My AMEG (Arctic Methane Emergency Group) colleagues and myself submitted this letter to the UK Lords Committee on the Arctic and UK secretary of state Ed Davey, It also went to scientists at the Royal Society meeting on Arctic sea ice. Submission from AMEG to the Arctic Committee in call for evidence The Arctic runaway meltdown crisis: Governments must collaborate to cool the Arctic Dear Committee, I am writing on behalf of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, AMEG, to warn the government about a monumental crisis which has been brewing for years – a crisis which now demands immediate action to prevent it getting out of hand. The Arctic is showing signs of runaway meltdown which has to be stopped. This situation has been almost totally ignored by climate modelling community who have failed to warn about the significance of recent observations and deductions on the sea ice decline. I am sending you this letter following a conference on Arctic sea ice at the Royal Society. The conference was asked to warn governments about the tremendous risks involved in allowing sea ice to continue in its “death spiral”, as graphically illustrated by Professor Wadhams at the conference and backed up by actual measurements of the sea ice over decades. The threat from climate change is far greater than expected, as Arctic sea ice retreats and Arctic warming accelerates. But, remarkably, this threat can be overcome. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for international collaboration to halt the Arctic warming, while this is still possible. AMEG has done extensive scientific research to identify the critical problems arising from Arctic warming, ignored by IPCC in AR5; and AMEG has done the necessary calculations to establish that interventions to solve these problems are possible – interventions dismissed by IPCC as premature, too dangerous or simply unnecessary. But these calculations show that it could soon become too difficult to halt the Arctic warming by affordable and benign techniques based on natural processes. Thus time is critical. Scientists agree that climate change is upon us, manifest in a growth of weather extremes over the past 15 years. Extremes of heat and humidity were expected to increase with global warming and average surface temperature increase. But since 1998 there has been a hiatus in warming over most of the planet with the exception of the Arctic, which has warmed dramatically. Thus, purely from these observations, it is plausible that recent weather extremes might be an effect of Arctic warming rather than global warming. The Arctic is implicated in temperature and climate control of the whole planet. The reflecting surface of snow and ice ensures a low temperature at the poles compared to the tropics. This temperature difference keeps the weather systems in the patterns to which we have been accustomed. A slow change in climate might have been expected as the Arctic warms. But IPCC has totally failed to anticipate the speed of warming in the Arctic, with models forecasting that the sea ice would last beyond the end of the century. As scientists, we look for a causal link when there is an apparent correlation, as between Arctic warming and weather extremes. Recent research, particularly by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, has shown the likelihood of a causal link through the disruption of jet stream behaviour such that the jet stream produces long periods of stuck weather. Note that the stuck weather may be cold or hot, wet or dry. Furthermore, since the jet stream is meandering further north and south, it is producing extremes of heat in the north (such as in Greenland recently) and cold in the south (such as in US recently). The cold effects are difficult to explain purely on the basis of global warming. On Wednesday 16th April, some of us attended a public review of the IPCCs fifth set of assessment reports known as AR5. These reports rightly highlight the importance of reducing our CO2 emissions. But they suggest that “inevitable” consequences of climate change can be dealt with by “affordable” adaptation. This is simply not true. Adaptation to the worst consequences of climate change will not be possible, let alone affordable. The IPCC process of consensus science has failed to identify the greatest risks – risks which are both high probability and high impact – short-term risks which will increase exponentially unless immediate action is taken. At the review meeting we asked the Secretary of State, Ed Davey, whether he was aware of serious omissions from these assessment reports. Was he being properly advised? In particular, was he aware of irreversible meltdown of the Arctic ice cap and the non-linear consequences: an exponential increase in discharge of ice and meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet to raise the sea level; an exponential increase in the emissions of methane from the Arctic seabed to exacerbate global warming; and abrupt climate change in the Northern Hemisphere with a growing food crisis? Here are five significant effects of Arctic warming. 1. Accelerated meltdown of the Arctic ice cap As sea ice retreats, more sunshine is absorbed to warm the ocean and cause further melting in a vicious cycle, with accelerated warming of the whole Arctic ice cap, including ice sheets and permafrost. The IPCC reports singularly fail to mention this accelerated meltdown. It is undoubtedly an effect of global warming and was probably triggered twenty or thirty years ago. The sea ice is already well past its tipping point, as recently acknowledged by a leading expert on tipping points, Tim Lenton; yet this is not mentioned by IPCC. The meltdown is effectively irreversible, without intervention to cool the Arctic. There is nothing in nature which will automatically stop this meltdown. There is no natural cycle which will bring back the sea ice. Yet the IPCC reports explicitly say that the melting in the Arctic is reversible, and they say this with complete confidence. Can they be trusted? 2. The consequence for sea level The IPCC reports say that the Greenland Ice Sheet is only contributing about a millimetre of sea level rise per year, and imply that there is nothing to worry about. But do you know about the latest research suggesting the discharge has been doubling every five years for the past twenty years? This cannot be due to natural variability of Greenlands temperature, but can be explained by accelerated Arctic warming. If this trend continues, we could see several metres of sea level rise this century, which would be devastating for low-lying countries and extremely serious for London and many other conurbations built on tidal waters. The sea level rise from the Greenland Ice Sheet is liable to provoke a similar contribution from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (through accelerated discharge of ice from glaciers whose ends are currently grounded on the seabed), leading to a total of around 15 metres from the two of them, sooner or later. The exponential trend in Arctic warming is liable to continue until the whole Arctic Ocean is free of sea ice throughout summer, producing the maximum warming effect. This could happen within the next two or three decades, given current doubling rates. Since the last glacial maximum there have been periods of rapid melting when the sea level rose 5 cm per year, or half a metre per decade. This rapid melting was probably fuelled by an ice-free Arctic Ocean – there is no other obvious explanation. The planet could again be moving towards this situation, implying that the sea level would rise about three metres this century. 3. The consequence for methane IPCC reports make passing mention of growing quantities of methane bubbling out of the Arctic seabed, but experts are saying that there is no natural mechanism for rapid release of large quantities into the atmosphere. Yet observations show that, as the ocean warms, the methane discharge from the seabed has been growing exponentially, with a marked increase of methane in the Arctic atmosphere. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, around 84 times as potent as CO2, weight for weight, over 20 years. If the current exponential trend is followed, methane could become the dominant greenhouse gas within two decades and we could get catastrophic methane feedback to global warming, as the Arctic warms even faster and methane is emitted at an even higher rate. There is evidence that such outbursts of methane have occurred in the past to cause mass extinction. 4. Abrupt climate change Met Office reports suggest that the current weather extremes amount to climate change and are due to current global warming. Clearly the Met Office objective is to persuade the government to do more to reduce CO2 emissions. However these weather extremes have grown through the past 15 years while there has been a global warming hiatus, so there cannot be a direct link. On the other hand, an entirely satisfactory explanation has been given by Dr Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, backed up by research and observation. Her explanation is as follows. The rapid warming of the Arctic (warming much faster than the global average) has reduced the temperature gradient between the tropics and the Arctic. This temperature gradient drives the jet streams in a wave pattern that moves from west to east around the planet. As the gradient is reduced, the wave meanders more to north and south, giving hotter spells in the north and cooler in the south. And the wave tends to get stuck in stationary patterns, which give rise to long spells of stuck weather, be it hot, cold, windy, wet or dry. We have been observing a dramatic increase of this type of weather extreme in the Northern Hemisphere over recent years, e.g. in the UK with the exceptionally wet and windy weather this past winter. Arctic warming appears to have become the main driver of climate change, with global warming an additional or compounding factor. (By increasing the background temperature and humidity, global warming makes hot spells hotter and wet spells wetter.) 5. Effect of this abrupt climate change on food and security The rapid rise in weather extremes amounts to abrupt climate change; and this is causing widespread crop failures and an increase in food prices. You will have observed the unrest in Syria and elsewhere in Asia and Africa, but have you heard that the unrest is partly due to food prices rising above the crisis level at which rioting can be expected in many countries? As Arctic warming continues, we can expect further deterioration in this situation. A good account of what may be in store for us has just been published by the Ecologist [1]. The long-term trend is inevitably towards mass starvation and global conflict. Since the IPCC reports suggest that adaptation is possible to the consequences of climate change, can you now believe what they say? What is the alternative? Is there an alternative? What should the government do? We urge you to consider interventions to cool the Arctic, including employment of geoengineering techniques of the cloud-cooling type but on a regional scale. We are aware that IPCC’s consensus-finding process has reinforced prejudice against intervention to reduce identified risks. We are aware of much antipathy to geoengineering stirred up by the media. And we are aware that most environmental groups are vehemently opposed to geoengineering. But the fact is that intervention to cool the Arctic is now the only way that the vicious cycle of warming and melting can be broken. This is the way we should be fighting climate change resulting from Arctic warming. And the required intervention techniques, such as cloud brightening, are eminently affordable, ranging up from less than a $billion a year to a few $billion per year. Whole-hearted intervention will be infinitely cheaper than attempts to adapt to an ever-worsening situation of rising sea level, methane feedback and food insecurity, as costs to prevent human tragedy would become prohibitive.. The prejudice of the scientific community, media and environmental organisations against intervention must be resisted, because without intervention we face dreadful consequences for which adaptation will be practically impossible. Over past years the government could have been strongly supporting research and development of geoengineering techniques; yet, sadly, our top government scientific advisers have been saying that geoengineering would be premature. The advice has always been that the government should focus on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, but this cannot save the Arctic from meltdown. Thus the Arctic situation has been allowed to deteriorate. Worse still, the government seems happy to see the exploitation of the Arctic for oil, gas and other resources, even though this is highly dangerous for the environment. The government ignored the plea from the Environment Audit Committee to have a moratorium on drilling in the Arctic [2]. Be that as it may, international collaboration for rapid development and deployment of techniques to cool the Arctic must now become a top government priority. And somehow the government must deal with the world food crisis that has already broken, with all its economic, social and political repercussions. There is no time to lose. Yours sincerely, John Nissen, Chair AMEG: ameg.me References: [1] The melting Arctic: theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/234309/the_melting_arctic_and_revolutions_to_come.html [2] Moratorium demanded: theguardian/world/2012/sep/20/mps-demand-moratorium-arctic-drilling
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:54:16 +0000
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