The Global Warming Stories Coming Out of Russia, China, Alaska Generating A Lot of Interest

Interest in the global warming stories coming out of China, Russia, and Alaska this winter was not expected, but quite a few folks have written in.

So, a bit more. It looks like "global warming" is "so yesterday."

Back on September 17, 2009, Time magazine: ships finding a shortcut through the Northeast Passage, off Russia's northern coast, from Siberia to the Bering Strait.

Plenty [of ships] have tried [to find a shortcut]. For centuries, sailors have searched for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the icy waters off Russia's northern coast. Otherwise known as the Northern Sea Route, the passage — from Siberia to the Bering Strait — promised a speedy sea route between Europe and Asia for anyone who could make it. But caked in ice during winter and pretty much inhospitable because of floating ice in summer, the route has remained largely off-limits. Global warming may change that.

"The Northeast Passage offers unmatched chances for efficient sea traffic," Beluga CEO Niels Stolberg wrote in an e-mail to Time, and "plenty [of] trade potential."
Sailing from Korea to the Netherlands via the Northeast Passage could shave 3,500 miles (5,500 km) and 10 days off the traditional 12,500-mile (20,000 km) route via the Suez Canal. Other routes could offer even bigger time savings. For Beluga, quicker trips and reduced fuel costs has saved the firm some $300,000 per ship. The company plans to sail even bigger ships through the passage next summer and expects to save about $600,000 on those voyages.

But fast forward two or three years, NASA is now reporting the Bering Sea is choked with record amounts of ice:

For most of the winter of 2011–2012, the Bering Sea has been choking with sea ice. Though ice obviously forms there every year, the cover has been unusually extensive this season. [This was last winter.] In fact, the past several months have included the second highest ice extent in the satellite record for the Bering Sea region, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The natural-color image above shows the Bering Sea and the coasts of Alaska and northeastern Siberia on March 19, 2012. The image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Black lines mark the coastlines, many of which have ice shelves or frozen bays extending beyond the land borders.

NSIDC data indicate that ice extent in the Bering Sea for most of this winter has been between 20 to 30 percent above the 1979 to 2000 average. February 2012 had the highest ice extent for the area since satellite records started. As of March 16, National Weather Service forecasters noted that all of the ice cover in the Bering Sea was first year ice, much of it new and thin—which is typical in the Bering Sea.

It's too early to sort out what the Arctic winter of 2012 - 2013 (this year) will be; presently the data is mixed, but this from the National Snow and Ice Data Center is of note:

Extent can increase quickly during November because there is little solar energy and the ocean is rapidly losing the heat that it gained in summer. For the Arctic as a whole, ice growth for November 2012 was faster than average, increasing at an average rate of 98,600 square kilometers (38,100 square miles) per day. After remaining lower than levels observed in 2007 for most of the month, by November 30 ice extent matched or exceeded extent seen in 2007, 2006, and 2010.