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Harold Hensel methane methanetracker.org Omar Cabrera support visualisation

Unknown 6/01/2014 Add Comment

by Harold Hensel

I keep thinking of this experience when I see that methane has now blanketed the entire globe with the highest concentrations in the northern hemisphere. I was signing up a young man for property insurance. We discussed coverage's and how much coverage he needed. We got almost to the end of the routine underwriting questions and I got to the one about if he had ever been convicted of arson. He said yes! Then he said, do you think that will make a difference? Do we think that the globe being blanketed with methane will make a difference?

Methanetracker.org is an important service and it is brought to you by one person, Omar Cabrera from Houston. There is nothing else like it on the internet. He has spent $30,000 of his own money to make methanetracker.org free to the public. He feels this strongly about the methane issue. If you notice the slider bar, it stops at 4/20/2014. He needs to upgrade and has run out of money to do it. He has not asked for money until he ran out of money. Methanetracker.org is very important and he should not be trying to go it alone. I think we should chip in to help him keep methane tracker going. He doesn't need that much. How to help is on the http://www.methanetracker.org/ web site.

Large Falls in Arctic Sea Ice Thickness over May 2014

Large Falls in Arctic Sea Ice Thickness over May 2014

Arctic extent Harold Hensel sea ice thickness

Unknown 5/25/2014 Add Comment

Comparing ice thickness (in meters) on May 2, 2014 (left) and May 30, 2014 (right, forecast run May 25, 2014)

Arctic sea ice has shown large falls in thickness in many areas over the course of May 2014, as shown on above image. The animation below also compares the situation between May 2, 2014, and May 30, 2014 (as forecast by Naval Research Laboratory on May 23, 2014). Ice thickness is in meters.

Thickness is an important indicator of the vulnerability of the ice. If only looking at sea ice extent, one might (wrongly) conclude that sea ice retreat was only minor and that everything looked fine. By contrast, when looking at thickness, it becomes evident that large falls have occurred over the course of May 2014.

Falls at the edges of the sea ice can be expected at this time of the year, but the large fall closer to the center is frightening. On the one hand, it appears to reflect cyclonic weather and subsequent drift of the ice. On the other hand, it also indicates how vulnerable the sea ice has become. Last year, a large area showed up at the center of the sea ice where the ice became very thin, as discussed in July 2013 in the post Open Water at North Pole and again in the September 2013 post North Hole.

The appearance of huge weak areas at the center of the sea ice adds to its vulnerability and increases the prospect of total sea ice collapse, in case of one or more large cyclones hitting the Arctic Ocean later this year. To highlight the dangerous situation, the main image from a post earlier this month is again added below.

Adding to the concerns are huge sea surface temperature anomalies, as illustrated by the image below, showing anomalies at May 23, 2014, and created by Harold Hensel with ClimateReanalyzer and Google Earth.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The image below shows sea surface anomalies on May 26, 2014, with an overlay of land temperatures, as created by Harold Hensel and edited by Sam Carana.

The image shows sea surface temperatures on the Northern Hemisphere that are 1.44 degrees Celsius warmer than the baselline temperature, despite large areas with cold water partly resulting from the huge amounts of meltwater flowing down along the edges of Greenland into the North Atlantic Ocean. The graph below shows Northern Hemisphere and Global sea surface temperature anomalies over May 2014.

By comparison, current (May 27, 2014) surface temperature anomalies of 0.64°C globally and 0.84°C for the NH. The image below shows annual temperature anomalies (land and ocean data).

Meanwhile, the development of this year's 'north hole' at the center of the sea ice appears to persist, as illustrated by the image below.

Post by Sam Carana.