A new study has examined the impact of changing sea ice and light absorption in the Arctic to reveal another climate feedback mechanism.
As multi-year sea ice is replaced with thinner first year sea ice, the properties of the sea ice change to allow more light through to the water beneath increasing ocean warming and more melting of sea ice.
On August 26 it was announced that arctic sea ice extent this summer has dropped to it's lowest level ever recorded, surpassing the previous record in 2007. And summer sea ice melt still has further to go this season with ice extent usually reaching a minimum area in mid September.
"This is a profound — and profoundly depressing — moment in the history of our planet," said Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. "The sea-ice death spiral, coming during one of the warmest summers in American history, is just one more clear sign of the deepening climate crisis that we ignore at our own peril."
Related: Sea ice volume: Multi-year arctic sea ice reducing dramatically | Climate Code Red Blog: Big call: Cambridge prof. predicts Arctic summer sea ice "all gone by 2015"
Global warming is likely to accelerate release of forest soil carbon say researchers. This is another climate feedback loop. Rising temperatures are likely to accelerate forest soil carbon decomposition leading to more CO2 released into the atmosphere, compounding global warming. Rather than these forests acting as a carbon sink, warmer temperatures may make them a major source of greenhouse gas emissions further contributing to global warming warn the researchers.
"Our results suggest that large stores of carbon that built up over the last century as forests recovered will erode with rising temperatures," said Susan Trumbore of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and University of California at Irvine (UCI), who led the research team.
