IPS News: The carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have melted the Arctic sea ice to its lowest volume since before the rise of human civilization, dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet, climate scientists are reporting.
'The Arctic sea ice has reached its four lowest summer extents (area covered) in the last four years,' said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the US city of Boulder, Colorado. The volume -- extent and thickness -- of ice left in the Arctic likely reached the lowest ever level this month... 'I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It's not going to recover.' he said...
'The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,' [said] James Overland of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory... 'Paradoxically, a warmer Arctic means future cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception' in these regions...
One local impact is a rapid warming of the coastal regions of the Arctic, where average temperatures are now three to five degrees C warmer than they were 30 years ago... 'I hate to say it but I think we are committed to a four- to six- degree warmer Arctic,' Serreze said...
If the Arctic becomes six degrees warmer, than half of the world's permafrost will likely thaw, probably to a depth of a few metres, releasing most of the carbon and methane accumulated there over thousands of years... Methane is a global warming gas approximately 25 time more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2). That would be catastrophic for human civilization, experts agree... A Canadian study in 2009 documented that the southernmost permafrost limit had retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years.
