Global Climate Tipping Point in the Arctic Now
Current observations on our world are giving new details to the words "tipping point". 2016 could be the first year with a full summer time melt of Arctic sea ice, already in the state of being a record year of ice loss. Greenland ice melt starts a whole month early this year. Global warming heat distribution has moved north with a full-on El-Nino period. Wildfires are devastating British Columbia in Canada. They also deposit fine heat absorbing soot over the ice.
Arctic-News Blog Spot , Sam Carana are glued to watching the observable manifestations in the Arctic. The El-Nino heat shift can be blamed, but that heat comes from a build up of global warming in the Oceans.
Greenland ice melt has suddenly moved into high gear early this year. This graph is taken from the SMH article. Graph shows area and percentage of total surface ice melt.
Image taken from Polar Portal
The thin blue line is a change threshold that we have just moved in to. Its a month early from the distribution of recent observations of the greenland ice melt.
The idea of tipping point is a system state shift, where the reverse path has a different dynamic, so a return to some of the initial conditions, such as being possible, will not restore all of the original state. The loss of ice mass and its high reflection albedo changes the dynamics of earths radiation balance, so heat absorption of our greenhouse radiation imbalance will happen faster. We haven't crossed the Greenland ice mass total-melt tipping point yet, but this new incident shows that our climate system has moved right up to it. The tipping point instability at this point of change is ever more likely to take over, as the change in climate locks in the change in polar wearther systems, and the Arctic may continue to warm. We call this weather "freak" now, but this will be the first evidence of a transition to becoming a new normal in the near future.
That only leaves the Antartic as the remaining ice cap, and that too is exhibiting warming changes. At the continental margins glacial mass accelerates with influence from a warming ocean, while a NASA study has shown increased snow fall adding to the center mass. The net Antarctic contribution to sea level may be marginal for a while. The old "snow pile at the center while nibbling away at the edges" trick, kind of looks like a fiendish recipe for a sudden ice flow surge, which is being observed in West Antartica.
Recent reports still indicate a trend of break up of Antarctic peripheral ice shelves which hold the glaciers back. They story is they gradually "crack up" and collapse. Still early stages in Antartica then.
author:
Michael Rynn
description:
Rapid warming changes in the Arctic region indicate that 2016 is a climate tipping point for this region.
keywords:
Arctic, global warming, tipping point
og:title:
Global Climate Tipping Point in the Arctic Now
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