Arctic Updates

[Jeff]

Climate change threatens North's infrastructure: report

November 26

Canada's North is at risk and unprepared to deal effectively with the threat climate change poses to the region's roads, buildings, waste sites and other other critical infrastructure, according to a federal advisory body.

In a report released Thursday, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy says the North requires a comprehensive effort to ensure "communities become more ready to adapt to expected climate changes leading to degrading permafrost, melting ice roads, storm surges and coastal erosion."

David McLaughlin, the president and CEO of the roundtable, said changes in temperatures in the region could put buildings at risk if they are built on permafrost.

"They will start to degrade," he told CBC News. "The foundations will become unstable you'll get cracks in them. Hospitals and schools all will start to crumble."

The group's 16 recommendations include:

* Updating construction and engineering codes and standards.
* Providing better weather and permafrost information.
* Examining changes to the insurance system.
* Putting more federal funding into new infrastructure built with the changing climate in mind.

The report also notes winter roads melting earlier in the spring could force communities to airlift supplies, while increased snowfall and changing ice conditions can add stress to buildings as well as energy and communications infrastructure.

The recommendations come as world leaders get ready to meet in Copenhagen beginning Dec. 7 to discuss how best to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which have been linked to rising temperatures, particularly in the Arctic, where permafrost degradation and melting sea ice are becoming a concern.

“Climate change is moving fastest in Arctic areas, requiring Canada to be a world leader in adaptation practices — more than we had even contemplated,” round table chair Bob Page said in a statement.

“We believe our report fills an important niche for the federal government in implementing its northern strategy.”

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009 ... cture.html


Hungry polar bears eat young due to shrinking sea ice

By Bob Weber - THE CANADIAN PRESS

Scientists say shrinking Arctic sea ice may be forcing some polar bears into cannibalizing young cubs.

“When (bears) are very hungry, they go looking for something to eat,” biologist Ian Stirling said Friday. “There’s nothing much to eat along the Hudson Bay coast in the fall other than other bears.”

So far this fall, tour operators and scientists have reported at least four and perhaps up to eight cases of mature males eating cubs and other bears in the population around Churchill, Man. Four cases were reported to Manitoba Conservation; four to Environment Canada.

“That’s a very big number,”said Stirling, a retired Environment Canada scientist, who has studied the Churchill population for 35 years.

“I worked there well over 30 years and never saw a single case of cannibalism.”

...

Bill Watkins, a zoologist with Manitoba Conservation, reports he hears about one or two cases of cannibalism a year. He said it’s possible more cases have been seen this year because more tourists are on the land, but he also suspects a climate change link.

“We would really need several years of data like this to confirm that something unusual’s going on,” he said. “While it’s very suggestive of an impact of climate change, it’s a little early to confirm that definitively.”

Nick Lunn, another Environment Canada scientist who’s spent decades studying the bears of Wapusk National Park near Churchill, said he saw polar bears eating other polar bear carcasses four times this fall. He couldn’t confirm the bears killed their meal themselves, but he suggested the number of cases was startling.

“I’ve been working there since the early 1980s and I have never come across (four) cases of bears feeding on the remains of bears before. There’s something going on.”

The cases may be increasing.

Stirling said between 2004 and 2006, he and other researchers found evidence of cannibalism in the carcasses of three adult females and one yearling.

“Killed, simply to be eaten.”

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment ... 51-cp.html

[Jeff]

Satellite images of healthy sea ice prove to be thin "rotten" ice up close

Nov 27, 2009

Arctic sea ice has duped satellites into reporting thick multiyear sea ice where in fact none exists, a new study by University of Manitoba researcher David Barber has found. In 2008 and 2009 satellite data showed a growth in Arctic sea ice extension leaving some to reckon global warming was reversing. But after sailing an ice breaker to the southern Beaufort Sea this past September Dr. Barber and his colleagues found something unexpected: thin, "rotten" ice can electromagnetically masquerade as thick, multiyear sea ice. And contrary to what satellites recently suggested, we are actually speeding up the loss of the remaining, healthy, multiyear sea ice.

The results of the study have now been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters, of the American Geophysical Union. "These are very significant findings since the scientists and public all thought that sea ice was recovering since the minimum extent in 2007," says Barber, a professor of Environment and Geography and Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science.

In September 2009 Barber and others went to various points in the southern Beaufort Sea aboard the research vessel (NGCC) Amundsen. They discovered the multiyear sea icescape was not as ubiquitous as it appeared in satellite remote sensing data. And much of the multiyear ice, which is integral to maintaining the ecosystem and its inhabitants, was so heavily decayed the Amundsen easily broke through floes six to eight meters thick. Indeed, through most of the journey the Amundsen sailed at an average speed of 24km/h; its open water cruising speed is about 25km/h.

"Ship navigation across the pole is imminent as the type of ice which resides there is no longer a barrier to ships in the late summer and fall," Barber says.

So why have satellites been fooled? When studying sea ice, satellites shoot microwaves at the icescape and, among other things, record how they scatter. Each variety of ice was thought to have its own unique scattering characteristics, which researchers could read to determine where certain species of ice reside. But Barber and his colleagues discovered that multiyear ice and the "rotten" ice have similar near-surface temperatures, similar near-surface salinities, and both have similar open water and new sea ice fractions at the surface. So when satellites try to identify who's who, the microwaves behave similar enough that cases of mistaken identity abound.

"Our results are consistent with ice age estimates that show the amount of multiyear sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009 suggesting that multiyear sea ice continues to diminish rapidly in the Canada Basin even though 2009 aerial extent increased over that of 2007 and 2009," the paper concludes.

"This has significant implications for assessment of the speed of global climate change impacts in the Arctic and for increased shipping and industrial development in the Arctic," says Barber.

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws ... news/41112

[Hairball]

I would be remiss if I didn't question the use of ice breakers on our perilously endangered ice. I mean, they break ice don't they? Since Summer Arctic sea ice has been recovering for 2 straight years it might be wise to impose a moratorium on the use of icebreakers in order to evaluate whether they were the cause of the problem all along.

[wintler2]

I would be remiss if I didn't question the use of ice breakers on our perilously endangered ice. I mean, they break ice don't they? Since Summer Arctic sea ice has been recovering for 2 straight years it might be wise to impose a moratorium on the use of icebreakers in order to evaluate whether they were the cause of the problem all along.

As icebreakers continue to operate and (you falsely claim) arctic sea ice is recovering then the link between them must be weak, hmm? By your logic presumably it is skiers causing the breakup of glaciers globally.

You are the silliest poster here in a long while, i'll miss you.

[orz]

wise to impose a moratorium on the use of icebreakers in order to evaluate whether they were the cause of the problem all along.

It might be wise to impose a moratorium on your spectacularly dumb posts.

Go back to the Fox News forums.

[smoking since 1879]

[brainpanhandler]

Antarctic melt to feed global sea rise
By Marlowe Hood (AFP) – 16 hours ago

PARIS — Quickening ice loss in West Antarctica will likely contribute heavily to a projected sea level rise of up to 1.4 metres (4.5 feet) by 2100, according to a major scientific report released on Tuesday.

Scientists long held that most of Antarctica's continent-sized ice sheet was highly resistant to global warming, and that the more vulnerable West Antarctic ice block would remain intact for thousands of years to come.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- whose 2007 report is the scientific benchmark for the UN December 7-18 Copenhagen climate summit -- did not even factor melting ice sheets into its forecasts for rising seas.

But studies since then show huge loss of ice mass, mainly as a result of warmer ocean temperatures, according to the review by more than 100 experts on the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

The new evidence suggests that West Antarctica in particular will add "tens of centimetres" to the global ocean watermark, which is predicted to go up two to nine times higher than the IPCC forecast, according to the report.

Even the relatively modest IPCC projection of a 18-59 centimetre (7-23 inch) increase by 2100 would render several island nations unlivable and wreak havoc in low-lying deltas home to hundreds of millions.

Ironically, the impact of global warming on the region is set to intensify over the next century due to the successful effort to repair another kind of damage to the environment -- depletion of the ozone layer.

A hole in the ozone layer caused by the release of CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) gases has cooled temperatures and shielded most of Antarctica from global warming, the report found.

"The most astonishing evidence is the way that one man-made environmental impact -- the ozone hole -- has shielded most of Antarctica from another, global warming," said John Turner, head of climate research for the British Antarctic Survey and lead editor or the review.

The stable temperatures -- and in some areas additional cooling -- over much of the vast Antarctic continent during the last 30 years has been offered as evidence by climate sceptics that global warming trends were exaggerated or simply false.

But with measures to control the CFC gases, the scientists said they expected the hole to "heal" in around 50 to 60 years, leading to additional warming of about 3.0 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) by century's end.

Already today, 90 percent of the Antarctic Peninsula's glaciers have retreated in the last few decades, though the bulk of the continent's ice sheet has so far shown little change.

The 550-page report highlights several other recent findings:

-- Earth's most powerful ocean current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, has warmed faster than the global ocean as a whole. This is set to disrupt the region's ecosystems, including the rise of alien species that compete with and replace native Antarctic inhabitants.

That process has already begun on the Antarctic Peninsula, where rapid warming has resulted in the expansion of plant, animal and microbial communities -- many of them introduced by humans -- on newly thawed land.

-- Sea ice loss and ocean acidification are directly affecting wildlife, and could reduce Antarctica's rich biodiversity, from the bottom to the top of the food chain.

Tiny krill have declined significantly, and in some areas Adelie penguin populations have dropped due to reduced sea ice and prey. In other regions, however, notably Ross Sea and East Antarctica, populations of the flightless birds have remained stable or gone up.

-- Levels of carbon dioxide and methane, the two main greenhouse gases, are higher and increasing faster than at any time in the last 800,000 years. At the same time, recent studies show that small changes in climate over the last 11,000 years -- the last ice age -- has caused rapid ice loss along with shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... bTqf2dOWwQ

[Jeff]

Arctic warming will continue, no matter what

JANE GEORGE

COPENHAGEN — No matter what the world’s nations do to curb climate change, one thing appears certain: the Arctic is headed for average annual temperatures that will rise 3 to 6 degrees C higher than today by 2100.

As the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen heads into its second week, scientists with the Hadley Centre, the UK’s foremost climate change research centre, made that prediction in a side event held Dec. 11, citing it as a best case scenario.

To limit Arctic warming to those levels, thousands of negotiators and their governments must agree to cut to climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions to a point where overall global temperatures will rise by 2 C before 2100.

If they can’t agree to make these cuts or how to help poor countries cope, “business-as-usual” energy practices would see temperatures rise by 4 C globally.

This “business-as-usual” will condemn the Arctic to temperatures from 9 to 16 C higher than today by 2100.

...

If the world waits until 2030 to take any action, the global temperature will increase by 4.5 C and by up to 5.5 C over land, bringing a host of “dangerous” impacts, such as the near-total melt of the Greenland ice sheet.

If the world dithers, it will require greater cuts to cool it down, and there will be even more uncertainty about the impacts, say the scientists.

To feel the warmth, people can look ahead to the New Year because the Hadley Centre predicts 2010 will be the warmest year since 1998, a record-breaking year for global heat.


http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/a ... tter_what/

[Jeff]

video: Tuktoyaktuk melting away

[Cosmic Cowbell]

To bring a few subjects together dear to the hearts of RIers, I present...

"Alien" Jellyfish Found in Arctic Deep

[Jeff]

Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than 'our most pessimistic models': researcher

By Bruce Owen, Winnipeg Free PressFebruary 6, 2010

WINNIPEG — Sea ice in Canada’s fragile Arctic is melting faster than anyone expected, the lead investigator in Canada’s largest climate-change study yet said Friday — raising the possibility that the Arctic could, in a worst-case scenario, be ice-free in about three years.

University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, said the rapid decay of thick Arctic Sea ice highlights the rapid pace of climate change in the North and foreshadows what will come in the South.

“We’re seeing it happen more quickly than what our models thought would happen,” Barber said at a student symposium on climate change in Winnipeg. “It’s happening much faster than our most pessimistic models suggested.”

Barber and more than 300 scientists from around the globe spent last winter on the Canadian Coast Guard research ship Amundsen in the Arctic, studying the impact of climate change. It was the first time a research vessel remained mobile in open water during the winter season. The Canadian government provided $156 million in funding for the study.

Barber said the melting sea ice can be compared to disappearing rain forests.

“If you go into the rain forest and you cut down all the trees, the ecosystem in that rain forest will collapse,” he said. “If you go to the Arctic and you remove all the sea ice or if you remove the timing of the sea ice, the system will change.”

That change will include more invasive species moving up from the South and species that live in the Far North having to adapt to a different environment.

The occurrence of Arctic cyclones is also on the rise, which contributes to ice breakup.

Barber said before the expedition that climate scientists were working under the theory that climate change would happen much more slowly. It was assumed the Arctic would be ice-free in the winter by 2100.

“We expect it will happen much faster than that, much earlier than that, somewhere between 2013 and 2030 are our estimates right now. So it’s much faster than what we would expect to happen. That can be said for southern climates as well.”

The impact means more variability in the Earth’s climate — warm trends are warmer and cold trends are colder.

Dr. John Hanesiak, an associate professor at the University of Manitoba’s Centre For Earth Observation Science, said that due to human actions and the release of greenhouse gases, those extremes may include more frequent summer droughts and more spring floods in southern climates.

“We know that we’re part of the problem,” he said. “There’s no question about that. The models are telling us that now.”

Scot Nickels, senior science adviser with Canada’s national Inuit organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said the impact of climate change has been significant on people who live in the Far North. It’s changing their way of life as wildlife adapt and traditional hunting patterns change.

“There’s also the need for economic development,” Nickels said, adding mineral and oil exploration has also increased with changing weather.

“It’s a real balancing act that has to be done. As we know in the South, that’s not an easy thing. It’s the same up north.”

Dr. Steve Ferguson, a research scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the thinning ice and warming of the water brings species from the south and the potential for the spread of disease.

“There’s phocine distemper that in Europe has wiped out a huge number of harbour seals,” he said.

“There’s now evidence some of that disease is in some of the Arctic seals, so there’s concern that as things warm move further north we can see some epidemics.

“Even killer whales, for example . . . we now know they move into the Arctic, but they come from quite far south, so again, they’re in contact with other kinds of whale species in southern areas and they’re bringing something potentially up north to the Arctic.”

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/ ... story.html

[Jeff]

Arctic methane leak, it’s official - March 05, 2010

Scientists officially report in a paper in today’s issue of Science (subscription required) what has already, er, leaked a while ago: Methane gas is released at quite substantial rates from beneath the frozen Arctic Ocean floor.

The international research team observed and recorded the leaks from the methane-rich shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf during a series of eight expeditions from 2003 to 2008 on board Russian ice breakers.

The permafrost (frozen soil) on the sea floor – a relic of the last ice age - was previously thought to act as a tight lid for the methane – a highly potent greenhouse gas – stored underneath. But the team, led by Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks – found that the cap has become permeable.

They discovered that 80% of the bottom water and 50 % of surface water over the shelf are already supersaturated with methane. As a result, large amounts of the gas are bubbling out into the atmosphere.

Methane released from the region – around eight million tons per year (compared to around 600 million tonnes globally) – is no immediate threat for global climate stability. But the scientists say that future permafrost thawing in response to rising sea and air temperatures does raise concerns for the future.

Arctic permafrost — on land and underwater — could hold trillions of tons of methane, most of which is stored in the form of frozen gas hydrates. The scientists now plan to drill into the seafloor off Siberia to estimate how much of the stuff is stored there.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbe ... ffici.html

[Ben D]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6233ZU20100304

Methane bubbles in Arctic seas stir warming fears
4th March 2010

(Reuters) - Large amounts of a powerful greenhouse gas are bubbling up from a long-frozen seabed north of Siberia, raising fears of far bigger leaks that could stoke global warming, scientists said.

It was unclear, however, if the Arctic emissions of methane gas were new or had been going on unnoticed for centuries -- since before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century led to wide use of fossil fuels that are blamed for climate change.

-snip-

"It's good that these emissions are documented. But you cannot say they're increasing," Martin Heimann, an expert at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany who wrote a separate article on methane in Science, told Reuters.

"These leaks could have been occurring all the time" since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, he said. He wrote that the release of 8 million tonnes of methane a year was "negligible" compared to global emissions of about 440 million tonnes.

[Jeff]

On the other hand:

"These leaks could have been occurring all the time" since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, he said. He wrote that the release of 8 million tonnes of methane a year was "negligible" compared to global emissions of about 440 million tonnes.

Humans must be to blame for climate change, say scientists
No possible natural phenomenon could have caused the huge rise in temperatures experienced in last half-century
Friday, 5 March 2010


...

"There is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is dominated by natural rather than anthropogenic [man-made] factors," the scientists concluded in their study, published in the journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews of Climate Change.

Scientific observations based on temperature recordings on every continent, as well as thermometer readings on, in and above the oceans, leave "little room for doubt" that the earth is warming, but trying to attribute a cause for this global warming is not possible unless man-made activity in the form of carbon dioxide emissions is taken into account, the scientists said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 16506.html

[Simulist]

Thank you for emphasizing the latter half of that paragraph, Jeff, instead of the first half.

The information in the latter half seems much more significant to the overall issue.