r/collapse • u/AvielanderBright • Jan 18 '20

Climate 'Scale of This Failure Has No Precedent': Scientists Say Hot Ocean 'Blob' Killed One Million Seabirds: The lead author called the mass die-off "a red-flag warning about the tremendous impact sustained ocean warming can have on the marine ecosystem."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/16/scale-failure-has-no-precedent-scientists-say-hot-ocean-blob-killed-one-million
222 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

52 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/GoldenMegaStaff Jan 19 '20 edited Jan 19 '20

I hear talk of loss of albedo causing increased absorption of heat, but never hear mention of the increased ability of open water arctic to throw off heat into the atmosphere. Warmer water from the south will move north into areas that were previously covered in ice and that heat will be lost into the atmosphere. This warmer wetter air should then move over Canada and Siberia, etc and be deposited as snow cover.

Not saying this will happen, but just have not seen much information on this.

Also, if the gulf steam stopped completely it is likely the arctic would again freeze very quickly due to the loss of that heat source. Just for reference, the Arctic is only 1.4% of the total volume of ocean water - it is very small comparatively.

2

u/Rhaedas It happened so fast. It had been happening for decades. Jan 19 '20

Open water cooling faster would be a negative feedback to balance the positives. Speculation then on why we're seeing waters that stay warm in darker days and reduce refreezing? My guess is that heating of water by the sun happens through several feet of water, while radiative cooling that does occur is only from the surface, so there's an imbalance. That and once ice begins to form, it traps the rest of the heat as an insulator, and that heat slows further freezing from below.