This is seriously worrying.

This was published today and is available on a number of news outlets.

Scientists Alarmed About Antarctica’s Unprecedented Lack of Sea Ice Growth

By Brian Kahn | July 26, 2023


Amid a summer of record heat, the most dramatic impact may be taking place under the cover of Antarctic night.

The continent at the bottom of the world normally sees a halo of sea ice grow around it each summer — or winter, if you’re in the southern hemisphere — but this year has been anything but normal. Scientists have been watching with shock as sea-ice growth stalls out in ways unseen in modern history. Sea ice, unlike ice on land, has a negligible effect on rising ocean levels. But the lack of rebound has entered territory known as “six sigma,” an obscure scientific term that denotes the extraordinary situation unfolding.

Antarctic sea ice usually reaches its nadir between February and March before regrowing over the next six or so months. This year, it hit an all-time low in February and has struggled to grow back. As of mid-July, there was an Argentina-sized chunk of ice missing, according to an analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag

That’s a record low for this time of year in the satellite record of Antarctic sea ice, which goes back nearly 45 years. But “record low” doesn’t encapsulate it. Enter the term “six sigma.” Scientists refer to deviations from the norm in terms of sigmas, as a way to standardize data and make it easier to compare and test hypotheses.

An event that falls within the one sigma range is something pretty close to average. Reach two sigma and you’re starting to get into slightly odd territory, while three sigma events are outside the expected range of normal. The sea ice was around that level in June, according to Lettie Roach, an associate research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University.

Not to be alarmist but…this is what’s called a six-sigma event, now unfolding in Antarctica.

Otherwise known as a once-in-7.5-million-year event.

But something that’s a five or six sigma event is extraordinary. Researchers have pegged the odds of an austral winter like this as somewhere in the range of once in about every 7.5 million years. Some days have yielded even more eye-watering odds, though focusing on a single day alone doesn’t quite capture the big picture.

“It’s now a larger departure from average conditions than we’ve seen in the Arctic,” said Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at NSIDC. (Research published last year shows the Arctic is infamously heating up roughly four times faster than the rest of the planet.)

Ice is missing all around the continent, but it’s particularly pronounced near the Antarctic Peninsula and areas north of the Weddell Sea. Stroeve said conditions have been so marginal that two postdoctoral scientists she works with who are conducting research on the peninsula deployed equipment on what little ice there was, only for them to lose their gear after a storm blew through and broke up the ice.

“It’s been a very bad winter for our research there because there really hasn’t been any sea ice in that area,” said Stroeve, who also works at the University of Manitoba as a Canada 150 research chair. “It’s too soon to say for certain but all climate models have suggested the Antarctic sea ice should be shrinking in response to anthropogenic warming.”

Blistering temperatures have affected both land and sea globally, with research published Tuesday showing July’s heat in the US and southern Europe has been “virtually impossible” without climate change providing a big background boost. While scientists are still teasing out what exactly is going on around the Antarctic, climate change has taken its toll on the continent and its sea ice.

After a slow but steady growth in sea ice through the mid-2010s, there’s been a sharp step change of decreasing sea ice. The region saw record-low sea ice in 2017, only for the record to fall the next year before being toppled again in 2022 and once again this year. Natural climate shifts are partly to blame; because Antarctic ice forms around a continent rather than being contained in a basin like Arctic sea ice, it tends to be more brittle and prone to outside influences such as El Niño.

Antarctica’s land ice is also under siege from warming, as are the floating shelves of ice that act as buttresses against it melting into the ocean and raising sea levels. How all these different types of ice, atmospheric patterns and more lock together is one of the most pressing topics in science when it comes to understanding the state of the world and the role the far-off reaches of Antarctica could play in reshaping coastlines.

“I think the recent events really highlight that we have more to do to understand the drivers of these important changes we’re seeing in the sea ice, ocean, land ice and atmosphere in Antarctica,” Roach said.

Add to this another report today.

By Georgina Rannard
BBC Climate & Science reporter

The Gulf Stream system of warm ocean currents could collapse as early as 2025, a scientific study has warned.

The end of the system, which drives the Atlantic's currents and determines western Europe's weather, would probably lead to lower temperatures and catastrophic climate impacts.

But leading scientists have reservations about the study and say it is not established science.

It is far from certain the system will shut down this century, they say.

The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Amoc would not in fact collapse so quickly.

The latest study's author, Prof Peter Ditlevsen at the University of Copenhagen, told BBC News that other scientists had warned about the potential for collapse of the system, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc).

"There's been worries that this current is weakening for as long as we have had measurements of it - since 2004," he said.

The Amoc is a complicated set of currents that bring warm water north towards the pole, where it cools and sinks.

But as global temperatures rise with global warming, fresh water is pouring into the Amoc from the melting Greenland ice cap and other sources.

It if collapses, it could lower temperatures by up to 10 or 15 degrees in Europe and lead to rising sea levels in the eastern US. It would also disrupt rain that billions rely on for agriculture.

The last time Amoc stopped and restarted was during Ice Ages about 115,000 to 12,000 years ago, The new study, published in Nature Communications, used sea surface temperature data stretching back to 1870 as a way of assessing the change in strength of Amoc currents over time.

It estimates Amoc could collapse between 2025 and 2095.

The analysis is based on greenhouse gas emissions rising as they have done so far. If emissions started to reduce, the world would have more time to keep temperatures below the point at which Amoc would collapse.

But scientists including Ben Booth at the Met Office Hadley Centre say the paper's conclusions "are far from settled science".

"We just don't have the evidence to state that it has declined," says Prof Penny Holliday at the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton.

"We know that there is a possibility that Amoc could stop what it's doing now at some point, but it's really hard to have certainty about that," she says.

"If my neighbour asked me if I should worry about heatwaves or the Amoc collapse, I'd say worry about temperatures. We know that is already happening and will get worse," she said.

The reasons for many scientists' reservations is that they say the study's authors made a series of assumptions about how to understand Amoc.

But the climate system is extremely complex and experts do not have all the evidence they need to fully understand the Amoc.

The predictions that it could collapse as early as 2025 or by 2095 should be taken with a large grain of salt, says Jon Robson at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading.

But It does not mean that the study is not important or that the possibility of Amoc shutting down should be dismissed, they say.

"We do still have to take the idea seriously that there could be abrupt changes in the North Atlantic climate system," says Prof Robson.

"But the exact predictions that it will happen and within this time frame - you have to take that with some scepticism," he adds.

 

Yeah, I'm shivering in my shoes.
Mostly because its not very warm, and 45 yrs is not a yard stick, and nobody was around 7.5 million years ago either.

I'm fed up with all the doom merchants that just publish something and we are expected to take it all in and tow the line.
Pull the other one, its got bells on.

 

Dr Holmes says that in the case of Antarctic sea ice – this form of measurement relies on 45 years worth of data due to the limited amount of time satellites have been measuring the entire continent to a reliable standard.

There are other methods to look back further in time, and although they are less accurate, Dr Holmes still says the longer-term records show that the current situation unfolding in the region is "concerning" and "very, very rare".

"It is obviously something that is a complete change from what we've seen before and it's something that is consistent with what we expect in a warming climate," she adds.

 

That bit was on Yahoo News, where I first saw the story, but then I checked elsewhere for proper news used in my original post. That was actually Insurance Journal and the link to NSIDC, which is part of NASA I believe.

 

@pete, you really ought to take this news much more seriously than you seem to. it's not all doom & gloom - at the moment at least! Something can be done to better the situation we are in but it will take a lot of political & commercial will - which just doesn't seem to be there as yet.

Look what can happen when things get really bad but then people rally around to do something about it I'm talking about the ozone hole. It's nearly closed after having been open many years. It took the nations of the world relatively little time to reach an agreement & stop the gases that were causing its destruction. If the same could be done with fossil fuels we might leave a better world to our grandchildren than the one we are currently leaving them!

Renewables is the way to go & solar energy, as well as wind energy is getting cheaper, all the time

 

Scientists reckon the first ice age lasted so long because once the planet became an ice ball, it just reflected sunlight out into space too effectively to warm up.

Conversely, I remember a few years ago when some scientists were trying to work out how to get trees to grow in icy regions nearer the poles, with the goal of increasing the rate of carbon sequestration, a bunch of other scientists observed that trees, being inherently good at absorbing heat, might actually accelerate global warming if planted in the wrong places. This is just one example of why we have to be careful what we do, and not just immediately jump on the first piece of incomplete evidence we have.

If we lose all the ice at the poles, we'll have a problem. Not only will that in itself accelerate climate change by reflecting less sunlight off into space, but there are other consequences too. There's methane and co2 locked up in that ice, so more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But probably worse for us Brits, the changes of salinity in the sea will affect the various natural currents around the world. We've got one of our own that passes right down the west coast. We can thank it for keeping us warmer than we should be for our latitude. So there is a possibility that while the world as a whole sees a warming on average, us Brits could find ourselves going the other way, and getting bitterly cold winters.

It is worth noting though that it's currently a good chunk of speculation for now. There isn't enough computing power to run accurate simulations at a localised level yet, but Nvidia are working on changing that.

 

I heartily agree with that bit.

 

Sea ice melting is an issue in itself but if the ice on Antarctica's land mass melts that would have a massive impact on sea levels. If Greenland's ice was to melt too this would raise sea level by about 200 feet. I would be living in a beachside location. Bangladesh would all but be under water and Tuvalu would disappear entirely as would most of London and many other coastal cities worldwide.

If the Gulf Stream was to fail then the seas around the UK would experience the same winter conditions as Canada. The Thames would need ice breakers the same as they use on the St Lawrence Seaway and St Lawrence River, especially if the salinity levels are reduced by ice melt in the Arctic.



Where will sea level rise most from ice sheet melt?.

I do not feel I am being alarmist but these are likely to be the future for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

 

No, there's nothing to stop us acting responsibly. But doesn't it annoy you that it's being used as yet another excuse to tax us out of existence?

 

Yes it does, and that's where my scepticism comes in, I don't deny something might be going on with the climate but we are getting the hard sell from all quarters and you can drive right through London with an old banger running on creosote, just as long as you pay £12 a day to do it.
Which kind of breaks down any argument that this kind of stuff is about cleaning up the environment, its all about making money and screwing those that can least afford it.

 

Yes, "carbon tax" is now added to all of our fuel bills including home heating. It has been steadily rising and no one knows where that revenue actually goes. It seems to hit a large government slush fund. So how does that tnat stop India, China, Japan, etc from polluting at a rate at least 20X every other country?

The shaming will not stop until us smaller polluters are forced into eating our own garbage while watching those countries shovel theirs into the ocean.

We're being hoodwinked!

 

I thought I read somewhere that the uk is responsible for almost one percent of all emissions.

So we kill ourselves trying to alter things and China and India just carry on doing what they are doing, Meanwhile we send them foreign aid because they are so hard done by and poor.
I think we need to wake up to what is really going on and stop blaming ourselves for all the worlds ills.

 

Can only say what it is here in France, but we're taxed on the air we breathe and the water we drink, 60% on fuel, 3 separate taxes on energy bills which then have VAT added. Tax in case of flooding (we live on the side of a hill!), tax for having our own septic tank waste disposal, tax when you're working, tax when you're retired and (a lot of) tax when you die. Just to cap it off, if you leave your worldly goods to anyone other than a spouse or children, they get taxed at 60% too. There's something badly wrong....especially given the French people's acceptance of this blatant robbery!

 

Remember that conversation we had about manipulating statistics? This is an excellent example of exactly that.

I don't entirely disbelieve the claim that the UK is responsible for only 1% of global emissions, but the dirty trick lies in how it is measured.

The 1% claim relates to emissions produced in Britain. It does not include emissions from all the stuff we ship in and out of Britain, and perhaps more importantly, it doesn't count emissions produced in the likes of China that we pay to produce most of our stuff. And nor does it include emissions produced in France, Belgium and the Netherlands who generate a significant chunk of the electricity we use here.

 

So every country that imports is cheating their statistics? why do we import?
Because they undercut our manufacturing and it became cheaper to buy from them, that all started years ago and is a fact of how things work in the modern world.

If they take the profits they are responsible for the emissions, if they don't want to be then stop selling us the stuff, which they wont do, they need us as much as we need them.

Oh and they could stop building coal power stations, but why should they?

They are doing very nicely out of all this while we wring our hands and keep telling ourselves how bad we are.