Scientists Find 35,000 Walrus Stranded In Alaska Due To Receding Ice Flows

Walrus_alaska

This extraordinary picture from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has many scientists worried as the latest sign of climate change. These are estimated 35,000 pacific walrus ashore on a beach in north-west Alaska. As mammals, walrus cannot swim indefinitely so they use their tusks to “haul out,” or pull themselves onto an ice floe or rocks. However, the loss of sea ice has left them effectively stranded.

220px-Noaa-walrus22The photo was taken five miles north of Point Lay, an Inupiat Eskimo village 300 miles southwest of Barrow and 700 miles northwest of Anchorage. It was taken on September 27th as researchers traced walrus. Female walrus give birth on sea ice and use ice as a diving platform to reach snails, clams and worms on the shallow continental shelf.

As temperatures warm in summer, the edge of the sea ice recedes north. Females and their offspring ride the edge of the sea ice into the Chukchi Sea. However, sea ice has receded now beyond shallow continental shelf waters and into Arctic Ocean water. The problem is that depths at that location exceeds two miles — a depth that walrus cannot dive to the bottom.

The World Wildlife Fund’s head of Arctic programs Margaret Williams says that the gathering show extreme environmental changes occurring wit the loss of sea ice. The comparison is with the plight of polar bears in the changing Arctic.

Source: Independent

153 thoughts on “Scientists Find 35,000 Walrus Stranded In Alaska Due To Receding Ice Flows”

    1. Nick, your first question was right. I’ve read articles based on interviews with indigenous people. According to the people who see the Walruses every year, the amount of space they’re on is the same. Animals are amazing creatures, unlike humans, they adapt. When we had the hysteria about the owls that could only live in one forest in Oregon and stopped logging there, owls were found other places. Behind the K-Mart neon sign,warm and cozy. Also at a gas station. Families lost their homes, the area’s economy tanked. And those sweet little owls were discovering other places to live. Nature changes, we know that. Why aren’t we smart enough to know we can’t change it. And if it came down to walruses or human beings, would you pick the walruses?

  1. I just found the free databases concerning the three-day-old NATURE, Climate Change scientific papers.

    I am downloading that “Argo floats” and writing programs to use them and integrate them into the databases that go way way back.

    If you want to grasp their impact on the data we have now, check out the southern hemisphere graphs which show the heretofore erratic southern hemisphere data here.

  2. davidm2575

    Mike Appleton, you refer to glacier ice in your thought experiment. Glacier ice happens in land areas, like Antarctica, Greenland, and Alaska. I already acknowledged that ice melting in these areas would contribute to rising sea levels. My point was about what people do not think about, and that is the actual effect of floating arctic ice melting.

    =====================================
    Fair enough davidm2575 as far as it goes.

    What you must determine, if your hypothesis is to be contemplative, is “where did that ice originate?.”

    In Antarctica, for instance, the ice cap on top of the land surface includes “immobile ice” (not yet glaciers) and mobile ice (glaciers already!) ….

    The glaciers are moving toward the ocean.

    When the ice of the glaciers leave the land mass and drop into the ocean, displacement takes place immediately, and sea level rise is a certainty.

    Whether they melt or not.

    How much sea rise is a calculation.

    However, if the ice forms in the ocean rather than on the land mass, there is no displacement ever, and therefore no sea level rise, no matter how much ice forms, so no calculation is necessary.

    Your cup experiment is quite detached from that physical scientific reality.

    Have you finished the homework assignment I gave you (distinguishing l * w form l * w * h)? i.e. ice extent from ice volume?

  3. “The databases shared by NOAA, a university, World Bank, and NASA, involve 7,280 individual weather stations in 236 countries and/or on 14 ships (which basically means all around the globe and oceans).” (Databases Galore – 2).

    Ignorance is your own freewill choice without any government interference.

  4. Paul C. Schulte

    The databases are not freely available.

    ======================
    Pure BS.

    I provided the links where it can all be downloaded at this very moment for free.

  5. davidm:

    Your experiment demonstrates that melting ice in a glass of water does not increase the volume of water in the glass. I believe that we all learned that in grammar school science class. (Actually, I seem to recall seeing a similar experiment on “Watch Mr. Wizard” back in the ’50s).

    However, the conclusion you reach from that experiment is false. The reason it is false is that we do not have freshwater oceans. You have probably noticed that it is easier to float in the ocean than in your local city swimming pool. That’s because saltwater is denser than freshwater. Therefore, when freshwater (such as glacier bits) melt in the ocean, more water volume is added than was displaced by the floating ice. As a consequence, melting ice in the Arctic does contribute to rising sea levels (and erosion as well). There are Inuit villages in Alaska slowly disappearing as we speak.

    1. Mike Appleton, you refer to glacier ice in your thought experiment. Glacier ice happens in land areas, like Antarctica, Greenland, and Alaska. I already acknowledged that ice melting in these areas would contribute to rising sea levels. My point was about what people do not think about, and that is the actual effect of floating arctic ice melting.

      You make a good point about the different density of freshwater and saltwater, and what happens when freshwater ice melts in saltwater. There is an effect as you suggest, but it is not so much as you imply about the Inuit villages. We are talking about a 2.6% difference in volume. Here is one study that attempts to answer the question with the following conclusion:

      “If all the extant sea ice and floating shelf ice melted, the global sea level would rise about 4 cm.”
      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-246X.2007.03472.x/abstract

      So only a 4 cm rise if ALL the extant sea ice and floating shelf ice melted. That’s only 1.57 inches. Not very much. The sea level has already risen that much without too much harmful effects.

      When we talk about glacier ice and ice on top of land masses melting into the sea, the effect is like 50 times more. That was my primary point, and I stand by it. A lot of attention is given to Arctic Ice decreasing by climatologists, and the effect of ice increasing in the Antarctic is ignored, mostly because we don’t really understand it. Air temperatures are rising, but the Antarctic is getting more ice? It is much more fun for scientists to talk about rising air temperatures and how the Arctic is losing ice. That connection makes sense and so the relationship between the two is simply accepted without proof that there really is a direct cause and effect relationship.

  6. davidm2575

    DavidM quoted the National Snow and Ice Data Center: “the Antarctic has reached its 35 year high in having the most ice ever, which baffles climate scientists who wonder how such ice expansion can happen in a warming world.”

    Dredd quoted his own blog and then wrote: “Loose the intellectual dishonesty.”
    ===============================
    My own blog quotes NASA, NOAA, WHO, and I have all the scientific data they have (they give it free) from the late 1700’s and I generate graphs from that data.

    You have not passed 5th grade yet.

    You cite to the ice extent of the Antarctic which is square miles, not cubic miles.

    It has nothing to do with how much ice there is.

    Quantity, or ice volume, is always expressed in cubic miles or kilometres, not square miles.

    You get an ‘F” again.

    Until you know that extent is l * w while volume is l * w * h … (How Fifth Graders Calculate Ice Volume – 5).

  7. “record high for the month” “topping the previous record”

    “This record high” … “beats the previous August record … but also beats the previous all-time record”

    “The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for the June–August period was also record high for this period”

    Yeah boy, the global warming is really cool huh?

    1. I think weather records in Phoenix go back 130 years. Makes the record temperatures a little ‘iffy’.

  8. Latest NOAA data (less than 100 years old) … (that is what the latest means):

    The combined average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces for August 2014 was record high for the month, at 0.75°C (1.35°F) above the 20th century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F), topping the previous record set in 1998.
    The global land surface temperature was 0.99°C (1.78°F) above the 20th century average of 13.8°C (56.9°F), the second highest on record for August, behind 1998.
    For the ocean, the August global sea surface temperature was 0.65°C (1.17°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.4°F). This record high departure from average not only beats the previous August record set in 2005 by 0.08°C (0.14°F), but also beats the previous all-time record set just two months ago in June 2014 by 0.03°C (0.05°F).
    The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for the June–August period was also record high for this period, at 0.71°C (1.28°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F), beating the previous record set in 1998.
    The June–August worldwide land surface temperature was 0.91°C (1.64°F) above the 20th century average, the fifth highest on record for this period. The global ocean surface temperature for the same period was 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 20th century average, the highest on record for June–August. This beats the previous record set in 2009 by 0.04°C (0.07°F).
    The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for January–August (year-to-date) was 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.3°F), the third highest for this eight-month period on record.

    (NOAA, Global Analysis).

    He, Mrs. He, or Miss He, who calls “hot” “cold” and “cold” “hot” is suffering emotionally and mentally.

  9. Joe Blow, You have done some SUPERB commenting on this thread. I have learned a lot. Thanks.

  10. Joe Blow

    Oh I see so forget what NASA says

    QUOTE

    In the 21st century, greenhouse gases have continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, just as they did in the 20th century, but global average surface air temperatures have stopped rising in tandem with the gases. The temperature of the top half of the world’s oceans — above the 1.24-mile mark — is still climbing, but not fast enough to account for the stalled air temperatures.

    UNQUOTE
    ======================================
    This is a law blog, so I hope you understand a principle of law that the latest decision of the Supreme Court is the authoritative law.

    If you cite a case 100 years old and I cite one decided three days ago, mine is the authoritative cite and yours is hopium.

    Same with scientific data.

    I cited data on the ocean temperatures from three days ago.

    Yours is way old and therefore just hopium.

    It is not false data, it is just that we know more now than we did then.

    You want to know less?

    Fine, that is your choice, but you snooze you lose.

    A note about your sea level rise misunderstanding:

    “We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.

    Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”

    Stiles said all of the Virginia tide gage measurements are showing about the same rise of a foot and a half over the last 100 years.

    The “we” you hang with wrote a bill to make saying the sea will rise more than 8″ would be illegal:

    There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.

    That is, the meter or so of sea level rise predicted for the NC Coastal Resources Commission by a state-appointed board of scientists is extremely inconvenient for counties along the coast. So the NC-20 types have decided that we can escape sea level rise – in North Carolina, anyhow – by making it against the law. Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow.

    (Social Dementia Causes Heated Misunderestimations – 2).

    Like I said, this is a law blog, so let’s consider that.

    Those deniers, like yourself, think that they can make the laws of nature.

    Even after the sea level had risen over a foot and a half there they wanted to pass a law making it illegal to tell the truth.

  11. Oh I see so forget what NASA says

    QUOTE

    In the 21st century, greenhouse gases have continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, just as they did in the 20th century, but global average surface air temperatures have stopped rising in tandem with the gases. The temperature of the top half of the world’s oceans — above the 1.24-mile mark — is still climbing, but not fast enough to account for the stalled air temperatures.

    UNQUOTE

  12. The data I used was published in NATURE, Climate Change, on the 5th of October, 2014, if you read the comment.

    That was 3 days ago.

  13. Joe Blow,


    KEYWORD “STALLED”

    How long ? 18 years
    ================================
    Some brains have stalled, not global warming.

    The apparent slowdown in rate of INCREASE was not a slowing down the way you mis-portray it.

    It was less rate of INCREASE, not less global warming. We are talking about rate of acceleration.

    Scientists, climatologists and oceanographers, now know that the apparent slowing of the acceleration rate was caused by not adequately monitoring the southern hemisphere ocean temps. Not having actual data, and using overly conservative estimates.

    For example, they are mapping the oceans near Australia in the southern hemisphere right now as they look for the lost Malaysian passenger plane, a mapping event that has not happened before because of the remoteness of the area.

    Similarly, for the first time thousands of buoy based measuring instruments have been placed in the oceans in the southern hemisphere to take the temperature of the oceans at various depths.

    The buoys go way down recording the temps, then rise to the surface periodically to transmit the data to satellites.

    That data has now been analyzed, and it shows the models were biased low as I wrote at 7:40 above (and provided links).

    The latest data, upon analysis, show that the graphs will project greater warming in the southern oceans, which will increase the global averages upward.

    The apparent slowing of rate of INCREASE was because of lack of data and overly conservative estimates.

    Now the graphs will begin to show that there was no slowing down of the rate of INCREASE after all (The Phrase is Back: “Worse Than Previously Thought”).

    Staying up to date with up to date data is important.

    1. Basically, what the scientists are saying is “All that data that we used to say that we had from the Southern Hemisphere, we just made it up.” Now we are getting ‘real’ temperatures, so you should ‘really’ believe’ us this time.

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