Major Arctic sea ice melt is expected this summer

(AP) -- The Arctic will remain on thinning ice, and climate warming is expected to begin affecting the Antarctic also, scientists said Friday. "The long-term prognosis is not very optimistic," atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University said at a briefing.

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• NotParker - May 02, 2008
  • Rank: 2.2 / 5 (6)
  Nonsense!!!
  
  "NASA satellites found that last winter's Arctic Sea ice covered 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) more than the last three years' average. It also was 10 to 20 centimeters (about 4-8 inches) thicker than in 2007. The ice between Canada and southwest Greenland also spread dramatically. "We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south," Denmark's Meteorological Institute stated."
  
  http://www.scripp...de/32821
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• bobwinners - May 02, 2008
  • Rank: 3.2 / 5 (5)
  I'd guess that the simple difference in the amount of land masses between the hemispheres is sufficient to guarantee quite different climate models at the poles.
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• bobwinners - May 02, 2008
  • Rank: 2 / 5 (1)
  This article is pointing out predicted end of summer changes in ice cover. Another 5 months will prove or disprove the prediction.
  Ithink it is the steady reduction in summer sea ice that is the best predictor of global warming.
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• mikiwud - May 03, 2008
  • Rank: 1.6 / 5 (5)
  bobwinners,
  No,the best INDICATION of global warming is TEMPERATURE.Official data now shows that the temperature has hardly changed over the past 10 years and fallen in last year.Even some of the British press "believers" have published it ,along with an "official" prediction that temps will not rise,or,even fall further in the next decade or so.
  The change in SEA ice has been put down,mainly,to changes in currents.This would also explain some coastal melting and increase inland,of the ice cap.
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• niftyswell - May 03, 2008
  • Rank: 2.1 / 5 (7)
  These models and predictions have yet to pan out. CO2 measurements are down, not up...latest stories mention a cooling period for the next 10 years that wasnt in the model. At what point do we hold the individuals accountable for the failures of their models? Instead it is continual doom and gloom with people, especially the press, reporting the next prediction without any mention of the last failure. They havent gotten a temp drop, a hurricane forecast, a snowfall/precipitation forecast, southern hemisphere record breaking cold winter forecast right to date...so why do they keep reporting this crap as if it is fact? All they get right is their observation of what already happened in a very small particular area that supports their hypothesis without any mention to the mounting evidence to the contrary. So let me ask a question- What if the sea ice isn't any thinner at the end of the summer season? Surely they will find a single spot in a million square area that is ...but what about the overall trend- will we continue to believe these studies?
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• samweiss - May 03, 2008
  • Rank: 3.4 / 5 (5)
  It amazes me the kind of comments that we find on a supposedly "science" news blog.
  
  niftyswell - If you are content with your understanding of the world being only influenced by newswire service headlines then you will forever by blown about by the whims of editors. Your assignment - learn the difference between weather and climate.
  
  mikiwud - you simply do not want to accept that short term variabilities are different than long term changes.
  
  Notparker - why do call "nonsense" for this article, which is simply a report on observations?
  
  All of the above - what you continue to ignore is that "energy" is not "temperature", and changes on Earth follow the law of conservation of energy. There is no such thing as "conservation of temperature." Frankly, all three of you apparently were not paying attention in high school chemistry and physics classes.
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• niftyswell - May 05, 2008
  • Rank: 2.3 / 5 (3)
  Sam, One of my degrees is in chemical engineering..so I know a bit about the law of conservation. While I am humbled by your condescension and sense of importance, I also am curious why you did not actually address any of my points? Is the new statement that the long term effects cannot be measured in the short term? A shift from the 'we must act now to avoid an immediate and fatal demise'? Temperature is a way of measuring thermal energy. Thermal energy is what AGW consider a threat to the ice caps and is supposed to cause flooding of coastal areas, drought, the extinction of species, and the death of millions of humans which is the result of CO2 produced by humans trapping the heat on the planet. This is mentioned in practically every article on the subject, a movie on the subject, a UN commission on the subject, and now many of those same experts are stating an unforeseen cooling is fast approaching. Many of those same experts have crossed over and said that CO2 doesnt play as big a role in the models as originally thought and the NASA expert who is making money pushing the global warming scenario has way too much water vapor in his model- which has a far greater potential to trap heat than CO2. Finally, on what basis do you state the earth follows the law of conservation of energy? That law applies to a closed system..I do not believe the planet is a closed system..if it were then no heat could enter the system and no heat would ever leave it. While it does undoubtedly change form as the law of conservation implies there are losses that must be accounted for. As a former believer in AGW, I have since found sanity in the arguments presented by the other side and in the obvious holes in the convenient arguments presented by the :believers".
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• deepsand - May 05, 2008
  • Rank: 3.3 / 5 (3)

  I'd guess that the simple difference in the amount of land masses between the hemispheres is sufficient to guarantee quite different climate models at the poles.

  
  
  The greater factor is that the Arctic & Antartic are in wholly different Atmosperic Convection Cells, of which there are 6, 3 in each hemisphere.
  
  See
  http://www.ux1.ei...ion.html
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• barbwire - May 20, 2008
  • Rank: 4 / 5 (1)
  I think the 4 interesting graphs at the top of the page here shed light on why this is not "nonsense" - arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
  Also, don't want to insult anyone, but this illustrates why engineers and scientists see things differently. An engineer responsible for, say, a faulty bridge must have calculated something incorrectly. A scientist with a faulty model must have made an incorrect an incorrect assumption, or not had fine enough resolution, or one of dozens of other problems that might come up while doing science - and they need to try and correct this and experiment some more. That's how science works. To say they should be held accountable is an engineering mindset, and doesn't make sense with science.
  BTW, "CO2 measurements are down"? www.esrl.noaa.gov...mlo.html
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