Arctic Ice Now Well Below 2012 Record Lows; Siberian Coast, Once The Ice Factory Now Ice-Free

[hatrack]

For the past month, Siberia has captured the world’s attention thanks to a climate change-fueled heat wave that caused temperatures in an Arctic town to crack 100 degrees in June and whipped up an outbreak of fires across normally frigid tundra. But an equally alarming situation is unfolding just north of Siberia’s shores: sea ice is crashing in a region that scientists consider to be the ice factory of the Arctic.

In fact, there’s so little ice cover in the Laptev Sea north of Siberia—as well as the Barents Sea to the west—that ice cover across the entire Arctic Ocean is currently at its lowest mid-July extent on record. If sea ice continues to plummet, it could bottom out at a new record low in September. Even if 2020 doesn’t set a dubious new record, the ongoing ice annihilation is yet another sign that the Arctic is undergoing unprecedented changes as it heats up at more than twice the globally averaged rate. “We’re kind of in the middle this year of this grand experiment,” said Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. That experiment, he explained, consists of a mix of regional and global factors fueling remarkable ice losses.

EDIT

As of Monday, sea ice had all but vanished from Siberian waters, and Arctic-wide levels were on par with September annual minima in the 1990s. The melt season is far from over, though, and it’s not clear whether ice will hit a new record low this September, a title currently held by 2012. If the Arctic moves into a cloudier, stormier, weather pattern, Labe says, melting “could easily slow down,” similar to how it did last August when cooler weather pumped the brakes on sea ice losses after the ice had veered into record territory earlier in the season. (2019 wound up effectively tying 2007 and 2016 for second-lowest sea ice extent on record.)

Then again, the most intense Arctic storms could shake things up in a different direction. Arctic cyclones, which are fueled by the temperature gradient between warm continents and cold Arctic ice, reach their peak in the central Arctic ocean in late summer. These storms can be potent destroyers of sea ice, particularly if that ice was already weakened by melting. Evidence suggests that 2012’s record minimum was partly thanks to a monster cyclone that spun up over Siberia that August.

EDIT

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ep45be/siberias-heat-wave-triggered-an-arctic-sea-ice-melt-down

[luv2fly]

1. I can't even imagine what kind of world today's babies are going to grow old in

Our children and grandchildren are going to face hurdles no other generation has encountered. I sure hope at least one of them is the genius that is going to solve these problems.

[Boomer]

2. It doesn't take a genius

We knew how to stop climate change decades ago, we just chose not to.

[luv2fly]

3. The genius is in getting people to change their behavior.

I remain hopeful even though I'll be long gone.