Will Arctic sea ice collapse in 2014?

There has been some discussion recently about extrapolating Arctic sea ice data, particularly for data relating to annual minimum sea ice. I've been trying which kind of trendline fits best and my conclusion is that a trendline pointing at 2014 fits the data best (image left). The respective dataset, on the left underneath, was produced by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) developed at Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, and is displayed below interactively (hover over blue line to see the respective volume data for that year). As mentioned in the discussion, some ice may persist close to Greenland for a few years more, since Greenland constitutes a barrier that holds the sea ice in place. Similarly, it is suggested that natural variability could prolong the ice longer than expected. However, such arguments offer no reason to rule out an imminent collapse of the sea ice, since natural variability works both ways, it could bring about such a collapse either earlier or later than models indicate. In fact, the thinner the sea ice gets, the more likely an early collapse is to occur. It is accepted science that global warming will increase the intensity of extreme weather events, so more heavy winds and more intense storms can be expected to increasingly break up the remaining ice in future, driving the smaller parts out of the Arctic Ocean more easily. Much of the sea ice loss already occurs due to sea ice moving along the edges of Greenland into the Atlantic Ocean. Could you think of any reason why Arctic sea ice would NOT collapse in 2014?

Related:
Arctic sea ice volume on track to reach zero around 2015
Greenland is melting at incredible rate
Arctic Sea Ice
When the sea ice is gone

Discussion: Should patent law apply to geo-engineering?

David Keith, a Harvard University professor and an adviser on energy to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said he and his colleagues are researching whether the federal government could ban patents in the field of solar radiation, according to a report in Scientific American.

Some of his colleagues last week traveled to Washington, D.C., where they discussed whether the U.S. Patent Office could ban patents on the technology, Keith said.

"We think it's very dangerous for these solar radiation technologies, it's dangerous to have it be privatized," Keith said. "The core technologies need to be public domain."

As suggested by Sam Carana, a declaration of emergency, as called for by the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), could be another way to deal with this issue.

A declaration of Emergency could give governments the power to overrule patents, where they stand in the way of fast-tracking geo-engineering projects proposed under emergency rules.Thus, patents don't need to be banned, prohibited or taken away; instead, patent will continue to apply in all situations other than the emergency situation, while new patents could also continue to be lodged during the emergency period.

Even where patent are directly applicable to proposed projects, patent law would still continue to apply, the emergency rules would merely allow governments to proceed in specific situations, avoiding that projects are being held up by legal action, exorbitant prices or withholding of crucial information.

A declaration of emergency could also speed up projects by removing the need to comply with all kinds of time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, such as the need to get formal approvals and permits from various departments, etc. This brings us to the need to comply with international protocols and agreements. If declared internationally, a declaration of emergency could overrule parts of such agreements where they pose unacceptable delays and cannot be resolved through diplomacy.

The issue is also discussed at the Geoengineering group at Google.

High level of seismic activity in 2012

Seismologists say last week's powerful earthquake off western Indonesia increased pressure on the source of the devastating 2004 tsunami: a fault that could unleash another monster wave sometime in the next few decades, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.  “The spring was pushed a little bit tighter,” said Kerry Sieh, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

In fact, two big quakes (8.6 and 8.2 on the Richter scale) rocked Indonesia; just hours later, three more earthquakes occurred in Mexico (7, 6.9 and 6.2 on the Richter scale). In just two days, 39 earthquakes rocked the planet, reports the Bucharest Herald.

“Something is wrong! There are too many strong earthquakes,” believes Romania’s top seismologist, Gheorghe Marmureanu, who finds the latest Indonesian quake very unusual. According to Marmureanu, what happened in Indonesia came as a surprise that puzzled scientists. “Statistics show that, in this region of Asia, there is one big earthquake every 500 years, roughly. However, since 2004, there already were three quakes with magnitudes above 8, which is out of seismological statistics. Something is wrong! There are too many big quakes in the Indonesian area,” Marmureanu warns.

The Extinction Protocol reports Marmureanu quoting from his book, page 495, according to the Extinction Protocol: “If you keep seismically shaking the Earth, like a bottle of soda, its structural integrity eventually will become compromised and it will start to fracture like an egg. In this case, the fracturing will be thermal dissipation by hyper-volcanism, mega-thrust earthquakes, and greater tectonic boundary plate agitation around volcanic arcs and subduction zones…if this is what’s indeed happening, the pressure will continue to build in the interior of the planet until it eventually destabilizes all tectonic plates in a spectral pattern of continous seismic oscillation. Every earthquake generates and emits enough kinetic energy through the earth to potentially trigger more seismic disturbances.” 

The post at the Extinction Protocol is accompanied by above map, with the caption that the shocking number of earthquakes that have rattled the globe, especially along tectonic plate boundaries, since the double 8.0+ magnitude earthquakes struck off the coast of Northern Sumatra on April 11 could be early indication the planet may be shifting towards a new catastrophic model.

Apart from earthquakes, there has also been plenty of volcanic activity this year. On 13 April, an explosion from Sangay volcano was observed at 08:25 local time, generating an ash and steam column of 2 km above the summit crater. This was the 49th volcano to erupt in 2012, reports the Extinction Protocol in another post, adding that there were about 50 volcanoes eruptions in all of 2011, while from 1990 to 2008 the average number of volcanoes erupting annually was 66.

The chart below, from dlinquist.com, shows a smoothed graph with total strength of earthquakes registering as 6+ on the Richter scale from 1973. 

Finally, the map below, also from dlinquist.com, shows where earthquakes have occurred from 1973. 

Importantly, earthquakes can disturb methane hydrates, resulting in abrupt releases of methane; as the post Thermal expansion of the Earth's crust necessitates geoengineering discusses, to firmly reduce this risk would necessitate geo-engineering.  

Methane levels for March 2012 are highest above ESAS

NASA has made available the monthly methane levels for March 2012. As the polar projection below shows, extremely high levels of methane are concentrated above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).

The image below further shows how the anomalies have increased over the years, especially on the Northern Hemisphere; note the wide gaps between anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere (blue) and the Southern Hemisphere (green) over the past few months. 

The images, based on AIRS NASA data, were produced by Dr. Leonid Yurganov, Senior Research Scientist, JCET, at University of Maryland - Baltimore County. For further images, see Dr. Yurganov's archive at asl.umbc.edu/pub/yurganov/methane