, Hurricane Sandy, the reduced flow in the Mississippi are very real and pose real threats to life and economic well being. I don't like saying this, but it is the extreme weather events that affect people personally that might shake them into demanding greater action from our political leaders. I only hope we can shake our political leaders enough to take the necessary action to forestall triggering the major climate feedback tipping points.

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    1. Thanks for commenting, Takver. People may feel disconnected, but they aren't. Warming in the Arctic is already affecting many people, in particular by causing the jet stream to slow down, which is making the weather more extreme in many countries.

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  4. Do something? It doesn't even show up on the media radar, and no legislation whatsoever is being discussed. Collapse is our only hope at this point - that it will be so severe that it will curtail most of our emissions, and even then the residual co2 and feedbacks will likely carry us into extinction.

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    1. Full out retooling of world x financial system to bring full order change to industry; industrial capacity and focus toward the storm facing us is needed ASAP.
      There is plan put forward to trim to this situation and it is best. http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/ameg-strategic-plan.html
      This is a game that needs to be kept fun and in focus of geological time.
      Panic needs to be avoided and the poor kept from abandonment clear round.
      It is my contention getting ahead of the situation is possible by chance.
      It isn't a chance happening industry and science are available with comm..
      Internet communications needs to be maximized to come up to speed by all. It shouldn't be allowed to be highjacked by those who would destroy.
      From the high order polynomial fit of heat rise at high N Latitude the trouble has been brewing for a little bit now.
      Perhaps if a frame for employment of all is adopted which can keep hope alive there is enough capacity left and will to live to work some magic.

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  5. I'm an architect. My concern is that we can't govern without infrastructure.

    For many people in the US the flooding of Pacific Islands and what happens to coastal cities in Europe or Asia, or cities in the tropics as temperatures make their populations into refugees from the heat is dismissable.

    Only the fact that the East and Gulf coast of the US have more than 100 cities and urban transportation corridors with populations of over 100,000 whose news media and entertainment advertising revenues will be effectively terminated by the flooding of stadiums, ball parks and studios to the point where their marketed populations can no longer watch movies news, and sports on TV will cause the need for climate change mitigation to begin to register with some of our pundits, voters and politicians.

    In the next decade as cities begin having their communications, utilities, water treatment, sewer treatment, transportation, nuclear power plants, electric power grids, oil and LNG storage tanks flooded regularly by rising sea levels as well as storm surges it will begin to hit home a little harder, maybe begin to be seen as a political issue to demand an emissions economy that makes polluters pay to clean up the mess they made for profit while declaring it all a hoax.

    In addition to the economic disruption of not being able to go to work or communicate for extended periods of time, much of our water, food and energy distribution will be affected by the intrusion of salt water and pollutants into aquifers and utility easements.

    The cost of relocating them out of the way of what will eventually be 60 meters of sea level rise overwhelming sea walls and levees with increasing rapidity will be in the tens and then hundreds of billions for each city each year as the flooding gets worse.

    Once it gets to where the seaports and airports, military bases, industrial parks, warehouses, tunnels, bridges, railroads, and subways routinely flood every year, every storm, as Miami and Norfolk do now, and the highrises along the beaches begin to see the sand underneath them begin to liquefy to where they no longer have enough compaction to support them will we realize we have more than a few issues that needed to be addressed decades earlier and now can't be remedied.

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