worse than expected

[ljgeoff]

A new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that the loss of polar albedo is having a greater effect on warming than scientists modeled.

For the first time, the new study used direct satellite measurement of polar darkness. What they found is that the Arctic has become 8% darker between 1979 and 2011.

This is two to three times worse than previous studies modeled.

“That extra absorbed energy is so big that it measures about one-quarter of the entire heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide,” the study’s lead author, Ian Eisenman, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told the Associated Press.

This blasts all the models and changes all of the dates for how much time we have.


Kristina Pistone, Ian Eisenman1, and V. Ramanathan. (2014) Observational determination of albedo decrease caused by vanishing Arctic sea ice. PNAS, published ahead of print February 18, 2014. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1318201111

Please talk about this -- nothing will change unless we demand it.

Comments

[pickledginger]

Oh, my. No wonder the winter has become so odd.
One is ... distressed.