Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean 382
New submitter turkeyfish writes "UK scientists are reporting today in the journal Nature Geoscience that a huge bulge of freshwater is forming in the Western Arctic Ocean caused by a large gyre of freshwater. The gyre appears to indicate that the ice is becoming thin enough over the Arctic Ocean that the wind is beginning to affect the motion of water under the ice. A sudden release of this water or its emergence to the surface will greatly accelerate the melting of the remaining polar oceanic ice and likely alter oceanic circulation in the North Atlantic."
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, not yet, and that's from somebody who thinks that anthropogenic climate change is probably a true hypothesis.
For one thing the thinning or melting of sea ice itself has no direct effect on sea level -- just like melting ice cubes don't change the level of water in a glass. The picture the article paints is far more complex. In a nutshell, thinning Arctic ice may allow winds to mix colder surface water with warmer deep water. This would cause more ice thinning faster than changes in the atmosphere (if any) could drive change. Any effect on sea level would be indirect.
What I'm much more concerned with is human responses to this development -- or rather *political* responses. Russia is making territorial claims in the Arctic Ocean based on some creative interpretation of international law, because they think that climate change may open the Arctic to resource exploration. If they find oil up there, there could be a polar conflict between Russia the US and strained relations between Canada and the US.
Blame Russia (Score:2, Interesting)
According to recent research, a large quantity of Russian rivers that flow North are dumping unusually high amounts of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean.
Either that or Dick Cheney cause it's all due to Global Warming.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:5, Interesting)
Ice occupies more space than water. Melting of sea ice results in a drop in ocean levels, not an increase. only melting of land based ice results in a rise in sea levels.
But ice also floats on water. If you have ice floating in a glass of water, and the ice melts, the level of liquid stays the same.
But salty water is more buoyant than freshwater! So the icebergs would sit a tad lower as the salinity of the water decreases.
But TFA says it's mostly caused by the wind gyre that sucks everything up with a low pressure system. And the main effect has nothing to do with rise or fall of ocean levels, but with ocean currents that keep the North Atlantic relatively warm, but could plunge it into an ice age if the currents reversed (as was the case during the last ice age). Fun and amazing stuff.
Re:Don't panic. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why can't we all agree that shit is happening and we should investigate what to do about it?
Because it has become an article of nigh-religious faith among a large number of otherwise rational people to insist that it's not happening, or if it happening it's not our fault, or even if it is happening and it's our fault there's nothing we can do about it. Sometimes all three at once. As the saying goes, "You can't reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:3, Interesting)
Finally, it's indeed the CO2 from SUV's and coal plants that causes glaciers to melt but as the glaciers melt they also release the CO2 stored in/under them.
I mostly agree with what you said except for bits about SUV's etc. This is more a smokescreen diversion from the real problems. For instance buy local products instead of imported cheap crap. The link at the bottom indicates that running one particularly large cargo ship supposedly pollutes as much as 50 million cars each year (likely a gross exaggeration but still worth considering)
http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:4, Interesting)
Climate change is real, global warming is real and the cause for this is real. This has been established by practically all scientists in the field. Denying it is as futile and idiotic as the few that still refute the theory of evolution based on their personal religious or political ideas.
Just curious... Can you tell me how many of these scientists predicted a fresh water plume, stirred by iceberg moved by high winds, would cause more ice to melt? I can't seem to find that prediction anywhere. I did, however find that high winds will cause the water to cool quicker via evaporation, which should have fixed that pesky iceberg problem, made the water saltier, thereby fixing that overabundance of fresh water problem that started this whole discussion. That was on the Wiki page for Thermohaline circulation. It says, "Wind moving over the water also produces a great deal of evaporation, leading to a decrease in temperature, called evaporative cooling. Evaporation removes only water molecules, resulting in an increase in the salinity of the seawater left behind, and thus an increase in the density of the water mass. In the Norwegian Sea evaporative cooling is predominant, and the sinking water mass, the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW), fills the basin and spills southwards through crevasses in the submarine sills that connect Greenland, Iceland and Great Britain. It then flows very slowly into the deep abyssal plains of the Atlantic, always in a southerly direction."
Also, is CO2 the only gas stored under glaciers? I mean, if the atmospheric CO2 concentration at the time the glaciers formed was so high that releasing a fraction of that gas would be enough to heat the world... wouldn't the planet have been too hot to form these glaciers in the first place?
I'm not trying to be smart ass, but if you don't question, you never learn. And you never EVER give up your freedom of the word of someone else without at least asking a few questions and pointing out gaping logical holes.
Re:doh. (Score:2, Interesting)
noone would need to tell you what will result when that happens - if you had used your brain to think this more than just 2-3 seconds.
freshwater plume forming means that there is some source that is supplying that freshwater. freshwater, therefore, will grow unless the current trend changes.
If you spent less time telling me to thing and more time... you know, reading the F'in article, you would fine the following:
This fresh water is coming in large part from the rivers running off the Eurasian (Russian) side of the Arctic basin.
Winds and currents have transported this fresh water around the ocean until it has been pulled into the gyre. The volume currently held in the circulation probably represents about 10% of all the fresh water in the Arctic.
Note that TFA says NOTHING about global warming or an increase in the amount of water entering the Arctic. What it DOES say is that WIND is bringing more of the water to the area, and the rotating nature of the winds is holding it there.
there is no telling what will happen to your microclimate in your locale as the globe warms up on average. you may remain unaffected, or get hit by freak weather or conditions.
Well, my "microclimate", meaning the southern half of the United States, just spent a summer with temperatures several degrees warmer than usual and we got no more freakish weather than usual. The winter before that was a few degrees colder than normal, and still no hurricanes over land. So, in a single year, I've seen periods warmer than usual and cooler than usual with no freakish behavior. I think we'll be OK with a 1.6 degree increase over the next 100 years.
Re:Day After Tomorrow (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. But I question the intensity of cold needed to freeze a blubber insulated, and wooly adult mammoth solid, while it is actively grazing.
Even a dead mammoth, put in a commerical freezer, would take several hours to freeze to such a state.
The cold would have had to have been sufficient to kill said mammoth quite quickly. Mammoth species had evolved pretty clever biology to prevent such an outcome. (Mutant hemoglobin, thick blubber layer, excessive secretion of sebum and thick, wooly body hair, just to name a few.) Humans, by comparison, are simply "ready to freeze" meat popsicles.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:4, Interesting)
I would start by picking up an average textbook on climate. You don't seem to understand the difference in time scales and energy between balanced weather/climate events and the unbalanced forces that create climate change. Again, feedback loops. It's not only the CO2 stored in the frozen water, it's the CO2 trapped in the frozen water + the CO2 and other greenhouse gasses WE HUMANS are adding.
Also, the last time there was such massive climate change there was a significant event that caused it (meteorite impact), now we humans are the significant event.
The effect will be even worse once the antarctic starts melting more significantly than it already does because not only will it release the CO2 trapped but also any matter that has been frozen (plants, microbes, animals, humans) or the life that cannot survive the change will start releasing methane and other greenhouse gasses common to rotting.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Azolla deposits from the Azolla Event during the Middle Miocene are believed to contain huge amounts of crushed plant material that would likely make it rich oil and gas strata. The problem will be, however, the anthropogenic reverse Azolla event that will likely speed the thawing of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets should this material be extracted and burned.
Actually, the earth was warmer in the Eocene than it was now. The clincher is that it took tens of millions of years to get that way and reverse after the Azolla Event. Human induced carbon dioxide pollution is forcing the system at a rate of 100-1000 times the natural rate. If you throw in the release of 90 GT of methane from clathrates on the arctic ocean floor and methane in from the melting of the permafrost, perhaps you add another 900 GT of methane, more or less all at once, which eventually becomes C02 as methane degrades in about 30 years, such as occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum then we may see as much as 6 C increase in global warming in a very short period of time. This has some scientists worried that we may soon pass or that we may have already passed a tipping point toward runaway heating.
To put that into perspective that means sea temperatures could rapidly return to mid-Eocene levels at the North Pole, about 55 F. Unless you are Santa, it would probably be much warmer at your house. Needless to say, growing food in much of the US or perhaps almost anywhere would be no easy task, especially since much of the mid-west will likely again be underwater.