Arctic Global Warming Spike Imminent (Updated, December 29, 2009)

Editor’s note added on December 29, 2009: Please see the article in The Telegraph by Louise Grey, Environment Correspondent in Copenhagen published on December 10, 2009: 

Copenhagen Climate Conference:
Met Office predict 2010 will be the hottest year on record

The Copenhagen negotiations have failed, the climate contrarians have declared victory, so now we’ll have to wait and see… If the Hadley Centre Met Office is correct, this new information just might wake the sleeping giant of public opinion and force world leaders to take action in time. 

Here’s the post we made on April 5, 2009:   

THE ARCTIC SHOULD PREPARE FOR A BLAST OF HEAT IN 2010

UK Met Office Arctic Temperature Feb 2009

The respected UK Met Office Hadley Centre has put up some striking maps on Google Earth Outreach: Environment and Science. The one showing projected temperature increase in the Arctic region by next year is surprising and very alarming.

UK Met Office Arctic Temperature Feb 2010

Simplified Instructions:

To view these maps on Google Earth Outreach, first download the latest version of Google Earth. The click on Climate Change in Our World to enter through the Met Office portal. Below the thumbnail image of a mustard-coloured map of Europe, click on “Open this KML.”  

An interactive globe showing the Arctic region will load. The only feature presented on this interface is that of temperature increase from 1999 to 2099, but you should have no trouble making out the shape of Greenland, with yellow and some orange colour marking its shoreline. Scientific data determines the colouring of the map, with deepening shades of yellow to orange, and as time progresses, to red. These colours show temperature anomalies, or above-normal temperatures.

You can use your cursor as a hand or a pointer. You can grab the globe to turn it around. Try using your pointer to move the toggle on the white time-line bar above. You can toggle in ten year increments, flash back and forth from the beginning to the end, or carefully move the toggler year by year.

Moving the toggler a slight bit from 2009 to 2010, you will see the spike in the Arctic temperature that is projected by the beginning of next year. This may make you instinctively lean back from away your computer. Seeing this abrupt change almost like being hit by a blast of heat from your monitor.

As most of you know, the temperature of the air and waters surrounding Greenland is of special significance. Warmer temperatures are causing the ice sheets and glaciers of Greenland to melt and slide into the sea, forcing a global sea-level rise that is now twice as much as was predicted just two years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Moreover, the melting of the floating Arctic sea ice is exposing more and more of the ocean to the heat of the sun and driving more warming for the entire planet. Wind and water currents are being affected, causing unstable climatic conditions and extreme weather.

Through Google Earth Outreach, we are looking at a forceful image of Dangerous Climate Change and a warning to world leaders of the urgency of taking immediate action to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These projections by the Met Office Hadley Centre are in the median range; they don’t show the worst-case scenario. If you toggle all the way to the end of this century, you will see what will happen if we don’t change our way of living on our planet. RIGHT NOW.

Admin

For more information, click here to go to the Met Office Hadley Centre website.

To watch a video about the features of Google Earth Outreach, with much more information, click here to go to the Alternative Energy News website.

Also see Google Earth Warms at the excellent Climate Feedback site.