Arctic Sea Ice Collapse 1979-2012 (PIOMAS)

March 2013 results just in: http://haveland.com/share/arctic-deat... - recovered a little, to about same as last year.

2013 started the year with ONE TRILLION tonnes (1,058km³) less ice than last year - this is a third of the amount of ice remaining at 2012's record minimum.
The rate of ice loss in the Arctic is staggering. Since 1979, the volume of Summer Arctic Sea Ice has declined by 80% and is accelerating faster than scientists believed it would, or even could melt.
The first ice-free summer in the Arctic Ocean is expected to happen between 2016 and 2022.

This latest video by Andy Lee Robinson illustrates the dramatic decline since 1979 until the end of 2012.
The soundtrack "Arctic Requiem" also by Andy Lee Robinson, is available for free download: http://haveland.com/share/Arctic-Requ...
You might like this beautiful video on an Arctic theme made by a friend using my track "Escape to Osiris", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBdC_M...

About the data: Sea Ice Volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) developed at APL/PSC.
Source data for this graph is available from http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpre...

More information:
Neven's Arctic Sea Ice Blog with some commentary:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/0...

3-D Visualization of Arctic Ice Loss
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/01/28/3...

Also featured on BBC's Newsnight:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-env...

New York Times: Pondering the Path To an Open Polar Sea, Andrew Revkin
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/201...

Washington Post: A sobering take on Arctic sea ice (VIDEO)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/c...

Think Progress: Arctic Death Spiral: The Video
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012...

Climate Central: Arctic Has Lost Enough Ice to Cover Canada and Texas
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/ar...

Yale Climate Forum: A New Climate State: Arctic Sea Ice 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYaubX...

I produced the animation using hand-written perl and php code to create povray scripts, and scheduling task distribution using MySQL between 6 linux servers working in parallel to render 795 HD1080p frames. The "farm" renders 20 frames simultaneously taking around 30 minutes per frame. On completion, I used ffmpeg to reduce the frames into mp4 720p with my music for the final result ready for upload.

The process is now automated so I can provide yearly or half-yearly updates with minimum fuss, but I don't want to fill up my channel with hundreds of versions showing little change!

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Sig Mund]

Please use the actual history that DMI shows. The Satellite record is short compared to the historical record.

The North West Passage that the St. Roch sailed in 1944 may open the summer of 2013. It has not been passable since 1944.

The Arctic has only had summer ice during each of the last 3 interglacials. Do you really expect this one to be different?

[Andy Lee Robinson]

Being able to sail the NWP in 1944 was a rare regional anomaly, and is in no way comparable to the unprecedented, sustained and precipitous collapse of sea ice volume that we are witnessing today.

"The Arctic has only had summer ice during each of the last 3 interglacials" - this sentence is wrong - the Arctic has had all-year ice for at least the last 3 million years.

You are quibbling over a terminal cancer patient's measles vaccination record, as if it is relevant to his condition.

[Sig Mund]

You are correct. That sentence was wrong. The Arctic has been ice free during summer in each of the last 3 interglacials is the correct wording.

You are wrong about Arctic Ice for the last 3 million years.

This paper will be a start for you. nature.com/nature/journal/v483­/n7390/full/nature10891.html

[Andy Lee Robinson]

I read the abstract - it is many thousand years since the summer arctic was ice free.

The paper notes that 400,000 yrs ago, sea level was 20m above present, and ~6-13m after isostatic rebound, which will lag SLR. Not good news for Florida or any coasts.

This paper is not reassuring - we should be heading gently into another glacial, but instead temps are increasing 50x faster, and will exceed anything in the Pleistocene or even Miocene epochs. Many species will have no hope of adapting in time.

[FreeEmALL1]

I wonder if... once we see a 4 degree rise and God Forbid beyond... the last of us might find some safehavens somewhere at the top and bottom of the planet

[Andy Lee Robinson]

Humanity might find its collective senses and rise to the occasion before that happens, but if past performance is anything to go by with how humans deal with existential threats... oh wait, they don't have any!

Intelligence is not appearing to offer any evolutionary advantage.

Maybe we're destined to be just a bloom of organic scum that shines briefly and fades away, becoming a source of hydrocarbons for the next generation of intelligent species, millions of years hence...

[Sam Carana]

Fantastic work, Andy, I featured it at the Arctic-news blog. Thanks!

[Rick Larson]

Start planting trees!

[Rick Larson]

Eye opening! Thanks for uploading.

[Emo Teofanov]

Don't be a pessimist Mr. Robinson. The human civilization will not disappear completely. Yes, most probably the human population will be drastically reduced by 50%~~60% when the planet becomes ice-free, but the civilization as a whole will survive.

I highly recommend the "AGU FM11 - Paleoclimate record points toward potential rapid climate changes" press-conference. It is here on YouTube:

/watch?v=KTTlAAiwgwM‎

[Kasia Turajczyk]

The Arctic Sea Ice is cracking, the world is changing and it will be never the same. The big oil companies do not wish to change anything and they do not allow the renewable energy take over the traditional energy. We are suck . I am curious what Buckminster Fuller would say about the world of today. A long time ago he created unbelievable and free solutions for the energy problems in the world. Nothing changed since then. It is a time for civil wars and revolutions all around the world.