Dr. Sidd Mukherjee said, “Latest frightening news” — State of the Cryosphere Report-2023.
This has been a year of climate disasters and ice loss. A glacial lake outburst flood devastated Sikkim in India. Swiss glaciers lost 10% of their remaining ice over just two years. Sea ice around Antarctica hit all-time-low summer and winter records. Unprecedented fires raged across Canadian permafrost. Parts of the Arctic and North Atlantic saw water temperatures 4 – 6°C higher than normal. It rained far inland on Antarctica, and Greenland saw its second-highest surface melt ever.
Our message — the message of the Cryosphere – is that this insanity cannot and must not continue.
The Cryosphere – Earth’s ice sheets, sea ice, permafrost, polar oceans, glaciers and snow – is ground zero for climate change. This is because of the simple physical reality of the melting point of ice; or in the case of our rapidly acidifying polar oceans, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere absorbed and turned to carbonic acid.
The warming impact of CO2, around 80% from fossil fuel use, already has led to steep glacier and ice sheet loss causing global sea-level rise; reduction of water resources from snowpack; growing CO2 and methane emissions from thawing permafrost; dramatic reduction of sea ice, now alarmingly low in both polar oceans; and growing evidence of stress on keystone polar marine species, such as krill, salmon and cod, from polar ocean acidification, warming and freshening. Enough. It is time to carve a line in the snow: because of what we have learned about the Cryosphere since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, 1.5°C is not merely preferable to 2°C. It is the only option.
Otherwise, world leaders are de facto deciding to burden humanity for centuries to millennia by displacing hundreds of millions of people from flooding coastal settlements; depriving societies of life-giving freshwater resources, disrupting delicately-balanced polar ocean and mountain ecosystems; and forcing future generations to offset long-term permafrost emissions.
This continued rise in CO2 is unacceptable.
The melting point of ice pays no attention to rhetoric, only to our actions.
Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mukherjee and Brouse (2022 and 2023)
Sea Level Rise: Then and Now Mukherjee and Brouse (2023)
Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)
Toppled Tipping Points: The Domino Effect Brouse and Mukherjee (2023)
The Age of Loss and Damage Brouse (2023)