The end of polar ice in 2022?
I have been concentrating on things within the human realm – a pandemic, war, New World Order etc. because they have been the most urgent things on my mind.
However, as we head towards the end of the melt season my attention is turning once more to the Arctic.
The situation is dire.
Watch Margo’s detailed report:
If you look at the following (and that is what everyone points to, from sceptics to followers of abrupt climate change) you might think that the situation is relatively “normal”
I have the impression that if there was total coverage that was only an inch thick this would be represented as sea ice extent.
There have been no headlines of how bad the Arctic ice is – no reports from the Polarstern with selfies of people posing against melting ice.
Silence.
Yet the situation is very different as can be seen in the pictures below.
Look at how close the breaking-up and melting of the ice is to the North Pole.
The distance from the Pole is 60 km (40 miles)
Let us go in a bit closer to see what it looks like.
This can be represented differently with ice concentration.
These days I avoid speculative or manipulative material and like, as much as I can, to limit myself to WHAT IS.
Graphical representations can misrepresent the situation.
Whereas a few years ago Peter Wadhams would go to the Arctic every year and measure the thickness of the ice from a submarine using sonar (data that could be taken to the bank), now it is all done by satellite and computer modelling.
If you want an example of how things can be distorted compare the US Navy sea ice thickness data from 2012 with now.
You can’t because some time they changed the computer modelling and that completely changed the way things looked.
Those are some of the reasons why I have developed a mistrust of the data.
However, pictures of the ice from Space, above, are difficult to falsify.
The media (to the extent they talk about the subject at all) and those that want to pull the wool over your eyes will point to climatic conditions.
While that is somewhat important it is the warm waters that are underneath and on the edges of the ice that make all the difference.
The temperature of the water is sufficient to just eat up ice.
More details below in Sam Carana’s article.
The following are absolute temperatures in the Arctic – all in green except for Greenland.
When it comes to methane…
Arctic subsea permafrost melt ‘methane’ emissions seem to be spreading along the shoreline. Compare – two days apart
These are comments from Margo who has never seen things this way:
We’ll be in high melt for at least 3 more weeks before it starts slowing.
I’ve never seen the ice breaking up at the North pole like this before, especially this early.
Here is another apposite comment from the Sea Ice Forum:
As someone who monitors the S1 Radar daily, I can say that what was different about the past winter, is that none of the ice formed on the Eurasian continental shelf made it past the shelf break into the Central Basin without being softened and thoroughly fragmented. The pack remained far more mobile and constantly broken from all angles all winter largely Basin wide.
The images we are getting now, make what in visual low resolution products you might assume are round contiguous floes, as sheets of contiguous ice, but actually they are weekly bound composite if many fragments.
We are also seeing large areas where the fractional area of ice is as low as ten percent, but they will count in Area and Extent as 100% ice covered, though the remaining up to 9O% is floating freshly fallen snow. If the snow stops for long, or serious winds come in, we will see things change very fast.
It is very dangerous having so much of the ice so dispersed, and large fetches available for it to be attacked by wind and wave from many. directions at once.
And the heat is available near the coasts for much longer.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,3749.msg342811.html#msg342811
To understand just how quickly things can change from relatively normal sea ice extent to open ocean you need to understand the concept of latent heat.
Try melting ice cubes in a saucepan of water. It takes a very long time for the ice to melt on the stove but once it has melted the temperature of the water rises very quickly.
Sam Carana says in his article that the latent heat buffer had already disappeared in June 2022.
The following article from Arctic News by Sam Carana,read by Margo in her video, explains everything very well.
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| [ from Blue Ocean Event ] |
A Blue Ocean Event occurs when virtually all sea ice disappears and the surface color changes from white (sea ice) to blue (ocean). According to many, a Blue Ocean Event starts once Arctic sea ice extent falls below 1 million km².
The image on the right shows a trend pointing at zero Arctic sea ice volume by September 2027.
Note that the volume data in the image are averages for the month September — the minimum for each year is even lower. Furthermore, since zero volume implies zero extent, this indicates that a Blue Ocean Event (extent below 1 million km²) could happen well before 2027.
Sea ice thickness and NASA Worldview satellite images
The above animation shows a dramatic fall in sea ice thickness over a large area. This fall in thickness is mostly due to warm water from the Atlantic Ocean that is melting the sea ice hanging underneath the surface. This is where the sea ice constitutes the latent heat buffer, consuming incoming heat in the process of melting.
The University of Bremen combination image below shows the difference in sea ice thickness between June 1, 2022, June 30, 2022, and July 22, 2022. The images at the center and on the right show large areas where sea ice is less than 20 cm thick, indicating that the latent heat buffer had already disappeared in June 2022, as also discussed further below.
The NASA Worldview combination image below shows the sea ice north of Greenland on July 19, 2022 (top), and on July 22, 2022 (bottom), that even at places where the sea ice once was the thickest, it can melt away rapidly. The mechanism behind this is that, as thick ice breaks off and fragments, it additionally gets heated up from the sides, and this further accelerates the melting as the sea ice breaks up further, into ever smaller pieces.
Of the extra heat from Earth’s energy imbalance, about 93% ends up in the ocean as increasing ocean heat content (see image below), 3% goes into melting ice, 4% goes into raising temperatures of land and melting permafrost, and less than 1% remains in the atmosphere, as discussed in an earlier post.
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| [ from earlier post ] |
On July 19, 2022, the sea surface temperature anomaly from 1981-2011 in the Arctic Ocean was as high as 14.0°C or 25.2°F (at green circle), as illustrated by the screenshot below of a nullschool.net image (with text added). In 1981-2011, the sea surface temperature at this spot (at the green circle in the Kara Sea) at this time of year was around freezing point.
A 2019 analysis concludes that the latent heat tipping point gets crossed when the sea surface temperature anomaly on the Northern Hemisphere gets higher than 1°C above 20th century’s temperature and when there is little or no thick sea ice left. As the image below indicates, the temperature anomaly of 1°C above the 20th century average looks set to be crossed in the course of the year 2021.
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| [ from the post Arctic Ocean invaded by hot, salty water ]
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As the Latent Heat Tipping Point gets crossed, there may still be a thin layer of ice at the surface, at least as long as air temperatures are low enough to keep it frozen and as long as strong winds haven’t pushed the sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean. This thin layer of ice will still consume some ocean heat below the surface, but at the same time it acts as a seal, preventing heat from the Arctic Ocean to enter the atmosphere. Even if a lot of sea ice remains, the situation is dangerous, if not even more dangerous. The continuing La Niña could cause a lot of thin sea ice to remain at the surface of the Arctic Ocean this year. The more sea ice remains, the less ocean heat can be transferred from the Arctic Ocean to the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean, which means that more heat remains in the Arctic Ocean.
One huge danger is that, as the buffer disappears that until now has consumed huge amounts of ocean heat, more heat will reach methane hydrates at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, causing them to get destabilized and resulting in releases of methane from these hydrates and from free gas underneath that was previously sealed by the hydrates.
As the latent heat buffer of the sea ice underneath the surface disappears, more of this heat could then reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, threatening eruptions to occur of seafloor methane (from hydrates and from free gas underneath the hydrates). The methane could similarly push up temperatures dramatically over the Arctic, and globally over the next few years.
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| [ feedback #14: Latent Heat ]
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The above 2014 image, from the feedbacks page, shows three of the numerous feedbacks that are accelerating warming in the Arctic. Feedback #1 is the albedo feedback. Feedback #14 refers to the loss of the Latent Heat Buffer and warming of the Arctic Ocean. Feedback #2 refers to methane releases.
Heatwaves look set to continue on the Northern Hemisphere, extending heat over the Arctic Ocean and thus affecting Arctic sea ice from above, while warm water from rivers will cause more melting at the surface, and while rising ocean heat will continue to cause more melting of the ice underneath the surface. If this continues, we can expect a new record low for sea ice in September 2022 and the joint loss of the latent heat buffer and the loss of albedo could push up temperatures dramatically over the Arctic, while the additional methane could similarly push up temperatures dramatically over the Arctic, and globally over the next few years.
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| [ The Buffer has gone, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page ] |
In conclusion, temperatures could rise strongly in the Arctic soon, due to sea ice loss in combination with an upcoming El Niño and a peak insunspots, with the potential to drive humans extinct as early as in 2025, while temperatures would continue to skyrocket in 2026, making it in many respects rather futile to speculate about what will happen beyond 2026. At the same time, the right thing to do now is to help avoid the worst things from happening, through comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.
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CONCLUSION
We have two more weeks of high melt and after that it slows down.
I am not a betting man but if i was I would be wagering that we could easily see a Blue Ocean Event in the next couple of months. However, if just the Central Arctic Basin around the North Pole turns into open water if just a few weeks it will be more significant than I can express.
All bets will be off and we will be in new territory – and no alternative energy or electric cars (or whatever else they want to foist on us) will help us one iota.
Once the ice goes no number of graphs or geoengineering to cover it all up will hide it.
The pictures will show the reality
POSTSCRIPT
In trying to find some context for this Margo and I went searching.
We found this item from late-August, 2020.
Before that there was no similar break-up that far north
