What trend can best be fitted to these data? Below, I’ve added a trendline that I believe best fits the data, but I encourage others to come up with better trends.
The trend points at 2014 as the year when Arctic sea ice will first reach zero volume for some time during that year. As discussed in the earlier post Getting the Picture, the Arctic Ocean looks set to be ice-free for a period of at least three months in 2015 (August, September and October), and for a period of at least 6 months from the year 2020 (June through to November).
Natural variability and strong feedbacks may speed things up further. Decline of sea ice in 2012 was such that we can expect a very low volume in December 2012, which could lead to inclusion of December in the period projected to be ice-free from 2020. That would make the ice-free period seven month long, i.e. well over half a year.
The image below shows the three areas where albedo change will be felt most in the Arctic, i.e. sea ice loss, decline of albedo in Greenland and more early and extensive retreat of snow and ice cover in other areas in the Arctic.
Related
- Getting the Picture
arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/getting-the-picture.html
- Albedo change in the Arctic
arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/07/albedo-change-in-arctic.html
arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/07/greenland-is-melting-at-incredible-rate.html
- Albedo change in the Arctic threatens to cause runaway global warming
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