Beaufort Sea Ice Pack Fracture (Arctic Sea Ice Breaking Up In January)

Source: Environment Canada

What's New for January 2008

1) Beaufort Sea ice pack fracture

A massive fracture of the Beaufort Sea ice pack as well as other interesting features are observed this winter in the Arctic. A new page under "Specific Ice Events" in the Education Corner shows this with satellite imagery and animations.

In December 2007, a massive fracture of the Beaufort Ice pack was observed west of Banks island. The image below clearly shows this fracture.


NOAA Image for January 9, 2008.

Read more: http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/app/WsvPageDsp.cfm?id=204&Lang=eng

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This is happening right now - in January - in the Arctic Ocean. The ice pack is now apparently so thin that it can't refreeze in the face of winter storms, even in January.

Note: The red lines you see are the North American coastline, running from Point Barrow, Alaska (up left) to Victoria Island in Canada (down right).

to see it in action - that's very eye-opening and, frankly, scary.

Glad you posted it here so it can get some views.

Thank you Hatrack

K&R

Neither are the shipping companies

Because of the huge increase in cruise ship activity around the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean...

I believe the Russians have already pounded in their claim markers just like in the old west.

Until they are sunbathing on their Beach fronts in Kodiak AK. :eyes:

Thanks for the thread and photo, hatrack.

But that's about as far south from here as you can get.

My bad.

I started to think that too. It's been a long week, a three day weekend isn't coming soon enough.

Are you thinking Alaska is in the Antarctic???

This OP sums up in one satellite image precisely why all the candidate infighting going on here right now is so amusing in a sick, warped sort of way. Sure, I want a Dem in the WH next year. Will it matter much in the grand scheme? Not really....

Is this a first ....in the WINTER??

the story. By the way, hatrack, your posts and other real news items are keeping many of us from ignoring DU lately. Thank you.

In preparation for Sixty Days And Counting -- this trilogy illustrates this crisis well, even brilliantly. The 'President' is a thinly-disguised GW, and Washington DC is inundated, then frozen.

Bad things this way are coming.

That must look incredibly cool from up close. Considering the deep shadows some of those slabs of ice are throwing, some of them must be tilted upward thousands of feet above the horizontal. Can you imagine looking up at them from underneath?

:wow:

It's pretty astounding.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3146261&mesg_id=3146960

Forty Signs of Rain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Forty Signs of Rain (2004) is the first book in the hard science fiction "Science in the Capital" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The focus of the novel is the effects of global warming in the near future. Its characters are mostly scientists, either involved in biotech research, assisting government members or doing paperwork at the NSF. There are also several Buddhist monks working for the embassy of the fictional island nation of Khembalung.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Signs_of_Rain



ISBN13: 9780553803112
ISBN10: 0553803115
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0-553-80311-5

I had really hoped this wouldn't happen till I was dead.

Giant fractures have been cracking open the ice in the Beaufort Sea in recent weeks creating extraordinary stretches of open water and giving researchers from around the world a first-hand look at the Arctic meltdown. "It's shocking to see," says David Barber, a climate specialist at the University of Manitoba. He is heading an international project, involving more than 200 researchers from 15 countries, on the Amundsen, a Canadian Coast Guard ship over-wintering in the Beaufort. "The fractures are huge," says Barber, who recently returned from the Amundsen and says some cracks are more than 100 kilometres across. "We drove our ship down of one of them and you couldn't see the sides of it." The Canadian Ice Service has posted a satellite image of one "massive fracture" on its website, along with an animation showing huge fissures opening and giant slabs of ice peeling away west and north of Banks Island over the last five weeks. Stretches of open water, known as leads, normally form in the Beaufort in winter as thick, old ice grinds past much thinner first-year ice. Barber says he has never such large fractures and so much open water in December and January. He says the phenomenon is tied to the loss of Arctic ice last summer, that "stunned" scientists as the ice retreated 40 per cent below normal, to the lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979.

There is now so little thick, multi-year ice left, that it is being blown around the Beaufort "like Styrofoam in a bathtub," says Barber. As the thick older ice moves it pulls away from the thin new ice creating fractures and large areas of open water. The $40-million research initiative on the Amundsen is part of the International Polar Year. Barber says the researchers could not have picked a more interesting winter to spend in the Beaufort, but says the changes they are documenting are "disturbing." Not only is the ice fracturing, but he says storm tracks are changing as weather systems are drawn in over the open water and fed by heat being released by the seawater. And thick multi-year ice, which the researchers are tracking with beacons, is moving at up to 30 nautical miles a day, much faster than normal. If the trend continues, he and other scientists predict the Arctic could be ice free in the summer months by 2020, plus or minus 10 years. That means Arctic summer ice, which has capped the planet for more than a million years, might be gone by 2010, says Barber.

The implications extend far beyond the Arctic, and the possibility of shipping routes opening in the North. Weather across the Northern Hemisphere is impacted by what happens in the Arctic and the northern ice plays a critical role in controlling Earth's thermostat. Arctic ice reflects close to the 95 per cent of solar radiation that hits it. Once the ice melts away, seawater absorbs the heat instead, later releasing it back to the atmosphere, a process that will speed global warming. The phenomenon is already at play in the Beaufort. Barber saysthe extra heat absorbed by the sea water last summer delayed the formation of new ice last fall by many weeks. And the heat is still being released as storms churn up open water, creating unusually balmy winter weather, he says, noting the temperatures off Banks Island hit -9 C when he was on the Amundsen in December. )
http://visz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?cid=14992&lang=eng

how come the U.S. is not acknowledging this?...:scared:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hmOKbkq17ICe03DC7hRIFdrIhCtwD8U7G22O3

Rising Sea Levels Threaten China Cities
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN – 1 day ago

BEIJING (AP) — Sea levels off Shanghai and other Chinese coastal cities are rising at an alarming rate, leading to contamination of drinking water supplies and other threats, China's State Oceanic Administration reported Thursday.

Waters off the industrial port city of Tianjin, 60 miles southeast of Beijing, rose by 7.72 inches over the past three decades, the administration said.

Seas off the business hub of Shanghai have risen by 4.53 inches over the same period, the report said.

Administration experts said global climate change and the sinking of coastal land due to the pumping of ground water were the major causes behind rising water levels.

"Sea level rises worldwide cannot be reversed, so Chinese city officials and planners must take measures to adapt to the change," Chen Manchun, an administration researcher, was quoted as saying on the central government's official Web site.

Globally, rising seas threaten to submerge low-lying island groups, erode coastlines and force the construction of vast new levees. Some scientists have warned that melting of the vast glaciers of Greenland could cause a 13-foot rise in sea levels in coming centuries.

More at link above ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^