An ongoing US Department of Energy-backed research project led by a US Navy scientist predicts that the Arctic could lose its summer sea ice cover as early as 2016 - 84 years ahead of conventional model projections. The project, based out of the US Naval Postgraduate Schools Department of Oceanography, uses complex modelling techniques that make its projections more accurate than others. A paper by principal investigator Professor Wieslaw Maslowski in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences sets out some of the findings so far of the research project: Given the estimated trend and the volume estimate for October–November of 2007 at less than 9,000 km3, one can project that at this rate it would take only 9 more years or until 2016 ± 3 years to reach a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. Regardless of high uncertainty associated with such an estimate, it does provide a lower bound of the time range for projections of seasonal sea ice cover. The paper is highly critical of global climate models (GCM) and even the majority of regional models, noting that many Arctic climatic processes that are omitted from, or poorly represented in, most current-generation GCMs which do not account for important feedbacks among various system components. There is therefore a great need for improved understanding and model representation of physical processes and interactions specific to polar regions that currently might not be fully accounted for or are missing in GCMs. According to the US Department of Energy describing the projects development of the Regional Arctic System Model (RASM): Given that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe, understanding the processes and feedbacks of this polar amplification is a top priority. In addition, Arctic glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet are expected to change significantly and contribute to sea level rise in the coming decades. Such Arctic changes could have significant ramifications for global sea level, the ocean thermohaline circulation and heat budget, ecosystems, native communities, natural resource exploration, and commercial transportation.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Dec 2013 15:53:07 +0000
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