“Below 40 degrees south there is no law; below 50 degrees south there is no God.”
—An old sailors’ saying
Driven by strong westerly winds and unhindered by land to slow its flow, the frigid Southern Ocean races around the coldest, windiest, driest, and most remote landmass on Earth—the vast polar continent of Antarctica.
Via Google Earth
Between the latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees south is the realm of the “Roaring Forties. ” These powerful winds, first named by sailors who used them for fast passage around the globe, have long been known for their ferocious storms and treacherous seas.
Credit: Luke Zeller
South of 50 and 60 degrees respectively are the “Furious Fifties” and “Screaming Sixties,” where these conditions are even stronger.
Here, a ship’s crew must not only battle waves that can be as high as multi-story buildings but watch vigilantly for icebergs and find safe routes through thick, ever-shifting sea ice that freezes and recedes with the seasons.
Here, even a well-quipped icebreaker—a ship especially designed to navigate ice-covered waters—can be incapacitated far from land or help. And it is here between 67 degrees and 54 degrees south—in the belly of the Screaming Sixties and Furious Fifties—that I spent six weeks aboard an icebreaker and research vessel.
This Finnish research team has discovered that the ecosystem under the ice has changed rapidly, with far more species and greater numbers of individuals. Species that were once rare are now common and thriving under thinner ice that allows more light to pass through it, increasing the area’s productivity (growth of phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain). The last couple of years, the ice has also broken out earlier than usual, and it’s likely these changes are effects of climate change.
Which brings us to the ice-pocalypse.
This week, Grist published a powerful article titled Ice Apocalypse by Eric Holthaus about the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. Climate scientist Tamsin Edwards wrote this response, urging caution about predictions of the amount and speed of sea level rise. But there is no disagreement that sea level rise will happen—only how much and how soon.
I seem to be reading a lot of articles like this one about this report. It seems a hope-for-the-best-but-prepare-for-the-worst approach is needed when tackling the effects climate change and making policy. We also need to mitigate the effects of burning fossil fuels and releasing so much carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) into our atmosphere.
Of course, phytoplankton—microscopic plants in our oceans—absorb carbon dioxide (just like other plants). But they are affected by ocean acidification… which is caused by burning of fossil fuels…
NASA’s Operation Icebridge continues to yield mind-blowing shots of Antarctica. Here sea ice is “finger rafting“—which occurs when thin, flexible ice floes collide, blocks sliding above and below each other in the pattern you see here:
As temperatures warm and coastal sea ice melts, communities in places such as Western Alaska, which were previously protected from wave action at this time of year, are at greater risk of erosion and inundation.
British researchers have mapped the sea bed beneath West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier, which, like the Thwaites Glacier, is accelerating. The terrain below the glacier affects how the glacier flows. Imagery shows a rocky region with mountains and deep scour marks. This data will help scientists predict how the glacier might behave in the future.
The West Antarctic ice sheet underwent a rapid collapse during a previous warming event. Scientists are eager to know more about it to better their understanding of what might happen if/when it collapses again. Could octopus DNA teach us something?
Other scientists still are looking at how the “wobble” in Earth’s orbit may have affected ice sheets.
Back in July, a massive iceberg calved from the Larsen C ice shelf (picture below). What happens to the ice shelf left in the aftermath?
Iceberg
Among NASA’s Operation Icebridge photos this year, this view of massive iceberg A-68A, which calved from the Larsen C ice shelf in July, is one of my favorites.
While I’m not intending Permafrost to be a regular feature of This Week in Ice, it is one of our planet’s ice features. As you may have heard, it is melting, too.
As the world warms, the fraction of the Earth where local temperatures make permafrost possible is shrinking. pic.twitter.com/dH3IfR2Vzv
To finish off this not-named-the-ice-pocalypse edition, some delightful news. A small group of young Australians made history by becoming the first children to ever go to Antarctica. Lucky kids!
A group of Australian #school#students have made history becoming the first children to fly to and set foot on #Antarctica as part of the Australian #Antarctic Program. The students won a competition to name the nation’s new Antarctic icebreaker RSV Nuyina (noy-yee-nah). pic.twitter.com/FqxqQ9kJLU
As always, I am not a scientist, just a writer/illustrator and science communicator passionately in love with sea ice. I welcome input and corrections by polar scientists as I learn more about this remarkable and vital part of our planet and bring this knowledge to a wider audience.
But in preparing for my journey, I had been reading about sea ice for some time. Anxious about going to sea, I devoured as much information about the ship and the journey as I could to prepare myself. I soon came across this video by Cassandra Brooks.
I was hooked. While most of our voyage would be upon the wild Southern Ocean, well beyond the ice, I longed to experience sea ice as fully as I could.
Eager to know more about breaking ice, I came across this description of ice navigation (scroll right down) by Captain David “Duke” Snider. I don’t know how many times I listened to it and imagined crushing ice in the middle of the night, far from home and family, in such a remote and dangerous part of the world. Despite my trepidation, I couldn’t wait to go.
And I couldn’t get sea ice off my mind. The more I learned about this remarkable environment, the more I was enchanted.
You might imagine that the frozen seas are a barren and lifeless place, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Breaking ice in the Ross Sea, I saw Adélie and emperor penguins, Weddell and crabeater seals, skuas (a gull-like seabird), snow petrels, Antarctic petrels, orcas on the hunt, and more. But I knew so much more lay beneath the surface.
Sea ice is a vital habitat for the growth of phytoplankton, tiny plants (mainly algae and bacteria). Beneath the ice, zooplankton (tiny animals) drift, providing nutrition for krill and the larger animals that feed on them, such as fish, penguins, seals, and whales. During the eternal days of a polar summer, when the sun never sets, phytoplankton bloom in this nutrient- and light-rich environment, reproducing exponentially until the water can appear green and soupy.
The base of the marine food chain, phytoplankton not only feed our oceans but provide about the half the oxygen we breathe. They also act as a carbon sink, taking up massive amounts of carbon dioxide—a major greenhouse gas—from our atmosphere.
Sea ice provides a safe resting place close to food for birds like penguins, mammals such as seals, and in the Arctic, walruses and polar bears. Some species also give birth on the sea ice.
The physics of sea ice are fascinating, too. Ice grows, shifts, flows with ocean currents, cracks, and melts, ever changing. In fact, sea ice has a direct impact on ocean currents because, as salty sea water freezes, brine is pushed out of the ice and trickles down through brine channels into the sea water below. The resulting extra-salty sea water is heavy and sinks, causing currents that drive ocean circulation worldwide.
Sea ice has high albedo, meaning it has a bright surface, reflecting around 80% of the sunlight that strikes it. Sea ice is vital in helping keep our planet cool enough for habitation and regulating our climate.
I will be exploring in more depth the physics, ecology, and importance of sea ice in posts to come.
Yes, I am passionately in love with sea ice, and it’s my greatest dream to return to the ice, accompanying scientists aboard an ice cruise. I hope readers will come to love it, too, and help me fight for it. Our vital sea ice is melting, and without it, our world will be a very different place.
This week, NASA’s Operation Icebridge offered us more spectacular views of Antarctica. Operation Icebridge uses research aircraft to capture images of Earth’s polar ice “to better understand connections between polar regions and the global climate system. IceBridge studies annual changes in thickness of sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets.”
Sea ice extent and concentration in both the Arctic and Antarctic remain well below average. You can read a full summary of October’s Arctic and Antarctic sea ice conditions here.
ARCTIC
Arctic sea ice grows rapidly at this time of year. October’s Arctic sea ice concentration was the fifth lowest on record for that month (satellite data from 1979 to present).
Current conditions:
Credit: NSIDC
Credit: NSIDC
Unlike Antarctic sea ice, which is usually only one to two years old due to seasonal melting, Arctic sea ice can last for multiple years. This animation shows how older Arctic sea ice is now thinning and melting.
ANTARCTIC
As days lengthen and temperatures increase in Antarctica, with the approach of the Austral summer, sea ice melts. October was tied with 2002 for the latest maximum sea ice extent and the second lowest Antarctic maximum extent (satellite data, 1979 to present).
Current conditions:
Credit: NSIDC
Credit: NSIDC
This one by Zach Labe shows more data:
#Antarctic sea ice extent falling well below average once again – although larger than last year at this time
Wind has a large role in sea ice formation, comparable to or even more important than temperature and rain says researcher Massimo Frezzotti. This research explores the processes that have affected sea ice variability, as well as the abundance of seals and penguins in the Ross Sea, over the last ten thousand years.
Krill are small shrimp-like crustaceans and a vital link in marine food chains. Antarctic krill, depicted in my painting, feed sea birds, penguins, seals, and whales.
A study in the Weddell Sea has shown that sea ice is a critical habitat for krill larvae during winter, and they find refuge from predators under the ice. But while it may be safer, it is not a food-rich environment. Krill do graze under the ice during the day, then at night drift down and away to more favorable feeding zones.
Glaciers & Ice Shelves
This graphic shows how land ice has decreased in Antarctica and Greenland from 2002 until the present.
One of the numerous reasons we should care about ice loss is that melting ice sheets not only raise sea levels but will have an effect on tides the world over. New research shows that, as ice sheets melt, sea levels don’t rise evenly across the world, and it matters which glaciers melt. In some places tide ranges will be increased, and in others reduced, thereby impacting coastal communities. These changes could also have an effect on larger scale ocean currents. Ocean currents affect our global climate, among other things. (Sea ice also has an effect on ocean currents, a subject I’ll be exploring in weeks to come.)
The Pine Island Glacier, which flows into West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea, makes the biggest contribution to sea level rise. This is the same glacier that carved a massive iceberg, four times the size of Manhattan back in September (and a mere month later, it broke into pieces too small to track). Here, warmer waters interact with floating ice, weakening the ice shelf from below.
Thanks to Operation Icebridge, we have our first closeup views of massive iceberg A-68A, previously only seen via satellite imagery.
From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: The western edge of iceberg A68, which calved in July; new edge of Larsen C Ice Shelf in the distance pic.twitter.com/DsCoSLWDbU
In the absence of any other significant iceberg news, I offer this picture of a wind-and-sea-tossed iceberg I took during a gale in Antarctica’s Ross Sea. Note the blue ice to its left. Blue ice looks that way because, over thousands of years, it has become very compressed, pushing out the air bubbles that give ice and snow its white appearance. Blue icebergs consist of very old ice, which has calved from glaciers and ice shelves into the sea.
And to finish, I hope you’ll enjoy this excellent series of short videos, showing how satellites have been monitoring life on Earth for over 20 years.
As always, I am not a scientist, just a writer/illustrator and science communicator passionately in love with sea ice. I welcome input and corrections by polar scientists as I learn more about this remarkable and vital part of our planet and bring this knowledge to a wider audience.
The most sensational polar news this week was this study by NASA scientists, who say a mantle plume almost as hot as the Yellowstone supervolcano is beneath Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica. A mantle plume is a domed upwelling of magma beneath the earth’s surface. It’s what creates Yellowstone’s geothermal features—such as geysers like the iconic Old Faithful, steam vents, mud pots, and hot springs. The mantle plume beneath Marie Byrd Land is causing some melting of the ice from below, creating lakes and rivers beneath the ice.
This mantle plume isn’t new. In fact, it formed 50 to 110 million years ago. And it isn’t an increasing threat, according to NASA. But it may help explain why the ice sheet collapsed so rapidly during warming of the climate at the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago. Now we are in a new era of rapid warming, ice sheets are increasingly thinned and weakened, the forces of human and geothermal activity working in concert against vulnerable ice shelves, it appears.
Sea Ice
Prepare to be mesmerized by another stunning sea ice visual by Kevin Pluck (who was featured on Vox this week—check it out).
A sneak peek at part of an illustration from Volcano Dreams
Alas, this week’s This Week in Ice is much abbreviated due to an impending book deadline. And it’s all about a supervolcano!
Volcano Dreams—a story of the Yellowstone supervolcano and the area’s fauna, by award-winning author Janet Fox and illustrated by me—is set for release on September 25th, 2018, from Web of Life Children’s Books! Huzzah!
I’m looking forward to soon sharing my process for creating the images for this book, which included a week-long visit to Yellowstone in early June for research.
This Week in Ice began with news that, due to the “Halloween crack,” there would be no winter over at the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Research Station. The station has already been moved fourteen miles across the Brunt Ice Shelf, but the fracture, which formed on Halloween last year, has been steadily growing. Spooky, indeed.
Credit: ESA
Sea Ice:
Kevin Pluck has produced yet another great visual showing the variability and overall decline of sea ice cover (since it has been observed by satellites).
NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project is enlisting narwhals to help determine the relationship between warming water, melting ice, and Greenland’s coastal fjords. Sensors attached to the “unicorns of the sea” capture temperature, salinity, and depth data.
More news about Greenland in the Ice Shelves & Glaciers section below.
ANTARCTIC
Ice extent and concentration. (NSIDC)
The Weddell polynya, a massive area of open water within the ice of the Weddell Sea, is still going strong. (It’s the dark blue patch in the ice toward the top of the image above.)
The NSIDC says that sea ice in Antarctica experienced a Bactrian—or double humped, just like the camel—maximum extent on October 11th and 12th. The first was on September 15.
Spot the blue camel hump:
Credit: NSIDC
This is the latest maximum on record (tied with 2002). It’s also the second lowest Antarctic maximum extent (per satellite records).
Ice shelves—floating ice surrounding land—act as a “safety band”, holding back ice flowing to the sea in glaciers. But Antarctic ice shelves are thinning and collapsing, and the Antarctic ice safety band is at risk.
In previous This Week in Ice posts, I’ve written about the B-44 iceberg, which calved in September but—a mere month later—broke into pieces too small to track.
Here it is on September 28th:
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
And here are some incredible views of the Larsen C iceshelf and colossal iceberg A-68, which carved from it in July.
From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: Looking out from the sea ice to iceberg A68, which calved from Antarctica's Larson C ice shelf in July pic.twitter.com/0oq9dzUbz1
From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: The western edge of iceberg A68, which calved in July; new edge of Larsen C Ice Shelf in the distance pic.twitter.com/DsCoSLWDbU
From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: The northern edge of massive iceberg A68, which calved off Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf in July. pic.twitter.com/qxcuuFS7tY
And a 400-meter iceberg has drifted into Tasmanian waters, off the coast of Macquarie Island, the first iceberg to be seen off the island in almost a decade.
Image credit: Tom Luttrell/Australian Antarctic Division
The World Meteorological Organization released its 2016 Greenhouse Gas report. This excellent short video explains the carbon cycle.
WMO releases Greenhouse Gas report at 1000 GMT on concentrations of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases in atmosphere in 2016 #COP23pic.twitter.com/JN6NzG0Hkb
I've worked with polar ice cores for 10 years. Ice cores give us 800,000 years of greenhouse gas history. Now we're off the charts. pic.twitter.com/pLCv8uW2LE
I’m on a deadline to complete the illustrations for a book about the Yellowstone supervolcano, so This Week in Ice is not as deep a dive as usual. But I did come across this interesting climate-related news. Previous eruptions of the Yellowstone supervolcano triggered volcanic winters.
I look forward to being back with more ice news in two weeks’ time.
As always, I am not a scientist, just a writer/illustrator and science communicator passionately in love with sea ice. I welcome input and corrections by polar scientists as I learn more about this remarkable and vital part of our planet and bring this knowledge to a wider audience.
POLAR BIRD 