Myth of arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now
- Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore's warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
- An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
- These satellite images taken from University of Illinois's Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated
The
speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North
Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely
gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’
Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change.
But
seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far
from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in
succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between
43 and 63 per cent since 2012.
Scroll down for video
To
put it another way, an area the size of Alaska, America’s biggest
state, was open water two years ago, but is again now covered by ice.
The
most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily
satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center,
which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term
trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the
Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square
kilometres.
This
was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006 (see graph,
right), and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres
over the past two years – an impressive 43 per cent.
Other
figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the
growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area
with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise –
from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres.
The
satellite images published here are taken from a further authoritative
source, the University of Illinois’s Cryosphere project.
They
show that as well as becoming more extensive, the ice has grown more
concentrated, with the purple areas – denoting regions where the ice
pack is most dense – increasing markedly.
Crucially,
the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future
melting. Professor Andrew Shepherd, of Leeds University, an expert in
climate satellite monitoring, said yesterday: ‘It is clear from the
measurements we have collected that the Arctic sea ice has experienced a
significant recovery in thickness over the past year.
‘It
seems that an unusually cool summer in 2013 allowed more ice to survive
through to last winter. This means that the Arctic sea ice pack is
thicker and stronger than usual, and this should be taken into account
when making predictions of its future extent.’
The speech by former US Vice-President
Al Gore (above) was apocalyptic. He said that the North Polar ice cap
is falling off a cliff and could be gone in seven years
Yet
for years, many have been claiming that the Arctic is in an
‘irrevocable death spiral’, with imminent ice-free summers bound to
trigger further disasters. These include gigantic releases of methane
into the atmosphere from frozen Arctic deposits, and accelerated global
warming caused by the fact that heat from the sun will no longer be
reflected back by the ice into space.
Judith
Curry, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Institute
of Technology in Atlanta, said last night: ‘The Arctic sea ice spiral
of death seems to have reversed.’
Those
who just a few years ago were warning of ice-free summers by 2014
included US Secretary of State John Kerry, who made the same bogus
prediction in 2009, while Mr Gore has repeated it numerous times –
notably in a speech to world leaders at the UN climate conference in
Copenhagen in 2009, in an effort to persuade them to agree a new
emissions treaty.
The ice cap is falling off a cliff. It could be completely gone in summer in as little as 7 years from now
Mr
Gore – whose office yesterday failed to respond to a request for
comment – insisted then: ‘There is a 75 per cent chance that the entire
polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely
ice-free within five to seven years.’
Misleading
as such forecasts are, some people continue to make them. Only last
month, while giving evidence to a House of Lords Select Committee
inquiry on the Arctic, Cambridge University’s Professor Peter Wadhams
claimed that although the Arctic is not ice-free this year, it will be
by September 2015.
Asked
about this yesterday, he said: ‘I still think that it is very likely
that by mid-September 2015, the ice area will be less than one million
square kilometres – the official designation of ice-free, implying only a
fringe of floes around the coastlines. That is where the trend is
taking us.’
For
that prediction to come true it would require by far the fastest loss
of ice in history. It would also fly in the face of a report last year
by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which stated
with ‘medium confidence’ that ice levels would ‘likely’ fall below one
million square kilometres by 2050.
Politicians
such as Al Gore have often insisted that climate science is ‘settled’
and have accused those who question their forecasts of being climate
change ‘deniers’.
However,
while few scientists doubt that carbon-dioxide emissions cause global
warming, and that this has caused Arctic ice to decline, there remains
much uncertainty about the speed of melting and how much of it is due to
human activity. But outside the scientific community, the more
pessimistic views have attracted most attention. For example, Prof
Wadhams’s forecasts have been cited widely by newspapers and the BBC.
But many reject them.
An area twice the
size of Alaska was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
after the arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in a row
Yesterday
Dr Ed Hawkins, who leads an Arctic ice research team at Reading
University, said: ‘Peter Wadhams’s views are quite extreme compared to
the views of many other climate scientists, and also compared to what
the IPCC report says.’
Dr
Hawkins warned against reading too much into ice increase over the past
two years on the grounds that 2012 was an ‘extreme low’, triggered by
freak weather.
‘I’m uncomfortable with the idea of people saying the ice has bounced back,’ he said.
However,
Dr Hawkins added that the decline seen in recent years was not caused
only by global warming. It was, he said, intensified by ‘natural
variability’ – shifts in factors such as the temperature of the oceans.
This, he said, has happened before, such as in the 1920s and 1930s, when
‘there was likely some sea ice retreat’.
Dr
Hawkins said: ‘There is undoubtedly some natural variability on top of
the long-term downwards trend caused by the overall warming. This
variability has probably contributed somewhat to the post-2000 steep
declining trend, although the human-caused component still dominates.’
Like
many scientists, Dr Hawkins said these natural processes may be
cyclical. If and when they go into reverse, they will cool, not warm,
the Arctic, in which case, he said, ‘a decade with no declining trend’
in ice cover would be ‘entirely plausible’.
Peer-reviewed
research suggests that at least until 2005, natural variability was
responsible for half the ice decline. But exactly how big its influence
is remains an open question – and as both Dr Hawkins and Prof Curry
agreed, establishing this is critical to making predictions about the
Arctic’s future.
Prof
Curry said: ‘I suspect that the portion of the decline in the sea ice
attributable to natural variability could be even larger than half.
‘I
think the natural variability component of Arctic sea ice extent is in
the process of bottoming out, with a reversal to start within the next
decade. And when it does, the reversal period could last for several
decades.’
This led her to believe that the IPCC forecast, like Al Gore’s, was too pessimistic.
‘Ice-free in 2050 is a possible scenario, but I don’t think it is a likely scenario,’ she concluded.
GOOD NEWS FOR POLAR BEARS...
The apparent recovery in Arctic ice looks like good news for polar bears.
If
there is more ice at the end of the summer, they can hunt seals more
easily. Yet even when the ice reached a low point in 2012, there was no
scientific evidence that bear numbers were declining, with their
estimated total of 20,000 to 25,000 thought to be higher than in the
1970s, when hunting was first banned.
In many Arctic regions, say scientists, they are in robust health and breeding successfully.
Computer
model predictions of decline caused by ice melt have also failed to
come true. In 2004, researchers claimed Hudson Bay bear numbers would
fall from 900 to fewer than 700 by 2011. In fact, they have risen to
over 1,000.
However,
the main international bear science body, the Polar Bear Specialist
Group, admits it has no reliable data from almost half of the Arctic, so
cannot say whether numbers are falling or rising.
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