This is by far the most disturbing and unsettling post that I have written to date. It is a call to arms that far exceeds anything that I can imagine. It will sound hyperbolic to the uninitiated, but it is my duty as someone steeped in the natural sciences to convey this grave warning and urgent call to action.
The title of the post refers to the moment in time when virtually all of the pack ice on the Arctic Ocean has disappeared. The long term consequences of such an event are truly apocalyptic. Projecting current rates of melting into the future results in the first Blue Ocean Event in 2032 or 2033, just eight or nine years from now. A more optimistic projection may result in the “Event” delayed to about 2040. Even more alarming is the revelation that 10-15 years after the first Blue Ocean Event, the Arctic Ocean will no longer freeze over even in winter!! Regardless of when the Event happens, a near wholesale transformation of planet Earth is in store absent radical and immediate de-carbonization.
Many climate activists have been ridiculed for boldly stating that “we only have ten years left to de-carbonize”. The statement is interpreted by right wing, self interested, climate change deniers as meaning climate alarmists are saying the world ends in ten years. They then laugh at what they perceive as naïve, doomerist hysteria. The proper interpretation is that this is the moment when we lose control of anthropogenic global warming; when positive feedbacks usher in a runaway greenhouse effect. This is why climate activists are so strident in requesting global cooperation for urgent action to de-carbonize NOW.
Allow me to outline a likely scenario for how and why events will unfold following a Blue Ocean Event. Once a Blue Ocean Event is recognized and declared, the dynamic interplay of the atmosphere, ocean, and continental land masses surrounding the Arctic Ocean above 60 degrees degrees latitude, will dramatically change in an accelerating fashion.
First, the albedo will be reduced. Albedo is a measure of the reflectivity of a surface. Dark surfaces absorb far more energy than white surfaces. Once the Arctic Ocean is devoid of it’s highly reflective, white, icy surface, far more solar energy will be absorbed by both the atmosphere over the ocean and the ocean itself. The reduction in albedo will cause temperatures to soar not only in the Arctic Ocean and the atmosphere above it, but in the surrounding land areas. One calculation by climate scientists, in an attempt to quantify the impact of this loss of albedo, have stated that the warming impact will be equivalent to all the fossil fuels burned since the early 1990’s.
A second factor concerns the latent heat of ice. A great deal of heat is needed to melt ice before the temperature of liquid water can begin to rise. A simple experiment can easily demonstrate latent heat: Add a great deal of ice to a beaker of water and wait for the temperature to stabilize. Record the temperature, which will be near the freezing point of water. Now put the ice and water mixture on a hot plate and begin heating the mix at a constant rate. Keep the thermometer in the mixture and measure the temperature every 30 seconds. Record your data, then plot a graph of temperature against time. Interpreting the data reveals that as long as some ice remained in the mixture, the temperature hardly budges, but once the ice has melted, the temperature shoots up in a linear fashion. Once the Arctic Ocean is free of ice, all heat absorbed by the water will go to raising the temperature of the water, some of which will then escape to the atmosphere, warming the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean, and further warming the land areas surrounding the Arctic Ocean.
A third factor concerns methane hydrates (aka methane clathrates). Methane hydrates are compounds whereby methane is locked into a water ice lattice. It is found in ocean floor sediments. Methane is also found locked in permafrost on land. The crystalline lattice in methane hydrates is stable as long as the temperature remains very cold. It is conservatively estimated that there are 1.3 trillion tons of methane locked in land-based permafrost and oceanic methane hydrates in the Arctic. Methane is 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short run, and 20 times as potent as CO2 in the long run. The difference is due to the low stability of methane once exposed to air. Methane decomposes to carbon dioxide with a half-life of about nine years. Warming water in an ice-free Arctic Ocean and melting permafrost in the surrounding land masses will result in a release to the atmosphere of billions of tons of methane gas to the atmosphere; possibly a few billion tons annually, which would cause an unprecedented spike in temperatures unseen in tens of millions of years.
The satellite photo above shows Arctic Ocean ice extent at the annual minimum. On the left is 1979. On the right is 2012. Well over one million square kilometers of pack ice was lost between 1979 and 2012. Ice loss has continued since 2012.
The above satellite photo was taken some time during the second decade of the twenty-first century, at or near the September minimum. It is color coded according to the age of the ice. The age of the ice is a good proxy for ice thickness, and ice thickness or volume is a far better metric than area for evaluating the health of the ice. Notice that the last remaining area of thick, old ice, is along the north shore of Greenland and the northwest shores of the islands making up Canada’s Arctic Archipelago. In fact, since 1979, about 90% of the volume of ice in the Arctic Ocean has disappeared. This development is extremely alarming because the remaining ice being very thin is also very vulnerable to melting away or being torn to pieces by storms. Also, while areal extent of pack ice increases during each winter, the volume of ice barely increases, and is lost again the following summer.
The above satellite photo was taken near the seasonal ice minimum in September 2020. Notice the further retreat of the ice front since the minimum from 2012 seen further above. Virtually the entire western Arctic is free of ice. The ice-free area almost extends to the North Pole.
As alarming as an ice-free Arctic Ocean would be for the stability of Earth’s climate, a pervasive complacency is the emotional state of most Americans. I suspect that many Americans feel the threat is still remote in time; that smart people will invent and subsequently deploy a geo-engineering strategy that saves us from the threat at the last minute; that the melting of Arctic Ice is part of a natural cycle that will soon reverse, or that a Blue Ocean Event is a hoax.
What is most chilling is the realization that it is far too late to prevent a Blue Ocean Event in the Arctic Ocean. We have crossed too many tipping points to prevent an eventual ice-free Arctic Ocean. Deploying the most draconian mitigation strategies would only delay the onset of ice free conditions by a few years. What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. The Arctic serves as the northern hemisphere’s thermostat. Once the ice is gone an acceleration of warming at lower latitudes with occur along with an amplification of the hydrologic cycle, resulting in more extreme floods and droughts. Sadly, effective mitigation will not happen. That ship has sailed. Instead, we can only expect “adaptation”, in real time, as climate change induced anomalous weather events occur. This will be our strategy until adaptation is no longer possible. The aftermath of this is anybody’s guess. Brace for impact.