It's raining over the Arctic Ocean and the rain is devastating the sea ice. What are the conditions that led to this?
As has been known for a long time, energy is added to Earth due to emissions by people and this translates into a warmer troposphere with more water vapor, warmer oceans and stronger winds.
Warming is hitting the Arctic particularly hard, due to numerous feedbacks, as illustrated by the sea surface temperature anomalies image on the right.
On July 6, 2017, cyclonic winds lined up to create a 'perfect storm'. As a result, an Atmospheric River of moisture was driven through Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, as shown on the images below.
On July 6, 2017, 1500 UTC, winds in Bering Strait were as high as 58 km/h (36 mph) at surface level (green circle on above image left), and as high as 82 km/h (51 mph) at 850 mb (green circle on above image right).
On July 6, 2017, surface temperatures of the air in Bering Strait were as high as 8.1°C (46.5°F) (green circle on image right).
Another indication of the strength of the wind driven through Bering Strait is wave height. On July 6, 2017, waves were as high as 3.35 m or 11 ft in the Bering Strait, at the location marked by the green circle on the image on the right.
The relatively warm and moist air driven through Bering Strait by strong winds is causing rain to fall over the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean, as shown on the video and images further below.
On July 7, 2017, high air temperatures were recorded over land and over the water.
The image below shows temperatures recorded at two locations over the Mackenzie River, one of 32.6°C or 90.8°F at the mouth of the Mackenzie River and another one of 34.7°C or 94.5°F further inland. Warm water from rivers can substantially warm up the sea surface and thus melt the sea ice.
Temperature of the surface of the water was 10°C or 50.1°F where the water was pushed into the Bering Strait, while temperatures as high as 46.9°C or 116.3°F were recorded over California.
The combined impact of high temperatures, strong winds, high waves and warm river water, rain water and melt water looks set to further devastate what sea ice is left in the Arctic Ocean.
Rain can be particularly devastating. The very force at which rain strikes can fracture the sea ice where it's weak, while pools of rainwater and meltwater will form at places where the sea ice is stronger. Where fractures appear in the sea ice, warm water can reach further parts of the ice and widen the cracks.
The video below shows rain over the Arctic Ocean. The video was created with cci-reorganizer.org forecasts from July 3, 2017, 18:00 UTC to July 17, 2017, 00:00 UTC.
Arctic sea ice is in a terrible shape. Sea ice volume is at a record low, as indicated by the Wipneus image below showing volume anomalies from 2002.
The image below, by Torstein Viddal, shows how low the 2017 year-to-date average sea ice volume is.
An additional danger is wildfires. Due to high temperatures, wildfires have broken out near the Mackenzie River, as illustrated by the satellite image below.
Wildfires come with a lot of emissions, including soot that darkens the surface when settling down, thus further speeding up warming.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described at the Climate Plan.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are accelerating. As illustrated by the image below, a linear trend hardly catches the acceleration, while a polynomial trend does make a better fit. The polynomial trend points at CO₂ levels of 437 ppm by 2026.
EPA animation: more extreme heat
This worrying acceleration is taking place while energy-related have been virtually flat over the past few years, according to figures by the EIA and by the Global Carbon Project. So, what makes growth in CO₂ levels in the atmosphere accelerate? As earlier discussed in this and this post, growth in CO₂ levels in the atmosphere is accelerating due to continued deforestation and soil degradation, due to ever more extreme weather events and due to accelerating warming that is making oceans unable to further take up carbon dioxide.
Ocean warming is accelerating on the Northern Hemisphere, as illustrated by above image, and a warmer Atlantic Ocean will push ever warmer water into the Arctic Ocean, further speeding up the decline of the sea ice and of permafrost.
[ click on images to enlarge ]
Loss of Northern Hemisphere snow cover is alarming, especially in July, as depicted in above image. The panel on the left shows snow cover on the Northern Hemisphere in three areas, i.e. Greenland, North America and Eurasia. The center panel shows North America and the right panel shows Eurasia. While Greenland is losing huge amounts of ice from melting glaciers, a lot of snow cover still remains present on Greenland, unlike the permafrost in North America and especially Eurasia, which has all but disappeared in July.
Worryingly, the linear trend in the right panel points at zero snow cover in 2017, which should act as a warning that climate change could strike a lot faster than many may expect.
A recently-published study warns that permafrost loss is likely to be 4 million km² (about 1.5 million mi²) for each 1°C (1.8°F) temperature rise, about 20% higher than previous studies. Temperatures may well rise even faster, due to numerous self-reinforcing feedback loops that speed up the changes and due to interaction between the individual warming elements behind the changes.
[ Arctic sea ice, gone by Sept. 2017? ]
One of the feedbacks is albedo loss that speeds up warming in the Arctic, in turn making permafrost release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.
Higher temperatures on land will make warmer water from rivers enter the Arctic Ocean and trigger wildfires resulting in huge emissions including black carbon that can settle on sea ice.
Given the speed at which many feedbacks and the interaction between warming elements can occur, Arctic sea ice volume may decline even more rapidly than the image on the right may suggest.
[ Record sea ice volume anomalies since end 2016 ]
Ominously, sea ice volume anomalies have been at record levels for time of year since end 2016 (Wipneus graph right, PIOMAS data).
As the Gulf Stream pushes warmer water into the Arctic Ocean, there will no longer be a large buffer of sea ice there to consume the heat, as was common for the entire human history.
Moreover, forecasts are that temperatures will keep rising throughout 2017 and beyond.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology reports that seven of eight models indicate that sea surface temperatures will exceed El Niño thresholds during the second half of 2017.
The image on the right, by the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), indicates an El Niño that is gaining strength.
For more than half a year now, global sea ice extent has been way below what it used to be, meaning that a huge amount of sunlight that was previously reflected back into space, is now instead getting absorbed by Earth, as the graph below shows.
Where can all this extra heat go? Sea ice will start sealing off much of the surface of the Arctic Ocean by the end of September 2017, making it hard for more heat to escape from the Arctic Ocean by entering the atmosphere.
It looks like much of the extra heat will instead reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean that contain huge amounts of methane in currently still frozen hydrates.
[ click on image to enlarge ]
The danger is that more and more heat will reach the seafloor and will destabilize methane hydrates contained in sediments at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, resulting in huge methane eruptions.
As the image on the right shows, a polynomial trend based on NOAA July 1983 to January 2017 global monthly mean methane data, points at twice as much methane by 2034. Stronger methane releases from the seafloor could make such a doubling occur much earlier.
Meanwhile, methane levels as high as 2592 ppb were recorded on April 17, 2017, as shown by the image below. The image doesn't specify the source of the high reading, but the magenta-colored area over the East Siberian Sea (top right) looks very threatening.
We already are in the Sixth Mass Extinction Event, given the rate at which species are currently disappearing from Earth. When taking into account the many elements that are contributing to warming, a potential warming of 10°C (18°F) could take place, leading to a rapid mass extinction of many species, including humans.
Earth is losing her sea ice. Arctic sea ice was at record low extent for the time of the year on March 24, 2017, as illustrated by the image below.
As the image below shows, on March 24, 2017, Arctic sea ice featured many cracks (top of Greenland is bottom left and Svalbard is on the right).
The poor state of Arctic sea ice is also reflected by the sea ice volume, as depicted by the image below, by Wipneus, showing PIOMAS anomalies up to March 2017.
On March 24, 2017, Antarctic sea ice extent was also much lower than it used to be at this time of year, as illustrated by the image below.
Altogether, global sea ice extent has now been at a record low for many months, as illustrated by the graph by Wipneus below. This means that a huge amount of additional sunlight has been absorbed over these months, instead of getting reflected back into space as before.
As Earth loses her sea ice, tipping point look set to be crossed that could result in rapid acceleration of Earth's temperature, as discussed at the extinction page, which warns that surface temperatures of the atmosphere could rise by some 10°C or 18°F within a decade, i.e. by 2026.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as described in the Climate Plan.
Will there be a Blue Ocean Event in September 2017, during which the Arctic Ocean will be virtually ice-free? What would be the significance of such an event?
The Arctic Ocean is about to become virtually ice-free, perhaps as early as next year. At first, this Blue Ocean Event may last for one or more days in September 2017. Over the years, the ice-free period will grow longer and longer, if no action is taken.
Projections of an ice-free Arctic Ocean have been made for years. What makes the prospect of a Blue Ocean Event so dire?
Disappearance of the sea ice means that a huge amount of sunlight that was previously reflected back into space, is instead getting absorbed by the Arctic. The reason for this is that sea ice is more reflective than the water of the Arctic Ocean. The situation on land in the Arctic is similar, i.e. the snow and ice cover on land is more reflective than the darker soil and rocks that get uncovered as the snow and ice disappears. So, extra heat gets added and this is accelerating warming in the Arctic. On land, extra heat will also warm up water of rivers, and a lot of this heat will end up in the Arctic Ocean.
Another feedback is water vapor, as highlighted in the diagram below.
A warmer atmosphere carries more water vapor. Since water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas, this further accelerates warming over the Arctic.
As above image shows, temperatures have been more than 2.5°C warmer than 1981-2010 over most of the Arctic Ocean over the past 365 days (up to October 7, 2016). Accelerated Arctic warming has been taking place for a long time. So, what is it that makes a Blue Ocean Event, a virtually ice-free Arctic Ocean, such a big thing?
It is a huge event, because once the sea ice is gone, warming of the Arctic Ocean is likely to speed up even more dramatically. Why? Because having no more sea ice means that the buffer is gone. In the past, thick sea ice extended meters below the sea surface, in many parts of the Arctic Ocean. Melting of this ice into water did consume massive amounts of ocean heat. As such, thick sea ice acted as a buffer. Over the years, Arctic sea ice has become thinner and thinner, as illustrated by the image below.
[ click on image to enlarge ]
Over the past few years, trends have been pointing at zero thickness soon, i.e. in a matter of years. Added below is a trend produced by Arctische Pinguin, pointing at zero volume sea ice in the year 2021.
[ click on image to enlarge ]
Note that there is some variability from year to year. This indicates that a Blue Ocean Event may well happen earlier than the trend, e.g. in September 2017. The image further shows that there's hardly any buffer left, the buffer is virtually gone!
This buffer used to consume massive amounts of ocean heat that is carried along sea currents into the Arctic Ocean. Once the sea ice is gone, that heat must go somewhere else. A huge amount of energy used to be absorbed by this buffer, i.e. by melting ice and transforming it into water. The energy that used to be absorbed by melting ice is as much as it takes to warm up an equivalent mass of water from zero °C to 80 °C. Much of this heat will then suddenly speed up warming of the water of the Arctic Ocean, rather than going into melting the ice as it did previously. So, the water of the Arctic Ocean will suddenly warm up dramatically. Remember that the Arctic Ocean in many areas is very shallow, in many places it's less than 50 m deep, as discussed in an earlier post.
The danger is that this extra heat will reach the seafloor and destabilize methane hydrates that are contained in sediments at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. This could result in huge methane eruptions. It is hard for methane plumes to get broken down in the water, given the abrupt and concentrated nature of such releases and given that the Arctic Ocean is in so many places very shallow. Once that methane enters the atmosphere, it will strongly contribute to further warming of the atmosphere over the Arctic.
In conclusion, disappearance of the sea ice would mean that the buffer has gone. This further increases the danger of huge abrupt releases of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. In many respects, the danger is such that we can just count ourselves lucky that such huge releases haven't occurred yet.
In response to this danger, comprehensive and effective action is needed, along multiple lines of action, each implemented in parallel and simultaneously. While local feebates are typically the most effective policies, local communities can each decide what works best for them, provided that agreed targets are met, and such targets will need to be a lot stronger and more comprehensive than the aspirational emission reductions that countries have submitted as part of the Paris Agreement.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as described in the Climate Plan.
Sea ice close to the North Pole looks slushy and fractured into small pieces. The image below shows the situation on July 8, 2016.
Sea ice north of the geographic North Pole. For more on the (geo)magnetic North Pole, see this page.
For reference, the bars at the bottom right show distances of 20 km and 20 miles. By comparison, sea ice in the same area did develop large cracks in 2012, but even in September 13, 2012, it was not broken up into small pieces, as shown by this image at a recent post.
As shown by above image, by Jim Pettit, Arctic sea ice volume has been in decline for decades. While this may look like a steady decline, chances are that the sea ice will abruptly collapse over the next two months, for the reasons described below.
The animation below, from the Naval Research Laboratory, shows Arctic sea ice thickness for 30 days up through July 8, 2016, including a forecast of 7 days.
Below is a new Naval Research Laboratory image, dated July 4, 2016
and contributed by Albert Kallio with the following description.
NORTH POLE SEA ICE DISAPPEARING VERY RAPIDLY 4.7.2016
Albert Kallio: The upgraded US Navy sea ice thickness system revealed extreme rates of sea ice pulverization and melting on 4.7.2016 which justifies a continued close attention to the developments on the Arctic Ocean. Due to virtually continuous storm centering the North Pole for weeks now, warm water upswells and sea water mixing drives base melting of icefloes besides wave actions that both wash and pulverize broken sea ice. The more pulverized sea ice becomes, the greater its 3-dimensional surface area that sits in water becomes, this easing transfer of heat from ocean to sea ice. In addition, honeycombing of ice also flushes ice with water in a stormy weather. The final factor being that most of sea ice is very recent (seasonal) ice that contain residues of salts, when saline brine is expelled this creates boreholes into ice making it "rotten ice" easily. https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycomcice-12/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif
Sea ice decline reflects the extra energy added to the Arctic, as global warming and feedbacks are hitting the Arctic particularly strongly. Three of these feedbacks are depicted in the image on the right.
As the sea ice melts, sea surface temperatures will remain at around zero degree Celsius (32°F) for as long as there is ice in the water, since the extra energy will first go into melting the ice. Only after the ice has melted will the extra energy start raising the temperature of the water.
Sea ice thus acts as a buffer that absorbs heat, preventing sea surface temperature from rising. As
sea ice is busy melting, each gram of ice takes 334 Joule of heat to change into water, while the temperature remains steady at 0°C ( 32°F).
Once all ice has turned into water, all further heat goes into raising the temperature of the water. To raise the temperature of each gram of water by one degree Celsius then takes only 4.18 Joule of heat.
In other words, melting of the ice absorbs 8 times as much heat as it takes to warm up the same mass of water from zero to 10°C. As sea ice disappears, extra energy instead goes into raising the temperature of the water, as depicted in the image on the right, and as further described at the feedbacks page as feedback #14.
Sea ice can reflect as much as 90% of the sunlight back into space. Once the ice has melted away, the water of the ocean reflects only 6% of the incoming solar radiation and absorbs the rest. Albedo change is depicted in above image as feedback #1. As Professor Peter Wadhams once calculated, warming due to Arctic snow and ice loss could more than double the net warming now caused by all emissions by all people of the world.
Once the sea ice has disappeared, a lot more energy will get absorbed by the Arctic Ocean, i.e. energy that was previously reflected back into space and energy that previously went into changing ice into water.
Furthermore, as the sea ice disappears, chances increase that storms will develop that come with rain and winds that can batter and push the remaining sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean, while storms can also increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and the occurrence of cirrus clouds that can trap heat.
Methane is a further feedback, depicted as feedback #2 in the image further above. As the water of the Arctic Ocean gets warmer, the danger increases that heat will reach hydrates at the seafloor and that this will trigger release of huge amounts of methane, in an additional self-reinforcing feedback loop that will make warming in the Arctic accelerate further and that threatens to escalate into a third kind of warming, i.e. runaway warming. Peter Wadhams co-authored a study that calculated that methane release from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean could yield 0.6°C warming of the planet in 5 years (see video at earlier post).
As above image shows, methane on July 8, 2016, reached levels as high as 2655 ppb. Such high levels typically occur due to methane hydrates getting destabilized. As the sea ice disappears, the situation could get worse rapidly, as illustrated by the images below.
July 5, 2016, sea surface was as warm as 17.1°C / 62.7°F at green circle, i.e. 13.7°C / 24.7°F warmer than 1981-2011.
These high sea surface temperature anomalies are the result of warmer water getting carried by the Gulf Stream below the sea surface of the Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean. The water carried into the Arctic Ocean is both warmer and saltier than the water at the surface, as the fresh cold meltwater forms a lid at the surface. At areas around Svalbard where the sea is rather shallow, the warmer water comes to the surface. These high anomalies thus indicate how much warmer the water now is that is entering the Arctic Ocean, as discussed in earlier posts such as this one.
The rapid recent rise in ocean heat is illustrated by above image, showing that oceans on the Northern Hemisphere in May 2015 through April 2016 were 0.93°C warmer than the 20th century average, whereas for the equivalent 2012 period the anomaly was merely 0.46°C. In other words, there now is more ocean heat, making the possibility of methane hydrates destabilization more threatening.
Meanwhile, the speed at which the Arctic is warming is changing the jet streams, as discussed by Paul Beckwith in the video below, following Paul's earlier video that's included in an earlier post.
There are many indications that changes to the climate are accelerating, causing extreme weather events to hit with increasing strength and intensity. Water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas and for each degree Celsius that temperatures rise, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water vapor, which will also lead to stronger storms such as cyclones. On the image below, typhoon Nepartak is approaching Taiwan, with wind speed as high as 103 mph or 165 km/h, and with cloud water as much as 9 kg per square m on July 7, 2016.
Nepartak approaching Taiwan on July 7, 2016, with wind speed as high as 103 mph or 165 km/h (left panel), and with cloud water as much as 9 kg per square m (right panel)
According to NASA, very powerful storms near the center of Nepartak's circulation were found to be dropping rain at a rate of over 193 mm (7.6 inches) per hour. Tall thunderstorms called "hot towers" were found to reach heights of 17.0 km (about 10.5 miles).
The image on the right shows a thermal image of Typhoon Nepartak on July 7 at 17:45 UTC. The colder the cloud tops, the higher they are in the troposphere and the stronger the storms.
On July 7, 2016, at 1500 UTC, Nepartak's maximum sustained winds had reached 150 knots (172.6 mph/ 277.8 kph), generating waves as high as 48 feet (14.6 meters).
Strong storms can bring water vapor high up into the stratosphere, contributing to the formation of cirrus clouds that trap a lot of heat that would otherwise be radiated away, from Earth into space.
Altogether, the combined global temperature rise due to global warming and feedbacks could exceed 10°C or 18°F within a decade, as discussed in previous posts such as this one.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.
It looks like sea ice has passed its minimum extent for the year 2015, as illustrated by the image below.
There are some differences between the various websites measuring extent, such as to whether the 2015 low was the third or fourth lowest. Japanese measurements show that sea ice extent was 4.26 million square km on September 14, 2015, i.e. lower than the 2011 minimum of 4.27 million square km, as illustrated by the image below.
Meanwhile, the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington has announced that Arctic sea ice volume minimum was reached on September 12, 2015, with a total volume of 5,670 cubic km. The image below shows a polynomial trendline based on their annual Arctic sea ice volume minima, including this volume for 2015.
Importantly, the sea ice in many places is now less thick than it was in 2012, as illustrated by the image below, showing sea ice thickness on September 27, 2012 (panel left) and a forecast for September 27, 2015 (panel right).
The reason for the dramatic decrease in thickness of the multi-year sea ice is ocean heat, as illustrated by the image below, showing sea surface temperature anomalies in the Arctic as at September 21, 2015.
The water of the Arctic Ocean is very warm, not only at the surface, but even more so underneath the surface. What has contributed to this situation is described by the image below. From 2012, huge amounts of fresh water have run off Greenland, with the accumulated fresh water now covering a huge part of the North Atlantic.
Since it's fresh water that is now covering a large part of the surface of the North Atlantic, it will not easily sink in the very salty water that was already there. The water in the North Atlantic was very salty due to the high evaporation, which was in turn due to high temperatures and strong winds and currents. As said, fresh water tends to stay on top of more salty water, even though the temperature of the fresh water is low, which makes this water more dense. The result of this stratification is less evaporation in the North Atlantic, and less transfer of ocean heat to the atmosphere, and thus lower air temperatures than would have been the case without this colder surface water.
Meanwhile, global warming continues to heat up the oceans, while less of this ocean heat can now be transferred from the water to the atmosphere in the North Atlantic, since the fresh water is acting like a lid.
The danger is thus that warmer water will be pushed into the Arctic Ocean at lower depth, and that it will reach the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean where huge amounts of methane are contained in sediments. Ice acts like a glue, holding these sediments together and preventing destabilization of methane hydrates. Warmer water reaching these sediments can penetrate them by traveling down cracks and fractures in the sediments, and reach the hydrates.
The big melt in Greenland and the Arctic in general is causing further problems. Isostatic adjustment following melting can contribute to seismic events such as earthquakes, shockwaves and landslides that can destabilize methane hydrates contained in sediments on the Arctic Ocean seafloor.
In the video below, by Nick Breeze, Professor Peter Wadhams discusses the situation.
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as discussed at the Climate Plan.
The water of the Arctic Ocean is very warm, not only at the surface, but even more so underneath the surface. What has...
Posted by Sam Carana on Tuesday, September 22, 2015
It's raining over the Arctic Ocean and the rain is devastating the sea ice. What are the conditions that led to this?
Another indication of the strength of the wind driven through Bering Strait is wave height. On July 6, 2017, waves were as high as 3.35 m or 11 ft in the Bering Strait, at the location marked by the green circle on the image on the right.
The combined impact of high temperatures, strong winds, high waves and warm river water, rain water and melt water looks set to further devastate what sea ice is left in the Arctic Ocean.
