John Vidal - Time to listen to the ice scientists about the Arctic death spiral
The Arctic’s ice is disappearing. We must
reduce emissions, fast, or the human catastrophe predicted by ocean scientist
Peter Wadhams will become reality
Ice scientists are
mostly cheerful and pragmatic. Like many other researchers coolly observing the
rapid warming of the world, they share a gallows humour and are cautious about
entering the political fray. Not Peter Wadhams. The
former director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and professor of ocean
physics at Cambridge has spent his scientific life researching the ice world,
or the cryosphere, and in just 30 years has seen unimaginable change.
When in 1970 he joined
the first of what would be more than 50 polar expeditions, the Arctic sea ice
covered around 8m sq km at its September minimum. Today, it hovers
at around 3.4m, and is declining by 13% a decade. In 30 years Wadhams has
seen the Arctic ice thin by 40%, the world change colour at its top and bottom
and the ice disappear in front of his eyes.
In a new book,
published just as July 2016 is confirmed
by Nasa as the hottest month ever recorded, this most experienced and
rational scientist states what so many other researchers privately fear but
cannot publicly say – that the Arctic is approaching a death spiral which may
see the entire remaining summer ice cover collapse in the near future.
The warming now being
widely experienced worldwide is concentrated in the polar regions and Wadhams
says we will shortly have ice-free Arctic Septembers,
expanding to four or five months with no ice at all. The inevitable result, he
predicts, will be the release of huge plumes of the powerful greenhouse gas
methane, accelerating warming even further.
He and other polar
experts have moved from being field researchers to being climate change
pioneers in the vanguard of the most rapid and drastic change that has taken
place on the planet in many thousands of years. This is not just an interesting
change happening in a remote part of the world, he says, but a catastrophe for
mankind.
“We are taking away
the beautiful world of Arctic Ocean sea ice which once protected us from the
impacts of climate extremes. We have created an ocean where there was once an
ice sheet. It is man’s first major achievement in re-shaping the face of the
planet,” he writes. And, boy, are we
seeing extremes. So far this year, the planet’s average temperature has been
1.3C warmer than the late 19th century, and 2016 is virtually certain be the
hottest year ever recorded... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/18/ice-scientists-arctic-ice-disappearing-reduce-emissions-peter-wadhams