As global warming triggers heavier rainfall and faster snowmelt in the Arctic, Inuit communities in Canada are reporting more cases of illness attributed to pathogens that have washed into surface water and groundwater, according to a new study.
“Scientists often talk about how if global temperature increases by 4 degrees Celsius [7°F], there will be catastrophic climate change effects, Ford said, “but where I work in the Arctic, we’ve already seen that 4-degree Celsius change.”
The findings corroborate past research that suggests indigenous people worldwide are being disproportionately affected by climate change. This is because many of them live in regions where the effects are felt first and most strongly, and they might come into closer contact with the natural environment on a daily basis. For example, some indigenous communities lack access to treated water because they are far from urban areas. ”In the north, a lot of [Inuit] communities prefer to drink brook water instead of treated tap water. It’s just a preference,” explained study lead author Sherilee Harper,a Vanier Canada graduate scholar in epidemiology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. ”Also, when they’re out on the land and hunting or fishing, they don’t have access to tap water, so they drink brook water.”
The disappearance of Arctic sea ice has crossed a “tipping point” that could soon make ice-free summers a regular feature across most of the Arctic Ocean, says a British climate scientist who is setting up an early warning system for dangerous climate tipping points.
Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter has carried out a day-by-day assessment of Arctic ice-cover data collected since satellite observation began in 1979. He presented his hotly anticipated findings for the first time at the Planet Under Pressure conference held recently in London.
Other glaciologists would not comment before seeing the details of the analysis, which have yet to be published in a journal. But if the findings are confirmed, they say, the existing models will have to be rewritten.
Up until 2007, sea ice systematically fluctuated between extensive cover in winter and lower cover in summer. But since then, says Lenton, the difference between winter and summer ice cover has been a million square kilometres greater than it was before, as a result of unprecedented summer melting. These observations are in contrast to what models predict should have happened……..
Plot of (probably best estimate available of) development of arctic sea ice volume between 1979 and now as determined by the numerical model PIOMAS. Deutsch: Zeitverlauf der momentan besten Schätzung des Volumens des arktischen Meereseises zwischen 1979 und 2010, wie es durch das numerische Modell PIOMAS bestimmt wurde. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This year’s Arctic Report Card from NOAA is in, and the grades aren’t good. The theme for this year is that it is clear that the Arctic is experiencing the impacts of a prolonged and amplified warming trend, highlighted with many record-setting events. The report also reminds us that deviations from the average air temperature are amplified by a factor of two or more in the Arctic relative to lower latitudes.
Walrus and other iconic species are at high risk due to prolonged Arctic warming.
To this I would add that it is now apparent (due to the inertia inherent in the global climate system) that the warming effects currently being observed are due to the greenhouse gasses released 30-40 years ago -back when climate change was barely known to the general public. The amount of warming built into the system (based on real-world observations like the ones in this report) that is still to come is quite terrifying – suggesting to me that the most recent IPCC predictions for warming and sea-level rise are remarkably optimistic (let alone the claims of the climate denialists!).
It is also worth noting that while a reduction in the ice-albedo effect leading to enhanced warming is described, accelerated GHG release from thawing permafrost, along with methane hydrates, are not mentioned in this report card (despite the evidence that permafrost is warming up around the Arctic rim). Either could act as additional positive feedback mechanisms – causing accelerated warming – if and when large amounts of gas are released (UPDATE – New article about accelerated methane release from permafrost).
Now to the findings of the report card. The “highlights” include:
*A new record minimum in springtime snow cover duration.
*Increased permafrost temperatures around the Arctic rim.
*Increased river discharge to the Arctic Ocean (could this affect the thermohaline circulation?)
*Increased greenness of Arctic vegetation.
Sea Ice
The Arctic summer sea ice extent and mass is rapidly decreasing.
*September Arctic sea ice extent was the third smallest of the past 30 years (the four smallest recorded September ice extents have occurred in the past four years, and eight of the ten lowest summer minimums have occurred in the last decade).
*Third smallest ever extent of older, thicker multiyear ice.
*Both the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage were ice-free in September.
Greenland
*Record warm air temperatures were observed over Greenland in 2010. This included the warmest year on record for Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, in at least 138 years.
*Melt period on Greenland’s inland ice sheet 1 month longer than the 30 year average.
*Glacier loss along the Greenland margins was also exceptional in 2010, with the largest single glacier area loss (110 square miles, at Petermann glacier) equivalent to an area four times that of Manhattan Island.
“There is now no doubt that Greenland ice losses have not just increased above past decades, but have accelerated – the implication is that sea level rise projections will again need to be revised upward.”
Outcomes
“It is increasingly unlikely (at least for the foreseeable future) that the Arctic will return to conditions that were considered normal in the later part of the 20th century…and very likely that Arctic climate warming will continue and we will continue to see records set in years to come.”
*Progressive reduction in the ice albedo effect, exposing darker ocean and increasing heat absorption – this in turn leads to accelerated melting and a progressive acceleration of this cycle (in a classical example of positive feedback).
*With the expectation of continued warming air temperatures, Arctic species that have adapted to the Arctic environments are expected to be displaced by the encroachment of more southerly (sub-Arctic) species and ecosystems.
“While we see somewhat direct relationships between warming and ice cover melt, it is more difficult, due to the complex nature of ecosystems, to predict and understand how these biological systems are and will respond to this amplified warming trend.”
According to a Reuters report published 29.10.2009, the multi-year ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished.
The disappearance of Arctic multi-year ice is a disaster for polar ecosystems
This is important news for several reasons:
*It is some of the best (or worst?) evidence yet of the rapidity and severity of Arctic warming (and by extension the globe).
*It is many years ahead of what modelers were predicting just a few short years ago.
*It potentially is the start of accelerated Arctic warming (runaway warming) due the loss of the albedo effect and activation of positive feedback loops (like permafrost thawing).
*It opens the Arctic up to shipping, exploration, drilling and other forms of environmentally-questionable activity.
The report describes how Canadian scientist David Barber (Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba) went searching for multi-year pack ice and found very little. “We are almost out of multiyear sea ice in the northern hemisphere,” he said in a recent presentation to the Canadian Parliament.
Reuters says that Barber spoke shortly after returning from an expedition that sought (and largely failed to find) a huge multiyear ice pack that should have been in the Beaufort Sea off the Canadian coastal town of Tuktoyaktuk.
This type of ice can be tens of metres thick and to date has been the barrier closing the fabled Northwest Passage:
Vast sheets of impenetrable multiyear ice, which can reach up to 80 meters (260 feet) thick, have for centuries blocked the path of ships seeking a quick short cut through the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They also ruled out the idea of sailing across the top of the world.
Barber also said that the Arctic is now, from a practical perspective, almost seasonally ice-free. The scale and rapidity of the changes astounded Barber. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 30 years of working in the high Arctic … it was very dramatic,” he said.
An increasing number of experts feel the North Pole will be ice free in summer by 2030 at the latest, for the first time in a million years.
The Arctic is an early indicator of what we can expect at the global scale as we move through the next few decades … So we should be paying attention to this very carefully, according to Barber
The Arctic sea ice pack thawed to its third-lowest summer level on record – up slightly compared to the last two years but continuing an overall decline due to climate change.
Minimum extent was reached on 12 September (2009) when it covered just 5.1 million square kilometres. This falls 20 percent below the 30-year average minimum ice cover for the Arctic summer (since satellites began measuring in 1979), and 24 percent less than the 1979-2000 average.
This year’s minimum represents a loss of about two-thirds of the winter maximum (measured at the height of winter in March). In contrast, sea ice shrank by just over half each summer during the 1980s and 1990s.
Shrinking sea ice extent endangers polar bears and the entire Arctic ecosystem
The lowest summer minimum ever recorded was reached in September 2007, with the second lowest level reached last year. This year’s minimum comes in third lowest.
Even though this year’s minimum is higher than the last two years, it does not mean that global warming has stopped or reversed. Scientists expect fluctuations from year to year in many biological phenomena (including sea ice) – It is the direction and slope of the trend that is important, rather than any one year’s measurement.
An important research paper published earlier this month shows something that climate researchers have long feared – widespread release of methane from the Arctic sea-bed, due to warming currents.
There is a huge amount of methane contained in the Arctic sea floor as methane clathrates (CH4 trapped within water molecules) and deposited at the bottom of the region’s seas.
The clathrates remain stable at low temperatures, but as climate-change induced warming of northern ocean currents continues, scientists worry that methane could be liberated and released into the atmosphere.
As methane is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG), it is possible that runaway global warming (where positive environmental feedback loops lead to accelerated heating and spiralling liberation of GHG from methane clathrates, boreal permafrost, and other sources) could occur.
Once this happens it will be out of our power to stop the climate system from “tipping” to a significantly different, much hotter, state.
Sonar image of methane plumes rising from the Arctic Ocean floor (Image: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton)
Clathrates have been implicated in past environmental change, including the Permian extinction event -
WIKIPEDIA: The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the hypothesis that rises in sea temperatures (and/or falls in sea level) can trigger the sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in the seabeds and their permafrost, which, because the methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, in turn causes further temperature rise and further methane clathrate destabilization – in effect initiating a runaway process, as irreversible once started as the firing of a gun. There is strong evidence that runaway methane clathrate breakdown may have caused drastic alteration of the ocean environment and the atmosphere of earth on a number of occasions in the past…..most notably in connection with the Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago.
The paper’s abstract says:
More than 250 plumes of gas bubbles have been discovered emanating from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin, in a depth range of 150–400 m, at and above the present upper limit of the gas hydrate stability zone (GHSZ). Some of the plumes extend upward to within 50 m of the sea surface. The gas is predominantly methane. Warming of the northward-flowing West Spitsbergen current by 1°C over the last thirty years is likely to have increased the release of methane from the seabed by reducing the extent of the GHSZ, causing the liberation of methane from decomposing hydrate. If this process becomes widespread along Arctic continental margins, tens of Teragrams of methane per year could be released into the ocean.
NASA Earth Observatory: Intense fires burning in the boreal forests of Russia, Alaska and Canada darkened Northern skies with smoke in July 2009. Large fires were burning in both Russia and Alaska in late July, and this image tracks the smoke from those fires by illustrating the concentration of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.
Smoke from Fires in Russia and Alaska
CO Concentrations
Tundra fires are important for several reasons:
About a third of the world’s soil-based carbon is locked-up in high-latitude tundra and boreal forest ecosystems.
Burning tundra releases CO2 and destroys stored carbon (in organic matter) – one study estimates that 50 years of accumulated plant matter was lost after one severe fire.
Severely burned tundra emits twice as much carbon as undamaged tundra normally stores away, for up to a year after burning.
It also absorbs around 70 per cent more solar radiation, warming faster (due to blackening and loss of vegetative cover) – this causes thawing of the underlying permafrost (up to 10 centimetres deep).
Thawing permafrost undergoes anaerobic decomposition and releases methane (a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO2).
This creates a positive feedback loop – burning and its later effects release carbon and melt permafrost. This causes more warming and makes further fires more likely.
Tundra fires will become more frequent in future because higher temperatures and increasing dryness increase the amount of vegetation available to burn (by prompting a shift from tundra comprised mainly of small herbs and grasses to one dominated by larger shrubs).
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The image above was made with data collected by the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) sensor on NASA’s Terra satellite between July 20 and July 26, 2009. Spots of red show where carbon monoxide concentrations were high, while orange areas point to moderate concentrations. Gray regions indicate places where no measurements were made, probably because of persistent clouds. The highest concentrations of carbon monoxide are centered over large fire complexes in Russia. Fires in Alaska were also pumping carbon monoxide into the atmosphere.
Carbon monoxide is a component of smoke that can be tracked long after the smoke has dispersed enough to no longer be visible. Carbon monoxide helps reveal where smoke’s other invisible fine particles and polluting gases end up. These invisible particles and gases, including carbon monoxide, are ingredients in the production of ground-level ozone, a harmful pollutant.
This article based on these two New Scientist articles:
