The Revolt and The Revolting: The 'Recharge' to the Arctic Ocean is not due to precipitation. The troposphere is simply to warm to preserve 'aged' ice.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The 'Recharge' to the Arctic Ocean is not due to precipitation. The troposphere is simply to warm to preserve 'aged' ice.

It isn't even a matter of 'recharge' anymore. It is a matter of 'sustained' ability of Earth to freeze ice in the Arctic Ocean. There are 'chronic' heat transfer systems all year round. The Arctic Ocean has no 'relief' from the heat.

One has to realize, there is 'higher amounts of 'COLD' reserve in the 'aged' ice. As the aged ice melts it is ONLY replaced with annual ice less able to 'sustain' against increased tropospheric temperatures.

If continued 'heat transfer systems' degrade ice that has no 'residual' eventually there will not be enough ice in the Arctic Ocean from year to year to 'fend off' higher tropospheric warming. As that occurs, as it most assuredly will at this rate, the troposphere will heat rapidly. A tipping point will be reached and Earth will find a very small margin to sustain life.

The decline in multiyear (including second-year ice) sea ice coverage has also been measured by NASA’s QuikScat satellite from 1999 to 2009. Each field shows the coverage on January 1 of that year. There is a 40 percent drop in coverage between 2005 and 2007. Credit: Ron Kwok, NASA/JPL (click here)

The summer minimum and the winter maximum are the two pivotal milestones in the annual cycle of Arctic sea ice. The thickness of sea ice and the extent at each of these times are key indicators of Arctic climate. Over the past two and a half decades, the extent of sea ice at the end of summer (mid-September) has declined significantly. The corollary to that trend is that at the winter maximum (end of February or mid-March), the ice covering the Arctic is much younger and thinner than it was in the past.
This pair of maps shows the median age of February sea ice from 1981-2009 (left) compared to February 2009 (right). (click here) Ice more than two years old is dark blue, ice that is one to two years old is medium blue, and ice that is less than one year old is light blue. Compared to the median conditions at the end of winter (the median is the number halfway between the lowest and highest numbers in a range), the ice pack of February 2009 contains much less old ice (dark blue).