LONDON—The Arctic ice cap will vanish completely in summer months within 20-30 years, polar researchers said Thursday, sounding the alarm two months before a critical climate change summit in Copenhagen.
It is likely to be largely ice-free during the warmer months within a decade, according to findings from an arctic expedition led by British adventurer Pen Hadow.
Veteran polar explorer Hadow and two other Britons went out on the Arctic ice cap for 73 days during the northern spring, taking more than 6,000 measurements and observations of the sea ice.
The raw data they collected from March to May has been analyzed, producing some stark predictions about the state of the ice cap.
“The summer ice cover will completely vanish in 20 to 30 years but in less than that it will have considerably retreated,” said Professor Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Britain’s Cambridge University.
“In about 10 years, the Arctic ice will be considered as open sea.”
Starting off from northern Canada, Hadow, Martin Hartley, and Ann Daniels skied over the ice cap to measure the thickness of the remaining ice, assessing its density and the depth of overlying snow, as well as taking weather and sea temperature readings.
Across their 450 kilometer (290 mile) route, the average thickness of the ice floes was 1.8 metres (6 feet), while it was 4.8 metres (16 feet) when incorporating the compressed ridges of ice.
“An average thickness of 1.8 metres is typical of first year ice, which is more vulnerable in the summer. And the multi-year ice is shrinking back more rapidly,” said Wadhams.
“It’s a concrete example of global change in action.
“With a larger part of the region now in first year ice, it is clearly more vulnerable. The area is now more likely to become open water each summer, bringing forward the potential date when the summer sea ice will be completely gone.”
Dr. Martin Sommerkorn, senior climate change adviser for the World Wide Fund for Nature’s international Arctic program, said the survey painted a sombre picture of the ice meltdown, which was happening “faster than we thought”.
“Remove the Arctic ice cap and we are left with a very different and much warmer world,” he said.
Loss of sea ice cover will “set in motion powerful climate feedbacks which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself,” he added.
“This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world’s population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emission from massive carbon pools, and extreme global weather changes.
“Today’s findings provide yet another urgent call for action to world leaders ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December to rapidly and effectively curb global greenhouse gas emissions.”
British energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband said the report “sets out the stark realities of a rapidly changing climate and illustrates the risk of an ice free summer in the Arctic in the not-too-distant future”.
“This further strengthens the case for an ambitious global deal in Copenhagen in December which the U.K. is fully committed to achieving,” he added.
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Comments
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skitters Posted 8:45 am
16 Oct 2009
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Bud Dingler Posted 3:37 pm
16 Oct 2009
This so called expedition was an utter joke from a scientific stand point. In the year 2009 we can measure ice with satellites and did not need to make beleieve we are ice fishing.
Oh and one little problem.....the expedition got rescued after the weather was so brutal they only made it half way to the pole!
The article above implies they crossed the pole but actually according to the Google Earth KML file provided by Catlin, they started at 81.7N 129.7W and ended at 85.5N 125.6W for a total distance of approximately 435 kilometers over 73 days. Hardly a broad survey of the Arctic Ice when put into perspective on the Google Earth and ICEsat maps which show an increase in the last 2-3 years in Arctic Ice Depths:.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 8:28 pm
18 Oct 2009
"That said, concern is rising over accelerated melting of polar ice. One may ask, why? Here's one important reason.
The North and South poles are the Earth's air conditioners, an engine for drawing heat from the equator to the poles, cooling and mixing the atmosphere to achieve relatively moderate temperatures worldwide. These processes, and Earth's rotation inducing the Coriolis Effect, produce wind and our complex weather.
The presence of ice at the poles is important environmentally because solid ice absorbs far more heat energy than liquid water at the same temperature. A gram of solid ice can absorb roughly 80 times the heat energy of a gram of liquid water at 0° Celsius (C). This phenomenon is the direct consequence of a physical property of water known as its "heat of fusion."
Without delving too deeply into minor nuances, the heat of fusion for water is 80 calories per gram. That is the energy required to melt one gram of ice into one gram of liquid water at 0° Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit (F°)). The water melts, but its temperature remains constant.
By contrast, it requires only one calorie to raise one gram of liquid water one degree Celsius, a physical characteristic known as its "specific heat." The water warms, but remains liquid.
Taking these two principles together, one gram of 0° C ice will become one gram of liquid water by absorbing 80 calories of heat without raising its temperature, but that same amount of heat, if applied to 0° C liquid water, will raise its temperature roughly 80° C or to 176° F.
The difference in effectiveness of absorbing heat as between ice and water has important environmental implications. The amount of ice melted at the poles is an indirect measure of the amount of additional heat in the atmosphere. As the amount of polar ice shrinks, its ability to remove heat from -- cool -- the atmosphere decreases.
When there is little or no ice, then it remains for liquid water alone to cool and buffer the atmosphere, thus inviting increased atmospheric temperatures. This is a logical extension of a loss of cooling, much as when the air conditioner fails in a home. Some might debate this point, and doubts are easily raised."
I think its important to note what is happening with the ice - it represents more than it might appear.
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