A study published in the September issue of the Journal of the Geological Society found that increasing CO2 levels are causing foram diversity to plummet:

A unique ‘natural laboratory’ in the Mediterranean Sea is revealing the effects of rising carbon dioxide levels on life in the oceans. The results show a bleak future for marine life as ocean acidity rises, and suggest that similar lowering of ocean pH levels may have been responsible for massive extinctions in the past.

Rising carbon dioxide levels acidify the ocean, which has a particularly devastating effect on organisms that have calcium carbonate shells, like Foraminifera.The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of the Geological Society, found that increasing CO2 levels caused foram diversity to fall from 24 species to only 4. The study found a tipping point occurs at mean pH 7.8, the pH level predicted for the end of this century.

Forams record past events in the geological record. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55 million years ago, was a period of massive carbon release and rapid warming, accompanied by extinctions in marine life.

This statement by study co-author Dr. Jason Hall-Spencer in the Geological Society’s press release is not optimistic:

Our natural laboratory provides a glimpse into the future of our oceans.

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress has posted this chart showing trends in ocean CO2 concentrations and pH at one sampling station off Hawaii.

Romm also points out that the disappearance of forams has grave implications for the rest of the food chain.

For an analysis of what that could mean, see 2009 Nature Geoscience study concludes ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years.”

A study published in the journal Global Change Biology reports the discovery of very similar colonies of bryozoans – animals that anchor themselves to the seabed – in both the Ross and Weddell Seas.

The bryozoans, sometimes called moss animals, are often microscopic as individuals but form colonies that can look like corals or some seaweeds. Those found were unlike others around the current coast of Antarctica.

So,what’s the big deal?

Bryozoans are largely static and their larvae, dispersed by currents, are short-lived and quickly sink. How is it possible that two virtually identical populations came to exist 2400 kilometers apart, separated by the 2 kilometre thick West Antarctic ice sheet?

An article at ABC News in Science quotes lead author David Barnes:

The most likely explanation of such similarity is that this ice sheet is much less stable than previously thought and has collapsed at some point in the recent past. And if the West Antarctic ice shelf has been lost in recent times we have to re-think the possibility of loss in future with climate change.

If the ice were gone a passage would become open through which currents could carry the larvae between the two seas.

Melting of the West Antarctica ice cap would raise world sea levels by between 3.5 and 5 meters. In a brief warm period about 125,000 years ago, world sea levels were about five meters higher than today and temperatures probably at least 4°C warmer.

Dr. Jeff Masters at WunderBlog reports that both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route are now open. Data at the University of Illinois site Cryosphere Today shows it is now possible to completely circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean in ice-free waters – and this will probably continue to be the case for at least a month.

Arctic sea ice extent image for August 24, 2010, as compiled by The University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. The northern route (Western Parry Channel) through the Northwest Passage was completely clear of ice, as was the Northeast Passage. The southern route through the Northwest Passage was still partially blocked.

This year marks the third consecutive year–and the third time in recorded history–that both the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route have melted free, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The Northeast Passage opened for the first time in recorded history in 2005, and the Northwest Passage in 2007. It now appears that the opening of one or both of these northern passages is the new norm.

Here’s an updated graphic:

As this graphic from Chris Mooney’s article in New Scientist shows, ice volume has been decreasing even more precipitously than ice area.

The average volume of Arctic ice between July and September has fallen from 21,000 cubic kilometres in 1979 to 8000 cubic kilometres in 2009, a 55% decline compared with the 1979 to 2000 average. This is even faster than the decline in ice extent, which is 40% below the long-term average.

Not only has the total volume of Arctic ice continued to decline since 2007 considerably more quickly than predicted by most climate models, the rate of loss is accelerating. The Arctic Ocean may soon be essentially ice-free during the summer months. The dark ocean waters, mostly devoid of ice, would then absorb still more sunlight, further warming the overlying atmosphere during an increasingly lengthy ice-free season, reshaping weather throughout the region and well beyond it.

A good friend recently asked me why I give so much attention to news about Arctic sea ice extent at this blog, saying he just glosses over posts on this subject.

Here’s the reason: the area of sea ice cover is an important, amplifying climate feedback. Loss of sea ice is a cause of concern because as the area of ice decreases, increased absorption of sunlight by the darker ocean causes more sea ice melting. As this graph from Makiko Sato & James Hansen’s new blog shows, Arctic sea ice extent has been declining steadily . . .

. . . as has sea ice volume. What ice remains is getting thinner.

It’s not just sea ice that is melting. Ice sheets are shrinking too, both in Greenland and in Antarctica.

And the ice loss over the last few years has been at a time of minimum solar irradiance. Solar irradiance is now once again on the upswing.

It seems likely that September Arctic sea ice may be all but gone within a few decades – or perhaps even sooner. What does less Arctic sea ice mean for Earth’s weather patterns?

NASA is predicting loss of summer sea ice will mean more severe winter storms in the northern hemisphere – a prediction which is already being borne out.

Following Arctic sea ice extent is fascinating because it shows that global warming is not something to worry about in the future. Global warming is here and now, and is already affecting us in our daily lives. What’s worrisome is that the impacts will only get more severe. By the time the impacts are bad enough to get our attention, it will be too late – the damage will already have been done. Under the best-case scenario it will take Earth a thousand years or more to recover. Under the worst-case scenario, Earth will flip into a different, stable climate regime which won’t be hospitable to human existence.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), neither the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic nor the Northern Sea Route along the coast of Siberia are yet free of ice and open – but it’s looking like they soon will be.

A Russian gas tanker set out from Murmansk on August 14 across the Northern Sea Route, escorted by two nuclear ice breakers, and is expected to deliver its cargo of gas condensate to China by early September.

Northern Sea Route (blue) and alternative route through Suez Canal (red)

Ice in the Vilkitsky Strait is the only remaining impediment to shipping across the Northern Sea Route . . .

. . . as seen in this NSIDC graphic of sea ice extent.

While this latest graphic shows the northern route of the Northwest Passage as being open, NSIDC’s Arctic Sea Ice News reports that as of August 17 neither the northern route (Western Parry Channel) nor the southern route (Amundsen’s Passage) through the Northwest Passage were completely clear of ice.  NSIDC says that sea ice area within the northern route is currently well below the 1968 to 2000 average and almost a month ahead of the clearing that was observed in 2007. In the southern route, there is still a substantial amount of ice.

Ice concentration on August 16, 2010. Lines mark two well-known routes through the Northwest Passage: Amundsen's route is yellow, and the northern route is red.

If winds push sea ice away from the entrance to M’Clure Strait, the northern route of the Northwest Passage could open again this year – if it hasn’t already.

M'Clure Strait, Northwest Territories, Canada.

On August 21, 2007, the Northwest Passage became open to ships without the need of an icebreaker.  The Northwest Passage opened again on August 25, 2008. In late August 2008, satellite images showed that the last ice blockage of the Northern Sea Route had melted – which would be the first time since satellite records began that both the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route were open simultaneously.

The Northern Sea Route was open in 2005 but closed again by 2007. A Russian nuclear icebreaker escorted a small convoy including two Western commercial vessels westward through the Northern Sea Route in 2009.

NOAA’s State of the Climate Global Analysis for July reports that year-to-date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 14.5°C (58.1°F) was the warmest January-July period on record, 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average.

This chart showing just how extraordinary this year has been so far is posted at NOAA’s website.

Scientists predict in a new study that fewer than one in five of the plants and animals which currently live in the world’s rainforests will still be here in 90 years time. The culprits? Climate change and deforestation.

The study, “Correlative and mechanistic models of species distribution provide congruent forecasts under climate change”, is published in the June edition of Conservation Letters, an open-access journal. Here’s the abstract:

Good forecasts of climate change impacts on extinction risks are critical for effective conservation management responses. Species distribution models (SDMs) are central to extinction risk analyses. The reliability of predictions of SDMs has been questioned because models often lack a mechanistic underpinning and rely on assumptions that are untenable under climate change. We show how integrating predictions from fundamentally different modeling strategies produces robust forecasts of climate change impacts on habitat and population parameters. We illustrate the principle by applying mechanistic (Niche Mapper) and correlative (Maxent, Bioclim) SDMs to predict current and future distributions and fertility of an Australian gliding possum. The two approaches make congruent, accurate predictions of current distribution and similar, dire predictions about the impact of a warming scenario, supporting previous correlative-only predictions for similar species. We argue that convergent lines of independent evidence provide a robust basis for predicting and managing extinctions risks under climate change.

By 2100, climate change and deforestation could have altered two-thirds of the rainforests in Central and South America and about 70% in Africa. The Amazon Basin alone could see changes in biodiversity for 80% of the region.

A U.K. Telegraph article about the study quotes Daniel Nepstad, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, which studies climate change in Massachusetts:

This study is the strongest evidence yet that the world’s natural ecosystems will undergo profound changes including severe alterations in their species composition through the combined influence of climate change and land use. Conservation of the world’s biota, as we know it, will depend upon rapid, steep declines in greenhouse gas emissions.

Battered by record heat and a drought that has destroyed millions of hectares of crops, Russia – the world’s third largest wheat exporter – has banned grain exports.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced:

In connection with the unusually high temperatures and the drought, I consider it right to impose a temporary ban on the export from Russia of grain and other products produced from grain.

Putin said Russia’s policy after December 31 would be determined by the results of the harvest. Russia has slashed its 2010 grain harvest forecast to 70-75 million tonnes, compared with a harvest of 97 million tonnes in 2009.

The record heat and drought have spawned widespread wildfires. Peat bog fires outside Moscow have shrouded the capital in smog. Wheat prices have soared as Russia sizzles.

Jeff Masters at Wunder Blog reports the Russian population affected by extreme heat is at least double the population of Moscow, which is just over ten million; and the death toll in Russia from the 2010 heat wave is probably at least 15,000, and may be much higher. The only comparable heat wave in European history occurred just seven years ago in 2003, and killed an estimated 40,000 – 50,000 people, mostly in France and Italy.

A comparison of August temperatures, the peak of the great European heat wave of 2003 (left) with July temperatures from the Great Russian Heat Wave of 2010 (right) reveals that this year's heat wave is more intense and covers a wider area of Europe. Image credit: NOAA/ESRL.

Masters observes this is the worst heat wave in Russian history:

Prior to this year, the hottest temperature in Moscow’s history was 37.2°C (99°F), set in August 1920. The Moscow Observatory has now matched or exceeded this 1920 all-time record five times in the past two weeks. Temperatures the past 27 days in a row have exceeded 30°C in Moscow. Alexander Frolov, head of Russia’s weather service, said in a statement today, “Our ancestors haven’t observed or registered a heat like that within 1,000 years. This phenomenon is absolutely unique.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says its time to face up to the reality of climate change:

None of us can say what the next summer will be like. The forecasts vary greatly. Everyone is talking about climate change now. Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past. This means that we need to change the way we work, change the methods that we used in the past.”

Fat chance of that happening, here. No matter what the evidence, it’s business as usual, pursue growth at any cost, and let the future take care of itself.

Update: Peak Oil News has posted this great graphic showing the distribution of fires:

Scientists are saying the record heat wave in Russia and the deadly heat and flooding in Asia may become the norm rather than the exception. The Peak Oil News piece quotes Professor Michael Mann, a noted paleo-climatologist researcher:

The record heat waves we’re seeing this summer aren’t simply a random event in isolation. They are embedded in the warmest 6 month period the globe has seen in the instrumental record spanning the past 150 years. And a wealth of paleoclimate evidence suggests that the past few decades are the warmest period in at least a thousand years, and perhaps much longer.

A number of stories appeared in the media last week about one of Greenland’s largest of  “outlet” glaciers (glaciers ending in the sea) calving an enormous ”ice island” of more than 100 square miles in size.

None of the stories had a good graphic showing what happened. Fortunately, WWF Climate Blog has posted this one:

The glacier has lost about a quarter of its floating ice shelf.

A 2009 survey of 34 of the widest Greenland marine-terminating glacier outlets from the inland ice sheet found the loss rate has been nearly constant since 2000.

Above: cumulative annual area changes for 34 of the widest Greenland ice sheet marine-terminating outlets. Source: Byrd Polar Research Center.

To put the Petermann Glacier’s latest ice island in perspective, the island’s area of at least 260 km² is well over twice what all 34 glaciers surveyed by the  Byrd Polar Research Center have been losing annually (-106 km² per year).

Scientists recently documented the breakup up of a 7 km² (2.7 square mile) section of another glacier in the region, the Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier. The calving front – where the ice sheet meets the ocean is now further inland than at any time previously observed.

Location of the successive calving fronts of the Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier between 1851 and 2009, overlain on a Landsat image from 7/29/2009. Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Historic calving front locations courtesy of Anker Weidick and Ole Bennike, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports Arctic sea ice extent averaged for July 2010 was the second lowest in the satellite record, after 2007.

Stormy, cloudy, and relatively cool weather in July slowed the rate of ice loss. Now the old, thick ice that moved into the southern Beaufort Sea last winter is beginning to melt out.

This map of ice age for the end of July, 2010, shows a region of open water north of Alaska, where old, thick ice has melted out.

NSIDC points out it would take “a very unusual set of conditions” in August to create a new record low – the decline rate in August would have to match the record decline rate of August 2008.

The Polar Science Center reports that Arctic ice thickness is continuing its precipitate decline. September ice volume reached a record low in 2009, 67% below its 1979 maximum (for the 1979-2009 period). If the 2010 anomaly stays below the 2009 level -which looks like a pretty safe bet at this point – 2010 will see a new record low for ice volume.