For the report try: http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/ nocs/ news.php?action=display_news&idx=628

For Markey’s science try: http://globalwarming.house.gov/issues/globalwarming?id=0002

BTW Cynodont (#12), wouldn’t it be important to know how much of a role CO2 and CH4 are, respectively, playing in the ice loss unfolding in the Arctic if one is thinking geo-engineering is realistic. If so, I believe this is not known. While methane’s study has been an AGW stepchild when it comes to funding and perceived importance relative to a science career I know that the permafrost on the continental shelf that is/was keeping the clathrates solid/froze is about -1° C. The report recently published of last summer’s study of methane release over the continental shelf suggest the warming seen in Mauri’s link (and water having its greatest density at 40° F when fresh water—I don’t know what it is for salt water), means that the heat necessary to raise the ocean floor temperature to above freezing is in the system, or will be before geo-engineering could restore the Arctic to its former condition (but, regardless, permafrost cannot be created in an interglacial period.

It also is instructive to look at the website of the Select Committee on Energy Security and Climate change chaired by Congress Markey, ACES is framed around an assertion that atmospheric methane is stabilized (see the last paragraph of the ”Science Basics“ page. If the political wisdom in DC is ignoring the renewed increase in CH4 in the atmosphere, thinks the tabling of methane over the past decade is due to policies to, do you think they will believe this success masked an increase in the release of CH4 in the Arctic?

Anonymous – the data produced by the folks as NSIDC would appear to indicate:
a) Antarctic sea ice is not a record low
b) You can cherry pick with the best of them

http://nsidc.org/ data/ seaice_index/ images/ daily_images/ S_timeseries.png

The effect will be evidwent within months. Reduce CO2, and the effect will be noted in the longer term(i.e some decades)as some fraction of degree less warming(3,5°C warming instead of 4°C warming, a great victory eh!)

JR: Are you seeing the ANTARCTIC sea ice, now at record low in the AMSR-E data?(at the site http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_s.png
?

“Warm and wet conditions in the Arctic region during Eocene Thermal Maximum”
A. Sluijs et al

from the conclusion:
“Specifically, our results imply that some mechanism, probably through cloud feedbacks not incorporated in the models29,30, substantially reduced Arctic winter cooling under high-CO2 conditions. Depending on the climatic and greenhouse- gas concentration threshold at which such mechanisms become significant, they might comprise unforeseen positive feedbacks for future Arctic warming.”

I expect that the warming of the Arctic will continue to accelerate beyond the already frightening accelerations just discussed. Not much time left to save the arctic sea ice.

Cynodont

Unfortunately, when the Arctic Sea Ice melts away completely, it’s “game over” as far as emissions reductions are concerned. The surrounding Arctic permafrost holds 1,600 GtC (see 2009 PNAS paper by Candell et al). When that rapidly melts and turns to methane, we’re looking at the equivalent release of more than 100 times the historical total of human CO2 emissions. The amplifying GHG feedbacks associated with this are staggering.

Almost certainly, the only option to prevent the arctic sea ice cover from collapsing is some kind of albedo enhancement technique, such as marine cloud seeding or stratospheric aerosols. Once the sea ice is gone, it will never come back, no matter how much geoengineering is applied. So we had better get started researching how to geoengineer effectively and safely, eh?

Joe, if you have a better, alternate solution to save the sea ice without geoengineering, please make my day and share it. I’m a *highly* reluctant proponent for it. I wish we didn’t need it, but the alternatives are far worse.

Cynodont

http://thingsbreak.files.wordpress.com/ 2009/ 10/ increasing-rates-of-ice-mass-loss-from-the-greenland-and-antarctic-ice-sheets-revealed-by-grace.pdf

I know that ice scientists are very reluctant to try to model and forecast ice loss, because of lack of understanding of exactly what’s going on yet. But that’s how we ended up having no quantitative estimate of ice mass loss in the last IPCC report. So, could the trends shown in Figures 1 and 2 of this article be input into a projection of future sea level rise through 2100 as an interim estimate, based on current trends, until we have more sophisticated ice loss models?

Arctic multiyear sea ice is effectively gone…

http://www.reuters.com/ article/ latestCrisis/ idUSN29351585

That there is any observable correlation between solar incidence and ice extent re-formation would have me looking for other factors. I would be looking at the quantity of CH4 in the Arctic’s atmosphere in these regions (if good data was available), cloud cover dynamics, and anomalies in water temperatures to see what else may be feeding into our leaving the beloved* paradigm of Kansas behind.

Dorothy posted a link in a comment here to data from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre that models this winter being a relative heat blast for the Arctic. I’ve played with the Met’s modeling and, while asking what creates it, note that the quote included in this post makes no reference to it.

To the degree I am an educated layperson relative to the science, what I have yet to see, and would assuage my fears that the professionals are lost to their version of motivated reasoning in there current assessments, is a reasoned explanation of why current observations, relative to the relatively recent past predictions, seem to be catching them flatfooted. When the ice free Arctic arrives (and Mark makes a good point that such is a poorly defined/used term) is of less relevance than that of being able to vet policy (and relative costs of policy choices) from an understanding that includes why the goal post an ice free Arctic Ocean represents is rushing into the present.

CH4 levels seem to me to be the most important candidate for developing hypotheses around for doing so. The slow motion methane time bomb is one of these that I feel needs to be dusted off, stripped of its IPCC “wild card” status, and considered to be a reasonable candidate. I recognize that doing such is to cry fire in a crowed theater. Given the probability that the theater is on fire, how responsible is not crying fire—or at least (to the degree the absence of data allows) honestly evaluating methane’s climatic “pyrogenic” footprint within the current dynamics.

I think we are in a situation where achems razor does not serve homo sapiens well (i.e. its the wind) when what defines “simple” within the science community (i.e. what has been focused on, funded, and studied) may have been too simple; too comforting; too grounded in the false hope of motivated reasoning.

* beloved—though not enough for us/US 1st Worlder’s to conceive, to say nothing of embrace, the suffering and sacrifice needed to keep such from becoming an historical epoch.