Rapid icemelt practically destroys small Alaskan town.

"Temperatures in some parts of Alaska soared into the 70s this week, causing a rapid "melt-out" of ice and snow along the Yukon River and unprecedented flooding that nearly wiped out the small community of Eagle.

...Borg says the Yukon rose 30 feet over its normal level when 4- to 7-foot-thick ice pans surged downstream, choking the river and bulldozing islands and shorelines. The devastation stretches for miles up and down the river, where trees have been sheared off and muddy banks scooped away like chocolate ice cream."

LINK

Sea level rise to be much worse than predicted. Everybody go surfing now?

"The global sea level looks set to rise far higher than forecast because of changes in the polar ice-sheets, a team of researchers has suggested.
Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen said earlier UN estimates were too low and that sea levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100.
The projections did not include the potential impact of polar melting and ice breaking off, they added.
The implications for millions of people would be "severe", they warned.
Ten per cent of the world's population - about 600 million people - live in low-lying areas. "
LINK

Hell in a handbasket. Ayup.

Well, just because I haven't had time to breathe doesn't mean that the Doom has slowed down. Au contraire- the world is getting weirder, scarier, and darker faster than anyone could keep up, let alone me in my own weird mental state (kind of like Nebraska but a little more desolate and with more vicious wolverines chasing me).

So. To sum up:

Cocaine-fueled terrorists took Mumbai for a few days, Americans ignored it and ate turkey and trampled a part-time Wal-mart employe to death in their frenzy to buy more crap made in China, and now residents of Kashmir are worried about potential retaliation. "I have asked my children to pay attention and be vigilant if shelling starts," said one woman.

Riots in Nigeria killed at least 400, and Thailand is "Feeling like a country on brink of civil war".

In economic news, Ford would like 9 billion dollars please, to stay in business, and we are officially in a recession. Bush is "sorry" that the financial crisis is hurting Americans.

As we turn to the environment, Venice is so flooded that fools are surfing in Saint Mark's Square, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is breaking off of Antarctica,
and the UN Comittee on Climate Change just warned ""Further expansion in the same style will generate global threats of really great intensity - huge droughts and floods, cyclones with increasingly more destructive power, pandemics of tropical disease, dramatic decline of biodiversity, increasing ocean levels," said Mr Nowicki.
"All these can cause social and even armed conflict and migration of people at an unprecedented scale."

So.

Happy Tuesday!

I am so so sorry.

" Polar bears are starving, drowning, resorting to cannibalism " LINK

Christ.
I don't even want to breathe.

So effing doomed.

"A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.
They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.
"The changes ... were massive and disturbing," said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec." LINK

Melty!

"Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013.
Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska's Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic.
As a result, scientists say that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year's record loss. More than a million square kilometres melted over the summer of 2007 as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic. But such destruction could now be matched, or even topped, this year.

What really unsettles scientists, however, is their inability to forecast precisely what is happening in the Arctic, the part of the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. 'When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic's summer ice cover would last until around 2070,' said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. 'It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic's summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct.'" LINK

Both the South and the North are all effed up.

"Twenty Russian scientists have been rescued from their camp on an ice floe in the Arctic that was melting faster than expected, a spokesman for the expedition told AFP on Monday.
"The 20 polar researchers and their two dogs climbed on board the 'Mikhail Somov'" research ship late Sunday, said Sergei Bolyasnikov, a spokesman for Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute.
"All scientific programmes at the station have been stopped," he added.
The ship travelled with an ice-breaker to rescue the researchers from camp North Pole 35, which was set up last September on an ice floe that has shrunk from six kilometres (3.8 miles) to just 600 metres in length.
The scientists are now due to return to the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk.
Scientists report that global warming means the thawing season is coming earlier in the Arctic and that the ice cover is retreating, making expeditions on ice floes increasingly perilous. " LINK

Christ this is heartbreaking.

"Tens of thousands of newly-born penguins are freezing to death as Antarctica is lashed by freak rain storms.
Scientists believe the numbers of Adelie penguins may have fallen by as much as 80 per cent – and, if the downpours continue, the species will be extinct within ten years.
And the Emperor penguin – made famous in the Oscar-winning documentary March Of The Penguins – is also under threat.
Temperatures on the Antarctic peninsula have risen by 3C over the past 50 years to an average of -14.7C and rain is now far more common than snow.
Adelie penguins are born with a thin covering of down and it takes 40 days for them to grow protective water-repellent feathers. With epic rains drenching their ancestral nesting grounds, their parents try to protect them. But when the adults leave to fish for food, or are killed by predators such as seals, the babies become soaked to the skin and die from hypothermia.
‘Everyone talks about the melting of the glaciers but having day after day of rain in Antarctica is a totally new phenomenon. As a result, penguins are literally freezing to death,’ said Jon Bowermaster, a New York-based explorer who has recently returned from Antarctica.
‘It is all very well talking theoretically about how the ice cap could disappear – but watching penguins walking among the skeletons of their young is the most powerful evidence of climate change I have seen.’" LINK

Is this really something to be voted on in a poll? Really?

wildly inappropriate. wildly.

Ok, We're so fucked. No ice at the north pole this year.

"It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
Thepolar regions are experiencing the most dramatic increasein average temperatures due to global warming and scientists fear that as more sea iceis lost, the darker, open ocean will absorb more heat and raise local temperatures even further. Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, who was one of the first civilian scientists to sail underneath the Arctic sea ice in a Royal Navy submarine,said that the conditions are ripe for an unprecedented melting of the ice at the North Pole.
"Last year we saw huge areas of the ocean open up, which has never been experienced before. People are expecting this to continue this year and it is likely to extend over the North Pole. It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer – it's not happened before," Professor Wadhams said." LINK

Crikey. This sounds surprising and really unpleasant!

"Officials in a remote Baffin Island community said Saturday conditions appear to have stabilized after a flash flood looked as though it might wash the community away from underneath.

Heavy rain and unusually warm 13-degree temperatures produced rapid snow melt in the surrounding mountains and hills and led to a flood last weekend.
So much water blasted down the Duvall that it carved a 10-metre channel through the permafrost, right down to bedrock. It damaged both of the town's bridges sufficiently that a majority of the community's 1,600 residents were cut off from the water reservoir, sewage lagoon and garbage dump.
Fears of subterranean erosion were then raised as large cracks and sinkholes began to appear between the town and the river.
"More large cracks (were) appearing, more sinkholes,'' said Mongeau. "We had a telephone pole that literally, before our eyes, dropped 15 feet into the ground.''
With more rain and warm temperatures forecast, Mongeau is unsure whether the current stability will last.
"At this point they're stable; tomorrow, who knows,'' he said.

Private geo-tech companies should be on site shortly to use ground-penetrating radar to find out exactly what's stirring beneath their feet. Science professionals already studying the situation are dumbstruck by what's happening.
Although Mongeau stresses his opinion is not scientific, he believes the root cause of this occurrence, and many other in the eastern Arctic, is global warming. He said ice patterns have been shifting and locals are noticing the arrival of new species to the area, like capeline -- a small fish used to catch cod.
"Fishermen have been fishing these waters for 40 years and they've never seen one,'' he said. "We're pulling them out in large numbers right now.'' LINK

So. Much. Faster.

Wow.

"Rapid Arctic sea ice loss could triple the rate of warming over northern Alaska, Canada and Russia and trigger permafrost thawing that unleashes extremely potent greenhouse gases, according to a new study.

Our study suggests that, if sea ice continues to contract rapidly over the next several years, Arctic land warming and permafrost thaw are likely to accelerate," lead author David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said in a statement.

Arctic sea ice extent shrank to a record low last summer, more than 30 percent below average, while air temperatures over land in the western Arctic were unusually warm from August to October — reaching more than 4 degrees F above average.
Researchers used a climate model to study whether the two events were related, and found that when sea ice melts quickly, the rate of Arctic land warming is 3.5 times greater than the average 21st century warming rates predicted in climate models. "LINK

Just in case you thought that big splash earlier was 'awesome'.

"Chinstrap penguins perch on top of an eroded blue iceberg near Candlemas Island. Icebergs are simply fragments of glaciers, and last October an iceberg half the size of Greater London ‘calved’ from the vast Pine Island Glacier (Pig). Over the past 20 years, Pig has been thinning at 40 times the previous stable rate. Antarctica holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 57m. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected sea level rises by 2100 of between 20 and 80cm" LINK

Splash.

"A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday..." CNN

"Vast Antarctic ice shelf on verge of collapse
Latest sign of global warming’s impact shocks scientists

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent.Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (about the area of Manhattan) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf — about 6,180 square miles (about the size of Northern Ireland)— was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate."Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread — we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."" MSNBC

The arctic is screaming, and the canary, he is dead.

""The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.
This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012.

"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."

LINK

( Why, yes, that is the 1765 Jean Baptiste Greuze painting A Girl With A Dead Canary. It is indeed.)

And then it swallowed my head- gulp.

Shake rattle and roll.

" ILULISSAT, Greenland, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Mini earthquakes and glacier acceleration on the Greenland ice cap are signs climate change is speeding up, scientists said.

The quakes are caused by giant chunks of ice breaking off the rock they have been frozen to for hundreds of years, Robert Corell, chairman of the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Greenland Friday.

Though small in magnitude, the earthquakes bolster concerns that the entire ice shelf could collapse, causing a catastrophic change in sea levels worldwide.

The speed at which Greenland's glaciers flow into the sea has also accelerated. The Ilulissat glacier is dumping ice chunks into the ocean at a rate of 2 meters per hour -- more than three times faster than 10 years ago, the newspaper said.

Given the changes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's current prediction sea levels will rise eight to 24 inches this century may be too low, scientists at the meeting said. Some estimate the seas may rise by more than two meters." LINK

Image from The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Arctic ice disappearing at an astonishing rate.

"An area of Arctic sea ice the size of Florida has melted away in just the last six days as melting at the top of the planet continues at a record rate.

2007 has already broken the record for the lowest amount of sea ice ever recorded, say scientists, smashing the old record set in 2005.

In just the last six days, researchers say 69,000 square miles of Arctic ice has disappeared, roughly the size of the Sunshine State.

Scientists say the rate of melting in 2007 has been unprecedented, and veteran ice researchers worry the Arctic is on track to be completely ice-free much earlier than previous research and climate models have suggested.

"If you had asked me a few years ago about how fast the Arctic would be ice free in summer, I would have said somewhere between about 2070 and the turn of the century," said scientist Mark Serreze, polar ice expert at the NSIDC. "My view has changed. I think that an ice-free Arctic as early as 2030 is not unreasonable." LINK

But hey, some fuckers in Vancouver are real excited about this. They had a conference. "Global warming means the Northwest Passage could become the new Panama Canal. It creates an awesome opportunity for Vancouver." LINK

Look, I am not anti-Vancouver. I just have a really hard time understanding how anyone on this green earth can call the end of the world as we know it an "awesome opportunity." That just blows my mind, breaks my heart, fills me with rage, and chills me to the fucking bones.

And again, the polar bears. I am so sorry.

Faster and worse. Arctic ice heading out. Polar bears heading out.

"They're going to drown, they're going to starve, they're going to resort to cannibalism, they're going to become extinct," she said."

The ice is retreating much much faster than earlier predictions, and the consequences for the entire world aren't understood, but what is clear is that polar bears aren't going to make it. LINK

A world without them is a much poorer place.

So so sorry. I am so so sorry.

Northwest Passage- open.

"The North-West Passage – the sea route running along the Arctic coastline of North America, normally perilously clogged with thick ice – is nearly ice-free for the first time since records began." LINK

Record shattering July Arctic sea ice loss

Warning: this is seriously scary stuff. Now might be the time to close your eyes, cover your ears, and start gently singing 'la-la-la-la-la'. Really.

"Sea ice extent in the Arctic in July 2007 set a record low, posting a large 7% decline compared to July 2006. July marked the third month this year that a record monthly low was set. Arctic sea ice coverage in July has declined by about 26% since measurements began in 1979 (Figure 1). The trailing end of Figure 1 shows a very striking drop, so it's worth investigating this decline in more detail.

Sea ice in July over the past 28 years has shown a steady decline, punctuated by ups and downs characteristic of year-to-year natural variability in the weather patterns over the Arctic. The steady decline is largely due to increasing temperatures in the Arctic from global warming, but a significant portion is due to changing wind patterns." LINK to the always amazing Dr. Master's blog.