Disappearing ice shelf shocks northern researcher

[Newsjock]

Source: Nunatsiaq News

When Warwick Vincent flew over the northwestern coast of Ellesmere Island last month, he was shocked to see open water where, at the same time last summer, he saw ice.

"To see that blue water as far as the eye could see, it was like being on a different planet," said Vincent, director of Laval University's centre for northern studies and a researcher who has studied the ecology of northern Ellesmere Island for years.

"The sight was absolutely extraordinary."

Vincent flew over the place where the 50 square-kilometre Markham ice shelf broke away from Ellesmere Island coastline where it had been attached for about 4,000 years

... Rising temperatures is something Vincent experienced first-hand on Ward Hunt Island last month where the high reached a record-breaking 19.7 C on Aug. 2. On nearby Ellesmere Island, the temperature that day rose even higher - 20.5 C.

Read more: http://nunatsiaq.com/news/climate/80912_1522.html

Locator map of Ellesmere Island: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ellesmere_Island.svg

[dana_b]

1. how can some people deny that we are expediting the planet's warming

is beyond me. When it's here and then it's gone in ONE year - I can't see how thay can deny it.

[kurt_cagle]

2. Climate Change

I think the question is less that the Earth is warming as it is the degree to which anthropogenic effects are responsible for that warming. The role of solar sunspot cycles is being re-evaluated in light of recent (July 2008) confirmation by CERN that cosmic rays play a huge role in precipitating cloud formation, with sunspots in turn strongly affecting the shape and efficacy of the earth's magnetic belts. If in fact this hypothesis is true, we are almost certainly nearing an end of a global warming period stretching about 80 years and we should be entering a period of global cooling that may extend to roughly 2060.

The wildcard is the degree to which human efforts affect this. Certainly anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere is higher than at any time since Pangaea split apart about 100 million years ago, but the upshot of this may be less due to greenhouse filtering and more due to particulate carbon serving to melt the sea ice directly - in other words, warming and cooling cycles far more extreme than the current ones have taken place throughout human existence, but there is now enough particulate matter in the air that its reducing the effective albedo of the sea ice, meaning that the ice is more vulnerable to breaking up now that it was even fifty years ago.

Thus, reducing emissions is still a desirable, especially as the melting of the Arctic does introduce a feedback cycle that will make it harder for the Arctic to cool back down again, as open water has a much lower albedo (and hence reflects light back far less effectively) than ice does.

Note - this is not a defence of Sarah Palin or the Republicans, most of whom share a rather shocking lack of knowledge about even the basics of climatology - only a warning that climate change is considerably more complex than many dems tend to paint it.

[Supersedeas]

3. very well said, thanks kurt