Since we last looked at the Arctic ice coverage the equinox has been passed, the sun has set and the sea is icing up again quite nicely considering the ice loss fell just short of the 2007 record.

Nevertheless, a record was probably broken and a serious one at that. The volume of the ice in 2008 was very likely lower than in 2007. I’ve used the terms “probably” and “likely” because as far as I can see they didn’t actually do a survey as they did in 2007 when they found much of the ice only a metre thick.

The problem can be seen in the markedly increased presence of one-year ice and areas where the coverage is less than 50%:

On the upside the young ice still reflects the heat of the sun. I would point out, however, that the criterion for coverage is ice >15%, so if you compare the white areas, signifying 15-50% the total reflectivity in 2007 and 2008 was probably similar.

On the downside it makes a longer term revival of the ice coverage well-nigh impossible. As Jay Zwally says:

“The reason volume is so important is new ice can’t get thick enough in the winter to survive next summer’s melting,” he says. “It takes seven to eight years for sea ice to reach its equilibrium thickness of around four to five meters.”

This may auger well for shipping, but not so well for release of methane clathrates.

And now a new study finds that blame can be attributed directly to humans for the warming of the polar caps.

Yes, the Antarctic is warming too.

Yet another study has found a rising frequency and intensity of arctic storms over the last half century. This is attributed to increasingly warmer waters and results in the acceleration of the rate of arctic sea ice drift out into the warmer North Atlantic waters.

It also involved deeper mixing of ocean levels. Sirpa Hakkinen, one of the scientists involved, seemed to be a bit excited about the potential of this to increase carbon storage in the ocean. Personally I can’t see any joy over increasing acidity of the ocean, nor over the presumed likelihood that deeper mixing might promote the release of methane.

And it indicates the presence of a positive feedback loop. Warmer waters lead to increased storminess, which leads to loss of sea ice to the North Atlantic which leads to warmer waters. What we need is cooler water coming in the Bering Strait end, which means a cooler Pacific, which means a cooler everything.

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

As the Wikipedia explains, there is a lot of methane locked up as frozen methane clathrate under the arctic ocean. Methane is a short-lived, but very potent greenhouse gas. If the clathrates are warmed up enough, they will release that methane, and possibly quite quickly. The upshot? Global warming going a lot faster and further than the IPCC models.

This is far scarier than a little trouble with the LIBOR…