e360 digest
12 Jan 2017:
A Bay in Denmark May
Hold The Global Record for Carbon Storage
Danish scientists say that a sheltered bay in southern Denmark may
hold the world record for carbon storage per meter
Thurøbund Bay in Southern Denmark.
because of its abundant seagrass meadows, which sequester carbon extremely efficiently. Reporting in the journal
Biogeosciences, the scientists said that CO2 absorption by eelgrass in Thurøbund Bay has resulted in the bay storing 27,000 grams of carbon per square meter, more than twice as much as other efficient carbon-storing ecosystems worldwide. A key reason for Thurøbund’s impressive carbon storage is that once seagrasses die in its sheltered waters, they are buried in the bay’s sediments, locking up the carbon. By contrast, many of the nine other Baltic Sea sites studied by the scientists were in exposed coastal areas, which means that dead grasses are carried out to sea and often not buried in sediment. The importance of “blue carbon” storage in coastal waters is gaining increasing attention, with international programs now
paying local residents to replant sea grasses, mangroves, and other shallow-water plants.
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Republican Who Led EPA Urges
Confronting Trump on Climate
William K. Reilly, who was head of the EPA under President George H.W. Bush, is blunt in his assessment of the climate change deniers and anti-regulatory hawks
William K. Reilly
who have been nominated to fill many of President-elect Donald Trump’s top environmental posts. Reilly, a Republican, looks with special alarm on Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, nominated to run the EPA. “For a prospective EPA administrator to doubt or even contest a conclusion that 11 national academies of science have embraced is willful political obstruction,” says Reilly. In an interview with
Yale Environment 360, Reilly discusses how Trump administration threats to cut funding for NASA climate change research represent a “reckless head-in-the-sand posture,” explains why he believes former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson may turn out to be one of the more enlightened environmental voices in the new administration, and urges EPA employees to stay and fight for the environment. “I would not advocate that committed people leave,” says Reilly. “We need them now more than ever.”
Read the interview.
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11 Jan 2017:
First Carbon-Capture Coal
Plant in U.S. is Now Fully Operational
The first large-scale power plant in the U.S. that removes and stores carbon dioxide from coal combustion
is now fully operating near Houston, Texas, capturing more than 1 million tons of CO2 annually. Operated by NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp., the
Petra Nova plant — which cost more than $1 billion — extracts carbon dioxide from flue gases and then pipes them to the West Ranch oil field 80 miles away, where the CO2 helps extract additional oil from the ground. The U.S. Department of Energy, which provided $190 million in grants to the plant, called the facility “the world’s largest post-combustion carbon-capture system.” A second large carbon-capture plant is set to become operational in Mississippi by the end of the month. The Kemper Power Plant is designed to turn lignite, a type of coal, into a gas called syngas, removing some of the CO2 before the syngas is burned to generate electricity.
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10 Jan 2017:
In a First, Bumble Bee
Is Listed as Endangered in Continental U.S.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has placed the rusty patched bumble bee, once common in 28 states and two Canadian provinces, on the endangered species list,
the first bee
A rusty patched bumble bee in Wisconsin.
in the contiguous 48 states. Populations of the bee, which thrived in the grasslands and prairies of the upper Midwest and Northeast, have plummeted by 87 percent in recent decades, leaving scattered populations in 13 states and one Canadian province. The Fish & Wildlife Service said that without protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, the rusty patched bumble bee faces extinction. Scientists say the bee’s numbers have fallen sharply because of loss of habitat, disease and parasites, pesticide use, and a changing climate that affects the abundance of the flowers the bees depend upon. The service said it will work with state and local partners to restore habitat and take other steps to rebuild populations of the bee, a pollinator important to many crops and plants.
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06 Jan 2017:
U.S. Likely to Become Exporter
Of Energy by 2026, New Report Says
The U.S. could become a major exporter of energy by 2026, if not sooner, as natural gas production increases and electricity demand
Solar panels in New Mexico.
flattens in the coming years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA)
latest Annual Outlook released this week. The report also projects that renewables will grow faster than any other power source over the next three decades. But while electricity-related CO2 emissions are expected to fall as natural gas, wind, and solar increasingly power the grid, industrial and transportation emissions will likely increase. As a result, the EIA said, the country will not significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and meet its pledges under the Paris Climate Agreement. Energy-related CO2 emissions fell an average 1.4 percent annually from 2005 to 2016. But according to the EIA report, that annual decline will likely average only 0.2 percent between 2016 and 2040.
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05 Jan 2017:
Natural Disasters Caused $55
Billion in Damage in North America in 2016
North America was hit by 160 natural disasters in 2016, more than any other year since records began in 1980, according to
an analysis by the global
A flooded Louisiana home in August 2016.
reinsurance firm Munich Re. The disasters — which included floods, wildfires, droughts, heat waves, and coastal storms — caused an estimated $55 billion in damage. Only 54 percent of those
losses were insured, Munich Re said. Two of the world’s five most expensive natural catastrophes last year happened in North America — Hurricane Matthew in late September and major flooding in Louisiana in August. The U.S. alone experienced
19 major flood events in 2016, its highest number ever. Munich Re classifies a natural disaster as any event that caused at least $3 million in damage. “A look at the weather-related catastrophes of 2016 shows the potential effects of unchecked climate change,” Peter Höppe, head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research Unit, said.
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Interview: In Costa Rica, Momentum
Builds for a Clean-Energy Economy
Costa Rica has an impressive track record when it comes to renewable energy. The country, famous for its ecotourism industry, produces almost all of its electricity
Monica Araya
from renewable sources. But Monica Araya wants her nation to go even greener. Araya, the founder and director of Costa Rica Limpia — a citizen’s group that promotes renewable energy — is now pushing for the widespread adoption of electric vehicles in Costa Rica, all part of a vision of making her country one of the world’s first carbon-neutral nations. In an interview with
Yale Environment 360, Araya describes how the fledgling effort to decarbonize Costa Rica’s transportation sector has encountered government resistance, and she urges clean-energy advocates worldwide to intensify their efforts, despite the pro-fossil fuel stance of the incoming Trump administration. “If the U.S. doesn't want to be part of the game, the game is going to continue,” says Araya. “Clean energy's going to continue. Electric mobility is going to continue... Costa Rica's going to move forward.”
Read the interview.
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04 Jan 2017:
Scientists Confirm Once Again
That Global Warming Hiatus Never Happened
Scientists have confirmed that global ocean temperatures have continued to rise over the past few decades — once again debunking
Sea surface temperature over the past decade.
the notion of a “hiatus” in global land and sea surface warming in the first 15 years of the 21st century. The
new research, published this week in the journal
Science Advances, was conducted by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and the non-profit research institute Berkeley Earth. The study supports an earlier finding by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that buoy-based sensors report slightly cooler ocean temperatures than historical ship-based systems — which made it appear as though temperature increases had slowed as the bulk of data collection shifted from ships to the new technology. Using measurements from floating buoys, ocean-based observation stations, and satellites over the past two decades, the new study confirmed that global sea surface temperatures have risen 0.12 degrees C per decade over the last 19 years, nearly double the previous estimate of 0.07 degrees C per decade.
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03 Jan 2017:
Indian Industrial Plant
Converts Captured CO2 Into Baking Soda
A coal-fired industrial plant in southern India has begun successfully capturing CO2 emissions and
converting them to baking soda.
The zero-emissions Tuticorin Chemicals plant.
The project’s developers say the process, which will capture up to 60,000 tons of CO2 each year, is the world’s “first industrial-scale example of carbon capture and utilization,”
according to The Guardian. It costs
just $30 per ton to capture the CO2, compared to the $60-90 per ton price tag that came with previous carbon capture systems. The technology is installed at Tuticorin Alkali Chemicals near Chennai in southeast India. It uses a form of salt to bond with CO2 molecules exiting the plant’s boiler system. The plant then reuses the captured gas to make baking soda, also commonly known as soda ash, a chemical used in the manufacturing of a variety of other products, including glass, paper, and detergents.
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29 Dec 2016:
Affluent Chinese Families
Now Have Similar CO2 Footprint as Europe
The rising numbers of middle and upper class Chinese now generate carbon emissions that are beginning to
rival those of Europeans, according to a new study. An Austrian researcher calculated that the 300 million Chinese who now make up the country’s increasingly well-off urban population annually generate 2 to 6.4 tons of carbon dioxide per capita. The wealthiest Chinese now have a carbon footprint that approaches residents of the European Union, who have an annual carbon footprint of 6.7 tons per capita. Because many of its 1.3 billion citizens still live in poverty, China overall only produces 1.7 tons of CO2 per capita, far below the average American’s carbon footprint of 10.4 tons per capita. Reporting in
Nature Climate Change, researcher Dominik Wiedenhofer said rising Chinese emissions underscore that all nations must focus on “decoupling” carbon emissions from affluent living standards.
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27 Dec 2016:
Scientists Take Closer Look
At CO2 Impacts of Forest Fragmentation
Researchers have discovered that fragments of temperate broadleaf forest in the northeastern U.S.
absorb more carbon than expected along their edges. But the scientists also found that those forest edges are more susceptible to heat stress and that rising temperatures from climate change are likely to significantly reduce the ability of temperate woodlands to absorb CO2. Scientists from Boston University took core samples from 210 trees in 21 fragmented forest plots around Boston to gauge rates of growth and carbon sequestration. The higher-than-expected rates of CO2 absorption along forest edges was due to reduced competition among trees, enabling remaining hardwoods to rapidly grow and absorb CO2. But growth and CO2 uptake along those same forest edges, which are exposed to more wind and sun, slows considerable in hot weather, the researchers reported in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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22 Dec 2016:
France Opens World’s
First Solar Panel Road in Normandy
France has opened what it says is the
world’s first solar-paneled road — a one-kilometer stretch that is expected to power street lighting
A new solar panel road in Normandy, France.
in the village of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy. The motorway, which is covered in 30,000 square feet of solar panels, cost $5.2 million to build and will be traveled on by 2,000 cars each day. The company that installed it, French engineering firm Colas, says it has about 100 other solar-paneled road projects underway, both in France and abroad. Critics of the project, however, argue that the Normandy road is not a good investment. Normandy gets only 44 days of strong sunshine each year, according to
The Guardian. Solar roadways have been proven less efficient at generating electricity than panels installed on rooftops. France’s environment minister, Ségolène Royal, has said she would like one kilometer in every 1,000 kilometers of French highway to be made of solar panels.
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21 Dec 2016:
Arctic to Experience Temps
40 to 50 Degrees Above Normal This Week
Temperatures near the North Pole are expected to reach nearly 32 degrees F on Thursday —
40 to 50 degrees warmer than average, according
GFS model simulation of temperatures in the Arctic.
to several weather models. The warm spell, driven by a powerful storm off the coast of Greenland, comes at the tail end of what is “
very likely” to be the world’s hottest year on record. It also follows an unusually warm November in which the Arctic lost 19,000 square miles of sea ice in just five days. A
study published in the journal Nature earlier this month found such temperature spikes have happened in the Arctic once or twice a decade, dating back to the 1950s. A similar warming event happened at the end of 2015. But the study also found that as sea ice has declined over the last half-century, it has become easier for warm air to move into the region and the intensity of those spikes has worsened.
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Interview: The Legacy of the Man
Who Changed Our View of Nature
He viewed nature as a web of life, and, in a conclusion stunning in its prescience, he named deforestation and “the great masses of steam and gas produced by industry”
Andrea Wulf
as the causes of climate change. Yet the name of the 19th-century Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt has remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world in the modern era. Historian Andrea Wulf, in her best-selling book
The Invention of Nature, aims to return Humboldt to his rightful place as, in her words, “the father of environmentalism.” In an interview with
Yale Environment 360, Wulf explains how Humboldt originated an entirely new genre of writing that made science accessible to the masses, combining empirical observations with soaring language. Today’s environmentalists, she says, can find inspiration in Humboldt’s work. “When I look at today's environmental debate in the political arena, I'm really missing this sense of awe for nature, this recognition that we are only going to protect what we love.”
Read the interview.
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19 Dec 2016:
U.S. Interior Department Updates
Coal Regulations to Protect Waterways
The Obama administration finalized a rule on Monday that
strengthens protections for rivers, streams, and forests near coal mining facilities —
Coal waste downstream of a mine in Kentucky.
the first update to the Interior Department regulations in 33 years. The tougher guidelines require companies to avoid mining practices that could pollute streams and drinking water sources, as well as restore waterways and landscapes to their original state once mining is complete,
according to Reuters. The Interior Department said the updated Stream Protection Rule would safeguard 6,000 miles of waterway and 52,000 acres of forest over the next two decades. It is likely to be one of the Obama administration’s last major environmental actions before leaving office, and one of President-elect Donald Trump’s earliest targets after inauguration. Trump has pledged to
rebuild the U.S. coal industry, saying on the campaign trail that he
would repeal any update to the stream protection rule if elected.
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15 Dec 2016:
New NASA Visualization Shows
How CO2 Moves Around in the Atmosphere
Scientists at NASA have created a striking
new video animation that shows exactly how carbon dioxide moves through the atmosphere
The movement of CO2 across the globe.
and across the globe — helping better explain how much CO2 stays in the atmosphere after being emitted, how long it stays there, and where it goes. That information, said NASA carbon cycle scientist Lesley Ott, will help improve researchers’ understanding of future climate change. The new 3-D visualization uses more than 100,000 measurements of CO2 taken daily from September 2014 to September 2015. It shows the rise and fall of CO2 throughout the seasons, the influence of geological structures like mountains, and the impact of highly productive ecosystems like the corn belt in the U.S. “There's still a long way to go, but this is a really important and necessary step in that chain of discoveries about carbon dioxide,” said Ott.
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14 Dec 2016:
Fearing Trump, Scientists
Rush to Preserve Key Climate Data Sets
Scientists in the U.S., aided by colleagues in Canada and elsewhere, are moving quickly
to preserve climate data stored on government computer servers out of concern that the Trump administration might remove or dismantle the records. A “
guerrilla archiving” event will be held at the University of Toronto this weekend to catalog U.S. government climate and environmental data. Other researchers from the University of California to the University of Pennsylvania are responding to calls on Twitter and the Internet to preserve data on everything from rising seas to wildfires. The actions come as President-elect Donald Trump has appointed climate change skeptics to all his top environment and energy posts. Though there has been no mention yet of removing publicly available data, “it’s not unreasonable to think that they would want to take down the very data that they dispute,” said Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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13 Dec 2016:
Large Majority of U.S. Voters
Supports CO2 Limits and Renewable Energy
Seven in 10 American voters believe that the U.S. should participate in international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions,
according to a new survey conducted by Yale University and George Mason University. The survey, which polled more than 1,200 people nationally shortly after the November election, also found that 62 percent and 63 percent of voters want President-elect Donald Trump and Congress to do more to address climate change, respectively. Only 10 percent of Americans oppose taxing or regulating greenhouse gas emissions, while 70 percent support limiting CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants — the primary aim of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan — even if it raises the cost of electricity. Eighty-five percent of Democrats and 76 percent of Republicans think the U.S. should use more renewable energy, and more than 71 percent of polled voters believe the federal government should do more to prepare for the impacts of climate change.
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12 Dec 2016:
Major Tech Investors Announce
$1 Billion Fund for Clean Energy Research
Bill Gates and several other major technology giants
announced Sunday that they will invest $1 billion in clean energy innovation
Wind turbines near Fluvanna, Texas.
over the next several years. The investments will be made through the Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, created by tech titans like Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Major areas of interest are expected to include energy storage, low-carbon electricity generation, transportation, and energy efficiency. "Anything that leads to cheap, clean, reliable energy we’re open-minded to," Gates told
Quartz. “People think you can just put $50 million in and wait two years and then you know what you got. In this energy space, that’s not true at all.” The investments will help supplement federally funded research at government and university labs, as well as support early-stage startups and labs without government grants.
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09 Dec 2016:
Giraffe Populations Vulnerable
To Extinction, New Research Shows
Giraffe populations have declined 40 percent over the last 30 years due to habitat loss, poaching, and civil unrest, according to
the latest update
Giraffes in the Ithala Game Reserve, South Africa
of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Only 97,562 giraffes existed in Africa as of last year, down from more than 163,000 in 1985, the IUCN said. The population is now listed as “vulnerable” to extinction on the global species tracking system. The new assessment also adds more than 700 newly recognized bird species to the Red List, thirteen of which are already extinct and 11 percent of which are threatened with extinction. “Many species are slipping away before we can even describe them,” says IUCN Director General Inger Andersen. “This IUCN Red List update shows that the scale of the global extinction crisis may be even greater than we thought.”
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From Obama’s Chief Scientist,
Parting Words of Caution on Climate
John Holdren is the longest-serving presidential science adviser in U.S. history and probably one of the most influential,
John Holdren
having advised President Obama on key energy issues for the last eight years. A physicist by training, Holdren was among the chief architects of the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan. The plan has been lauded by environmentalists, but is loathed by conservative politicians, some of whom have filed suit against it. Holdren spoke with
Yale e360 contributing writer Elizabeth Kolbert about the difference between “dangerous” and “catastrophic” warming, the incoming Trump administration, and how to talk to people who deny the existence of climate change. “Part of the reason that I retain some optimism about the future is that there are these fundamental forces pushing us toward doing the right thing,” he said.
Read the interview.
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07 Dec 2016:
Indonesia Bans the Burning
Of Peatland; Will Help Reduce CO2 Emissions
Indonesian President Joko Widodo
announced a moratorium earlier this week on the conversion of carbon-rich peatlands into agricultural land — a move that could prevent hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 from being emitted annually. In recent years, landowners and companies have been draining, drying, and often burning the country’s abundant peat-filled wetlands to make way for palm oil plantations and other farmland. Fires in 2015 caused more than a half-million people to be treated for respiratory problems and $16.1 billion in economic damage,
according to the United Nations Environment Program. Widodo’s moratorium protects peatlands of any depth and orders companies to restore any peatlands they have converted. "This regulation will be a major contribution to the Paris climate agreement and a relief to millions of Indonesians who suffer the effects of toxic haze from peat fires,"
said Nirarta Samadhi, Indonesia country director for the World Resources Institute.
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06 Dec 2016:
Google to Power Itself Using
100 Percent Renewable Energy in 2017
Google announced that it has purchased enough solar and wind capacity, 2.6 gigawatts, to run
entirely on renewable energy next year.
The company, whose data centers and offices consume as much electricity as the city of San Francisco, will get
most of its wind energy from the U.S. Midwest, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, and its solar from contracts in North Carolina and Chile. Google bought its first wind power in 2010 and is now the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy. “The science tells us that tackling climate change is an urgent global priority,” said Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure. “We believe the private sector, in partnership with policy leaders, must take bold steps and that we can do so in a way that leads to growth and opportunity.”
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Interview: Unusually Warm Arctic
May Have Impact on Global Weather
This year will almost certainly go down as the warmest on record in the Arctic, with autumn temperatures soaring 36 degrees F above historic norms.
Jennifer Francis
Among the climate scientists attempting to make sense of the rapid changes sweeping the Arctic is Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University. Francis has propounded the widely discussed theory that swiftly rising temperatures in the Arctic, which are closely intertwined with the loss of sea ice, are changing the shape of the jet stream and altering the weather of the northern hemisphere. In an interview with
Yale Environment 360, Francis explains why large portions of the Arctic are experiencing temperatures more typical of New York City and warns that we ignore climate upheaval at the North Pole at our own peril. "The speed of the change is what is very disturbing to me," says Francis, "because it's such an indicator of what's happening to the planet as a whole."
Read the interview.
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02 Dec 2016:
To Fight Air Pollution, Four
Cities Announce Ban on Diesel Cars By 2025
Four of the world’s largest cities announced Friday that they will
ban diesel cars by 2025 in an effort to cut air pollution.
Traffic and smog in the outskirts of Paris.
Leaders from Paris, Madrid, Athens, and Mexico City made the declaration at the C40 Mayors Summit, a biennial meeting of civic leaders concerned about climate change. Toxic air is responsible for an estimated
3 million premature deaths each year, according to recent research by the World Health Organization. While diesel engines burn fuel more efficiently and therefore release less carbon dioxide, they do produce nitrogen dioxide and particulates that can inflame and damage people’s lungs. “Mayors have already stood up to say that climate change is one of the greatest challenges we face,” said Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris. “Today, we also stand up to say we no longer tolerate air pollution and the health problems and deaths it causes.”
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30 Nov 2016:
Soils Could Release 55 Trillion
Kilograms of Carbon By Mid-Century
The world’s soils act as critical storage for carbon, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere to fuel plant and microbial activity.
Permafrost in Greenland.
But
scientists warned this week that as soils warm in response to climate change, they could release 55 trillion kilograms of carbon by mid-century — roughly equivalent to the projected emissions of the United States, or 17 percent of all countries, during that same period. The largest losses will be from high-latitude ecosystems, the new study, led by scientists at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and published in the journal
Nature, said. This includes Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost, where colder temperatures and slow microbial activity have led to the buildup of massive carbon reserves over thousands of years. The scientists found that for every 1 degree Celsius of global warming, soils will release approximately 30 trillion kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere, or twice the annual emissions from human activities.
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29 Nov 2016:
This Year’s Coral Die-Off on
Great Barrier Reef Was Worst Ever Recorded
The Great Barrier Reef in Australia experienced its worst recorded coral die off this year, with one region losing an average
Dead table corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
67 percent of its shallow-water coral,
scientists confirmed this week. The mass die-off event was caused by abnormally warm water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which can trigger corals to expel their algae and calcify and turn white, a process known as coral bleaching. Corals can recover from bleaching, but many never do. “Most of the losses in 2016 have occurred in the northern, most-pristine part of the Great Barrier Reef,” said Terry Hughes, a marine biologist at James Cook University who led the surveys of the coral die-off. “This region escaped with minor damage in two earlier bleaching events in 1998 and 2002, but this time around it has been badly affected.” Damage to the southern two-thirds of the reef, however, was far less than expected, the scientists reported.
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28 Nov 2016:
In Slovenia, Drinking Water
Now Protected as a Constitutional Right
Slovenia has amended its constitution to make access to drinking water a human right protected under national law — the first European Union
member state to do so. The amendment, which turns management of water resources over to the federal government as a public good supplied as a nonprofit service, was approved by the Slovenian parliament earlier this month by a 64-0 vote. Lawmakers who opposed the change abstained from the vote rather than voting no, arguing it was unnecessary and a publicity stunt,
the Associated Press reported. Slovenia joins 15 other countries that have incorporated the right to water in their constitutions,
according to the Agence France-Presse news agency. Prime Minister Miro Cerar, who previously called water “the 21st century’s liquid gold,” said that “being able to drink tap water around Slovenia… is a huge privilege that we must preserve for us and generations after us.”
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23 Nov 2016:
Trump Will Scrap NASA
Climate Research, Senior Adviser Says
NASA’s world-renowned research into climate change
will be eliminated under a Donald J. Trump administration, with some of the space agency’s climate work being transferred to other parts of the U.S. government, according to Robert Walker, Trump’s senior adviser on NASA. Walker said NASA’s chief function will be space exploration and that there will be no need for it to conduct what he has called “politically correct environmental monitoring.” He added, “Mr. Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.” NASA, a global leader in monitoring climate change using satellites and other technologies, has a $2 billion earth sciences budget. Walker, a former Congressman, falsely claimed that only half of the world’s climate scientists believe that human activity is driving climate change. Trump said on Tuesday that he has an
“open mind” about climate change and is re-evaluating his pledge to withdraw U.S. support for the Paris climate accords.
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22 Nov 2016:
Freakishly Warm Weather
Is Preventing Sea Ice Formation in Arctic
Scientists are watching with growing alarm as exceptionally warm air and ocean temperatures are
effectively holding winter at bay throughout much of the Arctic, leading to record low sea ice conditions. Researchers in the U.S., Britain, and Denmark say that air temperatures over much of the Arctic Ocean have been about 10 to 20 degrees C (18 to 36 F) above normal this fall, while sea temperatures have been nearly 4 C (7 F) higher than usual in October and November. As a result, sea ice simply isn’t forming in much of the Arctic basin, which further heats up the atmosphere and ocean since dark, open water absorbs far more solar radiation than the reflective white surface of ice and snow. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University said the region’s temperatures are now “literally off the charts.” Danish satellite remote sensing expert Rasmus Tonboe said the situation in the Arctic is both “surprising and alarming” because sea ice is
disappearing faster than climate models had forecast.
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