Arctic

Fresh off fishery win, Oceana’s Jim Ayers talks with Grist about climate fight

Jim Ayers, the onetime top aide to former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles (D) and now the Pacific region leader for conservation group Oceana, draws on a deep well of both political and environmental experience. That’s a combo we like at Grist, especially in folks willing to talk shop with us. Ayers did that today, stopping […]

Arctic sea ice drops below 2007 levels

Arctic sea ice extent just dipped below January 2007 levels in the last few days, according to the daily time series from the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

The NSIDC notes that they are showing the data from 2007 on this figure since that year "went on to reach the lowest summer minimum in the satellite record."

The NSIDC also has an interesting 2008 Year-in-Review for cryosphere buffs. It explains why the ice stopped growing for a week in mid-December. It also has an interesting graphic comparing the Arctic sea ice extent in 2008 with 2007:

The four global warming impact studies Bush tried to bury in his final days

NOTE TO U.S. MEDIA: Please don't fall for the Bush administration's final climate trick -- don't ignore these important studies.

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Normally, when an administration wants to bury bad news -- such as a government report it doesn't like -- the story gets released Friday afternoon. That ensures minimal media coverage. For news it really doesn't like, the Friday of a three-day weekend is ideal.

So what subject matter is so abhorrent it would motivate the Bush administration to release multiple reports simultaneously the Friday before the four-day weekend that culminates in their loss of power, and when they can be certain the media will be focused on other matters?

Answer: The impact of human-caused global warming on Americans -- arguably the single most taboo subject in the entire Bush administration. For eight years they have avoided their statutory obligation to detail the impacts of climate change on this country. And they have systematically muzzled government climate scientists from discussing those impacts with the public or the media.

It was easier to find people in the Bush administration to talk about torture or warrantless wiretaps, than it was to get someone to speak on (or off) the record on the likely impact of Bush's policy of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions on Americans.

On Friday January 16, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program actually released four major Synthesis and Assessment reports. You may remember the last report the CCSP released -- U.S. Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely "substantially exceed" IPCC projections, SW faces "permanent drying" by 2050. I was told by scientists knowledgeable about the CCSP process that all of the major impact reports were slowed down in the review process to make sure they came out after the election.

So what are the reports the Bushies have tried to bury? From the CCSP website:

Two trillion tons of land ice lost since 2003, rate of Greenland summer ice-loss triples 2007 record

The AP reports on new data to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union: More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than […]

WMO: ‘Overall [Arctic] ice volume was less than that in any other year’

“Arctic Ice Volume Lowest Ever as Globe Warms: UN,” is how Reuters reported it today. Sorry I missed that in my earlier post on the 2008 report from the World Meteorological Organization, but it was buried deep in the press release (see below). Note that the WMO is making a stronger statement than the National […]

NASA: Another brutally hot year for the Siberian tundra

Unfortunately, the greatest warming in 2008 came in the worst possible place for humanity — the Siberian tundra. That’s clear from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies report on the meteorological year, December 2007 through November 2008: The remarkably widespread warming in the land of the permafrost permamelt should be the big global warming story […]

NSIDC: Arctic melt passes the point of no return

The U.K.’s Independent reports on a study to be presented Tuesday to the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco by top cryosphere scientists: Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before […]

First commercial ship sails through Northwest Passage

CBC News reports: The Canadian Coast Guard has confirmed that in a major first, a commercial ship travelled through the Northwest Passage this fall to deliver supplies to communities in western Nunavut. The MV Camilla Desgagnés, owned by Desgagnés Transarctik Inc., transported cargo from Montreal to the hamlets of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Gjoa Haven and […]

NASA says October is sixth warmest on record

The corrected NASA temperature data for October is out here. It looks to be around the sixth warmest October on record, although interestingly (though not unexpectedly, see below), the five warmest Octobers on record are all from the previous five years. I don’t normally blog on the NASA monthly data, but the tiny, temporary, tizzy-inspiring, […]