Sometime within the coming weeks it will begin its melt. It is setting up to be another record breaking year. You can't tell by that plot, but the ice is extremely thin. It's also breaking up from wind, nearly 2 months ahead of last season.
The ice is melting from the bottom faster than from the sides. It's a little like when I used to watch ponds melt in the fields around where I grew up. The ice would retreat a little around the edges, it would get melted spots in the ice surface, and then it would all go away really quickly.
We are to the going-away-really-quickly part with Arctic sea ice.
Ice reflects almost all the light that hits it, but open water absorbs almost all light. It warms as a result. The same thing has been happening with land snow cover, actually faster.
So this melting and warming is feeding on itself. Almost all of the sea ice that was there in 1980 is gone; last fall's volume was about one fifth of what was there in '80.
Most predictions used to be that Arctic sea ice would last until the turn of the next century. Then it was mid-century. Now most are saying 2020 or 2030. But if you follow the volume plots, it looks more like 2 or 3 years from now.
We shall see.
No comments:
Post a Comment