At the fall 2016 American Geophysical Union conference, the largest earth science conference in the world, a demonstrator’s sign read “Ice doesn’t have an agenda, it just melts.” This sign could not have been more appropriate as a fall Arctic heat wave sent sea-ice volume (both thickness and extent) to record lows according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The sea-ice volume was the lowest for fall in the satellite record, which goes back to 1979.
In fact, although Antarctic sea-ice is at its maximum in September when Arctic sea-ice is at its minimum, the combination of the two was still at dramatically record-low levels for September, October and November. And, not only did Arctic sea-ice extent reach record lows for those months, February, April, May and June were also record low months. Thus, 2016 was the first year on record to experience record-low sea-ice for over half of the year.
The Guardian stated on Dec. 19 “The northern ice cap has been shrinking since the 1970s, with global warming driving the loss of about three-quarters of its volume so far.” The Arctic is warming at least 2.5 times faster than earth’s average, due to a powerful positive feedback effect: warming sea melts highly reflective sea-ice which exposes more highly absorbent dark sea-water which warms and melts more ice. As a result, the average Arctic temperature was 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal for the time of year, while some places recorded 36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and even a staggering 65 degrees warmer was recorded in parts of the Russian Arctic.
According to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) project, human caused global warming “made the (extremely warm winter in the Arctic) more likely by orders of magnitude.” Dr. Thorsten Markus, chief of NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, said the Arctic heatwave was “very, very unusual.”
Dr. Friederike Otto, an expert in modeling extreme weather events at the University of Oxford, stated “…a heatwave like this would have been extremely rare — we would expect it to occur about every 1,000 years.” Adding “If climate change continues unchecked, we could see similarly high temperatures in the Arctic every other year by the second half of this century.” And “…we cannot model a heatwave like this without the anthropogenic (human caused) signal.”
The results of a study by The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, using 13 different climate models, found “… In a world with just natural influences, such an event wouldn’t have happened at all.” Repeating the work using a different set of models, the same scientists found similar results, concluding that the record high temperatures were “… highly unlikely in the absence of (human caused) climate change.”
Although 2010 still holds the lowest sea-ice extent for September, the time of year when the minimum extent is expected, 2016 was setting minimum records when the Arctic Ocean should have been refreezing. This created extreme concern among scientists, since a delay in refreezing so late in the year is a major problem for 2017 weather.
Jennifer Francis, an expert in Arctic climate change at Rutgers University, indicated the “Arctic amplification”, which results from the difference in temperature between the Arctic Ocean and the warmer land mass of the northern mid-latitudes, “is most worrisome.” As the Arctic Ocean warms and the temperature difference with the surrounding land mass decreases, the polar jet-stream, which normally circles the North Pole at 250 mph at an altitude of 5 miles, slows and meanders allowing cold Arctic air to plunge deep into the northern latitudes. This mechanism brought intense winters to parts of North America and northern Europe in 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2013-14, causing record snowfalls and billions of dollars of damage.
According to leading climate scientists interviewed by the Guardian, “The dramatic melting of Arctic ice is already driving extreme weather that affects hundreds of millions of people across North America, Europe and Asia.” “Severe ‘snowmageddon’ winters are now strongly linked to soaring polar temperatures (which allow the atmosphere to hold much more moisture), with deadly summer heatwaves and torrential floods.” The Guardian article continued, “The scientists now fear the Arctic meltdown has kick-started abrupt changes in the planet’s swirling atmosphere, bringing extreme weather in heavily populated areas to the boil.”
This is the climate change that President Trump and his team of climate deniers call a “hoax”, “not a problem”, and “just a natural cycle.” And their solution? Withdraw from or ignore the Paris Climate Agreement, “bring back coal” and perpetuate the “clean coal” myth, defund and deregulate efforts to reduce fossil-fuel carbon emissions, and shut down the EPA, NASA and DoE’s climate science work.
Unlike ice, Trump clearly has an agenda. To those who think this is the way to “Make America Great Again,”or that Trump will change his mind, again, and everything will be OK — are you kidding?
William Gran, now retired, was an adjunct instructor at Greenfield Community College on global warming and climate change. He can be reached at whgran@gmail.com.