25-7-2014

Acceleration of
ice melt
ngel Abraham Alejandro Guerrero Garza
UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE APODACA
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Abstract:
The Earth's ice cover is melting in more places and at higher rates than at any time since
record keeping began. Reports from around the world show that global ice melting
accelerated during the 1990s-which was also the warmest decade on record.
The causes of the dramatic loss have implications for the future trajectory of the Arctic sea
ice cover. Ice mass balance observations demonstrate that there was an extraordinarily large
amount of melting on the bottom of the ice in the Sea. Calculations indicate that solar
heating of the upper ocean was the primary source of heat for this observed enhanced
Beaufort Sea bottom melting. An increase in the open water fraction resulted in a 500%
positive anomaly in solar heat input to the upper ocean, triggering an icealbedo feedback
and contributing to the accelerating ice retreat.
[National Snow and Ice Data Center].

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Hypothesis:
Global warming, pollution of the big cities and the lack of awareness of the population in
addition to the increase in large cities will make that climate change rise, emissions of
carbon dioxide grow and increase the greenhouse effect. This will make the poles to melt
and not be reset to its freezing point in winter lands times in areas where they are located.
The melting poles will bring great trouble for humanity, such as:
Increase in global temperatures
Geographical Changes by increases in the seas
Flooding in coastal cities
Abrupt climate changes in areas most affected by global warming
Changes of flora and fauna around the world
The above problems can always decrease as humans to change their lifestyle and way of
thinking.

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Acceleration of ice melt
Arctic sea ice extent over the modern satellite record (1979present) shows down- ward
trends in all months, smallest in winter and largest at the end of the summer melt season in
September. The period from 2002 onwards has seen a series of extreme September extent
minima. A new record minimum was set in 2005, followed by some recovery in 2006.
Then, in September 2007, Arctic sea ice extent fell to the lowest value ever recorded, 23%
below the 2005 minimum. Including the last three Septembers (20082010), which ended
up with the second, fourth and third lowest extents in the satellite record, respectively, the
September linear trend stands at12.4% per decade The downward trend in September ice
extent is best explained from a combination of natural variability in air temperature,
atmospheric and ocean circulation, and forcing from rising concentrations of atmospheric
greenhouse gases. Hind cast simulations from all coupled global climate models used in the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) that
incorporate observed climate forcing show declining September.
Whit all that mentioned before we can get into some questions:
What is affecting the climate that makes this acceleration in the ice melt?
Why is rising at that high the ice melt levels?
When is when the ice melt is higher in the whole year?
How can we prevent the ice melt now days?
This study uses daily averaged brightness temperatures from SMMR [Gloersen et al., 1990]
and SSM/I [Maslanik and Stroeve, 1990] mapped to the 25 km polar stereographic grid
available at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.
Different sensors on different satellites provide a continuous time series of multichannel
passive microwave brightness temperatures since 1979 (Table 1). Overlap periods between
sensors have been used to intercalibrate the different instruments, thereby ensuring a
consistent long-term time series. Because previous melt algorithms were developed for
SSM/I, we regressed SMMR T
B
s toward SSM/I using the overlap period in 1987. The
results are similar to those of Jezek et al. [1993], but we used the F-08 SSM/I as the baseline
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instead of SMMR. For the transition from F-08 to F-11 and from F-11 to F-13 we used the
coefficients derived by Abdalati et al. [1995] and Stroeve et al. [1998], respectively,
although studies have shown that intersensor offsets are generally less than 1 K [Colton and
Poe, 1999]. Since our melt detection involves the use of temporal variability between days,
slight offsets in T
B
s between sensors should not affect the results. Because the SSM/I has a
wider swath compared to SMMR the gap of missing data around the pole is different. For
consistency, averages and trends are calculated using only pixels that have coverage from
both, SMMR and SSM/I. In addition, the same land mask is applied to both data sets. The
length of the data record used in this paper goes through 2007.


Table 1. Data Periods for the Different Satellite Passive Microwave Radiometers
SATELLITE/INSTRUMENT START DATE END DATE
NIMBUS-7 SMMR Oct 1978 Aug 1987
F-08 SSM/I Jul 1987 Dec 1991
F-11 SSM/I Dec 1991 May 1995
F-13 SSM/I May 1995 present



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I. Sea ice and atmospheric data
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) provides daily and monthly fields of sea
ice concentration at 25 km spatial resolution derived from Scanning Multichan-nel
Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) and Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I)
brightness temperatures using the NASA Team sea ice algorithm (Cavalieri et al. 1996;
Meier et al. 2006). The combined record extends from October 1978 through present.
Ice age is derived from an algorithm developed by Fowler et al. (2004), applied to ice
motion fields derived from a combination of satellite passive microwave, visible and
thermal imagery and drifting ocean buoys. Ice motion is calculated from a cross correlation
technique applied to sequential daily satellite images. These satellite-derived motion fields
are then blended with buoy drift vectors via optimal interpolation to create the final motion
product. Ice age is estimated by treating each grid cell that contains ice as an independent
Lagrangian particle and advecting the particles at weekly time steps and using an ice
concentration thres hold of 15%.Atthe end of each melt season, remaining ice is aged one1
year. No area weighting is used. Rather, a pixel is assigned the age of the oldest particle
that lies in the domain of that pixel. Fowler et al. (2004), Rigor and Wallace (2004) and
Maslanik et al. (2007) provide further details. We limit the ice age analysis to the Arctic
Ocean domain. This is the same domain used in the heat budget analysis of Serreze et al.
(2007b). Fields of near surface air temperature, sea level pressure and absorbed solar
radiation at the surface are obtained from the JRA-25 atmospheric reanalysis, a product of
the Japan Meteorological Agency (Onogi et al. 2007). Data from the NASA A-Train
constellation of satellites, including radar and lidar data (e.g. CloudSat) that do not rely on
thermal or albedo contrasts to detect clouds (Stephens et al. 2008) are used to contrast
Arctic cloud conditions for recent years.
II. Accelerating decline in September ice extent?

Comiso et al. (2008) argue for a steepening trend in September sea ice extent on the basis
of a statistically-significant difference in linear regression slopes computed for an earlier
(19791996)andalater(19962007)time-period.Followingthisapproach, the top panel of Fig.
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3 shows regression slopes for the periods 19791998 (blue line) and 19992010 (red line).
The slopes are computed for the Arctic Ocean domain as defined in the study of Serreze et
al. (2007b). Comiso et al. (2008) by comparison considered the Northern Hemisphere sea
ice cover as a whole, which includes ice in the East Greenland Sea and the Canadian
Archipelago. The slopes
Climatic Change (2012) 110:10051027 1009
are 0.032 + 0.017 million km2 year1 and 0.154 0.038 million km2 year1,
respectively, and are statistically different from each other at a 95% confidence level. A
smoothed curved trend line computed using Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoothing
(LoWeSS; Cleveland and Devlin 1988) for the entire period of record is also shown (green)
and further supports the argument for a recent increase in the rate of ice loss. One aspect of
the data that complicates significance testing of the difference in slopes using linear-least
squares is that the data exhibit increased variability after 1990 (Fig. 1). For the Arctic
Ocean domain over the period 1979 to 1990, the standard deviation is 0.34 million km2;
while from 1990 to 2010 it is 0.51 million km2. This increase in variability coincides with
an early 1990s shift in the
springicethicknessdistributionintheArcticOceandomaintowardsalargerfraction of thin, first-
year ice (e.g. Maslanik et al. 2007; Nghiem et al. 2007), linked in turn to
aperiodwhentheArcticOscillation(AO),alsoreferredtoastheNorthernAnnular Mode (NAM),
was generally in a strongly positive phase (Rigor and Wallace 2004;
discussedinmoredetailbelow).Anincreaseinvariabilityofsummericeextentasthe spring ice
cover thins is a feature of coupled global climate model simulations (e.g.
Hollandetal.2008).Thereasoningisthatastheicecoverthins,largeregionsbecome especially
vulnerable to melting out during summer under favorable atmospheric conditions.
Conversely, even in a warming climate, occasional summers are cool enough for much of
the first-year ice to survive. The overall result is increased variability.
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Fig. 1 September sea ice extent with smoothed non-linear trend line (green), and linear trend lines for 1979 to 1998 (blue)
and 1999 to 2010 (red)[top] and detrended sea ice extent calculated by subtracting non-linear trend (green line in top
panel) from observed September extent [bottom]. The smoothed non-linear trend line is calculated using Locally
Weighted Scatterplot Smoothing (LoWeSS). Linear trends are calculated using least-squares regression
Models also project an accelerating rate of decline of September sea ice extent (e.g. Wang
and Overland 2009) with many showing this feature by the time that September ice extent
has reached the values seen today. Yet even during decadal or multi-decadal periods of
generally rapid ice loss such as those evident in the NCAR Community Climate System
Model Version 3 (CCSM3) simulations (Holland et al. 2006), there are periods of slow ice
loss or even temporary increases in extent. Thus, while the observed trend is steeper over
the past decade compared to the earlier part of the record, it is uncertain if this pattern will
be sustained. The higher extent for September 2009 relative to the previous 2 years (Fig. 1)
may have suggested a temporary recovery, yet September 2010 saw less ice compared to
2009 despite a winter circulation pattern that should have helped to favor ice retention
through the summer melt season (Stroeve et al. 2011).
III. Melt around the world
The Earth's ice cover is melting in more places and at higher rates than at any time since
record keeping began. Reports from around the world compiled by the Worldwatch
Institute (table 2) show that global ice melting accelerated during the 1990s-which was also
the warmest decade on record.
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Scientists suspect that the enhanced melting is among the first observable signs of human-
induced global warming, caused by the unprecedented release of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases over the past century. Glaciers and other ice features are particularly
sensitive to temperature shifts.
The Earth's ice cover acts as a protective mirror, reflecting a large share of the sun's heat
back into space and keeping the planet cool. Loss of the ice would not only affect the global
climate, but would also raise sea levels and spark regional flooding, damaging property and
endangering lives. Large-scale melting would also threaten key water supplies as well as
alter the habitats of many of the world's plant and animal species.
III.I most important cases of ice melt
Some of the most dramatic reports come from the polar regions, which are warming faster
than the planet as a whole and have lost large amounts of ice in recent decades. The Arctic
sea ice, covering an area roughly the size of the United States, shrunk by an estimated 6
percent between 1978 and 1996, losing an average of 34,300 square kilometers-an area
larger than the Netherlands- each year.
The Arctic sea ice has also thinned dramatically since the 1960s and 70s. Between this
period and the mid-1990s, the average thickness dropped from 3.1 meters to 1.8 meters-a
decline of nearly 40 percent in less than 30 years.
The Arctic's Greenland Ice Sheet-the largest mass of land-based ice outside of Antarctica,
with 8 percent of the world's ice-has thinned more than a meter per year on average since
1993 along parts of its southern and eastern edges.
The massive Antarctic ice cover, which averages 2.3 kilometers in thickness and represents
some 91 percent of Earth's ice, is also melting. So far, most of the loss has occurred along
the edges of the Antarctic Peninsula, on the ice shelves that form when the land-based ice
sheets flow into the ocean and begin to float. Within the past decade, three ice shelves have
fully disintegrated: the Wordie, the Larsen A, and the Prince Gustav. Two more, the Larsen
B and the Wilkins, are in full retreat and are expected to break up soon, having lost more
than one-seventh of their combined 21,000 square kilometers since late 1998-a loss the size
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of Rhode Island. Icebergs as big as Delaware have also broken off Antarctica in recent
years, posing threats to open-water shipping.
Antarctica's vast land ice is also melting, although there is disagreement over how quickly.
One study estimates that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), the smaller of the
continent's two ice sheets, has retreated at an average rate of 122 meters a year for the past
7,500 years-and is in no imminent danger of collapse. But other studies suggest that the
sheet may break more abruptly if melting accelerates. They point to signs of past collapse,
as well as to fast- moving ice streams within the sheet that could speed ice melt, as
evidence of potential instability.
Outside the poles, most ice melt has occurred in mountain and subpolar glaciers, which
have responded much more rapidly to temperature changes. As a whole, the world's
glaciers are now shrinking faster than they are growing, and losses in 1997-98 were
"extreme," according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service. Scientists predict that up to
a quarter of global mountain glacier mass could disappear by 2050, and up to one-half by
2100-leaving large patches only in Alaska, Patagonia, and the Himalayas. Within the next
35 years, the Himalayan glacial area alone is expected to shrink by one-fifth, to 100,000
square kilometers.
Table 2: Selected examples of Ice Melt around the world
Name Location Measured Loss
Arctic Sea Arctic Ocean
Has shrunk by 6 percent since
1978, with a 14 percent loss of
thicker, year-round ice. Has
thinned by 40 percent in less
than 30 years.
Greenland Ice Sheet Greenland
Has thinned by more than a
meter a year on its southern
and eastern edges since 1993.
Columbia Glacier Alaska, United States
Has retreated nearly 13
kilometers since 1982. In 1999,
retreat rate increased from 25
meters per day to 35 meters per
day. Glacier Rocky Mtns., Since
1850, the number of glaciers
has dropped
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Antarctic Sea Ice Southern Ocean
Ice to the west of the Antarctic
Peninsula decreased by some
20 percent between 1973 and
1993, and continues to decline.
Pine Island Glacier West Antarctica
Grounding line (where glacier
hits ocean and floats) retreated
1.2 kilometers a year between
1992 and 1996. Ice thinned at a
rate of 3.5 meters per year.
Dokriani Bamak Glacier Himalayas, India
Retreated by 20 meters in 1998,
compared with an average
retreat of 16.5 meters over the
previous 5 years. Has retreated
a total of 805 meters since
1990.
Duosuogang Peak Ulan Ula Mtns., China
Glaciers have shrunk by some
60 percent since the early
1970s.
Tien Shan Mountains Central Asia
Twenty-two percent of glacial
ice volume has disappeared in
the past 40 years.
Alps Western Europe
Glacial area has shrunk by 35 to
40 percent and volume has
declined by more than 50
percent since 1850. Glaciers
could be reduced to only a small
fraction of their present mass
within decades.

III.II Effects of Ice melt
The disappearance of Earth's ice cover would significantly alter the global climate-though
the net effects remain unknown. Ice, particularly polar ice, reflects large amounts of solar
energy back into space, and helps keep the planet cool. When ice melts, however, this
exposes land and water surfaces that retain heat-leading to even more melt and creating a
feedback loop that accelerates the overall warming process. But excessive ice melt in the
Arctic could also have a cooling effect in parts of Europe and the eastern United States, as
the influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic may disrupt ocean circulation patterns that
enable the warm Gulf Stream to flow north.
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As mountain glaciers shrink, large regions that rely on glacial runoff for water supply could
experience severe shortages. The Quelccaya Ice Cap, the traditional water source for Lima,
Peru, is now retreating by some 30 meters a year-up from only 3 meters a year before 1990-
posing a threat to the city's 10 million residents. And in northern India, a region already
facing severe water scarcity, an estimated 500 million people depend on the tributaries of
the
Glacier-fed Indus and Ganges rivers for irrigation and drinking water. But as the Himalayas
melt, these rivers are expected to initially swell and then fall to dangerously low levels,
particularly in summer. (In 1999, the Indus reached record high levels because of glacial
melt.)
Rapid glacial melting can also cause serious flood damage, particularly in heavily
populated regions such as the Himalayas. In Nepal, a glacial lake burst in 1985, sending a
15-meter wall of water rushing 90 kilometers down the mountains, drowning people and
destroying houses. A second lake near the country's Imja Glacier has now grown to 50
hectares, and is predicted to burst within the next five years, with similar consequences.
Large-scale ice melt would also raise sea levels and flood coastal areas, currently home to
about half the world's people. Over the past century, melting in ice caps and mountain
glaciers has contributed on average about one-fifth of the estimated 10-25 centimeter (4-10
inch) global sea level rise- with the rest caused by thermal expansion of the ocean as the
Earth warmed. But ice melt's share in sea level rise is increasing, and will accelerate if the
larger ice sheets crumble. Antarctica alone is home to 70 percent of the planet's fresh water,
and collapse of the WAIS, an ice mass the size of Mexico, would raise sea levels by an
estimated 6 meters-while melting of both Antarctic ice sheets would raise them nearly 70
meters. (Loss of the Arctic sea ice or of the floating Antarctic ice shelves would have no
effect on sea level because these already displace water.)
Wildlife is already suffering as a result of global ice melt-particularly at the poles, where
marine mammals, seabirds, and other creatures depend on food found at the ice edge. In
northern Canada, reports of hunger and weight loss among polar bears have been correlated
with changes in the ice cover. And in Antarctica, loss of the sea ice, together with rising air
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temperatures and increased precipitation, is altering the habitats as well as feeding and
breeding patterns of penguins and seals.
IV. We Can Reduce Soot Without Selling Our Souls

The Economist notes:
Stop putting it there and it will rapidly go awaya potentially easy win.That win is made
easier still by the fact that about 70% of emissions in Europe and the Americas come from
diesel engines. Better exhausts, to trap carbon particles before they are emitted, and the
scrapping of old, highly polluting vehicles could make an immediate impact. In other
countries the problem is more often inefficient stoves and dirty fuelagain, things that are
easy to deal with, at least in principle.
Reducing soot will be cheaper than the decarbonation which many policy-makers have
proposed. And it would increase the health of millions of people worldwide.
Dr. Charles Zender of the University of California at Irvine, told Congress:
Reducing Arctic [black carbon] concentrations sooner rather than later is the most
efcient way to mitigate Arctic warming that we know of.
IV.I Advices to prevent the Ice Melt
1. Eat and buy food that is grown local to you. Buy food from a farmer's market
or farm stand, or buy a share in a local farm's harvest that offers a CSA
(Community-Supported Agriculture) program. Grow vegetables and herbs
in your own backyard. It will cut down on greenhouse gas emissions used to
transport your food from growers and farms far away.
2. Use your car less since automobile emissions are a leading contributor to
global warming. Walk, use public transportation or ride your bike if possible
rather than jumping in your car.

3. Replace regular light bulbs with a compact fluorescent bulbs. Changing just
one light bulb will cut down on 150 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

4. Keep the tires on your car properly inflated. It cuts down on production of
carbon dioxide and will even improve your gas mileage.

5. Recycle all household waste that can be recycled. By recycling just half of
your waste, you can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide from getting out
into the environment.

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6. Plant trees on your property. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen.
One tree can absorb up to 1 ton of carbon dioxide in its lifetime.


Conclusions:
After the 2007 record September sea ice minimum, there was widespread speculation that
the Arctic Ocean was rapidly transitioning towards seasonally ice- free conditions. With
these processes described above working together to support further ice loss, combined
with the greater ease at which anomalous atmospheric forcing can cause dramatic summer
ice loss, the system may be poised to undergo rapid change. However, given the shortness
of the available sea ice extent time series, the apparent steepening of the downward
September trend may not be sustained. Climate model simulations reveal periods of rapid
ice loss are often followed by a temporary recovery. Given natural variability in the
coupled iceoceanatmosphere system, a few years of sea ice recovery, such as evident
between 2007 and 2009, should come as no surprise.
The ice melt will be in rise if we dont change our lifestyle, and our mentality about this
trouble.
There are too many things that we can do to prevent and control the global warming and the
ice melting in poles, as we mentioned there are simple advices that if we follow it we can
make the difference.

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Bibliography and references:
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[Donald K. Perovich1, Jacqueline A. Richter-Menge1, Kathleen F. Jones and
Bonnie Light]
2. Recent changes in Arctic sea ice melt onset, freeze up, and melt season length
[Thorsten Markus, Julienne C. Stroeve and Jeffrey Miller]
3. Recent changes in Arctic sea ice melt onset, freeze up, and melt season length
[Thorsten Markus, Julienne C. Stroeve and Jeffrey Miller

Article first published
online: 29 DEC 2009]
4. Melting of earth's ice cover reaches new high [Lisa Mastny, Worldwatch Institute,
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[http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/arctic-ice.htm]
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stop-melting-arctic-ice.html]
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