Alaska's Bering Sea Lost a Third of Its Ice in Just 8 Days

[coffeeFreak]

Wow, this is crazy!

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17022018/arctic-sea-ice-record-low-extent-alaska-bering-hunting-whales

[lesliepaul]

Yeah.........OK. Now to check out Canada's medal count at the Olympics.

[Silverstarqueen]

You can't pick one 8 day window in one area on sea ice activity, and declare a trend. Check out graph of sea ice recorded each year. The year of lowest sea ice overall was 2012. Click on last year 2017, and you can compare. It started out worse than 2012, and then actually did better overall than 2012. At some points in the year (early spring) there is often relatively little difference between years, at other points (midsummer) there is a great difference between years. Over many years, there is a trend toward less ice, that would certainly be more relevant. Since we don't have a record that goes back to medieval times, we don't know how the sea ice compares to those days, but there were accounts of the arctic ice receeding amongst early explorers.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charc ... ice-graph/

Locally we have had record low temperatures for this date, and we have a high snow pack, but we can't yet declare that a mini-ice age is approaching. However we could be back to the same spring flooding that was prompted by last year's late thaw.

The Great Lakes, on the other hand, have had more ice than normal this winter, so signs of a trend? not likely. Ice cover also high in 2015-16.
http://woodtv.com/blog/2018/01/16/great ... r-growing/

[Bigjohn69]

There's bad news coming in from the ends of the Earth, as sea ice in both the Arctic and the Antarctic is, once again, setting new records for lowest extent on record.

After global sea ice set a new record low for 2017, conditions in the Arctic and Antarctic started off 2018 less than ideal, and they have no been improving since.


https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/ ... mer/96075/

[Silverstarqueen]

Temperatures in the past have been as warm as they are today, around 120,000 years ago, and 400,000 years ago. During these periods the polar ice did melt and sea levels were considerably higher than today. Yes, sea levels will continue to rise and will cause serious problems. Rather than trying to stop the inevitable, our coastal populations should be preparing for it. Just beefing up the dikes isn't going to cut it for very long. People will have to move to higher ground instead of stubbornly sitting on marsh and deltas expecting the waters not to rise.

Sea levels have been rising for the last 20,000 years, similar to what they did 120,000 years ago.
http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/s ... level+rise

[Omnitheo]

Said this many many many times. Not sure why people can’t comprehend it. Read VERY CAREFULLY, then re-read, and take a minute for this to set in.

Earths Temperature has been hotter and colder in the past...BUT (and this is crucial here) it took tens of thousands-millions of years for the temperature to reach those points, giving plant and animal life time to adapt to the changes. The temperature changes we are seeing now are occurring at rates unprecedented outside of mass extinction events. These changes are occurring on timescales of decades, or over a thousand times faster than they have in the past.

Your excuses are like saying that it is ok and not at all a health risk to consume 20 litres of alcohol in an evening, because people have easily consumed more than that over the course of a lifetime.

[CapitalB]

Said this many many many times. Not sure why people can’t comprehend it. Read VERY CAREFULLY, then re-read, and take a minute for this to set in.

Earths Temperature has been hotter and colder in the past...BUT (and this is crucial here) it took tens of thousands-millions of years for the temperature to reach those points, giving plant and animal life time to adapt to the changes. The temperature changes we are seeing now are occurring at rates unprecedented outside of mass extinction events. These changes are occurring on timescales of decades, or over a thousand times faster than they have in the past.

Your excuses are like saying that it is ok and not at all a health risk to consume 20 litres of alcohol in an evening, because people have easily consumed more than that over the course of a lifetime.

My understanding is that we're actually supposed to be in the middle of a mini ice age right now, basically a continuation of the temperatures we were seeing 50 years ago and before (really 200...). We basically reversed the temper trend at some point and its just been climbing ever since.

[rustled]

Temperatures in the past have been as warm as they are today, around 120,000 years ago, and 400,000 years ago. During these periods the polar ice did melt and sea levels were considerably higher than today. Yes, sea levels will continue to rise and will cause serious problems. Rather than trying to stop the inevitable, our coastal populations should be preparing for it. Just beefing up the dikes isn't going to cut it for very long. People will have to move to higher ground instead of stubbornly sitting on marsh and deltas expecting the waters not to rise.

Sea levels have been rising for the last 20,000 years, similar to what they did 120,000 years ago.
http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/s ... level+rise

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[Silverstarqueen]

Said this many many many times. Not sure why people can’t comprehend it. Read VERY CAREFULLY, then re-read, and take a minute for this to set in.

Earths Temperature has been hotter and colder in the past...BUT (and this is crucial here) it took tens of thousands-millions of years for the temperature to reach those points, giving plant and animal life time to adapt to the changes. The temperature changes we are seeing now are occurring at rates unprecedented outside of mass extinction events. These changes are occurring on timescales of decades, or over a thousand times faster than they have in the past.

Your excuses are like saying that it is ok and not at all a health risk to consume 20 litres of alcohol in an evening, because people have easily consumed more than that over the course of a lifetime.

Sea level change is not an excuse for anything. It is a very legitimate and important marker for climate change. Over the last 5000 years it has actually levelled off, but in the 15,000 before that, the increase was quite dramatic.The point being, not that climate change isn't happening, or isn't important, but that it has happened before at great rates. and somehow life on earth has continued on. Yes, some species, many species were driven to extinction. But this has happened in the past, and will happen again. We could just as easily argue that the rise of modern man was likely aided by the dramatic warming of the earth in the last 20,000 years. In fact if we even had a mini-ice age, it would be catastrophic to the human race.
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/907

[Glacier]

Wow, this is crazy!

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17022018/arctic-sea-ice-record-low-extent-alaska-bering-hunting-whales

That's the result of wind, which blew the ice into the Arctic Ocean. The ice is thicker in the Arctic than it's been for 10 years because it's been blown inwards.

The actual area of sea ice in the Arctic is at a record low for this time of year...

[Poindexter]

The Bering sea ice was a real bother when it came to drilling for more oil. I say good riddance to that pesky stuff.

[Glacier]

The Bering sea ice was a real bother when it came to drilling for more oil. I say good riddance to that pesky stuff.

I sense a hint of sarcasm there. Although, it should be pointed out that the bearing sea doesn't offer much in the way of oil. The oil production is all up in Beaufort sea.

[Silverstarqueen]

There are a number of glaciers world-wide which are advancing. One of which is in Alaska.
Anyone get the sense lately that a mini-ice age is approaching? This is how it starts, longer winters than usual, that eventually just blend into short summer, then early fall. Crops fail.....

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/ ... p?id=85900

[Bigjohn69]

There are a number of glaciers world-wide which are advancing. One of which is in Alaska.
Anyone get the sense lately that a mini-ice age is approaching? This is how it starts, longer winters than usual, that eventually just blend into short summer, then early fall. Crops fail.....

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/ ... p?id=85900

That is from 2015

[Bigjohn69]

http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/

http://wgms.ch/


https://nsidc.org/data/glacier_inventory/


http://scholar.google.ca/scholar_url?ur ... AMIJCgAMAA

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