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Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
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Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.
This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeks shows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.
More...
But the North Pole's current plight stems from a much more startling reduction in sea ice that took place last summer. That extensive melt shattered all previous records and destroyed a significant portion of the Arctic's multi-year ice.
"We lost 65 percent of the ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere all in one year," Barber said. "So it was a whopping decrease. We didn't even think it was possible for the system to lose so much ice all at once."
Link.
They returned with images and data showing that red-hot magma has been rising from deep inside the earth and blown the tops off dozens of submarine volcanoes, four kilometres below the ice. "Jets or fountains of material were probably blasted one, maybe even two, kilometres up into the water," says geophysicist Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who led the expedition.
Three-quarters of all the fresh water on Earth is locked up in ice even now, and we have ice caps at both poles - a situation that may be unique in Earth's history... For most of its history until fairly recent times the general pattern for Earth was to be hot with no permanent ice anywhere.
Bryson, Bill A Short History of Nearly Everything p.427, New York ; Broadway Books 2003
Originally posted by eaglewingz
Sure, the first time in human history. But more or less the rule for the rest of history.
Originally posted by Long Lance
i don't know if a melted floating icecap will do much harm to us, when there are local phenomena which easily explain the process.
The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice
Originally posted by loam
Originally posted by Long Lance
i don't know if a melted floating icecap will do much harm to us, when there are local phenomena which easily explain the process.
Go back and re-read the article you cite.
Originally posted by monkey_descendant
we are a bit #ed aren't we.
It's going to get HOT without the ice caps. The oceans are going to just suck in the heat. If we don't have a slight ice age in northern europe we might boil to death instead since methane is going to start being released from permafrost and the oceans very quickly.
Nice knowing you all.
Originally posted by Long Lance
heat does not melt ice
Originally posted by Long Lance
does not rise to the top either, lol.
Originally posted by loam
So is that supposed to make me feel better about what is happening now?
The ice retreated to a record level in September when the Northwest Passage, the sea route through the Arctic Ocean, opened briefly for the first time in recorded history.
Serreze said those who suggest that the Arctic meltdown is just part of a historic cycle are wrong.
"It's not cyclical at this point. I think we understand the physics behind this pretty well," he said. "We've known for at least 30 years, from our earliest climate models, that it's the Arctic where we'd see the first signs of global warming.
Reduced greenhouse gas emissions could "cool things down a bit," he said.
Sayin' a thing does not by itself make it true.
I told ya so