[clim] Arctic sea ice situation requires a DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY

[John Nissen]

To the chairman of the IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Dear Dr Pachauri,

I argued, in an open letter to you in March 2009 [1], that the only way to save the Arctic sea ice is through geoengineering to cool the Arctic.  CO2 reduction can reduce heating but it cannot have a cooling action.   Could we be reaching the point of no return with the sea ice?

In April 2007, the IPCC forecast that the Arctic sea ice would remain beyond the end of this century.  The whole Copenhagen process, in focussing almost entirely on emissions reductions, has laboured under a tacit assumption that no tipping points would be reached this century.  The disappearance of the sea ice would be a tipping point, and possibly a point of no return, even with the most drastic geoengineering to try to cool the Arctic.  And the unabated warming of the Arctic, when the sea ice is gone, would inevitably lead to both massive methane discharge and Greenland ice sheet disintegration.  This would be catastrophic for all humanity.

But in September 2007 there was an unexpected and dramatic retreat to around 3 million square kilometres [2].  This represented an anomaly of about 2.5 million square kilometres [3].  There following some alarming projections, later that year, of possible disappearance by 2013 or earlier [4].

In past two months, the anomaly has increase from 0 to 1 million square kilometres.  If this continues at the same rate for another 4 months, through the rest of the Arctic summer, the sea ice will practically disappear.



Furthermore, much of the land mass normally covered with snow at this time of year (e.g. in Siberia) is bare, reducing the albedo and increasing absorption of solar energy.

The current warming may not continue throughout the summer, but the disregard of the Arctic warming by the IPCC and scientific advisers to the Copenhagen meeting, is inexcusable.

WE HAVE AN EMERGENCY

The meeting of two UNFCCC working groups (twelfth session of the AWG-KP and tenth session of the AWG-LCA [5]) in Bonn, 1st to 11th June, represents an opportunity for a "declaration of emergency", to which the geoengineering community must respond with proposals.  Governments must respond with the necessary funding and logistics for implementation of one or more proposals.

John Nissen,
Chiswick, London, UK

[1] http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/2009/03/open-letter-to-dr-pachauri.html
[2] http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png
[3] http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7139797.stm
[5] http://unfccc.int/2860.php

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