SUBLIME SOUNDS: THE YELLOW-BILLED LOON

Haunting calls and video from the Russian Arctic.
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Video by Gerrit Vyn at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

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ICE VIKINGS

Crazy dudes and dudesses ice-climb icebergs off Newfoundland.
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Ice Vikings from Don Wargowsky on Vimeo.

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THE FATE OF OLD SEA ICE

A few years ago sea ice covered a quarter of the Arctic Ocean. Now: 2 percent.
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Aerial view of the edge of the sea ice in Nunavut, Canada. Credit: Doc Searls via Wikimedia Commons .

  
The latest stats on 2012's sea ice in the Arctic are out from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The winter of 2012 was not the lowest year since satellite monitoring began 34 years ago—but it was well below the average.
  
And the trend continues downward... as you can see in the graph below showing March sea ice extent since 1979.
  

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center.

  
Worse is the fate of old sea ice. 
  
Ice older than four years used to make up about a quarter of the wintertime sea ice cover in the Arctic. It now constitutes only 2 percent. From the NSIDC page:
  

Ice age data this year show that the ice cover remains much thinner than it was in the past, with a high proportion of first-year ice, which is thin and vulnerable to summer melt. After the record low minimum of 2007 the Arctic lost a significant amount of older, thicker ice, both from melting and from movement of ice out of the Arctic the following winter. In the last few years, the melt and export of old ice was less extreme than in 2007 and 2008, and multiyear ice started to re-grow, with second and third-year ice increasing over the last three years.

 

Arctic sea ice. Credit: Pink floyd88 a via Wikimedia Commons.

  
After the near-record summertime melt of 2011 there was a decline in two-year-old ice. And although some thicker three- and four-year-old ice managed to survive, the oldest, thickest ice—the stuff more than four years old—continued to decline. 

   

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy J. Maslanik and M. Tschudi, University of Colorado.

  
In the map above you can see how much of 2012's winter sea ice was new ice—just formed this year (purple). And how there's virtually nothing left of the old sea ice that was born five or more years ago (white).
  

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy J. Maslanik and M. Tschudi, University of Colorado.

  
The graph above shows the trend since 1983... how much old ice there used to be and what an endangered species it is now.

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NORTHWEST PASSAGE OPENS FOR BOWHEAD WHALES

Bowhead whale. Via.

  
A new paper in Biology Letters reports on two satellite-tagged bowhead whales from different oceans meeting in the ice-free waters of the Northwest Passage in September 2010. 
  
One whale was from West Greenland. The other from Alaska. Their paths crossed in the Parry Channel in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (maps, below). 
  
From the paper:
  

It is not known what attracted the whales to this area, given the region has relatively low marine production in autumn compared with other known bowhead whale feeding areas.

   

Bowhead whale bones on ceremonial ground, Point Hope, Alaska. Credit: rnoblin via Flickr.

This was not the first times whales from different waters have met in an ice-free Northwest Passage. From the paper:
  

During the commercial whaling period (i.e. pre-1900), several harpoon heads of Atlantic origin were discovered in bowhead whales harvested in the Chukchi Sea/western Arctic, but this information was largely dismissed as anecdotal by scientists. 

  
Further evidence appears in the genetic record:
  

Recent genetic studies compared DNA of whales from Foxe Basin, Canada to whales from Alaska and suggest genetic mixing, although results are based on a small sample size from a highly segregated population. The lack of genetic differentiation between whales in the Pacific and the Atlantic, acknowledging that samples are taken several thousand years apart, suggests that some exchange of individuals occurred between whales in Svalbard and Alaska. 

  

Credit: Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, et al. Biol Lett. DOI:100.1098/rsbl.2011.0731. 

The maps show the individual tracks of the two whales from late spring through early autumn. The inset map shows where they overlapped. From the paper:
  

The Northwest Passage with tracks of four bowhead whales and extent of sea ice with greater than 50% concentration (white fields). (a) Track of a whale tagged on 4 May 2002 in West Greenland and ice extent on 20 September 2002. (b) Track of a whale tagged in Alaska on 12 May 2006 and sea ice extent on 8 August 2006. (c) Track of a whale tagged on 24 May 2010 in Alaska, one tagged on 15 April 2010 in West Greenland, and sea ice extent on 14 September 2010. The insert shows the area where whales occurred together in 2010. The whale from Alaska was present in Viscount Melville Sound between 19 August and 18 September while the whale from Greenland was present from 11 to 28 September.

  

1980: Sea ice coverage 1 Nov-31 Jan. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

2012: Sea ice coverage 1 Nov-31 Jan. Red star marks approximately where the two whales met in 2010. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

These latest images posted by NASA's Earth Observatory give you a sense of how the passage has opened up in the last three decades for whales... and presumably for others too. I marked (red star) approximately where the two whales met in 2010.
  
The authors conclude:
  

Given recent rates of sea ice loss, climate change may eliminate geographical divisions between stocks of bowhead whales and open new areas that have not been inhabited by bowhead whales for millennia (e.g. North of Greenland and north of the Canadian Archipelago).

The documented movements of bowhead whales in the Northwest Passage are perhaps an early sign that other marine organisms have begun exchanges between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans across the Arctic. Some of these exchanges may be harder to detect than bowhead whales, but the ecological impacts could be more significant should the ice-free Arctic become a dispersal corridor between the two oceans.

Foxe Basin Bowhead Whales from Stephen Ambruzs on Vimeo.

The open-access ♥ paper:
  

• Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, Kristin L. Laidre, Lori T. Quakenbush, and John J. Citta. The Northwest Passage opens for bowhead whales. Biol Lett. DOI:10.1098/rsbl.2011.0731.

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SATELLITE VIEW OF GLOBAL ICE MELT

Bear Glacier, Alaska. Via.

 
A new paper in Nature calculates that total global ice mass lost from Greenland, Antarctica, and all Earth's glaciers and ice caps between 2003 and 2010 was about 4.3 trillion tons (1,000 cubic miles).
  
That's enough melted ice to drive up global sea level by 0.5 inches (12 millimeters).
  
And that's enough water to cover the US to 1.5 feet deep (0.5 meters deep).

Glacier melt tunnel. Credit: Dook Cook | DougAK via Flickr.

  
The research was based on satellite measurements of ice loss from all Earth's land ice collected over eight years—with attention paid to rarely-observed glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica.
  
The findings:

• About a quarter of the average annual ice loss came from glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica (roughly 148 billion tons, or 39 cubic miles). 
• Ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica and their peripheral ice caps and glaciers averaged 385 billion tons (100 cubic miles) a year.

Glacier Bay, Alaska. Credit: NPS.

  
Traditional estimates of Earth's ice caps and glaciers have been made using ground measurements from only a few hundred of the roughly 200,000 glaciers worldwide.
  
This video explains some of those traditional ground-based measurement techniques.
  


  
This video describes how the GRACE satellite measurements work.
  

  
One positive finding of the satellite study was that ice loss from high the high Asian ranges—from the Himalaya, Pamir, and Tien Shan mountains—was only about 4 billion tons of ice a year. Previous ground-based estimates ranged as high as 50 billion tons a year.
  
From NASA News:

"This study finds that the world's small glaciers and ice caps in places like Alaska, South America and the Himalayas contribute about 0.02 inches per year to sea level rise," said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "While this is lower than previous estimates, it confirms that ice is being lost from around the globe, with just a few areas in precarious balance. The results sharpen our view of land-ice melting, which poses the biggest, most threatening factor in future sea level rise." 

Bering Glacier, Alaska. Credit: NASA.

The paper:

• Thomas Jacob, John Wahr, W. Tad Pfeffer & Sean Swenson. Recent contributions of glaciers and ice caps to sea level rise. Nature. DOI:10.1038/nature10847

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GREENLAND'S ICE IS DARKENING

Greenland melt map by NOAA’s climate.gov team, based on NASA satellite data processed by Jason Box, Byrd Polar Research Center, the Ohio State University.

  
Not only is Greenland's ice melting, it's also become darker and therefore more absorbent of light—accelerating its own thaw. 

From NASA's Earth Observatory page:

The map above shows the difference between the amount of sunlight Greenland reflected in the summer of 2011 versus the average percent it reflected between 2000 to 2006. Virtually the entire ice sheet shows some change, with some areas reflecting close to 20 percent less light than a decade ago.

Melting atop the Greenland ice sheet. Image via The Big Picture.

  

As expected, rising temperatures melt snow and ice to uncover water, vegetation, and bare ground. These darker substrates absorb more sunlight. 

As predicted, the loss of reflectiveness amplifies the initial warming.

Greenland glacier. Credit: Ville Miettinen via Wikimedia Commons.

Most of the melt patterns on the map (top) fit these expectations. 

But what's unexpected here is that the reflectivity of Greenland's ice is diminishing not just at the coasts but far inland as well. 

Even at the highest point of the ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level, where there's no visible summertime melting, the ice is darkening.

Smaller, colder snow crystals, left. Warmed ice crystals, right. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

So what's going on?

Well, according to Jason Box at Ohio State University the inland darkening is a result of changes in the ice crystals themselves.

As temperatures rise, the snow grains clump together, reflecting less light than the many-faceted smaller crystals (above left). 

The warmed—but not melted—crystals become rounded (above right), and these shapes absorb more sunlight than jagged crystals.

Greenland glacier from the air. Credit: Mila Zinkova via Wikimedia Commons.

  

Another chapter in Ooops: A history of Homo sapiens.

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WAKE

Ship wake. Credit: Yosemite James via Flickr.

Offshore wind farm wakes. Via.

South Georgia Island cloud wake. Credit: NASA.

Island wakes, Canary Islands. Via Flickr.

Aircraft turbulence wake. Via.

Ship track wakes in the clouds, North Pacific. Credit: NASA.

Comet wake. Credit: NASA via.

Bioluminescent dolphin wakes. Credit: Ammonite via National Geographic.

Icebreaker wake. Via.

Iceberg wake. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Crabeater seal wakes, Southern Ocean. Credit: Steve Nicol via.

Penguin wake. Via.

Ship bow-wake with bow-riding dolphins. Via.

Von Karman vortices, Aletian Islands. Credit: USGS.

Sea turtle wake. Credit: Rosa Say via Flickr.

Sea turtle wake. Via RedBubble.

Surf wake. Via.

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CIGARETTE CARD ARCTIC

These views of the Arctic are from cigarette cards issued by the Hassan Oriental Cigarette Company between 1900-1917—during the golden age of  polar exploration. 

The artist is Albert Operti, an Italian who accompanied Robert Peary on his 1896 Greenland expedition. 

Operti also painted many scenes of expeditions he was not a part of. As best I can deduce, the ship in this picture, Hansa, is the same supply vessel that came to an untimely end off Greenland during the 1869-1870 Second German North Polar Expedition. From Wikipedia:

As the supply ship, the Hansa followed the Germania [exploration ship] until July 19, when [Captain Paul Friedrich August] Hegemann misread a flag signal by [captain of the Germania, Carl] Koldeway and went ahead; the ship disappeared in the fog and got separated. The agreement was to meet in such a situation at Sabine Island. After unsuccessful attempts to get there, Hansa was inescapably stuck in the pack ice by mid-September 1869. During the next month, the ship was slowly milled by the ice and finally sank on October 22 at a position 70°32’N, 21°W approximately 10 km from the East Greenland coast. The crew managed to survive the winter in a shelter built of coal dust briquettes, while drifting on the sea ice southward along the eastern coast of Greenland. In June 1870, the crew got to the coast by boat and reached the Moravian Herrnhut mission at Narsaq Kujalleq (then Frederiksdal/Friedrichsthal) near Cape Farewell, from where they got back to Germany on a Danish ship.

When he wasn't painting the real and imaginary Arctic, Albert Operti was painting other make-believe stuff. From Visions of the North:

Like many panorama and diorama painters of the nineteenth century, when the Arctic was also a popular subject for such entertainments, Operti had a background in theatrical scene painting, and it was with this work that he was chiefly occupied in the middle years of his life, principally with the [New York] Metropolitan Opera. In the last six years of his life he returned to the [American Museum of Natural History], painting diorama backdrops, murals, and friezes for their exhibitions. During this period, he actually lived in quarters provided by the [New York] Explorers Club, and it was there that he died in 1927.

All images courtesy the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

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