Thursday, September 13, 2012

Winter Garden?

Getting some scary news from the climate folks. Seems the record setting Arctic ice melt is/has initiated a more intense arctic feedback loop adding more and more heat into the system. The more ice that disappears exposes more darker ocean water which absorbs more solar energy and increases the ice melt even more. The injection of all this additional energy is going to affect the weather in the U.S. and Europe this coming winter and it looks like it going to be a wild one. Whether it shows up as more extreme weather events or just a warmer winter (or both) is anyone's guess.

Some perspective:
On August 26, Arctic sea ice extent broke the record low set in 2007, and it has continued to decline since, dropping below 1.5 million square miles. That represents a 45 percent reduction in the area covered by sea ice compared to the 1980s and 1990s, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), and may be unprecedented in human history. The extent of sea ice that melted so far this year is equivalent to the size of Canada and Alaska combined.

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