Arctic Basin Summer Sea Ice May Be Gone By 2010, Canadian Scientists Warn - Victoria Times

[hatrack]

QUEBEC -- The Arctic Ocean could be free of ice in the summer as soon as 2010 or 2015 -- something that hasn't happened for more than a million years, according to a leading polar researcher. Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian research network, said the sea ice is melting faster than predicted by models created by international teams of scientists, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

They had forecast the Arctic Ocean could be free of summer ice as early as 2050. But Fortier told an international conference on defence and security in Quebec City yesterday that the worst-case scenarios are becoming reality.

"The frightening models we didn't even dare to talk about before are now proving to be true," Fortier told CanWest News Service, referring to computer models that take into account the thinning of the sea ice and the warming from the albedo effect -- the Earth is absorbing more energy as the sea ice melts.

According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015. "And it's probably going to happen even faster than that," said Fortier, who leads an international team of researchers in the Arctic looking for clues to climate change.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=1aaab4cd-0ca4-4b28-8a71-f442545a9d23

[gasperc]

1. I might just be Iceburgs next summer

It doesn't look like it will survive anymore summers as one intact region any longer. Sounds like it is getting so thin it will simply rip apart from the ocean currents

[rodeodance]

2. guess where countries planted their flags will sink.

[GliderGuider]

3. "The frightening models we didn't even dare to talk about before are now proving to be true"

It kind of makes you wonder how many of our worst fears are going to be realized in the next few years, doesn't it?

Tundra methane
Antarctic ice shelf collapses
No oil on the world export markets
Half today's food production in Africa by 2020
Permanent droughts in Australia and the the USA.
etc. etc. etc.

But we'll always have Paris (Hilton, that is).

[phantom power]

10. I want to know what models they *still* don't dare talk about.

Because it will be worse than those, too.

[kestrel91316]

4. "Canadian scientists" have been paying attention to MY dire

predictions, it seems.

Oy vey. I so wish I weren't almost always right with the doomsaying.......

[tom_paine]

5. "Who could have foreseen this would happen this quickly?"

:rofl:

[XemaSab]

6. "And it's probably going to happen even faster than that,"

Faster than 2010?

As in 2009? Or 2008?

Homie does realize that 2008 is next year, right? :shrug:

[NickB79]

7. Well, half of the Arctic sheet collapsed last year alone

So if 2008 has the same warming as 2007, there could very well be waves lapping at the pole within a year or two.

Maybe there will be a new Disney Christmas special, with elves floating facedown in the ocean and Santa huddled on top of his roof Katrina-style.

[XemaSab]

8. I watched the collapse of the ice sheet last summer

and I thought to myself "2050? Yeah right."

[NickB79]

9. How will lack of Arctic ice affect the Greenland ice sheet?

Does the ice surrounding Greenland help to "hold" the Greenland glaciers on land? Without the stabilizing effects of the Arctic sheet, can the Greenland sheet rapidly start sliding into the ocean?