First year ice is thinner in the Arctic

Probably one of the biggest fears of the skeptics is a grandstand play by the world's warming climate that gets worldwide attention -- an event that is so undeniably due to warming, so stark and obvious that it can't be denied without the denier looking UTTERLY and TOTALLY detached from reality, that it breaks down the whole denial enterrprise in one massive blow.

Yes, I wish it would happen soon, because then (dammit) we'd get out collective clean energy act together and dismiss these nonsensical fears of a radiation leak from a clean, carbon-free nuclear plant, and put the world on a new non-fossil-fuel-centric energy path.

I truly think that despite warming in the face of low solar activity, warming despite a burgeoning La Nina (last calendar year), the warmest decade in the instrumental record, the warmest year in the instrumental record (last year again), unprecedented high temperatures, biblical floods, horrific droughts, and trend after trend after trend after trend heading in the same direction, consistent with what we reasonable and reality-connected people know -- that the event which will catch the world's attention is a new Arctic ice sea cover extent minimum record.

I don't think it has to be gone completely. I think just the new record would turn the corner on the idiotic debate. I think it would confirm in the public mind all that climate scientists are saying about the irreversible and accelerating changes mankind is causing to the climate of the Earth. Because after explaining away the previous big new minimum record in 2007, they (the skeptics) have been able to distract and distort the "recovery" of Arctic sea ice. Another new minimum record would put the kibosh on that -- and enhance a perception that these deniers are just either a) lying or b) stupid, or even c) both.

Because of this report of even thinner first-year ice, it's going to be a strong melting season. I saw a report that they aren't predicting a new minimum, just something quite close to the 2007 record.

But we can hope (sadly) that the predictions are wrong, and that a new record will be set.

Melt, baby, melt.

Arctic sea ice cover 3rd smallest area during May



From the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

"Importance of storms
Arctic weather in the next few months will be a critical factor in how much ice remains at the end of the melt season. New research led by James Screen at the University of Melbourne shows that the storms that move northwards into the Arctic from the lower latitudes during summer strongly influence sea ice extent at the end of summer. Years with dramatic ice loss, such as 2007, have been associated with comparatively warm, calm, and clear conditions in summer that have encouraged ice melt. Summers with slow melt rates are opposite and tend to be stormier than average. The number of storms influences how warm, windy and cloudy the Arctic summer is."