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Beaufort Sea Ice Pack Fracture (Arctic Sea Ice Breaking Up In January)

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hatrack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 01:31 PM
Original message
Beaufort Sea Ice Pack Fracture (Arctic Sea Ice Breaking Up In January)
Edited on Fri Jan-18-08 01:35 PM by hatrack
Source: Environment Canada

What's New for January 2008

1) Beaufort Sea ice pack fracture

A massive fracture of the Beaufort Sea ice pack as well as other interesting features are observed this winter in the Arctic. A new page under "Specific Ice Events" in the Education Corner shows this with satellite imagery and animations.

In December 2007, a massive fracture of the Beaufort Ice pack was observed west of Banks island. The image below clearly shows this fracture.


NOAA Image for January 9, 2008.

Read more: http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/app/WsvPageDsp.cfm?id=204&Lang=eng



This is happening right now - in January - in the Arctic Ocean. The ice pack is now apparently so thin that it can't refreeze in the face of winter storms, even in January.

Note: The red lines you see are the North American coastline, running from Point Barrow, Alaska (up left) to Victoria Island in Canada (down right).
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Delphinus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 01:38 PM
Response to Original message
1. I had to go to the link
to see it in action - that's very eye-opening and, frankly, scary.

Glad you posted it here so it can get some views.
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SammyWinstonJack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 01:42 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. kick and rec.
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Radio_Lady Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 10:10 PM
Response to Reply #2
30. Wow. That's pretty disturbing. Kicked and recommended.
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leftchick Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 01:43 PM
Response to Original message
3. and the world continues to ignore the danger
Thank you Hatrack

K&R
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BrotherBuzz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 01:47 PM
Response to Reply #3
5. Cruise liners aren't ignoring this potential bonanza
Neither are the shipping companies
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Winterblues Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:37 PM
Response to Reply #5
15. US Coast Guard had to open a Search and Rescue site at Pt Barrow
Because of the huge increase in cruise ship activity around the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean...
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biermeister Donating Member (425 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:39 PM
Response to Reply #5
16. neither are the oil companies
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BrotherBuzz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 03:47 PM
Response to Reply #16
20. I understand there just might be a showdown between the US and Russia
I believe the Russians have already pounded in their claim markers just like in the old west.
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humbled_opinion Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 01:45 PM
Response to Original message
4. Most people won't even recognize Global Warming ...
Until they are sunbathing on their Beach fronts in Kodiak AK. :eyes:
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Uncle Joe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 01:59 PM
Response to Original message
6. This is not good.
Thanks for the thread and photo, hatrack.
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Roland99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:07 PM
Response to Original message
7. Isn't it... summer... there now?
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hatrack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:14 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. Wrong pole - we're about a month past summer solstice in Antarctica . . .
But that's about as far south from here as you can get.
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Roland99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:31 PM
Response to Reply #9
14. Ha! DOH! Bit of a brain malfunction there for me.
My bad.
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TheCentepedeShoes Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 06:44 PM
Response to Reply #14
25. Don't feel bed
I started to think that too. It's been a long week, a three day weekend isn't coming soon enough.
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Desertrose Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:14 PM
Response to Reply #7
10. NOT summer in the ARCTIC.
Are you thinking Alaska is in the Antarctic???
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Gloria Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:09 PM
Response to Original message
8. Oh, wow! Pity the poor polar bears...this is truly disturbing!
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Systematic Chaos Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:17 PM
Response to Original message
11. Number nine... number nine... number nine... number nine... number nine...
This OP sums up in one satellite image precisely why all the candidate infighting going on here right now is so amusing in a sick, warped sort of way. Sure, I want a Dem in the WH next year. Will it matter much in the grand scheme? Not really....
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Desertrose Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:18 PM
Response to Original message
12. The animation is truly disturbing...it happens so FAST!
Is this a first ....in the WINTER??
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jwirr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:25 PM
Response to Original message
13. I live near Lake Superior and those long term maps sure do tell
the story. By the way, hatrack, your posts and other real news items are keeping many of us from ignoring DU lately. Thank you.
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donkeyotay Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 03:13 PM
Response to Original message
17. That's scary. Thanks for the image. k&r nt
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byronius Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 03:37 PM
Response to Original message
18. I'm re-reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Fifty Degrees Below.
In preparation for Sixty Days And Counting -- this trilogy illustrates this crisis well, even brilliantly. The 'President' is a thinly-disguised GW, and Washington DC is inundated, then frozen.

Bad things this way are coming.
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progressive_realist Donating Member (669 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 03:39 PM
Response to Original message
19. Not to make light of the situation, but...
That must look incredibly cool from up close. Considering the deep shadows some of those slabs of ice are throwing, some of them must be tilted upward thousands of feet above the horizontal. Can you imagine looking up at them from underneath?

:wow:
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Radio_Lady Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 10:13 PM
Response to Reply #19
31. Read Viva's post number #28 titled "a little info...."
Edited on Fri Jan-18-08 10:15 PM by Radio_Lady
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Ian David Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 05:01 PM
Response to Original message
21. Anyone else read "Forty Signs of Rain"?
Edited on Fri Jan-18-08 05:02 PM by IanDB1
Forty Signs of Rain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Forty Signs of Rain (2004) is the first book in the hard science fiction "Science in the Capital" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The focus of the novel is the effects of global warming in the near future. Its characters are mostly scientists, either involved in biotech research, assisting government members or doing paperwork at the NSF. There are also several Buddhist monks working for the embassy of the fictional island nation of Khembalung.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Signs_of_Rain



ISBN13: 9780553803112
ISBN10: 0553803115
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0-553-80311-5
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yardwork Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 05:04 PM
Response to Original message
22. This is bad, right?
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sakabatou Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 08:43 PM
Response to Reply #22
27. YES!
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aquart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 06:00 PM
Response to Original message
23. Okay, I feel a little sick.
I had really hoped this wouldn't happen till I was dead.
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Radio_Lady Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 10:16 PM
Response to Reply #23
32. "I had really hoped this wouldn't happen till I was dead." My thoughts exactly.
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greenman3610 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 06:07 PM
Response to Original message
24. climate experts - how different is this from previous years?
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Viva_La_Revolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 09:08 PM
Response to Reply #24
28. a little info...
Giant fractures have been cracking open the ice in the Beaufort Sea in recent weeks creating extraordinary stretches of open water and giving researchers from around the world a first-hand look at the Arctic meltdown. "It's shocking to see," says David Barber, a climate specialist at the University of Manitoba. He is heading an international project, involving more than 200 researchers from 15 countries, on the Amundsen, a Canadian Coast Guard ship over-wintering in the Beaufort. "The fractures are huge," says Barber, who recently returned from the Amundsen and says some cracks are more than 100 kilometres across. "We drove our ship down of one of them and you couldn't see the sides of it." The Canadian Ice Service has posted a satellite image of one "massive fracture" on its website, along with an animation showing huge fissures opening and giant slabs of ice peeling away west and north of Banks Island over the last five weeks. Stretches of open water, known as leads, normally form in the Beaufort in winter as thick, old ice grinds past much thinner first-year ice. Barber says he has never such large fractures and so much open water in December and January. He says the phenomenon is tied to the loss of Arctic ice last summer, that "stunned" scientists as the ice retreated 40 per cent below normal, to the lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979.

There is now so little thick, multi-year ice left, that it is being blown around the Beaufort "like Styrofoam in a bathtub," says Barber. As the thick older ice moves it pulls away from the thin new ice creating fractures and large areas of open water. The $40-million research initiative on the Amundsen is part of the International Polar Year. Barber says the researchers could not have picked a more interesting winter to spend in the Beaufort, but says the changes they are documenting are "disturbing." Not only is the ice fracturing, but he says storm tracks are changing as weather systems are drawn in over the open water and fed by heat being released by the seawater. And thick multi-year ice, which the researchers are tracking with beacons, is moving at up to 30 nautical miles a day, much faster than normal. If the trend continues, he and other scientists predict the Arctic could be ice free in the summer months by 2020, plus or minus 10 years. That means Arctic summer ice, which has capped the planet for more than a million years, might be gone by 2010, says Barber.

The implications extend far beyond the Arctic, and the possibility of shipping routes opening in the North. Weather across the Northern Hemisphere is impacted by what happens in the Arctic and the northern ice plays a critical role in controlling Earth's thermostat. Arctic ice reflects close to the 95 per cent of solar radiation that hits it. Once the ice melts away, seawater absorbs the heat instead, later releasing it back to the atmosphere, a process that will speed global warming. The phenomenon is already at play in the Beaufort. Barber saysthe extra heat absorbed by the sea water last summer delayed the formation of new ice last fall by many weeks. And the heat is still being released as storms churn up open water, creating unusually balmy winter weather, he says, noting the temperatures off Banks Island hit -9 C when he was on the Amundsen in December. )
http://visz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/woalert_read.php?cid=14992&lang=eng
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Virginia Dare Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 06:56 PM
Response to Original message
26. I read yesterday China is seeing an alarming rise in ocean levels..
how come the U.S. is not acknowledging this?...:scared:
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Radio_Lady Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 10:17 PM
Response to Reply #26
33. Here's the link for the China story from Jan. 16:
Edited on Fri Jan-18-08 10:20 PM by Radio_Lady
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hmOKbkq17ICe03DC7hRIFdrIhCtwD8U7G22O3

Rising Sea Levels Threaten China Cities
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN – 1 day ago

BEIJING (AP) — Sea levels off Shanghai and other Chinese coastal cities are rising at an alarming rate, leading to contamination of drinking water supplies and other threats, China's State Oceanic Administration reported Thursday.

Waters off the industrial port city of Tianjin, 60 miles southeast of Beijing, rose by 7.72 inches over the past three decades, the administration said.

Seas off the business hub of Shanghai have risen by 4.53 inches over the same period, the report said.

Administration experts said global climate change and the sinking of coastal land due to the pumping of ground water were the major causes behind rising water levels.

"Sea level rises worldwide cannot be reversed, so Chinese city officials and planners must take measures to adapt to the change," Chen Manchun, an administration researcher, was quoted as saying on the central government's official Web site.

Globally, rising seas threaten to submerge low-lying island groups, erode coastlines and force the construction of vast new levees. Some scientists have warned that melting of the vast glaciers of Greenland could cause a 13-foot rise in sea levels in coming centuries.

More at link above ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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Radio_Lady Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 10:21 PM
Response to Reply #33
34. So, why don't we have similar rises in the sea off of all of our coastal cities?
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Az_lefty Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 10:00 PM
Response to Original message
29. Global Warming and a Recession??? We're really fucked... n/t
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tom_paine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-19-08 12:20 AM
Response to Original message
35. K & R for an important story
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