September 15, 2012

Arctic Sea Ice Melt

The "astounding" loss of sea ice this year is adding a huge amount of heat to the Arctic Ocean and the atmosphere, said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "It's like having a new energy source for the atmosphere."
… Peter Wadhams, the head of the polar ocean physics group at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., told BBC News on September 6 that the added heat from sea ice loss is equivalent to the warming from 20 years of carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas that is causing manmade global warming.
For more detail, see Arctic Warming Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events "Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves."

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