New Record Low Arctic SIE Maximum Reached

The Arctic Sea Ice is dying. We've known this since the mid-1990s from satellite measurements available since the end of the 1970s and there is some pre-satellite evidence to show that it has been in decline since the 1960s via the early environmentalist Rachel Carson.

However, since the mid-2000s it's been accelerating. Normally the big news has been with the Sea Ice Extent minimum reached in September, but recently the decline in the Sea Ice Extent maximum in March is becoming increasingly concerning.

This year we have reached a new record low Arctic SIE Maximum, about 40,000Km2 lower than the previous maximum reached in 2015. This is after 6 months in 2016 where the Arctic SIE was at record low levels and even this year it has spent about 30% of the time in record low territory over and above (or should it be under and below) the record lows over that period in 2016.

The record itself was reached near the beginning of March (March 06), but because the extent can vary quite significantly up and down at the maximum point, it's not safe to call the maximum until it can be reasonably known that it's peak will be exceeded.

That point has been reached, the current extent reached 13.61mKm2 as of March 16 and there is no year from the year 2000 to 2016 where SIE has risen by more than the 270,000Km2 that would be required for 2017 to break its current peak.

Here's the graphic.

Arctic Brain Freeze

Another Geo-engineering project is doing the rounds.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/12/plan-to-refreeze-arctic-before-ice-goes-for-good-climate-change

In my opinion, it's not such a good idea, so sorry to dump on the scientist. There's grave concern for the arctic, I track it via the Jaxa arctic sea-ice extent vishop web page on a daily basis. It's scary.


Steven Desch's plan is still a bit like pumping harder on the gas to provide the power to apply some brakes, because the 1 million wind pumps would have to be currently made with fossil fuel industry power. I imagine, that because they're not generating electricity, just pumping cold, salty water up; they won't deplete the rare earth metals used to make electric wind-turbines. So, it's not as bad as it might be.

But, 1 million wind turbines: for electricity turbines that's enough to power 2 billion homes at a cost of £2000bn (though economy of scale would bring that down).

It's disappointing that he says: "“Our only strategy at present seems to be to tell people to stop burning fossil fuels.. It’s a good idea..." What he should be saying is "that is of course essential." Because it's not just a good idea, we have to get our emissions down to zero (and rapidly, and then go negative!), because CO2 will hang in the atmosphere for 100s to 1000s of years. Prioritising CO2 over arctic geoengineering is wiser, because it'll provide centuries of better breathing space (quite literally); whereas this, like all geoengineering projects encourages BAU and creates a maintenance issue: you're going to have to replace 5% of them every year: that's 50,000 wind pumps per year.

In addition, because global warming would get worse, the effort to keep the arctic frozen would increase. That's because of warm waters entering from the Atlantic and Pacific as well as warm air from the rest of the planet, pressures on the jetstream and higher radiative forcing due to greater CO2 in the atmosphere. These things wouldn't change and all of them are a product of burning FF.

The question though is that prioritising this would probably deplete renewable energy efforts, because the companies used to build turbine blades would first be diverted to build these things.

The definitive lay perspective on Geo-engineering, I think is the chapter on it in Naomi Klein's book "This Changes Everything."

Glamourising Carmageddon In a 1ºC Warmer World

A recent Guardian article nails it. We've already hit >1ºC of warming, so it's virtually impossible to stay under 1.5ºC despite the fact that the Paris Climate Agreement in December 2015 stated it as a goal.

There's an interesting incidental quote in the article:

“And by 2030 you will have to get rid of the combustion engine entirely”

Indeed, that's where it must lead and the realisation that infernal combustion engines are going to have to be phased out rather more quickly is going to dawn on us pretty soon. For example, if we want to have 0 fossil fuel cars on the road by 2050, then we have to stop making them by 2025. Norway, India and the Netherlands are already considering this.

So what this article is saying - if it doesn't mean merely ending production - is that we should already have stopped building fossil fuel cars in 2005, which means they'll be forcibly taken off the road. The fact that cities like Paris ban odd or even numbered vehicles on high pollution days is an indication of how this might take place, but whatever, they have to go and go quickly.

Yet, and this is a big yet - we are still glorifying cars in every advertising space possible: on TV in virtually every commercial break; on billboards, in papers, on facebook, on the Guardian, even over Guardian articles warning about climate change. There they are, the car companies, rubbing our faces in the pollution they're causing - because they get to advertise all the time and the counter-narrative gets almost no air-time.

And this needs to stop as well, because it's no different to tobacco adverts during the 1970s, actually it's worse because these products are a threat to the whole planet, not primarily the individuals who smoke. Deglamourise those tail-pipes and the incessant urban noise that the fossil fuel industry has immersed us in. End those adverts, it'll make it easier to end fossil fuel car production.

Capitalising the Cumbrian Floods

Naomi Klein's book: The Shock Doctrine (2007), makes the insightful, but surprising claim that free-market capitalists use economic and climate disasters to push forward neoliberal ideological policies. This is called #disastercapitalism . 

The idea is this: people normally resist free market solutions to all sorts of cultural norms. For example, the NHS in the United Kingdom is deeply valued to the extent that an amateur choir can achieve a Christmas number 1 in the pop charts by releasing a song that defends it.

What Disaster Capitalism does though is use the dislocation, caused by a traumatic event to railroad purported solutions to inject free-market answers while people are still reeling in confusion from the event. For example, in the case of climate change related events, you would think it would be the other way around: that people would rapidly form the association between global warming and and the current event and make strong calls for the government to turn more rapidly away from fossil fuels.

Surprisingly, although some people do this, by and large no such response occurs. Instead what happens is that people are preoccupied with the immediate need for relief and consequently suppress or ignore statements or opinions that relate the event to climate change. For example, after the Hebden Bridge flooding of 2012, they released a web page where they talk about "what work has been done since last Summer, and what’s also planned in the medium and long terms". There's no mention of climate anything. You can skip to the forum too. So, from the 2012 forum, topic "Floods Practical Solutions", of the 19 posts, there's one reference to climate ("Has anyone mentioned Treesponsibility? The group was set up to leessen (sic) the effects of climate change in the Valley by planting trees"). Another flood-related topic is no longer on the server. Of the other topics "Floods Sandbags" (no references); "Floods, The Politics" 20 refs: "Climate change certainly seems to be contributing to the problem, but it will be hundreds of years, if at all, before we will see the results of any effort we make to counter climate change."(i.e. let's not think about it right now); "Every Councillor and every senior Council Officer in Calderdale needs to read the Pitt Review of the 2007 floods and act on the recommendations. They should also understand where Climate Change is leading us." (which was written by the Green Party Candidate and brushed aside in the next post with "I'm not sure that right now is the time to be pushing 'I told you so' stuff"); "Only yesterday a report was mentioned on the BBC from the Committee on Climate Change that warns of more of these downpours in the future.". Another Green party comment "Our own Government and its agencies have to stop talking about flood threats in terms of one in 30 or 100 years. With climate change it could happen next month again". This was countered in the next post and in a couple of later posts: "As I said, there is no evidence to link the recent wet weather with man made climate change and for that reason the Green Party and other opportunists should not use terrible events such as the recent floods to progress their agendas."

Given that people are cautious to make any link, particularly during the events themselves, it becomes relatively easy for the government to exploit it. And indeed this is just what they've done. In response to questions about how the Government had made cuts to the Environmental Agency prior to the Cumbrian floods in early December 2015, the government then offered Council Tax and business tax cuts as relief.

Doesn't this strike anyone as being rather odd? As if anyone's need for flooding relief was somehow related to how much they pay in council tax? Isn't it also more likely that homes built closer to flood plains are likely to be in lower council tax areas and therefore there's less to claim back, though they're more likely to be flooded? And how is a business's profits related to the amount of damage they'd suffer? And isn't it likely that a business that was making more money would find it easier to cope with the cost anyway?

The only common factors in all of this is that:

1. The 'flooding relief' potentially has greater benefits for Cumbrians who are better off, compared with those who aren't.
2. The relief needs to be applied from across the country to those in need, not localised to the area in question. How is a community's ability to fund its own relief related to the extent of the disaster?
3. Business taxes (and possibly Council taxes) pay for things like welfare, so in a sense the flooding disaster is being used to make cutbacks in welfare: although the rich across the country aren't paying for the flooding relief, the poor in the UK will have less money as a consequence.

And guess what, Liz Truss is planning to apply the same approach to the flooding in the North of England again - they have no idea if it works, but it's already policy.

“Of course, you’ve asked about funding and we’re looking at schemes similar to what we put in place in Cumbria to make sure families and businesses are supported,” said Truss.

 Disaster Capitalism to a tee.

Arctic Attacks

Arctic Sea Ice has reached a new record low maximum. The Guardian covers it quite nicely in this article.

Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter maximum

In writing a reply to a comment for the article I ended up listing a number of major reasons why the Arctic is under attack. It turns out there's an awful lot of mechanisms and feedbacks that are making Arctic Sea Ice increasingly vulnerable. Off the top of my head I could think of these:

1. Most of the ice is now easily melted first-year ice, which even when it melts is less likely to refreeze, because it doesn't change salinity of the top layer of water much.

2. The Arctic sea surface temperatures are rising, and will be hit harder again, now we are in an El Nino phase; so melting from below is becoming more of an issue. [This is the primary cause of this years record low Arctic Maximum]

3. The increased amount of open water in the Arctic ocean means that Arctic sea ice is being affected more by storms. In the past the ice itself dampened waves; the effects of currents and could distribute the force of storms across the ice pack. Now there are open waves and the structural integrity can't withstand the currents nor storms. One the effects of this is 'flash melting' where stunning amounts of sea ice can suddenly melt by being submerged during a storm (this was a contributory factor to the summer record in 2012).

4. The increased amount of energy in the atmosphere around the Arctic ocean means that storms are becoming more common and stronger.

5. The increased humidity above the arctic has numerous effects. (a) Water vapour is a greenhouse gas and therefore it acts as a positive feedback on melt. (b) Increased cloud cover reduces direct levels of radiation acting as a negative feedback (though it's understood less than (a)). (c) Regular air temperatures above 0ºC means that rain is increasingly likely and rain is a much more effective thermal conductor than air (because water has a much higher specific heat capacity).

6. Arctic melting is starting to reach the coasts of the Greenland and Canadian Archipelago. This means that the multi-year ice is no longer held fast to the land and is therefore more easily transported.

7. Increased outflow and calving from Arctic glaciers, particularly in Greenland adds to the destabilisation of land-fast Arctic sea ice.

8. The opening of the North East Passage and in particular open water from the North Sea to the Bering Strait (separating Alaska and Russia) means that for some of the year actual ocean currents can flow all the way across the Arctic. This, again, increases transport.

9. The increased rate of arctic temperature rises compared with more southerly latitudes means that the northern Jetstream is breaking down (this is different to the Gulf stream of course). The effect is to make  the Jetstream more wavy which allows warmer air to be transported to the Arctic (often raising temperatures by >20ºC) as well as transporting cooler air further south causing major climatic problems in Canada and North America (the Polar Vortex).

So, in short - there's whole set of depressing indicators and feedbacks as the Arctic Sea Ice melts, which is why as a whole it's accelerating.

Rain, Rain Won't Go Away

A couple of weeks ago I thought the UK was starting to turn a corner in recognizing the possibility that our weather is being affected by climate change. The connection between climate change and extreme weather reporting had declined in the 3 years from 2009 from 25% to about 11% in 2012, despite the extensive floods we had that year.

2013 had Century-level floods in Eastern Europe, India, China, Russia, Canada and Oregon but we were largely spared. However, in October however we had the worst storm since 1987; followed by the worst storm surge in 60 years; followed by persistent flooding in Scotland and Southern England over December along with a second storm surge that destroyed Aberyswyth's sea front and caused extensive damage elsewhere.

Since then parts of the country have had continual flooding to the extent that by early January David Cameron was admitting this could be due to climate change; which was backed up by the MET office which called for attribution studies to prove it.

But then at the end of January it was suddenly all put down to not dredging rivers. If that's true, then failing to dredge the River Severn has lead to Jet Stream blocking patterns and our wettest January on record.

So, I decided to take a look at MET office rainfall anomaly images for both 2012 and the end of 2013. I'm picking selected months. Let's see them:

April 2012 vs 1961-1990

April 2012 vs 1981-2010

June 2012 vs 1961-1990

June 2012 vs 1981-2010

July 2012 vs 1961-1990

July 2012 vs 1981-2010

August 2012 vs 1961-1990

August 2012 vs 1981-2010

October 2012 vs 1961-1990

October 2012 vs 1981-2010

November 2012 vs 1961-1990

November 2012 vs 1981-2010

December 2012 vs 1961-1990

December 2012 vs 1981-2010

The above images are for 2012 and tell us some interesting things. Firstly, the three months April, June and July were exceptionally wet. You can see how blue the country is. Secondly, the comparison with 1961-1990 is almost always bluer than 1981-2010. This gives us an indication that the UK was wetter over these months in 1981-2010 compared with 1961-1990. That's because the corresponding months in 2012 are less wet when compared against the more recent range. Now let's look at the flooding in 2013:

October 2013 vs 1961-1990

October 2013 vs 1981-2010

November 2013 vs 1961-1990

November 2013 vs 1981-2010

December 2013 vs 1961-1990

December 2013 vs 1981-2010

Again, we see the same sorts of patterns. We can see how extremely wet October 2013 has been (compared with October 2012). We can also see how the rainfall pattern has been so much more damaging in December 2013 compared with 2012 even though December 2012 looks generally bluer. Finally, also note that November has been getting wetter according to the graph, since November 2013 is relatively dryer compared against the 1981-2010 range vs the 1961-1990, i.e. 1981-2010 was a wetter period.

Conclusion.

These images could tell us a couple of important aspects about climate change in the UK:

• It's generally getting wetter for certain months in the year since the range 1981-2010 is wetter than 1961-1990.
• We've been seeing some pretty bad weather: all those blue regions tell us it really has been getting worse.
• Flooding can't just be due to a lack of dredging in the river Severn, because we're looking at pictures of rainfall, not flooding and these images easily explain why it's been so bad.

Edit

At the time of publication it wasn't possible to report the images for January 2014 as they hadn't been published by the MET. It is possible now. You can see the same trends are in effect: the anomaly for January 2014 is astonishing in both cases, but less so compared with the average rainfall over 1981 to 2010 (which implies that that period was a bit wetter than 1961 to 1990). In early March it should be possible to add the graphs for February rainfall (which won't be as extreme).

January 2014 vs 1961-1990

January 2014 vs 1981-2010

 Edit 2

And a day later the March 2014 data became available. Again, the same trends are evident. Firstly, Rainfall for the month is extreme - in fact more extreme than January and more extreme than I anticipated just yesterday as it covers Northern Ireland and Great Britain with the exception of the east coast and the North West of England. Secondly, rainfall is less extreme relative to the 1981 to 2010 period which means that that period is wetter. Truly astounding.

February 2014 vs 1961-1990

February 2014 vs 1981-2010

Calgary Flooding Podcast Transcript

Hi folks,

I had just finished a facebook status on India's recent 60-year flooding event (just a fortnight or so after Central Europe's multi-century flooding event) when I discovered that 70,000 had been evacuated from Calgary because of yet another flooding event. 

Most media reports (but not this one) are bending over backwards to play down the the connection, but there's an awful lot of 'freak' weather, going on these days. Bob Stanford's interview on Anna Maria Tremonti's podcast about Calgary's flooding just a few days ago was a superb description of the state of play of the current state of  climate science and extreme weather events.

It's so informative, I thought I should provide a transcript.

Anna Maria Tremonti: 'Well Bob Sanford lives in Canmore too, but he's in Winnipeg this morning. He's been trying to make sense of these and other severe floods and he's come to a disturbing conclusion. Bob Sanford is the chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of the United Nations Water For Life Decade and the author of "Cold Matters - The State and Fate of Canada's Fresh Waters." ' Good Morning!"

Bob Sanford: " Good morning Anna."

Anna: "Well, what do you make of what we're seeing across Southern Alberta this morning?"

Bob Sanford: "Well, to scientists working in the domain of climate effects on water this is, really the worst of all possible outcomes. We built on flood plains because we thought we had relatively stable climate, the climate that we've experienced over the past century. We thought it would stay the same. We also thought that we had a good grasp of how variable we could expect climatic conditions to be based on what we've experienced in the past century.

And now we've discovered that neither assumption was correct. We do not have adequate means to protect development on flood plains; climatic conditions are more variable than we thought and that variability is increasing as climate changes and we've also discovered that our hydrologic conditions are changing."

Anna: "So what do floods like this tell us about what's happening with our water cycles?"

Bob Sanford: "Well if we put all of the data together they tell us that warming temperatures are altering the form that water takes and where it goes in the hydrosphere. Evidence that increasing temperatures are accelerating the manner and rate at which water is moving through the hydrological cycle is now widely enough available to allow us to connect the dots with respect to what's happening in Canada. So let's start very briefly in the Canadian Arctic. In the North and throughout much of the Canadian Boreal, water that's been trapped as ice in the form of glaciers and as permanent snow pack and permafrost is, is in decline. And the same sort of thing is visibly evident in Canada's Western mountains. There's now evidence that we've lost as many as 300 glaciers in the Canadian Rockies alone between 1920 and 2005. And the same thing that's causing our glaciers to disappear is (in combination with landscape change) changing precipitation patterns on the great plains.

And the same warming is causing water left on the land after the last glaciation in the great lakes region to evaporate. So, you might well ask 'where's all this water going?'  And one of the places it's going is into the atmosphere where it becomes available to fuel more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as the one that you had in Toronto in 2005 that cause $700m [Canadian] worth of flood damage to infrastructure, roads and homes. And you may remember that, in that year, that Calgary just dodged the same kind of bullet - well - not this time. And what we're seeing here is that rising temperatures and the increasing concentration of atmospheric vapour are making what were once predictable, natural events, much worse and what we've discovered is that the atmosphere holds about 7% more water vapour for each degree celsius temperature increase.

And what this tells us is that the old math and the old methods of flood prediction and protection won't work any more. And until we find a new way of substantiating appropriate action in the absence of this hydrologic stability, flood risks are going to be increasingly difficult to predict or to price, not just in Calgary or Canmore, but everywhere."

Anna: " So you're saying, then that there's more condensation in the air. Warm air can hang on to water longer and then - burst when it hits somewhere that can no longer hang on to it?"

Bob Sanford: "Well, warmer atmosphere is more turbulent and it carries more water vapour. And we're seeing that happening widely. We're also seeing in North America disruption in the Jet Stream which is allowing climatic events to cluster and remain in places for longer periods of time, resulting in more intensive floods and droughts. And we're seeing this as a result of the general warming in the atmosphere."

Anna: "And you've said that this is because of Climate Change. How do we know that this isn't just a fluke, an outlier?"

Bob Sanford: "Well, we know that Classius Clapeyron relation is one of the standard logarithms, or algorithms that we use in Climate Science. And we know that as the temperature increases we know what we can expect in terms of water vapour increases in the atmosphere and we're beginning to see some very interesting phenomenon associated with this. Things like atmospheric rivers. Great courses of water vapour aloft that can carry between 7 and 15 times the daily flow of the Mississippi and when these touch ground or are confronted by cooler temperatures that water precipitates out and what we see is huge storms of long duration and the potential for much greater flooding events."

Anna: "So, what you're saying is this part of a blot or pattern across North America."

Bob Sanford: "Well, unfortunately, this may be the new normal. I regret to say that everything we know about how climate affects the hydrologic cycle supports or suggests that events like this are likely to be more common. And the insurance industry has already warned us of a trend towards more intense and longer duration storms that cause more damage especially in areas of population concentration. And this is certainly what we're seeing in the Calgary Area."

Anna: "What are you hearing from people you know in Canmore?"

Bob Sanford: "Well, there's a great deal of concern about how long this event is going to last and, well we heard from residents there this morning on your show, there is a deep concern about how much damage there has been done to very expensive infrastructure, roads and bridges. So we're going to have to wait until the storm is over to determine exactly the extent of those damages."

Anna: "What should we be doing to address the situation you're describing?"

Bob Sanford: "Well, I think that it's important to recognise that the loss of hydrologic stability is a societal game-changer. It's already causing a great deal of human misery widely. So we're going to have to replace vulnerable infrastructure across the country with new systems designed to handle greater extremes and this is going to be very costly. We're also going to have to invest more in the science so that we can improve our flood predictions."

Anna: "As you look at what's unfolding across Southern Alberta - not surprising to you? Surprising? The residents there certainly are saying it was completely unexpected."

Bob Sanford: "Well, I don't know if it was entirely unexpected. We know that there's great variability in our climate naturally. But we also know that some of these influences are affecting the frequency of these storm events. And researchers at University of Saskatchewan's Kananaskis research centre  have predicted already that events of this sort will be more common.

No-one likes to be right on such matters, but it appears that these are going to be events that we're going to see more frequently in the future."

Anna: "Um-hmmm, that's a rather grim forecast. No pun intended."

Bob Sanford: "It is grim, but I think that if we accept what we see happening right in front of our very eyes is real then we can begin to adapt and begin to rethink about how we situate our homes and our infrastructure and flood plains. We can begin to think about how we're going to adapt to more extreme weather events it's not certainly outside of the domain of human possibility to do so and we should be acting toward that direction."

Anna: "Well Bob, good to talk to you. Thanks for your time this morning."

Bob Sanford: "Thank you."

The Big Wedgie

This is just a short blog about an interesting development in the Arctic. I keep a frequent lookout on websites such as NSIDC's Arctic Sea Ice News and importantly Neven's Sea Ice Blog.

One of the big predictions for forthcoming years is the collapse of the Arctic ice cap which may happen as soon as in just a few years. This graph makes it quite clear what will happen:

It's a scary graph and implies that we'll have a September minimum of 0Km3 as early as 2015; an August ... October minimum of 0Km3 as early as 2016 and a July minimum of 0Km3 as early as 2017. That is, a rapid collapse of the Arctic sea ice. However, there are wide error bars, and so future predictions should be treated cautiously.

In the arctic much of the ice disappears every year (first year ice), but some remains (multiyear ice). The resilience of Arctic sea ice depends upon multi-year ice, because it's thicker. Most of the multiyear ice was lost in 2007 and has progressively depleted since then.

As you can see, most of the remaining multi-year ice (about 20% of ice >=4 years) clings to the North Coast of Greenland and islands North of Canada and the thinking is that any ice that clings on beyond 2016 or so will be there. This might not happen. Here's why. There's regular arctic ice being churned out from the Fram Strait, the sea between Greenland and Svalbard thanks to Arctic ocean currents that head up North round  from the Atlantic (the same currents that give the UK warm weather).  You can see it here:

It's thought by some Arctic observers that the multi-year ice is held in place at the top of Greenland by what's called the Wedge. This may get swept out through the Fram strait in just a couple of days. It'd be the big Wedgie for the Arctic and would have serious consequences for the remaining multi-year ice and whether the Arctic sea ice would in fact trend to around 1MKm3 or nothing at all. Here's a model of the process:

The reason why it can get swept out now, is because the ice is so thin elsewhere in the Arctic, on average, it's just over 1metre thick. Since we know that with thinner ice sea currents have more opportunity to influence Arctic sea ice and in recent weeks observers have noticed a number of cracks appearing in the Arctic sea ice, early than they would be expected (large cracks do occur in the ice, just not normally this early, here):

(It's a false-color image so you can see the contrast more easily, Greenland is bottom right, cracks are shown white against orange).
Of course, it might not actually happen - I'll post a comment in a few days if it does!

SIA Later!

Or rather we won't as in a few years it'll all be gone!

This is a little blog about current Arctic Sea Ice Area as we near the 2012 record-breaking summer minimum.

Take a look at the image:

It's a section of the Arctic SIA as of yesterday.

We can see that the whole of the top-right hand edge, is the Northern Sea Route. You can see it's open-water and there's a lot of it. It first opened in 2009, but right now it's so wide you could pretty much sail the UK straight through; and within 3 years!

The opening of the Northern Sea Route means that ocean currents can sweep more easily round the eastern edge of the North Pole; bringing warmer waters from the Gulf Stream (not to be confused with the Jet Stream); and thus accelerating the collapse of the Arctic Sea Ice. We can see the effect quite clearly; the eastern edge continues to melt significantly, just days away from the supposed end of the melting season.

By contrast the Western edge of the Arctic Sea Ice is pinned by an extensive set of islands as well as the all-important Greenland land mass. This is why the Sea Ice is clinging to that edge, the frozen land keeps it cooler and protects it from ocean currents.

The last thing to note is the colour scheme. Red means '60%' ice, pink means '80%' ice; purple is near 100%. This means that the white dot in the middle, which is the North Pole itself, is only 80% Sea Ice at best and has a large amount of 60% (i.e. rotten) Sea Ice relatively close by. Given that the Eastern edge of the ice is about half-way to the North Pole, I'd guess it'll be gone within 3 years.

SIA Later, in a week or so for my post on the Arctic minimum!