Ice-Freee Arctic by the year 2030

[liveweatherman]

The news media features plenty of stories about the rapid melting of the Wilkins Ice Shelf 1000 miles south of South America. If the warming trend continues, the people living near the Patagonian coast of Argentina will be watching icebergs float off their coast.

J. Stoeve at the National Snow and Ice Data Center of the University of Colorado, Boulder report that the Arctic lost ice cover was roughly equivalent to an area the size of Texas and California combined in 2007. Only half of the ice remains from the 1950's and 1970's. In addition, because Antarctic is calving (ice sheets breaking apart) enormous glaciers and researchers are prediciting a seasonally ice-free Arctic by the year 2030. continue

-robynstevens's ProMet Blog

[Ed Mahmoud]

With a little luck, I'll still be around in 22 years, and no matter how many 'The Day After Tomorrow' CGI generated shots of collapsing ice shelfs Al Gore stuck into his movie and presented as actual documentary footage, I suspect I'll be chuckling that anyone believed the Arctic would be 'ice-freee' by then.

[x-y-no]

I'm skeptical of trend projections like this. There's no way to know if the trend of the last couple of decades won't be affected by some superimposed natural variation.

I'd say the confidence that we'll see an ice-free arctic summer before mid-century is rising, though. And barring a spectacular success at reducing GHG production (something that's all but impossible,) it looks like it's a mortal lock to happen in the second half of the century.

[Ed Mahmoud]

I'm skeptical of trend projections like this. There's no way to know if the trend of the last couple of decades won't be affected by some superimposed natural variation.

I'd say the confidence that we'll see an ice-free arctic summer before mid-century is rising, though. And barring a spectacular success at reducing GHG production (something that's all but impossible,) it looks like it's a mortal lock to happen in the second half of the century.

You might be right on that, or you might not be, but I'm really going to have to lose some more weight and exercise more to see that happen.

[KWT]

Yeah I do think the Arctic will be totally ice free eventually, though note even though we got record low ice last summer we still rebounded back upto average the following winter....

[x-y-no]

The winter ice extent isn't a terribly good measure without looking at thickness - something we don't have the resources to do in a comprehensive way. One might have large extents of relatively thin ice which melts away quickly the following summer.

The summer minimum is a more valuable measure because that's the ice that persists all year round.

[wbug1]

With a little luck, I'll still be around in 22 years, and no matter how many 'The Day After Tomorrow' CGI generated shots of collapsing ice shelfs Al Gore stuck into his movie and presented as actual documentary footage, I suspect I'll be chuckling that anyone believed the Arctic would be 'ice-freee' by then.

So how come the number of pirates peaked in 1860 guy?

[Sanibel]

National Geographic reported a decrease in the thick multi-year ice in the arctic that bears depend on.

Nothing about pirates however...

[xironman]

Actually at Cryosphere http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg, we are basically in a dead heat with last year. I am sure this has come up in previous discussions, but the Canadian Ice Service has a cool Quickscat of the multiyear ice available on their site http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/app/WsvPageDsp.cfm?id=11892&Lang=eng, near the bottom of the page. You can easily see how the multiyear ice is breaking up and being flushed into the North Atlantic. If this continues 2030 is optimistic.