High Temperatures in the Arctic

The images below illustrate extremely high temperatures forecast to hit Russia on June 6, 2015, as also discussed in the previous post.

A temperature of 29.4°C (84.92°F) is forecast for the location at the green circle for June 6, 2015. The location is close to the Arctic Ocean and to rivers ending in the Arctic Ocean, as also shown on the image below.

The location, at a latitude of 66.48°N, is approximately on the Arctic Circle, which runs 66°33′45.8″ north of the Equator. North of the Arctic Circle, the sun is above the horizon for 24 continuous hours at least once a year.

The many hours of sunshine make that, during the months June and July, insolation in the Arctic is higher than anywhere else on Earth, as shown on above image, by Pidwirny (2006).

Insolation, with contour labels (green) in units of W m⁻²

The size of the June snow and ice cover is so vitally important as insolation in the Arctic is at its highest at the June Solstice.

The Wikipedia image on the right calculates the theoretical daily-average insolation at the top of the atmosphere, where θ is the polar angle of the Earth’s orbit, and θ = 0 at the vernal equinox, and θ = 90° at the summer solstice; φ is the latitude of the Earth.

The calculation assumed conditions appropriate for 2000 A.D.: a solar constant of S0 = 1367 W m−2, obliquity of ε = 23.4398°, longitude of perihelion of ϖ = 282.895°, eccentricity e = 0.016704.

Snow and ice cover on land can take up a large area, even larger than sea ice. In May 2015, the area of snow extent on the Northern Hemisphere was 17 million square km, while sea ice extent in May 2015 was below 13.5 million square km. 

Northern Hemisphere snow, May 2015. Credit: Rutgers University Global Snow Lab

The chart below shows the decline of snow cover on land on the Northern Hemisphere in Spring over the years. 

Credit: Rutgers University Global Snow Lab

High temperatures over the Arctic Ocean are heating up the snow cover on land and the sea ice from above. High temperatures also set the scene for wildfires that can emit huge amounts of pollutants, including dust and black carbon that, when settling on the sea ice, can cause its reflectivity to fall. Rivers furthermore feed warm water into the Arctic Ocean, further heating up the sea ice from below. 

The image below shows Arctic sea ice extent at June 3, 2015, when Arctic sea ice extent was merely 11.624 million square kilometers, a record low for the time of the year since satellite started measurements in 1979. 

Sea ice melting occurs due to heat from above, i.e. absorbed sunlight. Once the sea ice is gone, energy from sunlight that previously went into melting and transforming ice into water, will instead go into warming up the Arctic Ocean and the sediments under the seafloor.

In addition, sea ice is also melting due to heat from below. Much of this heat is carried by the Gulf Stream and by rivers into the Arctic Ocean. Once the sea ice is gone, all this heat will go into warming up the Arctic Ocean and the sediments under the seafloor.

The sea ice acts as a heat buffer by absorbing energy in the process of melting. In other words, as long as there is sea ice, it will absorb heat and this will prevent this heat from raising the temperature of the water in the Arctic. Once the sea ice is gone, this latent heat must go elsewhere.

As the sea ice heats up, 2.06 J/g of heat goes into every degree Celsius that the temperature of the ice rises. While the ice is melting, all energy (at 334J/g) goes into changing ice into water and the temperature remains at 0°C (273.15K, 32°F).

Once all ice has turned into water, all subsequent heat goes into heating up the water, at 4.18 J/g for every degree Celsius that the temperature of water rises.

The amount of energy absorbed by melting ice is as much as it takes to heat an equivalent mass of water from zero to 80°C. The energy required to melt a volume of ice can raise the temperature of the same volume of rock by 150º C.
Decline of Arctic sea ice means that a lot more heat will be absorbed by the Arctic Ocean.

Thick sea ice covered with snow can reflect as much as 90% of the incoming solar radiation. After the snow begins to melt, and because shallow melt ponds have an albedo (or reflectivity) of approximately 0.2 to 0.4, the surface albedo drops to about 0.75. As melt ponds grow and deepen, the surface albedo can drop to 0.15, while the ocean reflects only 6% of the incoming solar radiation and absorbs the rest.

As Professor Peter Wadhams, University of Cambridge, once calculated, a collapse of the sea ice would go hand in hand with dramatic loss of snow and ice cover on land in the Arctic. The albedo change resulting from the snowline retreat on land is similarly large as the retreat of sea ice, so the combined impact could be well over 2 W/sq m. To put this in context, albedo changes in the Arctic alone could more than double the net radiative forcing resulting from the emissions caused by all people of the world, estimated by the IPCC to be 1.6 W/sq m in 2007 and 2.29 W/sq m in 2013.

Professor Peter Wadhams on albedo changes in the Arctic

Update June 8, 2015: The website at earth.nullschool.net shows that over the past few days temperatures over 30°C (86°F) were reached at several locations over rivers ending up in the Arctic Ocean.

The animation below, by ClimateReanalyzer, shows the heat wave and the storm that hit the Arctic recently.

This animation shows the current GFS model 8-day forecast for the Arctic for six meteorological parameters (precip/cloudcover; wind, pressure, precipitable water, temperature, temperature anomaly). The forecast begins with an impressive storm twirling around the North Pole with 10-meter winds peaking around 55 km/h (~35 mi/h), which fades as the low pressure breaks down. The storm is coupled to an early season heat wave that hit Siberia this week with the development of a high amplitude ridge in the jet stream.In mid August 2012, a comparable storm churned up the sea ice and contributed to the record minimum ice extent that emerged in September. Arctic sea ice is more resilient to wind in early June when it is still relatively thick and compacted than it is in mid August towards the end of the melt season. This current storm is therefore unlikely to have the same impact as the Aug 2012 storm. But the event is worth mentioning nonetheless.

Posted by Climate Reanalyzer on Sunday, June 7, 2015

Arctic sea ice extent at June 3, 2015, was merely 11.624 million square kilometers, a record low for the time of the…
Posted by Sam Carana on Friday, June 5, 2015

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High temperatures in the Arctic

The NOAA map below shows sea surface temperature anomalies above 8 degrees Celsius in the Arctic Ocean.

These anomalies are very high, considering that it is now June and the melting season has only just begun.

Partly causing these high temperatures in the Arctic Ocean is water flowing into the Arctic Ocean from rivers. As the map below shows, a number of large rivers flowing through Siberia end in the Arctic Ocean.

map from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rs-map.png

The Naval Research Laboratory image below shows waters with very low salinity levels (top white rectangles) where warm water from rivers in Siberia enters the Arctic Ocean.

Accelerated warming of the Arctic has changed (and is still further changing) the Jet Streams, increasing the occurence of heat waves on the Norhern Hemisphere that cause huge amounts of warm water to flow into the Arctic Ocean. This is illustrated by the animation below.

[ note: animation is a 2 MB file that may take some time to fully load - click on image to enlarge ]

Another spot to watch, indicated on above map with the bottom white rectangle, is where the Mackenzie River flows into the Beaufort Sea. In this area, sea surface temperatures up to ~17°C (63°F) were recorded from June 26 to 28, 2014, as illustrated by the image below.

As the map below shows, similarly high sea surface temperatures were recorded in the Bering Strait.

High temperatures over North America are making the situation worse. On June 28, 2014, temperatures as high as 27°C (81°F) were recorded in the north of Canada and temperatures as high as 23°C (74°F) were recorded in Alaska, as the map below illustrates.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The 15-hour forecast below, run on June 29, 2014, shows temperatures in the north of North America of up to ~30°C (86°F) in many areas.

As long as the soil is frozen and covered with snow and ice, much of the sunlight is reflected back into space, while much of the sunlight that gets absorbed goes into melting the snow and ice. Once the snow and ice has melted, that energy goes into heating up the soil. The energy required to melt a volume of ice can raise the temperature of the same volume of rock by 150º C.

In Greenland, meltwater percolation is causing latent heat transport into the firn, making it warm up by as much as +5.7°C at midlevel elevations (1400–2500 m), according to a recent study by Polashenski et al.

The situation is particularly dire for the Arctic Ocean, due to the very warm water on the Northern Hemisphere, currently featuring a sea surface temperature anomaly above 1.5º C, as illustrated by above image.

The prospect of an El Niño event striking this year now is 90%, according to predictions by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts.

Arctic sea ice volume minimum is typically reached around halfway into September.

This is still months away, and the number of days the Arctic Ocean is covered by sea ice has fallen dramatically over the years, as illustrated by the image on the right, from a recent study by Claire Parkinson.

The danger is that heat will penetrate sediments underneath the Arctic Ocean that contain huge amounts of methane in the form of hydrates and free gas, resulting in huge eruptions of methane from the seafloor of the Arctic ocean, as described at the methane-hydrates blog.

This risk is intolerable and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.

Post by Sam Carana.

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The Social Tipping Point

by Paul Beckwith

Abrupt Climate Change is happening today, big time!

Abrupt climate change. It is happening today, big time. The northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation system is doing its own thing, without the guidance of a stable jet stream. The jet stream is fractured into meandering and stuck streaked segments, which are hoovering up water vapor and directing it day after day to unlucky localized regions, depositing months or seasons worth of rain in only a few days, turning these locales into water worlds and trashing all infrastructure like houses, roads, train tracks and pipelines. Creating massive sinkholes and catastrophic landslides. And climate change is only getting warmed up.

In the Arctic methane is coming out of the thawing permafrost. Both on land and under the ocean on the sea floor. The Yedoma permafrost in Siberia is now belching out methane at greatly accelerated rates due to intense warming. The collapsing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is exposing the open ocean to greatly increased solar absorption and turbulent mixing from wave action due to persistent cyclonic activity. Massive cyclonic activity will trash large portions of the sea ice if positioned to export broken ice via the Fram Strait.

We have lost our stable climate

What does it all mean? There is no new normal? Far from it. We have lost our stable climate. Likely permanently. Rates of change are greatly exceeding anything in the paleorecords. By at least 10x, and more likely >30x. We are heading to a much warmer world. The transition will be brutal for civilization.

Can we avoid this? Stop it? Probably not? At least with climate reality being suppressed by corporations and their government employees. With their relentless push for more and more fossil fuel infrastructure and mining and drilling.

What else can we expect as we negotiate our abrupt transition in climate to a much warmer world?

Craziness, in a nutshell. Temperatures over land surfaces in the far north have been consistently over 25 C for weeks, due to persistent high pressure atmospheric blocks leading to clear skies and unblocked solar exposure. Water temperatures in rivers and streams in the far north have resulted in large fish kills as their ecological mortality thresholds have been exceeded. Many other regions are experiencing strange incidences of animal mortality. Mass migrations of animals towards the poles are occurring on land and sea, at startling rates, in an effort for more hospitable surroundings for survival. Shifting food source distributions is causing even hardier, less vulnerable species to be severely stressed. For example, dolphins are being stranded or dying, birds are dropping out of the sky, and new parasites and bacteria are proliferating with warmer temperatures.

In regions of the world undergoing severe droughts the vegetation and soils are drying and fires are exploding in size, frequency, and severity. Especially hard-hit are large regions of the US southwest, southern Europe, and large swaths of Asia. Who knows if forests that are leveled by fire will eventually be reforested; it all depends on what type of climate establishes in the region.

What about coastal regions around the world and sea levels? Not looking too good for the home team. In 2012 Greenland tossed off about 700 Gt (Gt=billion tons) of sea ice, from both melting and calving. As the ice melts it is darkening from concentrated contaminants being exposed, from much greater areas of low albedo meltwater pools, and from fresh deposits of black carbon ash from northern forest fires. Even more worrying are ominous signs of increasing movement. GPS sensor anchored to the 3 km thick glaciers hundreds of km from the coast are registering increased sliding. Meltwater moulins are chewing through the ice from the surface to the bedrock and are transporting heat downward, softening up the ice bonded to the bedrock and allowing sliding. Eventually, large chunks will slide into the ocean causing tsunamis and abrupt sea level rises. Many regions of the sea floor around Greenland are scarred from enormous calving episodes in the past.

The Social Tipping Point

On a positive note, this knowledge of our changing climate threat is filtering out to greater numbers of the slumbering public that has been brainwashed into lethargy by the protectors of the status quo. As more and more people see the trees dying in their back yards and their cities and houses and roads buckling under unrelenting torrential rains they are awaking to the threat. And there will be a threshold crossed and a tipping point reached in human behavior. An understanding of the reality of the risks we face. And finally global concerted action. To slash emissions. And change our ways. And retool our economies and reset our priorities. And not take our planet for granted.

Paul Beckwith is a part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. He teaches second year climatology/meteorology. His PhD research topic is “Abrupt climate change in the past and present.” He holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life.

The above compilation of IPCC and NOAA images is by Peter Carter, who adds the following comment:

I agree. The IPCC in 2007 said: “The concentration of CO2 is now 379 parts per million (ppm) and methane is greater than 1,774 parts per billion (ppb), both very likely much higher than any time in at least 650 kyr (during which CO2 remained between 180 and 300 ppm and methane between 320 and 790 ppb). The recent rate of change is dramatic and unprecedented; increases in CO2 never exceeded 30 ppm in 1 kyr – yet now CO2 has risen by 30 ppm in just the last 17 years.”

By definition this is abrupt heating. because atmospheric GHG concentration correlates directly with radiative forcing. CO2 is now 397 ppm and methane is now 1830 ppb ! It follows that the rate of ice being melted will also (as it looks) be unprecedented. The only force we have against mad fossil fuel pushing governments is accountability. They have to be made to face the full terrible consequences of their action on energy and inaction on climate. They are destroying the world.

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Watching methane over Arctic Ocean

Above image, from Wunderground.com, shows high temperatures close to the Kara Sea, where methane readings over 1950 have been recorded for some time now (see earlier posts here and here).

The image below, from Foreca and kindly provided by Albert Kallio, shows that temperatures on parts of Kara Sea and surrounding coast hit 40 degrees Celsius (or 100°F) on July 20, 2013.

The image below, also from Foreca, shows the situation on July 21, 2013, at 1:00 pm.

The NOAA image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies for July 18, 2013.

The animation below shows methane readings for July 19, 2013. High readings over the Kara Sea persist, not surprisingly, while there’s a worrying spot of methane over the East Siberian Sea and there are a number of high readings showing up over Greenland. The animation below is a 3.1 MB file, so it may take some time for it to fully load.

[ click to enlarge ]

Above animation shows the location of the sea ice versus the depth of the seabed. As discussed in previous posts (here and here), there are areas close to the North Pole where the sea ice has been very thin for some time.

The above animation shows one spot just north of Greenland with a high methane reading. The spot shows up at a location where the sea ice is typically at its thickest. At first glance, it may seem hard for methane to rise from the seabed and escape into the atmosphere through such a thick layer of sea ice. But take a look at the animation below, from the Naval Research Laboratory, showing sea ice thickness over the past 30 days. Indeed, there has been quite a bit of movement in the ice in that area, making it easy for methane to enter the atmosphere there.

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How unique in history is the current situation in the Arctic?

Image from the earlier post: Accelerated Arctic Warming

How does the current situation in the Arctic compare to times back in history when temperatures were high, in particular the Eemian interglacial (130 000 to 115 000 years ago)? “Our data show that it was up to eight degrees Celsius warmer during the Eemian interglacial in North Greenland than today”, says project leader Prof. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen from the University of Copenhagen in a recent news release.

As has been described in earlier posts at this blog, the current speed of change is unprecedented in history, and this is destabilizing the Arctic and threatening to unleash huge amounts of methane from the seabed and escalate into runaway warming. Comprehensive and effective action is therefore desperately needed.

Views on this from other people follow below.

Paul Beckwith:

Basic premise about stability of Greenland Ice sheet is wrong. In previous interglacials summers were much hotter but winters were much colder (more extreme seasonality); this helped maintain both sea ice and Greenland ice. CO2 and CH4 stayed within narrow bands much lower than now. Now, reason for melt is completely different. GHG much higher now; temps higher year round so recovery less robust in winter. Before troposphere and stratosphere warmed; now troposphere warming like crazy and stratosphere cooling. Lapse rates did not change much before, now lapse rate is slower so more warming higher up (recall extreme melt at 3100 m on Greenland peak; in fact on entire Greenland surface; well 97%). Daily lows much higher now then before due to GHG trapping at night; not the case before. GHG concentrated more at pole since tropopause only 7 km high (compared to CH4 wetland emissions from wetlands near equator where tropopause is 17 km high). Over Greenland summit only 4km up to tropopause). Also more black carbon now to kill snow/ice albedo. Not looking too good for the home team (us).

Also, with warmer upper troposphere from reduced lapse rate colder stratosphere now (not so in previous interglacials) there is no surprise that SSWs (sudden stratospheric warming) events are occurring more frequently…

Further views will be added below. Please comment!

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