It looks like climate change is canceled.
Mid melt season Greenland is bright as the low ice loss year 2018. Good news for the sea-level rise, but I’d bet elsewhere in the Arctic; the melt is going strong. Jason Box, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports that Greenland’s ice and snow was below the 1981-2010 average. That's temporary good news for sea-level rise.
The massive ice sheet gain of mass from snow and rain, minus runoff) was slightly above average since September of 2020, most of which fell on Southeast Greenland. Elsa’s contribution is not included in the data.
Southwest Greenland, which has suffered the most ice and snow cover melting, increased its ability to reflect solar energy to space as the region brightened significantly. “The extent of bare ice exposure is tracking near the lowest levels for the last five years except 2018, which was an especially snowy and low-melt year.
Sea ice in the area has not had the good melt year as Greenland. Sea ice fell to its lowest extent in recorded history despite cool and cloudy weather, which should have protected the ice.
Monga Bay notes three bullet points as to why.
- Three new studies help explain why. One found that increasing air temperatures and intrusion of warm water from the North Atlantic into the Barents and Kara Seas — a climate change-driven process known as Atlantification — are overpowering the ice’s ability to regrow in winter.
- Another study found that sea ice in coastal areas may be thinning at up to twice the pace previously thought. In three coastal seas — Laptev, Kara, and Chukchi — the rate of coastal ice decline increased by 70%, 98%, and 110% respectively when compared to earlier models.
- A third study found accelerated sea ice loss in the Wandel Sea, pointing to a possible assault by global warming on the Arctic’s Last Ice Area — a last bastion of multi-year sea ice which stretches from Greenland along the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Combined, this research shows Arctic ice may be in worse trouble than thought.
Sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean hit a record low on Monday for this time of year, surpassing even the year 2012 which went on to see the lowest annual minimum extent since satellite records began in 1979. Extent fell to 8.867 million square kilometers (3.4 million square miles) of ice cover on July 5, 2021.
This year’s early July drop was unexpected by some observers due to a cool stormy spring in the Arctic which in the past might have put a brake on the melt season, though a Russian heatwave is now stoking Laptev Sea melt, while warmth over Hudson Bay has caused ice there to disappear earlier than typical.
Bloomberg Green on the Arctic amplification.
Record-high temperatures from Canada to Scandinavia and intense wildfires flaring up from California to Russia’s Far East are adding to extreme weather events recorded at the start of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Extremes are piling up in what’s poised to be a brutal summer as the planet warms. Climate change is intensifying many unusual weather patterns to the point that scientists are able to detect its influence nearly in real time. That’s been the case during the heatwave that’s boiled Canada and the U.S. northwest this season, as well as the heatwave that hit Siberia last year.
Meanwhile, forest fires in Siberia contribute to aerosols and turn these forests from a carbon sink into a carbon source. The fires expand the thawing of the permafrost, which stores vast quantities of carbon-rich soils.
The largest fires on earth are taking place in the Taiga of Siberia. But the season is still young; unfortunately, all hell can break loose at any moment.