(Sea ice off Greenland 2009)

In between discussing the role of the media in communicating climate change at the Global Media Forum here in Bonn and producing radio and online stories from my Arctic trip, I have just read a press release from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)I’d like to mention here.
It doesn’t really surprise me, but it concerns me to read that the Arctic sea ice is expected to reach a critical minimum again this summer, although probably not the shock low of 2007.
AWI scientists and a team from Hamburg University’s “climate campus” have published figures in the Sea Ice Outlook looking at the forecasts for the ice cover in September (the month when it reaches its minimum) made by a dozen international research institutes. The Hamburg team and the AWI team come to different results, using different methods, but both agree there’s an 80% probability that the ice area will be between 4,7 und 5,7 million km2. Just for comparison, between 1980 and 1990, it always covered more than 7 million km2.

The time is always far too short.
I have still have plenty of Arctic impressions and stimulating conversations I’d lack to pass on in the coming days and weeks, but I will be doing that from Bonn.
First, I have to finish a couple of radio and online stories from my trip. I’ll keep you posted here when they’re ready.
Meanwhile we are gearing up for the Global Media Forum 2010 here, all about Climate Change and the Media.
Some of the statements made by the experts I met on Spitzbergen have found their way onto DW ‘s  Climate Press Blog Ice Blog readers might also be interested in that.
The top items are in German at the moment, but if you scroll down, you’ll find statements in English on some issues.
More on the Arctic encounters and related issues SOON. (Threat or a promise? You have been warned.)So please keep checking the Ice Blog.

Sound familiar? Ice-blog readers will remember methane is more than 20 times as powerful as CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and that scientists in the Arctic are measuring the extent of methane emissions from melting permafrost.
There are billions of tonnes of methane captured in the Arctic soil. As temperatures rise and the permafrost melts, more methane is released. It increases the greenhouse effect further, resulting in a “feedback loop”, with the increased warming melting more permafrost and releasing even more methane.
Zackenberg station in Greenland, which I visited this year, is one of the Arctic stations measuring methane. If you haven’t heard the programme I made including interviews with Prof. Morten Rasch, who heads the Greenland environment monitoring programme, it’s available under the “climate” banner on the right of DW’s environment page. There’s also a photo gallery with brief texts if you don’t have the time to listen to the full feature.
Climate Monitoring in Arctic Greenland
Now a study presented in the journal Nature reports a massive rise in the amount of methane being released from the Arctic permafrost.
See also today’s edition of the Guardian.
Guardian’s David Adam on rise in Arctic methane emissions
Although only 2% of global methane comes from the Arctic, the increase is highest in the Arctic, which is warming much faster than the rest of the planet.
The Guardian quotes Prof. Paul Palmer from Edinburgh University as saying the study “does not show the Arctic has passed a tipping point, but it should open people’s eyes. it shows there is a positive feedback and that higher temperatures bring higher emissions and faster warming”.
Edinburgh Climate Expert Paul Palmer

How’s this for a bizarre story to end the week:
Greenpeace has been protesting on Svalbard, Spitsbergen, which belongs to Norway, drawing attention to the fact that coal is still being mined there and fired – amongst other places – in German power stations!
60% of the island is still covered with glaciers – and they’re melting at a record rate. The whole Arctic, as we know, is being affected much worse and faster than the rest of the planet by climate change.
The Greenpeace protesters are targeting the German government and public in particular, given that a big German company is one of the ones using the coal. Their poltical point is also that Germany is still planning to build new coal-fired plants, in spite of the impact they will have on the climate. Greenpeace is calling on Chancellor Angela Merkel – re-elected just last weekend – to re-think the coal policy and put more of an effort into combatting climate change.
There are probably very few people who know there’s still coal being mined on Spitsbergen. Well, let’s see whether this gets onto German tv news this evening. “A hae’ ma doots”, as they say in Scotland (Translation: I have my doubts). Top marks for trying, though, it takes considerable effort to get up to Spitzbergen to mount a protest.
Greenpeace blogger from the Svalbard protest
World leaders block Arctic coal shipment??

It’s the time of reckoning again for the Arctic ice, as summer comes to an end and the freezing seasons starts. The scientists are constantly improving their measuring and forecasting, so the results come as no real surprise.

Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research puts the ice extent figure at 5.1 million km2, which is only 70 percent of the longer-term average between 1979 and 2000. It is not as low as the schocking record low of 4.1 million km2 in 2007. But the experts stress that does not mean a recovery. The slight increase this year is fresh ice, which is less thick. The AWI’s Professor Ruediger Gerdes says the proportion of thicker perennial ice has been reduced so far that summer ice cover is much more sensitive to atmospheric anomalies than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

Two ships went through the north-east passage this summer. The Arctic is changing fast.