Watching the sea ice melt in the arctic 2012!

[RollingThunder]

I spent 3 yrs in Earth Resource Satellite image processing....

....as a janitor?

 

[Old Rocks]

What we are watching is a very large change in the albedo of the earth in four months of the summer. The ice reflects 90% of the sunlight, the water absorbs 90% of the sunlight. And then, as the water warms, it melts more ice.

It looks like we will have an essentially ice free Arctic Ocean around 2015, almost certainly by 2020. This was not supposed to happen before 2100. While the temperatures are not quite as high as the models have predicted, the effects are far greater than what has been predicted. From the cryosphere to the weather patterns, the sensitivity of systems of this planet seem to be far greater than most thought.

Now we are still waiting to find out what the amount of outgassing of the CH4 clathrates will be this summer.

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[Old Rocks]

Arctic News: High September 2012 methane levels

 

[Old Rocks]

Much information and links here.

Arctic News: Arctic Methane Alarm

The graph on the right, based on data by Isaksen et al. (2011), shows how methane’s lifetime extends as more methane is released.

The GWP for methane typically includes indirect effects of tropospheric ozone production and stratospheric water vapor production. The study by Isaksen et al. shows (image below) that a scenario of 7 times current methane (image below, medium light colors) over 50 years would correspond with a radiative forcing of 3.6 W/m-2.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

What we are watching is a very large change in the albedo of the earth in four months of the summer. The ice reflects 90% of the sunlight, the water absorbs 90% of the sunlight. And then, as the water warms, it melts more ice.

It looks like we will have an essentially ice free Arctic Ocean around 2015, almost certainly by 2020. This was not supposed to happen before 2100. While the temperatures are not quite as high as the models have predicted, the effects are far greater than what has been predicted. From the cryosphere to the weather patterns, the sensitivity of systems of this planet seem to be far greater than most thought.

Now we are still waiting to find out what the amount of outgassing of the CH4 clathrates will be this summer.

Right.

It's soot from Asia to blame