A recent report in Nature Communications entitled ‘Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic’ shows that even if we manage to curb our burning of fossil fuels to a moderate level we will still have an ice free Arctic ocean as early 2030 and almost certainly within the subsequent twenty years, to 2050. This is considerably earlier than the IPCC report which were estimating somewhere between 2080 and 2100.
The IPCC reports are the gold standard on climate research but their failure is that the report is made from almost every country on the planet and many of the countries have big oil and coal industries including the USA, Australia and Russia and they will not allow a report that impacts their industries adversely.
Being close to the heavily populated areas in the northern hemisphere the Arctic is one of the most comprehensively monitored regions on the planet and we have good satellite observations for some forty years. Climate models are becoming increasingly accurate and the Korean researchers combined the observations from several satellites and used three different models and no doubt a very powerful computer to crunch the data to get a series of results and they all came out with essentially similar results.
A Blue Ocean event in the Arctic would be a massive milestone to the planets climate as we have already lost 40% of the sea ice and it is influencing the weather of the USA, Europe and Asia by changing the polar vortex and bringing extremes of weather. As the ice disappears the dark blue ocean absorbs the heat from the sun and raises the temperature of the region.
The atmosphere to the top of the troposphere is higher at the equator than it is at the poles because the air is warmer at the equator and consequently thinner and to get a barometric pressure of 1000 millibars you need a higher amount of air than you do at the cooler poles.
In the stratosphere air flows from a high point at the equator towards the lower level at the poles and because of the spin of the planet the upper winds flow from the west to the east in a circular ring at 60 to 80 degrees of latitude in both north and south hemispheres.
If there is a good differential of temperature the Vortex flows in a steady ring but as the poles warm faster the differential gets smaller and the Vortex slows down and starts to wonder in big loops. It can also stall so that there is no progression of weather. The problem here is that if you have a rainy wet event it can stay for days or weeks and cause a serious flood. An extended dry period will become a serious drought and cause massive bush fires that burns thousands of acres of land.
These events are already happening increasingly more frequently with only a 40% loss of ice and we don’t want a milestone event like a Blue Ocean.
The IPCC reports are the gold standard on climate research but their failure is that the report is made from almost every country on the planet and many of the countries have big oil and coal industries including the USA, Australia and Russia and they will not allow a report that impacts their industries adversely.
Being close to the heavily populated areas in the northern hemisphere the Arctic is one of the most comprehensively monitored regions on the planet and we have good satellite observations for some forty years. Climate models are becoming increasingly accurate and the Korean researchers combined the observations from several satellites and used three different models and no doubt a very powerful computer to crunch the data to get a series of results and they all came out with essentially similar results.
A Blue Ocean event in the Arctic would be a massive milestone to the planets climate as we have already lost 40% of the sea ice and it is influencing the weather of the USA, Europe and Asia by changing the polar vortex and bringing extremes of weather. As the ice disappears the dark blue ocean absorbs the heat from the sun and raises the temperature of the region.
The atmosphere to the top of the troposphere is higher at the equator than it is at the poles because the air is warmer at the equator and consequently thinner and to get a barometric pressure of 1000 millibars you need a higher amount of air than you do at the cooler poles.
In the stratosphere air flows from a high point at the equator towards the lower level at the poles and because of the spin of the planet the upper winds flow from the west to the east in a circular ring at 60 to 80 degrees of latitude in both north and south hemispheres.
If there is a good differential of temperature the Vortex flows in a steady ring but as the poles warm faster the differential gets smaller and the Vortex slows down and starts to wonder in big loops. It can also stall so that there is no progression of weather. The problem here is that if you have a rainy wet event it can stay for days or weeks and cause a serious flood. An extended dry period will become a serious drought and cause massive bush fires that burns thousands of acres of land.
These events are already happening increasingly more frequently with only a 40% loss of ice and we don’t want a milestone event like a Blue Ocean.
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