In my last post, I showed that we have at most a decade before the last of the long term sea is gone and no longer a factor. What difference will it make?
The important change will be in the amount of summer heat absorption in the Arctic Ocean. Up to very recently, this factor was negligible since the Sea remained covered with minor late season clearances. This year, half the Arctic is clear. And the other half will mostly clear in the next decade. This will be additionally stabilized by the sharp increase in solar energy absorption in the top layer of water.
What I am saying, is that once the ice is gone, the annual reestablishment of sea ice cover will be more difficult. The water will be slightly warmer and will take longer to establish its annual thickness.
Remember that it took 32 calories to melt or freeze the ice in the first place. If all this unused energy goes into warming the arctic waters, then Our sea ice cover will behave a lot like the sea ice cover in Hudson Bay providing perhaps a four month long clear sailing environment.
It will still be too cold to generate much evaporation, so there should be little change for the land based ice sheets. This conforms to the data provided by the drill cores that go back over 15,000 years. In fact, the only break in that data continuity came 12500 years ago and is a principle marker for the Pleistocene nonconformity. It became dryer.
This also suggests open seas during the summer months of the Bronze Age and their near reemergence in the early fifteenth century. It also loudly begs the question of what mechanism cooled the northern Hemisphere, or more appropriately what cooled the surface waters of the gulf stream?
A previous post suggested that the mechanism was an injection of cold water from the Antarctic. We just have not figured it all out yet. I think though that we should be prepared for a nasty surprise there. The open question in my mind is whether we now have any evidence to support a four hundred year chilling cycle for the Atlantic? It may be more random than that, but it likely exists.
It has only taken 400 years to recover from the little ice age. Yet almost 2500 years had passed since the collapse of the Bronze Age optimum. Surely someone noticed? My point is that as far as we can determine, most of those 2500 years were chilly. We could actually be dead wrong here and the climate could have been generally warmer throughout and the real anomaly is the recent little ice age.
Time to look at those tree rings and pollen samples in transition areas to get a much refined climate proxy.
Otherwise, with the current regime, We know that the permafrost line will shift north somewhat, and the tree line will also move north. It is hard to see how this will effect humanity very much since few of us like to live in alpine like conditions. The short summers will remain the same and be just a little warmer. And there are many better places to grow potatoes.
Local coastal agricultural enclaves will be possible, just like those old Vikings in Greenland. Otherwise, a quick trip to Churchill will inform you of likely future conditions in the high Arctic.
Certainly, once the long term ice is gone, the shipping season will open right up although I am sure everyone will plan on a September crossing. The polar bears will be able to treat the whole Arctic the same way they treat Hudson Bay with a much longer hunting season. I would also expect an explosion in the Arctic biomass in general since there will be a season in which the ocean receives sufficient solar energy for all forms of plankton and the like.
The high arctic will still be a desert on land, but the ocean could easily become the globe's larder if managed well.
The important change will be in the amount of summer heat absorption in the Arctic Ocean. Up to very recently, this factor was negligible since the Sea remained covered with minor late season clearances. This year, half the Arctic is clear. And the other half will mostly clear in the next decade. This will be additionally stabilized by the sharp increase in solar energy absorption in the top layer of water.
What I am saying, is that once the ice is gone, the annual reestablishment of sea ice cover will be more difficult. The water will be slightly warmer and will take longer to establish its annual thickness.
Remember that it took 32 calories to melt or freeze the ice in the first place. If all this unused energy goes into warming the arctic waters, then Our sea ice cover will behave a lot like the sea ice cover in Hudson Bay providing perhaps a four month long clear sailing environment.
It will still be too cold to generate much evaporation, so there should be little change for the land based ice sheets. This conforms to the data provided by the drill cores that go back over 15,000 years. In fact, the only break in that data continuity came 12500 years ago and is a principle marker for the Pleistocene nonconformity. It became dryer.
This also suggests open seas during the summer months of the Bronze Age and their near reemergence in the early fifteenth century. It also loudly begs the question of what mechanism cooled the northern Hemisphere, or more appropriately what cooled the surface waters of the gulf stream?
A previous post suggested that the mechanism was an injection of cold water from the Antarctic. We just have not figured it all out yet. I think though that we should be prepared for a nasty surprise there. The open question in my mind is whether we now have any evidence to support a four hundred year chilling cycle for the Atlantic? It may be more random than that, but it likely exists.
It has only taken 400 years to recover from the little ice age. Yet almost 2500 years had passed since the collapse of the Bronze Age optimum. Surely someone noticed? My point is that as far as we can determine, most of those 2500 years were chilly. We could actually be dead wrong here and the climate could have been generally warmer throughout and the real anomaly is the recent little ice age.
Time to look at those tree rings and pollen samples in transition areas to get a much refined climate proxy.
Otherwise, with the current regime, We know that the permafrost line will shift north somewhat, and the tree line will also move north. It is hard to see how this will effect humanity very much since few of us like to live in alpine like conditions. The short summers will remain the same and be just a little warmer. And there are many better places to grow potatoes.
Local coastal agricultural enclaves will be possible, just like those old Vikings in Greenland. Otherwise, a quick trip to Churchill will inform you of likely future conditions in the high Arctic.
Certainly, once the long term ice is gone, the shipping season will open right up although I am sure everyone will plan on a September crossing. The polar bears will be able to treat the whole Arctic the same way they treat Hudson Bay with a much longer hunting season. I would also expect an explosion in the Arctic biomass in general since there will be a season in which the ocean receives sufficient solar energy for all forms of plankton and the like.
The high arctic will still be a desert on land, but the ocean could easily become the globe's larder if managed well.
