Temperatures leap 40 degrees above normal as the Arctic Ocean and Greenland ice sheet see record June melting

Ice is melting in unprecedented ways as summer approaches in the Arctic. In recent days, observations have revealed a record-challenging melt event over the Greenland ice sheet, while the extent of ice over the Arctic Ocean has never been this low in mid-June during the age of weather satellites.

Steffen Olsen, an Arctic researcher with the Danish
Meteorological Institute, and dogs set out to retrieve
 oceanographic moorings and a weather station over
 meltwater topping sea ice in northwest Greenland on Thursday.

Greenland saw temperatures soar up to 40 degrees above normal Wednesday, while open water exists in places north of Alaska where it seldom, if ever, has in recent times.

It’s “another series of extreme events consistent with the long-term trend of a warming, changing Arctic,” said Zachary Labe, a climate researcher at the University of California at Irvine.

And the abnormal warmth and melting of ice in the Arctic may be messing with our weather.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Jason Samenow -  “Temperatures leap 40 degrees above normal as the Arctic Ocean and Greenland ice sheet see record June melting.”

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells review – our terrifying future

You already know it’s bad. You already know the weather has gone weird, the ice caps are melting, the insects are disappearing from the Earth. You already know that your children, and your children’s children, if they are reckless or brave enough to reproduce, face a vista of rising seas, vanishing coastal cities, storms, wildfires, biblical floods. As someone who reads the news and is sensitive to the general mood of the times, you have a general sense of what we’re looking at. But do you truly understand the scale of the tribulations we face? David Wallace-Wells, author of the distressingly titled The Uninhabitable Earth, is here to tell you that you do not. “It is,” as he puts it in the book’s first line, “worse, much worse, than you think.”

Burning issue … Eagle Creek ablaze near Beacon Rock golf
course in North Bonneville, Washington, in September 2017.

The book expands on a viral article, also titled The Uninhabitable Earth, which Wallace-Wells published in New York in the summer of 2017, and which frightened the life out of everyone who read it. Writing at length, he is even more remorseless in his delineation of what the not nearly distant enough future probably holds for us. The book’s longest section, entitled Elements of Chaos, is composed of 12 short and brutal chapters, each of which foretells a specific dimension of our forecast doom, and whose titles alone – Heat Death; Dying Oceans; Unbreathable Air; Plagues of Warming – are enough to induce an honest-to-God panic attack.

Wallace-Wells identifies a tendency, even among those of us who think we are already sufficiently terrified of the future, to be strangely complacent about the figures. Yes, we know that climate change will cause sea level rises of between four to eight feet before the end of this century, but then again what’s a few feet if you happen to live a couple of miles inland? “That so many feel already acclimated to the prospect of a near-future world with dramatically higher oceans,” he writes, “should be as dispiriting and disconcerting as if we’d already come to accept the inevitability of extended nuclear war – because that is the scale of devastation the rising oceans will bring.”

Read the book review from The Guardian by Mark O’Connell - “The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells review – our terrifying future.”

Greenland’s Ice Melt Is in 'Overdrive,' With No Sign of Slowing

Melting on Greenland's ice sheet has gone into "overdrive," with meltwater runoff increasing 50 percent since the start of the industrial era and continuing to accelerate, new research shows. As more water runs off the ice sheet, it drives sea level rise, putting new pressure on coastal communities around the world.

New research showing the accelerating melting of the
Greenland Ice sheet" is a wake-up call that shows how fast
 Greenland is changing," said climate researcher Luke Trusel. 

"Once the ice sheets get kicked into motion, they just keep going. This is a wake-up call that shows how fast Greenland is changing," said Rowan University climate researcher Luke Trusel, co-author of the new study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

The scientists found that the trend of increasing surface melting across the ice sheet began in the mid-1800s as greenhouse gas emissions from the growth of industries were ramping up, and that it shot up over the past three decades. More meltwater is running off Greenland's ice sheet now than at any time in the last 350 years, and probably since long before that, going back 6,000 to 7,000 years, Trusel said.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Bob Berwyn - “Greenland’s Ice Melt Is in 'Overdrive,' With No Sign of Slowing.”

Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble

Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 200 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels a half-millimeter every year, a team of 80 scientists reported Wednesday.

Crevasses near the grounding line of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica. 

The melt rate has tripled in the past decade, the study concluded. If the acceleration continues, some of scientists’ worst fears about rising oceans could be realized, leaving low-lying cities and communities with less time to prepare than they had hoped.

The result also reinforces that nations have a short window — perhaps no more than a decade — to cut greenhouse-gas emissions if they hope to avert some of the worst consequences of climate change.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Chris Mooney - “Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble.”

It’s 50 years since climate change was first seen. Now time is running out

Fifty years ago, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) delivered a report titled Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Polluters to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association for the fossil fuel industry.

 ‘Scientists attribute 15-40% of the epic rain
 of Hurricane Harvey to climate change.’

The report, unearthed by researchers at the Center for International Environmental Law, is one of the earliest attempts by the industry to grapple with the impacts of rising CO2 levels, which Stanford’s researchers warned if left unabated “could bring about climatic changes” like temperature increases, melting of ice caps and sea level rise.

The year was 1968, and the term “global warming” would not appear in a peer-reviewed academic journal until 1975. Famed Nasa scientist James Hansen would not testify before Congress that “global warming has begun” for another 20 years. And the US would not enter into – only to later pull out of – the Paris climate accord for nearly half a century.

Read the climate change opinion piece on The Guardian by Richard Wiles - “It’s 50 years since climate change was first seen. Now time is running out.”

The land of ice embracing climate change

Greenland's massive ice cap is melting at alarming speed, raising fears of sea levels rising around the world.

A sheep farm in Greenland.

But for many of Greenland's 56,000 residents, melting ice means money.

"I'm quite optimistic," Andrias Olsen, a fleet manager with the State fishing company Royal Greenland, said.

"We're seeing some higher stocks due to climate change — at least due to warmer sea temperatures — but also due to the ice cap melting.

"A lot of nutritious water comes down the big fjord systems, which creates optimal conditions for fishery.”

Almost 80 per cent of Greenland is covered by an ice cap, meaning everyone has to make a living on the coast.

Read the ABC News story by foreign correspondent Eric Campbell - “The land of ice embracing climate change.”

Greenland’s Coastal Ice Passed a Climate Tipping Point 20 Years Ago, Study Says

Ice caps and glaciers along the coast of Greenland passed a tipping point in 1997, when a layer of snow that once absorbed summer meltwater became fully saturated. Since then, the coastal ice fields—separate from the main Greenland Ice Sheet—have been melting three times faster than they had been, according to a new study published Friday in the journal Nature Communications.

The coast of Greenland passed
 a tipping point in 1997

"The melting ice caps are an alarm signal for the ice sheet. It means long-term ice mass loss is inevitable. It will increase and accelerate if nothing changes," said lead author Brice Noël, a scientist at the  University of Utrecht Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research. "It's very unlikely the ice caps will recover. It's a climate tipping point—the time at which a change or an effect cannot be stopped.”

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Greenland’s Coastal Ice Passed a Climate Tipping Point 20 Years Ago, Study Says.”

What will be left once earth's climate changes - art?

Not much more than our art will be left among the ruins resulting from climate change, some argue.

Interestingly it has been art, at least of the film variety, that has been predicting what is ahead.

The Guardian writes in a story headed: “A doomed Earth of science fiction may well become a reality” that our climate altering activities are hurtling us towards the fictional future of a hot, melting world.

The sci-fi film, “The Day the Earth Caught Fire” was made some 50 years ago, but could easily be showing us what is really happening today.

Here is something new - our poles are on the move!

Every day, it seems, there is something new.

Now researchers have detected that the North Pole is drifting.

NewScientist reports in a story headed: “Earth’s poles are shifting because of climate change”, that subtle changes in Earth’s rotation have resulted from the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.

It has been shown that the melting due to greenhouse gas emissions is making its own contribution to the shift.