Record Arctic Warming

This topic has conflicting interpretations all over the place.  From here it appears that the Arctic atmosphere has been warmer for a full five years.  Yet at the same time we are duly informed by the Navy that ice thickness has largely recovered to its preceding thickness.  Generally all other evidence appears to support a warmer Arctic and progressive ice loss.  The anomaly is the Navy’s report and it is the one I want to actually accept.

Other climate issues outside the arctic appear to fit inside pretty conventional expectations and a rare record does get broken.  A jet stream shift made life miserable throughout the US this year yet so what!  It will happen again in a few decades.

The Arctic is a different matter. We had been led to believe that a substantial amount of the arctic ice mass had been removed in the past three decades.  The question was why?

The best answer appears to be a modest increase in the influx of warm Gulf Stream water.  Evidence of such possibilities abound in the geological record and is reasonable as an aftermath of the obvious down shift precipitating the little ice age of around 1700 AD.

Further work suggests we are entering the mid section of a thousand year current driven heat cycle.

Thus a warming Arctic is reasonable.  Yet the apparent ice reversal is contraindicative.  For reasons as yet not understood, it may simply not be real.  Or the currents may well have changed again.

The sea level prognostications here are rubbish.

Record Arctic warming to boost sea level rise

by Staff Writers

Oslo (AFP) May 3, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Record_Arctic_warming_to_boost_sea_level_rise_999.html

Record warming in the Arctic over the past six years will substantially contribute to a global sea level rise of up to 1.6 meters by 2100, according to a study published in Oslo Tuesday.

"Surface air temperatures in the Arctic since 2005 have been higher than for any five-year period since measurements began around 1880," the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) said.

"In the future, global sea level is projected to rise by 0.9 to 1.6 meters (2.95 to 5.25 feet) by 2100 and the loss of ice from Arctic glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland Ice Sheet will make a substantial contribution to this," the authors of the study said, stressing, however "that high uncertainty surrounds estimates of future global sea level."

The melting of polar region ice could have disastrous effects on low altitude coastal regions, including in faraway regions.

Temperatures are rising twice as quickly in the Arctic as on the rest of the planet, and "in the future, average autumn-winter temperatures in the Arctic are projected to increase even more," the authors said.

The hike would amount to 3.0 to 7.0 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080, they said.

"And the Arctic Ocean is predicted to be nearly ice free in summer during this century. Likely within the next 30 to 40 years," they added.

The full report will be presented at a meeting of Arctic Council member countries the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland in the Greenland capital Nuuk on May 12.

The AMAP was set up in 1991 by the eight Arctic Council members.