NASA briefs president Obama last night

NASA briefing is related to the rapid melt away of the North Pole ice cap which is the greatest ever environmental event from the ending of the Ice Ages. According to the spaceborne observations North Pole is losing now extremely rapidly its ice cap. The problem had started a few years ago with the loss of historic sea ice averaging at 28,000,000 kilograms per second the last few years. However, recently the loss of sea ice and snow cover around North Pole has dramatically escalated.

The sea ice cover in the Arctic is exceedingly important as it acts as a sun shade to the shallow parts of the Arctic Ocean such as East Siberian Sea where there is another ice cover on the sea. This ice is not ordinary ice but special ice that became infamous during the Deepwater Horizon accident and it is called methane ice, or methane clathrate. Molecule per molecule methane is 256 times more powerful in capturing sun’s heat than carbon dioxide and there are enormous amounts.

The Arctic Ocean has seen for the last three weeks at all time record melting levels where the entire rear end of the Arctic Ocean has been under water. Either as a melted ocean, or sea ice where its topmost layer has melted away and where the water sits on top of sea ice on melt water pools. Normally, these occur just before autumn appears.

The loss of methane from melting methane ice on the sea bed mud layers is phenomenal risk to our world as even less than 1% can raise global mean temperature 6C (9F) once the 50 gigatonnes from East Siberian Sea melt. The fears are now that this stuff is rising aggressively from the sea bed and threatening a globe by a massive climatic pandemonium.

In addition, several states have already concluded or in contemplation of territorial land swaps as the local mean temperature in the Arctic could shoot up as much as 20C (30F) when the oceans around Greenland have become ice free and the sea beds and melting permafrost are belching out copious amounts of methane to trap sun’s heat.

It is now feared that in the post sea ice conditions the entire Arctic warms so much that Greenland’s ice dome will be dumped vast rainfalls and heat waves. As a result of these, the until-present cold and stable ice dome transforms itself to a warmed and wet, dynamic, or aggerate-forming ice sheet which eventually looses its internal strenght.

The much-feared, Heindrich -1 event, will generally follow H0 event that triggered the Younger Dryas rapid cooling that filled the ocean between America and Europe with ice bergs. As the climate cools very rapidly due to oceanic ice load (Greenland ice dome still contains the coldness stored from many thousands of winters), the agriculture fails.

The Last Dryas or H-1 event is feared to put at risk 90% of Europe’s population benefiting only the Arctic flower Dryas Octopetalas. Besides a long freeze-up in Europe due to the Gulf Stream (that largely throws most of the ice islands towards Europe, though some bergs scatter almost everywhere), the climate dries up globally.

H-1 ice berg calving event from destablised Greenland ice dome throws sea levels over 6 metres higher. Because of this, many marine littoral states in the Southern Hemisphere have recently completed territorial land swaps, purchases or expatriation treaties. For example, the territorial purchase treaty between the Republic of Kiribati and the Republic of Fiji took effenct in 2011. Of expatriation treaties taken recently effect, the Republic of Tuvalu and Australia is in force.

H-1 fear is anchored largely to unexpectely rapid collapse of heavily water-pocketed Lasen B ice shelf and its replication as climates warm.

Veli Albert Kallio, FRGS

Vice President Environmental Affairs, Sea Research Society, Charleston, South Carolina, USA, (the operators of 100ft oceanographic vessel “Urraca” acquired from the Smithsonian Institution)

Chairman, Frozen Isthmuses’ Protection Campaign of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, FIPC, Helsinki, Finland

First Nations United Nations General Assembly Motion 101292 rapporteur, Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio Climático y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra (CMPCC) on Greenland ice sheet stability.

Fellow, Royal Geographical Society, London, England
Fellow, The Explorers Club, New York City, USA