Academia, Animals, Environment, Science

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. In case you bumped your head again the blue squares and the green circles in the image above are the OBSERVED temperatures.

  4. Judge you missed the memo and bumped your head.

    Might want to go back and read NASA’S Memo again dated

    October 6, 2014
    RELEASE 14-272
    NASA Study Finds Earth’s Ocean Abyss Has Not Warmed

    You are behind the times and stuck in the past

    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

    HOW LONG HAVE THEY BEEN “STALLED”

    18 years

    http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/nasa-study-finds-earth-s-ocean-abyss-has-not-warmed/

  5. “The planet’s two largest ice sheets – in Greenland and Antarctica – are
    now being depleted at an astonishing rate of 120 cubic miles each year. That is the discovery made by scientists using data from CryoSat-2, the European probe that has been measuring the thickness of Earth’s ice sheets and glaciers since it was launched by the European Space Agency in 2010.

    Even more alarming, the rate of loss of ice from the two regions has more than doubled since 2009, revealing the dramatic impact that climate change is beginning to have on our world.” (How Fifth Graders Calculate Ice Volume – 5).

  6. Global warming has continued apace:

    “The global ocean stores more than 90% of the heat associated with observed greenhouse-gas-attributed global warming. Using satellite altimetry observations and a large suite of climate models, we conclude that observed estimates of 0–700 dbar global ocean warming since 1970 are likely biased low. (Nature, Quantifying underestimates of long-term upper-ocean warming)

    It’s worse than we thought. Scientists may have hugely underestimated the extent of global warming because temperature readings from southern hemisphere seas were inaccurate. (The world is warming faster than we thought)

    We know that the planet is getting warmer—but it turns out that it’s happening faster than we thought. Turns out scientists have been underestimating warming increases because of inaccurate temperature recordings taken in the southern oceans. (Earth Has Been Getting Warmer Way Faster Than We Thought)

    The oceans are warming faster than previously thought, according to a pair of new studies released this weekend and published in the scientific journal Natural Climate Change. This conclusion is largely due to enhanced information gathering in the southern oceans, which was limited in the past. The research teams compared previous ocean warming figures, based on the less complete data, with projections based on information they were able to obtain from more detailed studies. They found that from 1970 through 2004, increases in ocean temperatures exceeded those earlier figures.(Scientists Discover World’s Oceans Warming Faster Than Predicted)”

    (The Phrase is Back: “Worse Than Previously Thought”).

  7. Joe Blow

    At the current rate Judge Dredd it would take 120 years for the sea to rise one foot.
    ===============================
    Wrong again yo yo.

    The data is available for free and surely you have the ability to download the data and process it (Databases Galore – 2).

    I did (Databases Galore – 5 ).

    That way you have personal knowledge rather than faith or trust in imbeciles.

    1. The databases are not freely available. Michael Mann and others have declared some databases to be proprietary work and as such free from FOIA searches. Besides, NOAA keeps fudging the figures on the databases. In some areas of science, scientists need to be hooked up to a lie detector.

  8. Joe Blow

    Now we find out there has been NO GLOBAL WARMING for 18 years.
    …
    ======================================
    The “we” is your problem.

    Hanging with them will do that to you.

    Hang here and prosper: “When you find a myth you have heard or want to clarify, click on the link to the right of the particular climate myth you have heard, and you will then go to a page with comprehensive discussion and debunking of that myth: ” (Agnotology: The Surge – 5).

  9. Now we find out there has been NO GLOBAL WARMING for 18 years.

    “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.”

    KEYWORD “STALLED”

    How long ? 18 years

    http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/nasa-study-finds-earth-s-ocean-abyss-has-not-warmed/

  10. ” For the past 18 years, the U.S./French Jason-1, Jason-2 and Topex/Poseidon spacecraft have been monitoring the gradual rise of the world’s ocean in response to global warming. ”

    For the past 18 years we have heard nothing but the Glaciers are retreating the ice is melting and the sea level has rose one inch in ten years. Do the math Judge.

  11. At the current rate Judge Dredd it would take 120 years for the sea to rise one foot.

  12. So there was Time magazine with the ice story where ice would increase in volume, meaning that sea level would drop.

    ” The red line in this image shows the long-term increase in global sea level since satellite altimeters began measuring it in the early 1990s. Since then, sea level has risen by a little more than an inch each decade, or about 3 millimeters per year. ”

    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-262

  14. Jaick,

    So there was Time magazine with the ice story where ice would increase in volume, meaning that sea level would drop.

    Others said the ice caps would melt and the seas levels would rise.

    You have to put your head way up the dark end to chose the wrong hypothesis.

    The correct hypothesis, the one that you are not promoting, is the one you should focus on.

    It is all around you to be seen if you are not blind.

  15. Jack,

    There are always people who call themselves scientists who are quacks, at the same time, there are the well informed:

  19. davidm2575

    Dredd,
    … 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.

    Always remember that there are three types of lies:

    “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.”
    ===========================
    The three types of lies you promote are unconvincing.

    “The planet’s two largest ice sheets – in Greenland and Antarctica – are
    now being depleted at an astonishing rate of 120 cubic miles each year. That is the discovery made by scientists using data from CryoSat-2, the European probe that has been measuring the thickness of Earth’s ice sheets and glaciers since it was launched by the European Space Agency in 2010.

    Even more alarming, the rate of loss of ice from the two regions has more than doubled since 2009, revealing the dramatic impact that climate change is beginning to have on our world.
    …
    West Antarctica has lost so much ice between 2009 and 2012 that the gravity field over the region dipped, according to an announcement Friday from the European Space Agency (ESA). The conclusion is based on high-resolution measurements from satellites that map Earth’s gravity.

    The gravitational fluctuation over the Antarctic Peninsula is small, but it’s further evidence that melting ice is fundamentally changing parts of the planet. (Discover, Antarctic Ice Melt is Changing Earth’s Gravity)
    …
    Although not designed to map changes in Earth’s gravity over time, ESA’s extraordinary satellite has shown that the ice lost from West Antarctica over the last few years has left its signature.

    More than doubling its planned life in orbit, GOCE spent four years measuring Earth’s gravity in unprecedented detail.

    Scientists are now armed with the most accurate gravity model ever produced. This is leading to a much better understanding of many facets of our planet – from the boundary between Earth’s crust and upper mantle to the density of the upper atmosphere.

    The strength of gravity at Earth’s surface varies subtly from place to place owing to factors such as the planet’s rotation and the position of mountains and ocean trenches.

    Changes in the mass of large ice sheets can also cause small local variations in gravity.

    Recently, the high-resolution measurements from GOCE over Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 have been analysed by scientists from the German Geodetic Research Institute, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the Jet Propulsion Lab in USA and the Technical University of Munich in Germany. (ESA, GOCE)”

    (Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us? – 7).

    Loose the intellectual dishonesty.

    1. 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.”

      What I find interesting is how you cherry pick information and use that to accuse me of intellectual dishonesty.

      Your analysis has two serious flaws. First, it is based solely upon some cherry picked areas of western Antarctica. Secondly, it is based upon satellite imagery measuring gravity, and the assumption is that a very slight change in that measure was caused by melting ice. No evidence whatsoever is given to support that assumption.

      The truth is that ice measurements for the expansion of the ice shield over all of Antarctica has reached a 35 year high. The interesting thing is that Antarctica actually has land mass, which means ice melting there might cause the sea to rise. However, ice in the Arctic is floating in water. There is no land mass holding it up. Therefore, melting ice in the Arctic will NOT increase sea level, yet the Arctic is the area that gets all the attention about melting ice. See the following YouTube for a simple experiment illustrating how melting ice does not result in greater water volume:

      http://youtu.be/aOCqHRpQh88

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