There’s really no place to hide from the heat: new reports from both ends of the world show just some of the consequences of a steadily warming planet. The NSIDC and NASA have announced a new record low in the Arctic sea ice cover, and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is suffering a devastating bleaching event — both the result of higher global temperatures.
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The thinning of the north polar cap has been a concern of scientists for years, but this summer it appears that the ice is thinning fastest at its center, right around the pole itself. This is unexpected and unprecedented and could lead to an ice-free arctic much sooner than expected. Most scientists did not expect such an event to take place for another 10 to 30 years. The more open ocean there is over the arctic, the less heat is reflected and the more methane is released from underwater methane hydrates and melting permafrost. Methane is 30 times more efficient a heat trap than CO2.read more
The spring of 2013 will be the coolest in 50 years in the British Isles. Two days ago, many parts of Upstate New York experienced a snowstorm, extremely rare for late May. At the same time, the Russian Arctic Station is being evacuated because the ice floe it is sited on has started melting much earlier than expected. So what’s happening? Why are the mid-latitudes unseasonably cold when the arctic is warm?read more
Methane is bubbling out of the bottoms of Arctic lakes, to the extent that, if you put a match to the surface of one of them, they catch on FIRE.
Some of it seems to be coming–not from the bottom mud–but from deeper geologic reservoirs that contain hundreds of times more methane than is in the atmosphere now. Due to Arctic melt, this methane–which has been safely secured by a covering of permafrost in the past, is now bubbling up to the surface, leaving open holes big enough to be seen from an airplane.
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