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Arctic Death Spiral May 25, 2012 : 2:47 PM (Al Gore's Journal)
http://blog.algore.com/2012/05/arctic_death_spiral.html[font face=Serif][font size=5]Arctic Death Spiral[/font]May 25, 2012 : 2:47 PM
[font size=4]Climate Central paints a scary picture:[/font]
[font size=3]…
“But it's worse than that, says a new analysis by scientists at the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Research Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. "First-year ice is not just thinner, " said Donald Perovich, lead author of a report in Geophysical Research Letters, in an interview. "We're also beginning to realize it has other properties." The most important: new ice is less reflective than old ice, for most of the year, anyway. It absorbs more heat from the Sun, which means it doesn't just melt faster: it actually speeds up its own melting.”
“Here's how it happens, according to Perovich. "Most of the precipitation in the Arctic," he said, "happens at the end of summer and in the early fall." When the snow first begins to fall, it builds on the multi-year ice, but disappears onto the patches of open ocean. Those patches eventually freeze, and the snow sticks there as well; it just forms a thinner layer. So for most of the winter, all of the ice, thick and thin, is covered with a brightly reflective blanket. That would be good as far as warming is concerned, except that for most of the winter, the Sun doesn't rise.”
“When the Sun finally does rise in spring, it melts the thinner snow first, forming heat-absorbing pools on the surface of the first-year ice. The older ice eventually catches up, forming pools of its own, but since the surface is crumpled, the ponds don't spread as widely, and they absorb less heat.”
“In short, the death spiral -- where more melting leads to more melting -- appears to be even steeper than anyone thought.”[/font][/font]
[font size=4]Climate Central paints a scary picture:[/font]
[font size=3]…
“But it's worse than that, says a new analysis by scientists at the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Research Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. "First-year ice is not just thinner, " said Donald Perovich, lead author of a report in Geophysical Research Letters, in an interview. "We're also beginning to realize it has other properties." The most important: new ice is less reflective than old ice, for most of the year, anyway. It absorbs more heat from the Sun, which means it doesn't just melt faster: it actually speeds up its own melting.”
“Here's how it happens, according to Perovich. "Most of the precipitation in the Arctic," he said, "happens at the end of summer and in the early fall." When the snow first begins to fall, it builds on the multi-year ice, but disappears onto the patches of open ocean. Those patches eventually freeze, and the snow sticks there as well; it just forms a thinner layer. So for most of the winter, all of the ice, thick and thin, is covered with a brightly reflective blanket. That would be good as far as warming is concerned, except that for most of the winter, the Sun doesn't rise.”
“When the Sun finally does rise in spring, it melts the thinner snow first, forming heat-absorbing pools on the surface of the first-year ice. The older ice eventually catches up, forming pools of its own, but since the surface is crumpled, the ponds don't spread as widely, and they absorb less heat.”
“In short, the death spiral -- where more melting leads to more melting -- appears to be even steeper than anyone thought.”[/font][/font]
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