Monday, June 19, 2023

Arctic sea ice under threat - update 3

The NASA Worldview satellite image below shows Arctic sea ice on June 18, 2023. While the sea ice on much of the picture is shrouded in clouds, Arctic sea ice clearly is in a poor condition, even close to the North Pole (on the bottom left of the image below). 


The Uni of Bremen image below shows Arctic sea ice thickness on June 18, 2023.

The danger is that, as El Niño strengthens, there will be massive loss of Arctic sea ice over the coming months, with water in the Arctic Ocean heating up strongly due to loss of the latent heat buffer and loss of albedo, while huge amounts of ocean heat keep entering the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

The image below shows that the North Atlantic sea surface temperature was 23.1°C on June 18, 2023 (on the black line), 0.8°C higher than the 22.3°C on June 18, 2022 (on the orange line). A record high of 24.9°C was reached on Sept. 4, 2022, even while La Niña was suppressing the temperature. This time, there's an El Niño. 


Furthermore, the Jet Stream is strongly deformed, threatening to result in heatwaves that extend over the Arctic Ocean and that cause hot water from rivers to enter the Arctic Ocean, while storms accelerate the flow of ocean heat into the Arctic Ocean, and while fires and storms contribute to darkening of the sea ice, speeding up its demise.

All this threatens to trigger eruption of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as has been described many times before, such as in this post, in this post and in this post.

[ Latent heat loss, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page ]
[ see the Extinction page ]
Loss of Arctic sea ice albedo, loss of the latent heat buffer and eruption of seafloor methane all constitute tipping points that threaten to abruptly accelerate the temperature rise in the Arctic, further speeding up loss of permafrost in Siberia and North America and thus threatening to trigger further releases of greenhouse gases.

In addition, there are further events and developments that could unfold and make things even worse.

The upcoming temperature rise on land on the Northern Hemisphere could be of such a severity that much traffic, transport and industrial activity will grind to a halt, resulting in a reduction in cooling aerosols that are now masking the full wrath of global heating. Without these cooling aerosols, the temperature is projected to rise strongly, while there could be an additional temperature rise due to an increase in warming aerosols and gases as a result of more biomass and waste burning and forest fires. Furthermore, as traffic slows down, there will be less nitrogen oxide emissions, which could result in less hydroxyl to curtail methane.

The bar on the right depicts the threat, as discussed at the Extinction page.

In conclusion, the situation is dire and calls for support for a Climate Emergency Declaration.


Links

• Arctic sea ice under threat

• Arctic sea ice under threat - update 1

• Arctic sea ice under threat - update 2

• NOAA - The National Centers for Environment Prediction Climate Forecast System Version 2  

• NOAA - Climate Prediction Center - ENSO Diagnostic Discussions
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml

• University of Bremen - sea ice concentration and thickness
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/start

• NASA Worldview
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov


Posted by at
Labels: , , ,