Breakup of the North Poll

[brokensymmetry]

Excerpt: The northeast passage across the siberian polar ice is open. The glaciers on Ellesmere Island and the northern and northeastern shores of Greenland are collapsing within a matter of days. The channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Isalnd is open. And only about 250 miles of ice remains on the north shore of Greenland connecting it to the polar ice. And that is breaking up.

More at: http://www.rense.com/general56/break.htm

Cavaet: Not a mainstream source, so I don't know how reliable this is!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Pole

You may have been reading too much politics!

But seriously, the breakup of the Arctic Ice Pack is creating severe problems for Polar Bears.

A dead zone of anoxic (ultralow oxygenated) water has appeared off the coast of Oregon come down from Alaskan waters.

Melting glaciers and ice packs are changing ocean currents and salinity.

There is a big drop in breeding among birds in Northern Scotland. It was one specific place, one species, sorry, I don't have the details.

[brokensymmetry]

6. Pole, not poll.

I shall consider myself properly admonished.

Perhaps we should vote on global warming? :)

[seventhson]

2. Pole NOT poll

by the way

[Maple]

3. It's quite true

Northwest passage is again open

Polar bears are sunning themselves.

[glitch]

5. Polar bears are starving to death -

the ice has receded too far from the shore and their food supply is too far out, unobtainable. Their complex ecosystem is very disrupted. Saw this on Dr. David Suzuki's tv show 'The Nature of Things'. Very sad.

[hatrack]

4. I'd take Rense with a few canisters of salt; that said, NOAA charts here

For one thing, here's Svalbard (aka Spitzbergen). Much of the archipelago is largely ice-free by this time of the year; however, you'll note on this chart that the entire chain is almost completely ice-free at 80 North with about three weeks to go before reaching the seasonal sea ice minimum. I've never seen ice extent this low at this time of year, and I've been tracking this for about five years now.



Again, Baffin Bay. Kane Basin, which is the fair-sized opening you'll see on the map on the "umbilicus" between Baffin Bay and the Polar Ocean, has pretty minimal cover with about a month to go before reaching minimum extent.



Of course, there's plenty of seasonal variability in Arctic ice cover, but with the events of the last 10-15 years in mind, the ice extent reports do make for interesting viewing these days.

By the way, if you want to pick a particular region of the Arctic Basin, just go to this map and click on the desired region. Unfortunately, thanks to budget cutbacks, NatIce now only updates once every two weeks, rather than weekly, so expect new data/charts around the 20th of August.

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/arctic/index.htm

[jpak]

7. The pack ice disappears each year between Ellesmere and Greenland

during the formation of North Water Polynya (a polynya is an area of reduced ice concentration or open water surrounded by thicker pack ice).

It's a natural phenomenon...

http://www.fsg.ulaval.ca/giroq/now/what.htm

I spent 4 months there in 1998...

http://www.fsg.ulaval.ca/giroq/now/Gallery/Scientist.html

http://www.fsg.ulaval.ca/giroq/now/Gallery/Scenery.html

on edit:

I boarded an ice breaker at Barrow Alaska last August. The pack ice was located far to the north of us - didn't see any ice at all between Barrow and the Bering Strait.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

8. Lovely.

I see that Rense is still linking to holocaust denial web sites. How nice.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. NASA site

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/Arctic_Warming_ESU.html

[Dogmudgeon]

10. Rense is passing on an e-mail

Here's the heading to the article:

Breakup Of The North Pole
From Dirk Dunning
[e-mail]
<0>8-15-<0>4

It's an e-mail from Dirk Dunning -- I assume he has first-hand or other reliable information about the loss of Arctic ice. You can even write to him, if you'd like.

Rense, of course, passes along a lot of interesting, often hard-to-find information, most of it without comment or credibility. But that's the nature of what you find on Rense.com.

However, no debunkery is necessary. Dunning is merely adding his voice to the hundreds who have witnessed the loss of Arctic ice cover since the late 1990s. The consequences of this "sea change" have yet to be asessed, but if they change the Northern Polar (Meteorological) Vortex, it will change the weather of the entire Northern Hemisphere.

--bkl