Heading for an ice- free minimum in September?

September 2015 without Arctic Sea Ice?

Arctic News,

9 March, 2015

The image below shows that Arctic sea ice extent, on March 8, 2015, was merely 14.263 square km.

What would happen if the Arctic sea ice kept falling to, say, under 11 million square km by end April and then followed a trajectory similar to 2012 for the next four months? As the animation below shows, such a scenario could wipe out all Arctic sea ice for more than a month from September 1st, 2015.

The following image is a contribution by Albert Kallio.

Sea ice thickness image, Naval Reserach Laboratory

Albert Kallio comments: "The latest sea ice thickness measurement (9th March 2015) for the US Navy submarines shows that the thick and rigid multiyear sea ice congestion has cleared from the Fram Strait between Greenland and the Svalbard Archipelago. That means sea ice is weak; new ice with saline residues and pack ice is made of numerous thin sea ice slabs that have been compressed to thick piles, rather than fewer thick slabs of multiyear sea ice. That means: more sea ice surface area is exposed to sea water and the heat within it. As a result, sea ice is likely melt even faster once it escapes from the Fram Strait. The wave penetration is also stronger within soft and highly fragmented seasonal ice packs. So, the sea ice is now primed for faster transport out of the Arctic Ocean."

So, what would happen if the sea ice was wiped out like that?

Sunlight that previously went into melting the sea ice, as well as sunlight that was previously reflected back into space by sea ice, would be absorbed by the Arctic Ocean instead. In other words, we can expect massive warming.

Professor Peter Wadhams on albedo changes in the Arctic

The resulting temperature rise is likely to start wildfires all over the Northern Hemisphere, which would not only send huge amounts of greenhouse gases and soot into the air, but could also cause the grid to stop functioning, which would make electricity supply stop, industrial activity stop, traffic stop, etc. This in turn would make that the aerosols that are currently sent up in the air by such activities and that are currently masking the full wrath of global warming, will fall out of the air in a matter of weeks. Until now, about half of the global temperature rise is suppressed by such aerosols. Stopping aerosols release overnight could make temperatures rise abruptly by 1.2°C (2.16°F) in a matter of weeks.

Methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean typically start becoming huge around the end of October..

Conclusion from a paper presented at the 2008 EGU conference, on background
of a frame from a video interview by Nick Breeze with Natalia Shakhova.

Further warming of the Arctic Ocean could cause methane to erupt from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean in quantities that could quickly double and tripple the amount of methane in the atmosphere.

The combined impact of such feedbacks could wipe out crops, deplete water supplies and make a huge number of species go extinct very quickly, including human beings.

In conclusion, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.