Change in the Arctic this year was unlike any ever seen before, scientists say
Source: Alaska Dispatch News
Change in the Arctic this year was unlike any ever seen before, scientists say
Author: Yereth Rosen
Updated: 12 hours ago
Published 13 hours ago
The meltdown at the top of the world proceeded at an unprecedented clip over the past year, a sweeping scientific report said Tuesday. ... The annual Arctic Report Card,* presented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the American Geophysical Union** conference in San Francisco, documented rapid changes in the region in 2016, including several records.
Air and sea-surface temperatures are higher, sea ice*** is sparser and more fragile and ocean waters are absorbing more carbon, changing their chemistry to more acidic levels, while warming tundra is now expelling more carbon that it is drawing in from the atmosphere.
"We've seen a year in 2016 in the Arctic like we've never seen before," Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA's Arctic research program and one of the editors of the document, said at a news conference. "The report card this year clearly shows a stronger and more pronounced signal of persistent warming than in any previous year in our observational record."
The Arctic Report Card is an annual, peer-reviewed summary that has been issued by NOAA since 2006. This year's report gathers information from 61 scientists across 11 nations.
* http://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card
** http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2016/welcome/
*** http://nsidc.org/
Read more: https://www.adn.com/arctic/2016/12/13/change-in-the-arctic-this-year-was-unlike-any-ever-before-scientists-say/
Hat tip, the Newseum, in DC. They put front pages of newspapers from around the country on display on the side of the building facing Pennsylvania Avenue. On mornings when I take a commuter bus from the Pentagon into downtown DC, like this morning, I look at the front pages.
= new reply since forum marked as read
1. Soil, fresh water and resource depletion? All these can be mitigated for a while by the increasing use of fossil fuels, during which time the depletion increases and the side effects of the waste products (including CO2) multiply.
2. The unfolding 6th Mass Extinction Event and overpopulation? These two are intrinsically related due to habitat destruction by the expanding human population.
3. The psychological workings of the human being (especially status-seeking and comfort-seeking), leading to the growth imperative, leading to debt-based financial systems? This is where politicians of all shapes, sizes and stripes come from, along with advertising agencies, lines of credit and smart phones.
There are far more, but the litany of doom gets boring at this point. These are enough to make my point.
These are all interconnected in a myriad of ways, and are all variously global in scope. Trying to solve one tends to make others worse. We don't have an Arctic ice problem, we have a global human-systems problem.
Do you think these things can be addressed through the institutions which created them, in the short amount of time left to address them, with margins for money and energy and resources now razor thin, by people whose minds were formed inside of the system of modern techno-industrial-financial civilization, with all the family and cultural beliefs and assumptions which trip them up at every turn?
The only way out of the vast, multi-dimensional trap we've inadvertently built for ourselves is through a reset of global human activity to a very low level for a very long time. There isn't a politician in the world who would facilitate that, so we're fucked. We can't avoid it, even with President Warren. It will happen no matter who the Americans put in charge.
On edit: But thanks for the welcome back! 
Reflective white ice being replaced with dark water absorbs more heat. And the adjacent Greenland ice cap can raise sea levels.
Plus the Antarctic sea ice is also now unlike any year seen before:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
