Masters rebukes disinformers: “Diminishing the importance of Arctic sea ice loss by calling attention to Antarctic sea ice gain is like telling someone to ignore the fire smoldering in their attic, and instead go appreciate the coolness of the basement, because there is no fire there. Planet Earth’s attic is on fire.”
Chris Mooney has a good piece in New Scientist, “Arctic ice: Less than meets the eye,” the source of the above figures. Mooney focuses on the work of Canada’s David Barber — you can find his peer-reviewed work here: “Where on Earth is it unusually warm? Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is full of rotten ice” — New study supports finding that “the amount of [multi-year] sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009.”
Mooney also discusses the PIOMAS ice volume model developed by the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center in Seattle, which I have been featuring on CP this year. Their analysis finds “not only has the total volume of Arctic ice continued to decline since 2007, but that the rate of loss is accelerating” [see also Arctic death spiral: Naval Postgrad School's Maslowski "projects ice-free* fall by 2016 (+/- 3 yrs)"].
Mooney talks to Michael MacCracken of the Climate Institute who explains how an increasingly ice free Arctic will lead to “more extreme storms and heavy precipitation events in regions not used to them” like the U.S. Great Plains.
Uber-meteorologist Jeff Masters also has a great piece, “Northwest Passage opens for 4th year in a row,” which I excerpt below:
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
