Arctic News: La Niña

Showing posts with label La Niña. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Heat Storm

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On April 11, 2018, Arctic sea ice extent was only 13.9 million km². Arctic sea ice extent has been at a record low for the time of year for most of 2018, as illustrated by above image. In 2012, extent went below 3.4 million km². The question is what minimum 2018 extent will be.

Arctic sea ice could disappear altogether in 2018. Have a look at the progressive loss of sea ice volume depicted in the image on the right, from an earlier post. Zero sea ice volume by 2018 is within the margins of the trend line contained in the data going back to 1979.

What drives volume decline is the combination of extent loss and especially thickness loss. Sea ice thickness has declined particularly where the ice once was at its thickest, i.e. north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The combination image below shows the decline of the thicker sea ice, by comparing sea ice thickness on April 15 (run April 14) for the years 2015 through to 2018, showing that sea ice this year is entering the melting season with little or no thick sea ice left north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to cope with the influx of warmer water.

The image below shows how much Bering Strait sea ice is at a historic low and the associated International Arctic Research Center post describes that this is caused by higher ocean temperatures and frequent storms.

The influx of warm water from the Atlantic Ocean and from the Pacific Ocean is melting the sea ice from below, while sunlight is melting the sea ice from above. Furthermore, warm water from rivers that end in the Arctic Ocean also contribute to melting of the sea ice, and there are numerous feedbacks that can dramatically speed up melting.

Disappearance of the sea ice means that the buffer that until now has consumed huge amounts of heat, will be gone and that heat that previously went into melting the sea ice, will instead warm up the Arctic.

Sea ice can be expected to continue its downward spiral, given the continued rise of the temperature of the sea surface in the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Pacific Ocean, as illustrated by the image below.

The sea surface is not necessarily the place where the water is at its warmest. This is illustrated by the image below, showing subsurface ocean heat in the area most relevant to El Niño/La Niña events.

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We're currently still in a La Niña period in which temperatures are suppressed, as illustrated by the Multivariate El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Index image on the right.

As illustrated by the forecast plumes image underneath on the right, it looks like a new El Niño will arrive this summer, which will elevate temperatures from the trend.

This could result in a heat storm as early as summer 2018, in which heat waves could decimate the sea ice, while storms could push the remaining sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean.

This danger is further illustrated by the trend line in the image below, a trend that is contained in NASA LOTI data up to March 2018, adjusted by +0.79°C to better reflect the rise from preindustrial and surface air temperatures, and to better include Arctic temperatures.

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The temperature rise in the Arctic is causing decline of the sea ice extent as well as the extent of the snow cover on land.

The image on the right shows the progressive decline of the spring snow cover on land in the Northern Hemisphere.

A recent study shows that the amount of water melt from the glaciers on Mt. Hunter, Alaska, is now 60 times greater than it was before 1850.

Heat waves combined with strong rainfall due to storms could devastate the snow cover in 2018.

Decline of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic comes with a huge loss in albedo, which means that huge amounts of sunlight that were previously reflected back into space instead get absorbed by the Arctic.

The Buffer has gone, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page

A rapid rise in temperatures in the Arctic will also accelerate changes to jet stream, which can cause huge amounts of heat from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean to enter the Arctic Ocean, further speeding up its warming and threatening to destabilize methane hydrates in sediments under the Arctic Ocean.

The methane will initially be felt most strongly in the Arctic, further speeding up Arctic warming which is already accelerating due to numerous feedbacks including - as said - the loss of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic, which makes that less sunlight is reflected back into space and instead adds to warming up the Arctic.

All this shouldn't come unexpected. In the video below, Guy McPherson warns that a rapid temperature rise will affect agriculture across the globe, threatening to cause a collapse of industrial civilization, in turn resulting in an abrupt halt of the sulfates that are currently co-emitted as a result of burning fuel, which will further add to a temperature rise that is already threatening to cause people across the globe to perish at massive scale, due to heatstroke, dehydration and famine, if not perish due to nuclear radiation and further toxic effects of war, as people fight over who controls the last habitable places on Earth.

Guy mentions the President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, who in a press conference on August 28, 2017, warns that: "If we lose the Arctic, we lose the globe". The video below shows an extract of the press conference.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

More heat on the way

Above image shows temperature anomalies over the Pacific Ocean on February 12, 2017. Note the 19.2°C (34.5 °F) anomaly off the coast of Japan, at the location marked by the green circle.

In 2016, the annually-averaged temperature for ocean surfaces around the world was 0.75°C (1.35°F) higher than the 20th century average, higher than the previous record of 2015, NOAA reports. The global annual land surface temperature for 2016 was 1.43°C (2.57°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record of 2015 by 0.11°C (0.19°F). Note that NOAA uses the the 20th century average as a baseline, for more on different baselines, see this earlier post.

There is more heat on the way, as illustrated by the image below.

As above image shows, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) temporarily raises (El Niño) or suppresses (La Niña) global temperatures. Generally, the stronger the event (El Niño or La Niña), the greater its impact on the average global temperature around that time. Note that one value for 2016 literally went off the chart.

As above image shows (at the end of the graph on the right), we've barely had a bit of a La Niña in 2017 and we're already facing another El Niño event.

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Above images shows ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) plumes with strong positive anomalies in all three El Niño regions (on the right).

In other words, temperatures in 2017 look set to be very high, which spells bad news for the Arctic where temperature anomalies are already several times higher than in the rest of the world, as illustrated by the image below.

As the image below shows, Antarctic sea ice extent was at a record low for the time of the year on February 11, 2017.

The situation looks particularly grim for the Arctic sea ice. As the image below shows, Arctic sea ice extent on February 11, 2017, was also at a record low for the time of the year. In fact, it had fallen to 13,895,00 km² that day, raising the question whether perhaps the maximum for the year 2017 had already been reached.

Low global sea ice extent means that less sunlight is reflected back into space by the ice and that more heat is instead absorbed by the ocean, adding to the predicament the world is in. The situation in the Arctic is crucial, as huge amounts of methane, contained in sediments under the Arctic Ocean, could be released if warming continues, potentially triggering mass extinction of species, including humans, within one decade.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

• Climate Plan
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

• Extinction
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html

• How much warming have humans caused?
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/05/how-much-warming-have-humans-caused.html

• Warning of mass extinction of species, including humans, within one decade
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/02/warning-of-mass-extinction-of-species-including-humans-within-one-decade.html