Chris Mooney: Scientists are floored by what’s happening in the Arctic right now

Temperature anomalies for January 2016. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies 

by Chris Mooney, The Washington Post, February 18, 2016

New data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggest that January of 2016 was, for the globe, a truly extraordinary month. Coming off the hottest year ever recorded (2015), January saw the greatest departure from average of any month on record, according to data provided by NASA.

[January was the ninth straight month of record breaking global warmth]

But as you can see in the NASA figure above, the record breaking heat wasn’t uniformly distributed — it was particularly pronounced at the top of the world, showing temperature anomalies above 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 1951 to 1980 average in this region.

Indeed, NASA provides a “zonal mean” version of the temperature map above, which shows how the temperature departures from average change based on one’s latitude location on the Earth. As you can see, things get especially warm, relative to what the Earth is used to, as you enter the very high latitudes:

(NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

Global warming has long been known to be particularly intense in the Arctic — a phenomenon known as “Arctic amplification” — but even so, lately the phenomenon has been extremely pronounced.

[This is where the Earth is most vulnerable to big swings in climate]

This unusual Arctic heat has been accompanied by a new record low level for Arctic sea ice extent during the normally ice-packed month of January, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center — over 400,000 square miles below average for the month. And of course, that is closely tied to warm Arctic air temperatures.

“We’ve looked at the average January temperatures, and we look at what we call the 925 millibar level, about 3,000 feet up in the atmosphere,” says Mark Serreze, the center’s director. “And it was, I would say, absurdly warm across the entire Arctic Ocean.” The center reports temperature anomalies at this altitude of “more than 6 degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) above average” for the month.

The low sea ice situation has now continued into February. Current ice extent is well below levels at the same point in 2012, which went on to set the current record for the lowest sea ice minimum extent:

(National Snow and Ice Data Center)

“We’re way down, we’re at a record low for this time of year right now,” says Serreze. When it comes to the rest of 2016 and the coming summer and fall season when ice melts across the Arctic and reaches its lowest extent, he says, “we are starting out in a deep hole.”

So what’s causing it all? It’s a complicated picture, say scientists, but it’s likely much of it has to do with the very strong El Niño event that has carried over from 2015. But that’s not necessarily the only factor.

Here's what it means to have the hottest year on record - again

Play Video2:15

Researchers say 2015 was the hottest year on record, and that it "smashed" the previous record, which was 2014. The Post's Chris Mooney explains what that could mean for weather patterns, the Paris climate deal, and 2016. (Gillian Brockell, Chris Mooney/TWP)

“We’ve got this huge El Niño out there, we have the warm blob in the northeast Pacific, the cool blob in the Atlantic, and this ridiculously warm Arctic,” says Jennifer Francis, a climate researcher at Rutgers University who focuses on the Arctic and has argued that Arctic changes are changing mid-latitude weather by causing wobbles in the jet stream. “All these things happening at the same time that have never happened before.”

Serreze agrees that the El Niño has something to do with what’s happening in the Arctic. “I think this is more than coincidence. That we have this very strong El Niño at the same time when we have this absurd Arctic warmth. But exactly what the details are on that, I don’t think we can say right now,” he says.

[Why the U.S. is cutting carbon emissions no matter what happens with the Supreme Court]

In Alaska, matters have been quite warm but not record-breaking this winter, says Rick Thoman, climate science and services manager for the National Weather Service in the state.

“It’s been another warm winter in Alaska,” Thoman says. “No other way to put it. This is the third in a row that’s been significantly warmer than normal.” Alaska’s winter so far (taking into account the months of November, December and January) has been the third warmest on record since 1925, he says.

Still, it all fits a by-now familiar picture of an Arctic warming up considerably faster than the mid-latitudes, with consequences that could extend far outside of the polar region, says Rafe Pomerance, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who sits on the National Academy of Sciences’ Polar Research Board.

Impacts of Arctic warming are usually considered in isolation, and that’s a mistake, he says. “It’s unraveling, every piece of it is unraveling, they’re all in lockstep together,” Pomerance says. “What tends to happen is, everybody nationally reports on the latest piece of news, which is about one system. You hear about the sea ice absent the temperature trend. So you really have to think of it as a whole.”

Indeed, impacts of Arctic warming include the melting of major Arctic glaciers and Greenland (containing the potential for up to 7 meters of sea level rise if it were to melt entirely), the thawing of carbon rich permafrost (which could add to the burden of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions) and signs of worsening wildfires across the boreal forests of Alaska, to name a few.

If the Arctic is this warm in January and February, then when real warmth comes later this year, these will all be areas to watch.

“I think this winter is going to get studied like crazy, for quite a while,” says Francis. “It’s a very interesting time.”

Study: Global warming is threatening birds

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A National Audubon Society report predicts that 126 species will experience severe declines.

More at Energy & Environment:

The solution to climate change that has nothing to do with cars or coal

We may have just seen a truly ominous new weather record

It’s not just Flint: Poor communities across the U.S. live with ‘extreme’ polluters

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Chris Mooney reports on science and the environment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/18/scientists-are-floored-by-whats-happening-in-the-arctic-right-now/

US builds up Arctic spy network as Russia, China increase presence

A F-22 Raptor from the 1st Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base takes off from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage on Tuesday morning, June 23, 2015, while participating in Alaska's premier joint training exercise Northern Edge. A Navy P-3 Orion is in the background. Bill Roth / ADN

by Brian Bennett and W.J. Hennigan, Arctic Newswire, September 7, 2015

WASHINGTON -- As China and Russia boost their military presence in the resource-rich far north, U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to study potential threats in the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War, a sign of the region's growing strategic importance.

Over the last 14 months, most of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have assigned analysts to work full time on the Arctic. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently convened a "strategy board" to bring the analysts together to share their findings.

In addition to relying on U.S. spy satellites orbiting overhead and Navy sensors deep in the frigid waters, the analysts process raw intelligence from a recently overhauled Canadian listening post near the North Pole and a Norwegian surveillance ship called the Marjata, which is now being upgraded at a U.S. Navy shipyard in southern Virginia.

The administration's growing concern was dramatized Wednesday when the Pentagon confirmed it was tracking five Chinese warships in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia, for the first time. Officials said the Chinese ships were steaming in international waters toward the Aleutian Islands but posed no threat.

The growing focus shows how the United States and other polar powers are adjusting as global warming opens new sea lanes and sets off a scramble for largely untapped reserves of oil, natural gas and minerals. The United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are pursuing jurisdiction over the Arctic seabed.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as the NGA, has spent two years drawing new maps and charts of waterways and territories in the vast region. In a statement, Director Robert Cardillo said his agency intends to "broaden and accelerate" that work, while other agencies help chart the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

"There are a lot of things we can see now that we couldn't see 10 years ago," said a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the new interest in the Arctic.

Some of the transformation is visible on detailed digital maps that the NGA made public last week, while President Barack Obama was on a three-day visit to Alaska and became the first U.S. president to visit a community above the Arctic Circle.

The maps show airstrips, oil drilling areas, ports, maritime boundaries and sea routes. The NGA plans to make public 3-D maps of all of Alaska by 2016 and the entire Arctic by 2017 to help track melting sea ice and receding glaciers.

The U.S. intelligence focus is chiefly aimed at Russia's military buildup in the far north under President Vladimir Putin. The country's Northern Fleet is based above the Arctic Circle at Murmansk.

The Russian government announced plans in March 2014 to reopen 10 former Soviet-era military bases along the Arctic seaboard, including 14 airfields, that were closed after the end of the Cold War. A shipyard in northern Russia also is constructing four nuclear-powered submarines.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker complained that the Pentagon is closing bases and shedding troops while Moscow has begun rebuilding a military force that was eviscerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"It's the biggest buildup of the Russian military since the Cold War," Walker told reporters during Obama's visit to his state. "They're reopening 10 bases and building four more, and they're all in the Arctic, so here we are in the middle of the pond, feeling a little bit uncomfortable with the military drawdown."

To help keep watch, Canada has refurbished a listening post called CFS Alert at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles from the North Pole. It was once part of the Distant Early Warning line, a system of radar stations that watched for incoming Russian bombers or missiles.

"It was thought to be a relic of the Cold War," said Rob Huebert, a professor in Arctic affairs at the University of Calgary. "Now it is a critical element of an intelligence system that monitors a part of the world that few have access to."

About 100 intelligence officers stationed at CFS Alert, which stands for Canadian Forces Station, try to intercept Russian aircraft and submarine communications and other signals intelligence. Canada shares the take with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Norway also cooperates closely with U.S. intelligence agencies.

The Marjata, an advanced spy ship specifically built to collect electronic intelligence, has been getting new equipment and systems since April at U.S. Naval Weapons Station Yorktown in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Camp Peary, the CIA's training base for clandestine operatives, is adjacent to the facility.

The Marjata, which is operated by the Norwegian Intelligence Service, is scheduled to leave in November, U.S. officials said. It will patrol the Barents Sea, on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, to eavesdrop on Russian military activities.

Under pressure to track growing environmental threats in the Arctic, the White House issued an 11-page national strategy in May 2013. It challenged federal agencies to "improve our awareness of activities, conditions and trends in the Arctic region that may affect our safety, security, environmental or commercial interests."

Officials said that was a wake-up call to intelligence officials to pay more heed to potential problems in the Arctic.

The Navy already was paying attention. It had largely abandoned research in the Arctic after the Cold War, but the Office of Naval Research began charting Arctic waterways again in 2009. Now ships drop underwater drones that track temperatures and use upward-looking radar to chart ice thickness.

"We're not storming into the Arctic or anything; it's not a crisis," said Scott Harper, head of the office's Arctic Program. "But we're doing research that will determine how our systems will work properly if and when we do."

(c)2015 Tribune Co. Visit Tribune Co. at www.latimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

http://www.adn.com/article/20150907/us-builds-arctic-spy-network-russia-china-increase-presence

As the Arctic warms, sunlight will cause even more CO2 to be emitted by thawing permafrost by oxidizing organic carbon

Scientists discover that, as the Arctic continues to warm, sunlight will be the major cause of CO2 escaping into the atmosphere from vegetation preserved in frozen soil

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, September 4, 2014

LONDON − One of the puzzles of the permafrost has been solved by scientists in the US. The key to the carbon cycle in the Arctic north is not the microbe population − it’s the sunlight.

Such a discovery is not, strictly speaking, concerned with climate change, but with the more detailed question of how the world works – specifically, how the carbon that was once plant material gets back into the atmosphere.

However, since the Arctic permafrost is home to half of all the organic carbon trapped in the soils of the entire Earth, the finding is ominous.

The Arctic is one of the fastest warming regions on the planet. As it warms, more and more carbon dioxide is likely to escape from the half-decayed tundra vegetation preserved in the frozen soil and will find its way into the atmosphere, to accelerate still further warming.

For the moment, the study is another piece fitted into place in a wider understanding of the carbon cycle.

Organic carbon

Rose Cory, of the University of Michigan, US, reports with colleagues, in the journal Science, that they measured the speeds at which bacteria and sunlight converted dissolved organic carbon in the lakes and rivers of Alaska.

In the standard domestic garden compost heap, the hard work of turning such things as decaying cabbage stalks, potato peelings and grass cuttings back into carbon dioxide and methane is performed by microbes.

But visible and ultraviolet light beams also pack a punch. They too can oxidise organic carbon and turn it back into gas molecules.

In 2013, Dr Cory and colleagues established that levels of dissolved organic carbon in a region that was once permanently frozen were rising, giving microbes and other conversion processes a chance to get to work.

The researchers took samples of flowing and still water from 135 lakes and 73 rivers on Alaska’s North Slope over a three-year period, and then incubated them under differing conditions of light.

More efficient

They found that sunlight was 19 times more efficient than microbes at processing the carbon, and could account for between 70% and 95% of all the carbon released from Alaskan water.

“We’re likely to see more carbon dioxide released from thawing permafrost than people had previously believed,” Dr Cory said. “We are able to say that because we now know that sunlight plays a key role and that carbon released from thawing permafrost is readily converted to carbon dioxide once it is exposed to sunlight.”

Microbes are less efficient in low temperatures. And the sunlight works more efficiently because it can directly degrade the dissolved organic carbon, and can also convert it into a condition that makes it more accessible for the microbes.

“This is because most of the fresh water in the Arctic is shallow, meaning sunlight can reach the bottom of any river – and most lakes – so that no dissolved organic carbon is kept in the dark,” said Byron Crump, a microbial ecologist at Oregon State University, and a co-author of the report. “Also there is little shading of rivers and lakes in the Arctic because there are no trees.”

Arctic ‘is set to reach 13 °C by 2100′

by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network, February 20, 2014

Iceberg in Rødefjord (Scoresby Sund), Greenland: Arctic sea ice volume has shrunk by 75% since the 1980s. Image: Hannes Grobe 20:05, 16 December 2007 (UTC) via Wikimedia Commons

There is wide political agreement that global average temperatures should not rise more than 2°C above their level several centuries ago. The rise some scientists expect in the Arctic by 2100 is more than six times as great.

LONDON – US scientists say that by the end of this century temperatures in the Arctic may for part of each year reach 13 °C above pre-industrial levels. Global average temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 °C over the level they were at in around 1750.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report that it thought the probable global temperature rise by 2100 would be between 1.5 and 4 °C under most scenarios. Most of the world’s governments have agreed the global rise should not be allowed to exceed a “safety level” of 2 °C. [There is no scientific basis for thinking that a "2 °C" temperature rise is "safe" -- this was simply a politically expedient number.]

But James Overland, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and colleagues, writing in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Earth’s Future, say average temperature projections show an Arctic-wide end of century increase of 13 °C in the late autumn and 5°C in late spring for a business-as-usual emission scenario.

By contrast, a scenario based on climate mitigation would reduce these figures to 7 °C and 3 °C, respectively. The team say they consider their estimates “realistic,” and they have used a large number of models in reaching them.

Ice fall

The Arctic is known to be warming fast, much faster than regions further south. The mean Arctic temperature is 1.5 °C higher today than it was between 1971 and 2000, double the warming that occurred at lower latitudes during the same period.

The authors say Arctic sea ice volume has decreased by 75% since the 1980s. Reasons for the rapid warming include feedback processes linked to changes in albedo, which have caused a big drop in the ability of the Arctic’s snow and ice to reflect sunlight back into space.

As they melt they are replaced by darker rock and water, which, instead of reflecting the warmth away from the Earth, absorb it and help to raise the temperature. There are also changes taking place in ocean and land heat storage. These all help to amplify the effect of greenhouse gases in warming the Arctic.

Professor Overland and his colleagues say it is very likely that the Arctic Ocean will become nearly free of sea ice at some seasons of the year before 2050, and possibly within a decade or two. This in turn will further increase Arctic temperatures, economic access (for oil and gas exploitation and by shipping), and ecological shifts.

No agreement

The greenhouse gas emissions mitigation scenario the authors use (known as RCP4.5) assumes atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) of about 538 parts per million (ppm). Before the Industrial Revolution concentrations were at about 280 ppm, and had changed little over many millennia. They are now at their highest in 15 million years, and rising at about 2 ppm annually, reaching almost 400 ppm.

Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and so far world leaders have not managed to agree how to reduce them. Their efforts are now concentrated on next year’s UN climate change convention meeting, to be held in the French capital, Paris.

Professor Overland and his colleagues conclude that major changes in the Arctic climate are “very likely” over the decades until 2040, including “several additional months of open water in the Arctic Ocean, ever earlier snow melt, further loss of permafrost, increased economic access, and dramatic impacts on ecological systems.”

They say the large difference in surface air temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the century, which they are confident will happen, “makes a strong case to begin mitigation activities for greenhouse gases.”

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/02/arctic-is-set-to-reach-13c-by-2100/

Robert Way corrects Judith Curry's erroneous Senate testimony on Arctic warming

A Historical Perspective on Arctic Warming: Part One

by Robert Way, Skeptical Science, January 28, 2014

During her most recent Senate testimony, Dr. Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) repeated one of the most common misconceptions found in the blogosphere, that the Arctic was warmer than present during the 1940s. This period - known as the Early Century Warm Period (ECWP) - coincides with observations of reduced Arctic sea ice cover and allowed for more widespread ship navigation than during the late 1800s and early 1900s (Johanessen et al., 2004).

There are two elements to the contrarian views on the ECWP in the Arctic. First, they argue that during the ECWP the Arctic was warmer than present. Secondly they have used the ECWP as a means of casting doubt on the main drivers of global warming. These contrarians argue that internal climate variability caused the ECWP and that this internal variability may have contributed to recent Arctic warming, thereby suggesting that climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases may be lower than current estimates. Some of these discussion points have also somehow found themselves in the IPCC AR5's Chapter 10 where the following claim is made.

"Arctic temperature anomalies in the 1930s were apparently as large as those in the 1990s and 2000s. There is still considerable discussion of the ultimate causes of the warm temperature anomalies that occurred in the Arctic in the 1920s and 1930s."

Based on previous examination of the surface temperature record and also reading the literature on the topic, I found myself skeptical of this IPCC claim and by extension the contrarian views. Tamino expressed a similar sentiment in a recent article. In this post I will be examining the first element of the discussion and will evaluate whether "Arctic temperature anomalies in the 1930s were apparently as large as those in the 1990s and 2000s" is an accurate statement.

The challenge with describing Arctic surface air temperature changes is that the observational network is sparse, something we noted and corrected for in Cowtan and Way (in press). Using a single observational network therefore has the potential to mislead - particularly on short timescales. However, comparison of all available long surface temperature records for the Arctic (here defined as regions North of 60° N) shows relatively strong agreement amongst the various products (Figure 1). 

Figure 1. Arctic annual surface air temperature changes from ~1900 to ~2013 relative to the 1901-2000 baseline. Top panel: combined land and ocean air temperatures; bottom panel: land-only air temperatures.

From the above graph it is also apparent that some temperature anomalies between 1930 and 1950 were well above the 20th century average, but they do not match the magnitude of those observed over the past decade for any complete record. Over longer timescales (120 months/10 years) this difference becomes more apparent with no records showing similar warmth to present in the Arctic during any previous period (Figure 2). One record (NansenSAT; Johannsen et al., 2008) shows greater mid-century warmth and less recent warmth relative to the other datasets; this dataset includes 20th century data from both Russian drift stations and Argo buoys, but the land station data comes from CRUTEM2v which has limited Arctic coverage. It should be noted that the record terminates in 2008 before several of the warmest years in the Arctic. 

Figure 2. Centered rolling mean (120-month/10-year) of Arctic surface air temperatures from ~1900 to ~2008 (truncated at both ends) relative to the 1901-2000 baseline. Top panel: combined land and ocean air temperatures; bottom panel: land-only air temperatures. 

The Arctic surface temperature record presented by CW2014 is the most complete spatially due to its incorporation of interpolation (e.g., kriging) and has been validated against both Arctic buoys and satellite records during the recent period. It also shows a greater warming during the ECWP than other Land+Ocean records, therefore it is retained for comparing the ECWP and recent Arctic warming.

To compare the relative distributions of monthly anomalies we take the warmest 120-month period (10-year) during the ECWP and compare it to the warmest 120-month period during the recent warm period (Figure 3). Comparison of these two periods reveals a clear shift in the average air temperatures and also an increase in the probabilities of warm months over the past decade. Recently, it has also become increasinly rare for even a single month to have a below-normal average temperature, in contrast with the ECWP where this was common. 

Figure 3. Comparison of warmest 120-month (10-year) periods in Arctic surface air temperatures during the early century warm period and recent warm period using the CW2013 dataset. Left panel: density plots showing the frequency of temperature anomalies during both periods; right panel: box plots showing the minimum/maximum values, lower/upper quartiles and medians for both periods. This figure was updated due to mistakenly using HadCRUTv4 in the original.  

Based on the data presented above there is virtually no evidence that Arctic air temperatures were greater than present during any previous period of the last century. This is clearly a case where the IPCC should consider amending its text to provide a more accurate picture of Arctic temperature changes. In Part Two, the Early Century Warm Period will be discussed in the context of its causes and origins.

Supplemental:

CW2013 = Cowtan and Way Long-Kriged Global Temperature Product (after Cowtan and Way, in press). Discussed above.

GISS = Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Hansen et al., 2010).

HadCRUT/CRU = Hadley Climate Research Unit (Jones et al., 2012; Morice et al., 2012).

NOAA/NCDC = National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center (Lawrimore et al., 2011; Vose et al., 2012;).

BEST = Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (Rohde et al. 2013).

NansenSAT = Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (Johanessen et al., 2004; Kuzmina et al., 2008).

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Rapid_Arctic_Warming_Part_One.html