2014 Arctic ice minimum: 5.02 million square kilometers.

* From World Resources Institute, Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, at http://cait2.wri.org

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The Arctic sea ice expands and contracts each year like a lung – growing through the autumn and winter towards its late-March peak, then shrinking over the summer to its smallest expanse, the annual “minimum,” in mid-September. The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado believes this year’s minimum came last Wednesday:

The Arctic’s sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent on September 17, 2014. Sea ice extent on that day was measured at 5.02 million square kilometers (1.94 million square miles). It was the sixth-lowest extent recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice in 1979. The number is above the 2012 record extent but is still below the long-term average.

In context, 5.02 million square kilometers is 1 percent of the earth’s surface, or in land-equivalent terms between Australia’s 7.2 million square kilometers. and the European Union’s 4.4 million. The 2014 minimum is well above the record 3.4 million square kilometer low of 2012, but about 1.7 million sq. kms. smaller than the 6.7 million average from 1980-2000. The ice-volume estimates done by University of Washington’s Polar Studies Center – 8.15 million cubic kilometers in 2014, as against a 1980-2000 average of 12.9 million cubic kms – suggest that the 2014 sea ice is on average about two feet thinner than it was a generation ago.

Like other climate-change phenomena, shifts in ice coverage depends on many factors – short-term issues like seasonal storms and cloud cover, which combined to help create the extreme 3.4-million sq. km. minimum in 2012, the lowest figure ever measured; the long-term interplay of low-albedo dark water and bright Arctic sun, which reinforces itself as ice cover shrinks; and the human-influenced trends in gas emissions and deforestation. The world’s great and wise are meeting today to discuss these issues at the UN’s Climate Change Summit in New York.  As they do so, they can look back on a millennial record as follows:

Emissions: Since the Kyoto Conference at the end of 1997, total greenhouse emissions – carbon dioxide, methane, and so on – have grown by about a third, or by 10.9 billion tons of carbon equivalent. The largest story in this is Chinese industrial growth: Aggregates of all gases find Chinese emissions accounting for 6.3 billion or three-fifths of the total between 1998 and 2011. Using more up-to-date estimates which cover carbon dioxide emissions alone (CO2 accounts for about two-thirds of emissions), the Netherlands Environmental Protection Agency places Chinese net growth at 6.3 billion out of 10.1 billion tons net increase of CO2 from 1997 to 2012, with the 9.9 million tons in total emissions estimated for 2012 nearly as much as those of the United States, the European Union, and Japan combined.

Elsewhere in the world, developed-world emissions have been stable or dropping. The U.S. and EU are both down about 7 percent from their 1997 CO2 totals, with drops of 10 percent or more in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Japan, Canada, Australia, and Russia, though, are all slightly up. No cause for smugness in the U.S. – while the financial crisis and the natural gas boom together cut emissions sharply between 2007 and 2012, early estimates for 2013 suggest an upturn of 3 percent, or 150 million tons. Indian emissions, meanwhile, are up about a billion tons per year, accounting for 10 percent of the net increase; Korea and Taiwan combine to add 0.3 billion tons, Brazil and Mexico 0.25 billion tons, and the rest of the world 2 billion more.

Carbon sinks: Trends in forest cover and other factors that pull carbon out of the air are is similar. Since the late 1990s, forest coverage in the big northern-hemisphere countries – the U.S., Canada, and Russia – has remained stable. China’s cover has risen from 19 percent to 23 percent of land area, offsetting about 0.3 billion tons of extra gas emissions; the European Union’s cover is up from about 37 to 38 percent of land area. Near the equator, though, the big forests have continued to shrink more rapidly than northern forests have grown: Brazil’s coverage has dropped from 65 percent to 61 percent of land, Indonesia’s from 55 percent to 52 percent, Congo’s from 69 percent to 68 percent, and Papua New Guinea’s from 66.5 to 63 percent. Altogether, world coverage is down about 1 percent since the turn of the century, from 40.4 billion sq. kms. to 40.1 billion sq. kms. as of 2011, an aggregate loss roughly equivalent to the land area of Japan.

In sum, the Summit participants contemplate a record which is very sobering but not hopeless: (1) generally negative trends in emissions and carbon sinks; (2) examples of success, especially in Europe, and some long-term evidence that development can bring both carbon-efficiency and rising forest coverage; and (3) less time to change.

FURTHER READING:

Policy –

The UN’s climate change summit: http://www.un.org/climatechange/summit/

Secretary of State John Kerry on U.S. policy:http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/09/231950.htm

The European Union’s approach:http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/brief/eu/index_en.htm

And the Sydney-based Lowy Institute offers a guardedly optimistic look at Chinese climate policy, guessing that Chinese emissions may peak in 2025 and then begin to decline: http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/chinas-climate-change-policies-actors-and-drivers

Trends & data: emissions and sinks –

WRI’s “Climate Analysis Indicators Tool” has data through 2011 for all greenhouse gases and land use: http://cait2.wri.org/

The Netherlands Environmental Agency estimates carbon dioxide emissions by country through 2012: http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2013-report

Data for CO2 only, 1997-2012 –

The World Bank has forest-cover estimates by country and region, 2000-2011:http://wdi.worldbank.org/table/3.1

… also from the World Bank, forest cover by country back to the 1980s:http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS

And reports and assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:http://www.ipcc.ch/

Trends & data: Arctic ice –

Arctic sea-ice and other estimates from the National Snow and Ice Data Center:http://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/arctic-sea-ice-reaches-minimum-extent-2014

Arctic ice volume estimates from the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center:http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

Source: http://progressive-economy.org/2014/09/24/2014-arctic-ice/