Goodreads has the following ratings: 1 star = did not like it, 2 stars = it was okay, 3 stars = liked it, 4 stars = really liked it, 5 stars = it was amazing. This year I read 77 books and only gave four of them 5 stars. Those four were:

Still Alice by Lisa Genova: This was a heartbreaking story about a woman who gets early onset Alzheimer. She is a brilliant Harvard professor and it is really hard to read about her experience as she struggles to deal with day to day life and to come to terms with her disease. I could not put the book down even though I really did not want to get to the end.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park: A true story about two different children in the Sudan. One is a girl who has to walk all day every day to go and get water and bring it back to her home. The other is a boy who gets separated from his family by war and ends up in s a surprising place in the end.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: I am a sucker for a book about WWII and this one was no exception! This was a story about a blind French girl and a German radio operator who we follow along each of their own paths in the war until they finally meet in the French village of Saint Malo. The writer does a great job of keeping you entertained while giving us a bit of WWII history at the same time.

The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah: Yet another WWII book, this one is also set in German occupied France and it gives us a bit of insight into the role that women had in the war and as part of the Resistance.

There were also several which I gave 4 stars to. Of those, these were my favorites:

The Martian by Andy Weir: A story about a man accidentally stranded on Mars and his attempt at survival and his hope for rescue.

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett: A bunch of short stories about writing, life, love and friendship. She has a quick wit and a way of writing that I really enjoyed.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: Another WWII book! This one is about an English girl who gets captured by the Germans and the story takes place while she is being interrogated by them. She gives them as little information as possible, but in the end, she does give them information.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio: The story of a kid born with a facial abnormality and his struggles to fit into "real life". You can't help but love him and you want to protect him from the outside world.

11/22/63 by Stephen King: The story of a man who goes back in time in order to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy. However, no action is without consequence. The only complaint I had about this book is that it was very long! It was almost 900 pages. Otherwise it was a hit.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion: The story of an autistic man and his quest for a girlfriend. Being a man of lists, he creates one to guide him on his quest.

What were your favorite books in 2015? 

1.1°C or 34.1°F at the North Pole

The year 2015 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record. In the media, a lot of attention has been given to the many floods, droughts, wildfires and heatwaves that have battered the world this year.

Sadly, though, little attention is given to the situation in the Arctic. The image on the right shows a forecast for December 30, 2015, with temperatures at the North Pole above freezing point, as further illustrated by the nullschool.net image below, showing a temperature forecast of 1.1°C or 34.1°F for the North Pole. Wind speed at the North Pole is forecast to be 105 mph or 168 km/h on December 30, 2015, and 133 mph or 215 km/h closer to Svalbard.

As the image below illustrates, very high temperatures are forecast to hit the Arctic Ocean on December 30, 2015.

Above image shows temperature anomalies at the highest end of the scale for most of the Arctic Ocean, with a temperature anomaly for the Arctic as a whole of 2.4°C or 4.32°F above what was common in 1979-2000. The situation isn't likely to improve soon. For January 3, 2016, the temperature in the Arctic is forecast to be as much as 4.56°C or 8.21°F warmer.

How is it possible for such high temperatures to occur over the Arctic Ocean? The image below shows how the year 2015 is shaping up in terms of temperature anomalies.

Global warming is felt most strongly in the Arctic as warming continues, as illustrated by above image and by the image on the right.

Warming in the Arctic is accelerating due to feedbacks. One of these feedbacks is the way the jet streams are changing. Changes in the jet streams are becoming more prominent as the Arctic is warming up more rapidly than the rest of the world.

jet streams

As the difference in temperature between the Arctic and the equator becomes smaller, the speed at which the jet stream circumnavigates the globe is decreasing and jet streams become more wavy.

Meanwhile, most of the extra heat caused by global warming goes into the oceans, and the Atlantic Ocean is warming up fast. At the same time, meltwater is accumulating at the surface of the North Atlantic, lowering sea surface temperatures there. With such large differences between high temperatures over North America and lower temperatures over the North Atlantic, the speed of the jet stream between those places can increase dramatically.

The result is that huge amounts of warm air are being pushed high into the Arctic. The image on the right shows the jet streams on December 27, 2015, when speeds as high as 263 mph or 424 km/h were reached at the location marked by the green circle. Also note the jet streams crossing the Arctic at the top of the image, while crossing the equator at the bottom of the image.

The image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere in November.

For over a month now, storms over the North Atlantic have been pushing hot air high up into the Arctic. The video below uses surface wind content by Climate Reanalyzer (selected daily averages and sequences of forecasts) to cover the period from December 5, 2015, to January 8, 2016.

Best wishes for 2016

Above video stops at January 8, 2016, when two cyclones are visible, one in the North Atlantic and another one over the North Pacific, prompting me to create the image on the right.

What causes these storms to grow this strong? Waters keeps warming up dramatically off the east coast of North America. Emissions from North America tend to extend over these waters, due to the Coriolis effect, and this contributes to their extreme warming.

The image below shows carbon dioxide levels as high as 511 ppm over New York on November 5, 2015, and as high as 500 ppm over the water off the coast of coast of New Jersey on November 2, 2015. 

Emissions contribute to warmer waters - click to enlarge

The top panel of the image on the right shows that on December 11, 2015, carbon dioxide levels were as high as 474 ppm (parts per million, surface concentration) at the location marked by the green circle in New York.

The bottom panel of the image on the right shows that the water off the coast was warmer by as much as 10.3°C or 18.5°F at the location marked by the green circle on December 11, 2015.

The NASA video below shows carbon dioxide emissions over the year 2006.

It's not just CO2 off the North American coast that contributes to further warming of the Gulf Stream, many other emissions do so, including methane, CO, etc. Carbon monoxide (CO) is not a greenhouse gas, but it depletes hydroxyl, thus preventing oxidation of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. The animation below shows a carbon monoxide level at green circle of 528 ppb on December 28, 2015, 0900z, while the sea surface temperature anomaly there was 15.8°F or 8.8°C on that day. 

Carbon monoxide reached much higher levels recently over land, as illustrated by the image below that shows a CO level of 2077 ppb in New York on January 6, 2016. 

These emissions heat up the Gulf Stream and make that ever warmer water is carried underneath the sea surface all the way into the Arctic Ocean, while little heat transfer occurs from ocean to atmosphere, due to the cold freshwater lid on the North Atlantic.

feedback #28 at the feedback page

The image on the right shows that it was warmer by as much as 9.6°C or 17.2°F near Svalbard on December 25, 2015, at the location marked by the green circle. The same anomalies were recorded on December 26, 2015, when the temperature of the water there was 11°C or 51.9 °F.

This gives an indication of how warm the water is that is being pushed underneath the sea surface into the Arctic Ocean.

Strong winds and high waves can cause more sea ice to be pushed along the edges of Greenland out of the Arctic Ocean, into the Atlantic ocean, expanding the cold freshwater lid on the North Atlantic, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

The image below shows the impact of these storms on sea ice speed and drift on December 31, 2015 (left) and a forecast for January 8, 2016 (right).

The danger is that, as warmer water reaches the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, it will increasingly destabilize sediments that can contain huge amounts of methane in the form of free gas and hydrates.

Methane levels over the Arctic Ocean are already very high. Above image shows methane levels as high as 2745 ppb over the Arctic Ocean on January 2, 2016. High releases from the Arctic Ocean seafloor are pushing up methane levels higher in the atmosphere, as discussed in earlier posts such as this one.

So, while the extreme weather events that have occurred in the year 2015 are frightening, even more terrifying is the way the water of the Arctic Ocean is warming up. Sadly, this is rarely even discussed in the media. So, let's once more add the image below that should have been given more media attention.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described at the Climate Plan.

The year 2015 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record. In the media, a lot of attention has been given to the...
Posted by Sam Carana on Monday, December 28, 2015

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful week! Today after I get off work, I will drive up to the (snowy!) mountains where my parents live, where I will don flannel and wool and will spend time eating and reading and kicking butt in Rummikub (hopefully). This year my brother is not going to make it, but it will be nice to see my parents and my aunt and her family and to partake in the annual traditions.

The other thing I always love is getting together for the annual day after Christmas breakfast. It has been a tradition that my high school friends and I have had for probably about 10 years, if not more. Most years, most of us make it and a lot of the time the Moms and sometimes even my Dad, some brothers or even a boyfriend or two straggle in as well. It's always great to catch up with the girls and to see the kids get older and older. Last year I missed it since Christmas was on a Wednesday and I had to work, so this year I am looking forward to it twice as much!

I hope that everyone out there has a great weekend and a joyous holiday!

What are your plans for the next few days? Do you have any annual traditions? 

It's my favorite time of year again! It's time for the Best of 2015! First, I am going to start with one of my favorites, in fact you may even call it the best of the "Best of": travel.

It's always hard to decide where the best travel places were each year! This year I was lucky to go to several new places as well as a couple of "tried and trues". However, even in the familiar places, sometimes there was a bit of a twist!

Mt. Baker, WA

Portland, OR

Tetons, WY

Rocky Mountain, CO

Home Sweet Home, CA

Half Dome / Yosemite -- May

Sisters Wilderness, OR

Tahoe Rim Trail, NV

Antelope Lake, CA

John Muir Trail / Yosemite - August

TMB, Chamonix, France 

NYC - View from Tribeca

As you can see, much of my travels this year involved the outdoors! This year while traveling, I tried snowshoeing for the first time, I tasted at least 28 different kinds of new beers (that is just a guess), I made a lot of new friends and cemented a lot of old friendships.

This year, I got to see parts of Yosemite I had never seen before, I revisited a couple of states that I haven't seen much of (CO, WY), I revisited a couple of states that I know and love (OR, WA, NY) and I added one new state (Idaho) to my "states I've visited" list.

I had a fabulous 2 weeks in the Alps of France, Switzerland and Italy where I hiked every day, ate way too many baguettes and cheese, drank too much wine and took a lot of photos of the same mountain from all different angles.

I feel so lucky that I have the means to travel and that my health is good. I am also lucky that I have a family that instilled the love of adventure, travel and the outdoors in me!  I try my hardest not to take things like that for granted. I don't know who I would be without some of the places that I have been. All in all, I would call this a successful year of travel and I can't wait to see what 2016 has in store for me!

What journey did you take in 2015? What was your favorite destination this year? 

At the Paris Agreement, nations committed to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

How much have temperatures risen already? As illustrated by above image, NASA data show that during the three-month period from September through November 2015, it was ~1°C warmer than it was in 1951-1980 (i.e the baseline).

A polynomial trend based on the data from 1880 to 2015 for these three months indicates that a temperature rise of 1.5°C compared to the baseline will be reached in the year 2024.

Let's go over the calculations. The trendline shows it was ~0.3°C colder in 1900 compared to the baseline. Together with the current ~1°C rise, that implies that since 1900 there's been a rise of 1.3°C compared to the baseline. This makes that another rise of 0.2°C by 2024, as pointed at by the trendline, would result in a joint rise in 2024 of 1.5°C compared to the baseline.

The situation is even more worse than this. The Paris Agreement seeks to avoid a temperature increase of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. When we include temperature rises from pre-industrial levels to the year 1900, it becomes evident that we have already surpassed a rise of 1.5°C since pre-industrial levels. This is illustrated by above image, earlier added at How much time is there left to act? (see notes there) and by the graph below, from a recent post by Michael Mann, who adds that ~0.3°C greenhouse warming had already taken place by the year 1900. 

~0.3C greenhouse warming had already taken place by 1900, and ~0.2C warming by 1870

Let's add things up again. A rise of ~0.3°C before 1900, a further rise of 0.3°C from 1900 to the baseline (1951-1980) and a further rise of ~1°C from the baseline to date, together that adds up to a rise of ~1.6°C from pre-industrial levels.

In other words, we have already surpassed a rise of 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels by 0.1°C.

The trendline indicates that a further rise of 0.5°C will take place by the year 2030, i.e. that without comprehensive and effective action, it will be 2°C warmer than pre-industrial levels before the year 2030.

Full wrath of emissions yet to come

The full wrath of global warming is yet to come and the situation is even more threatening than pictured above, for the following reasons:

1. Half of global warming has until now been masked by aerosols, particularly sulfates that are emitted when some of the dirtiest fossil fuels are burnt, such as coal and bunker oil. As we make the necessary shift to clean energy, the masking effect that comes with those emissions will disappear. 
2. As Ricke and Caldeira point out, the carbon dioxide that is released now will only reach its peak impact a decade from now. In other words, we are yet to experience the full wrath of the carbon dioxide emitted over the past decade. 
3. 
   The biggest threat comes from temperature peaks. People in some parts of the world will be hit  harder, especially during summer peaks, as discussed in the next section of this post. As temperatures rise, the intensity of such peaks will increase.
   The image on the right illustrates this with a forecast for December 25, 2015, showing extreme weather for North America, with temperatures as low as 30.6°F or -0.8°C in California and as high as 71.5°F or 22°C in North Carolina. 
4. Feedbacks such as rapid albedo changes in the Arctic and large amounts of methane abruptly released from the Arctic Ocean seafloor could dramatically accelerate the temperature rise. Furthermore, water vapor will increase by 7% for every 1°C warming. Water vapor is one of the strongest greenhouse gases, so increasing water vapor will further contribute to a non-linear temperature rise. The resulting temperature rises threaten to be non-linear, as discussed in the final section of this post.  

Situation even worse for some

Such temperature rises will hit some people more than others. For people living on the Northern Hemisphere, the outlook is worse than for people on the Southern Hemisphere.

NOAA data show that the November global land and ocean temperature anomaly was 0.97°C, while the 3-month global land and ocean temperature anomaly was 0.96°C. The 12-month anomaly on November 2015 on land on the Northern Hemisphere (where most people live) was 1.39°C, as shown on the image below, while the trendline shows that for people living on the Northern Hemisphere, a 1.5°C rise compared to 1910-2000 could be reached as early as in 2017.

Similarly, the outlook is worse for people living in regions that are already now experiencing high temperatures during the summer peaks. As said, as temperatures rise, the intensity of such peaks will increase.

Feedbacks in the Arctic

The image below, from an earlier post, depicts the impact of feedbacks that are accelerating warming in the Arctic, based on NASA data up to November 2013, and their threat to cause runaway global warming. As the image shows, temperatures in the Arctic are rising faster than elsewhere in the world, but global warming threatens to catch up as feedbacks start to kick in more. The situation obviously has deteriorated further since this image was created in November 2013.

[ click on image at original post to enlarge ]

Above image, from an earlier post, depicts the impact of feedbacks that are accelerating warming in the Arctic, based on NASA data up to November 2013. The image shows that temperatures in the Arctic are rising faster than elsewhere in the world. Global warming threatens to catch up as feedbacks start to kick in more, triggering runaway global warming. The situation obviously has deteriorated further since this image was created in November 2013.

The image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere in November.

The image below gives an indication of the high temperatures of the water beneath the sea surface. Anomalies as high as 10.3°C or 18.5°F were recorded off the east coast of North America (green circle on the left panel of the image below) on December 11, 2015, while on December 20, 2015, temperatures as high as 10.7°C or 51.3°F were recorded near Svalbard (green circle on the right panel of the image below), an anomaly of 9.3°C or 16.7°F.

This warm water is carried by the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean, threatening to unleash huge amounts of methane from its seafloor. The image below illustrates the danger, showing huge amounts of methane over the Arctic Ocean on December 10, 2015.

Methane is released over the Arctic Ocean in large amounts, and this methane is moving toward the equator as it reaches high altitudes. The image below illustrates how methane is accumulating at higher altitudes.

Above image shows that methane is especially prominent at higher altitudes recently, having pushed up methane levels by an estimate average of 9 ppb or some 0.5%. Annual emissions from hydrates were estimated to amount to 99 Tg annually in a 2014 post (image below).

An additional 0.5% of methane represents an amount of some 25 Tg of methane. This comes on top of the 99 Tg of methane estimated in 2014 to be released from hydrates annually. 

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described at the Climate Plan.


Links

- How Close Are We to 'Dangerous' Planetary Warming? By Michael Mann, December 24, 2015http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/how-close-are-we-to-dangerous-planetary-warming_b_8841534.html

- Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission, by Katharine L Ricke and Ken Caldeira (2014)
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/12/124002/article

- How much time is there left to act?
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/how-much-time-is-there-left-to-act.html

During the three-month period from September through November 2015, it was 1°C warmer than it was in 1951-1980,...
Posted by Sam Carana on Wednesday, December 16, 2015

In my industry, when we are looking for information, we ask for "color", as in, "can I get some color on that sale at Nordstrom?" And the person would say, "it's tomorrow from 8 - 5." 

Here's a "bit of color" about me: 

I am reading two books (one for the bus on my Kindle, one hardback for home) and they are The Architects Apprentice and The Beekeepers Apprentice. It's a coincidence that both of them have the word Apprentice in them!! Both are good so far! The Architect is about Istanbul in the 1500s; the Beekeeper is about Sherlock Holmes. I hope to finish both by the end of the year, which will bring my total books read this year to 77 books. 

I am looking forward to this weekend, when we will have our group holiday dinner for work, next week, which is a short week where I will go and visit family and friends, and a good night's sleep, which I may not get for another week or so, but whenever I get it, it will be great. 

I am eating a lot of "comfort" foods lately. Soups, stews and desserts have been on the menu a lot lately, and I need to get back into the habit of eating more healthy. 

I am planning my running schedule for next year with hopefully a couple of vacation trips sprinkled in. It's hard to plan around 5 other people's schedules (only one of us can have a day off at a time at work), summer plans, family things and races!!! I know, it's a hard problem to have... 

I am putting off buying the last of my gifts. I have to buy a gift for a coworker's wife for our holiday party and I don't really know her well and I have no idea what to get her! 

What are you reading? What should I get my coworker's wife? 

This year has been a strange one for me. I would say I have been "busy" but I don't know if I have been any busier than I was last year, or the year before that. There is always something on the To Do list; there is always something to fill the time. (See this post from 2013 where I was having similar "issues").

However, for some reason, this year, I have felt more of a change in my mindset, or my motivation. Or maybe I have just shifted my priorities. I am not really sure what the catalyst was or where the mood started to shift, but this year, I feel like I have been slacking in a few of my normal, pleasurable departments.

I used to talk a lot about running on this space. In 2012, I think I ran almost 40 races, including 12 half marathons and 2 marathons and my first ultra. In 2013, I traveled to Boston, Washington DC and BC for races and I ran my first 50 miler. In 2014, I ran 10 races over 50k. This year, I started off great. I wanted to run my first 100 mile race. I was training in January and I felt strong. I was running up hills with gusto. Then I fell one day and sprained my ankle pretty badly and my training went downhill and my fitness started to decline. Of course, I still had races on the calendar, because a lot of the races you have to sign up for really early.

The first race was Jed Smith, which is a loop course. I ran it about 45 minutes slower than I had the year before. My ego took a dive. The next one was the Gorges 100k in Portland in March. I had not trained enough as my ankle was just beginning to feel better, and this one was not as fast as I would have liked either. Next up was Lake Sonoma 50M, where I did not do as well as I wanted but I actually did better than I thought I would. The weekend after that I had a road race, which hurt me more than all of the other races combined (I was sore for days!).

I had a few week gap, where I ran intermittently, and then came the big one, Quicksilver 100k, where I did much better than I thought I would and was actually very happy with my time. The "training" by way of racing actually worked this time. But I had signed up for another race the next weekend and this one was my nemesis. It's called the Silverstate 50M and it's near Reno and it's got a couple of huge climbs and it's at about 7000 - 8000 ft. Last year I ran it while injured and it was horrible. I got the worst time I have ever gotten and the last climb was torture. This year I actually felt pretty good for the first 40 miles, but then for the last 10 I felt nauseated and tired. I crossed the finish line and had to go and sit by myself in the porta-potty just in case I was going to lose my lunch.

In the weeks after that, I had no energy. BUT, what I haven't said is this. There is another component to the story. In February, I started house shopping. Every week I scoured the internet. Every weekend I went to open houses. Every couple of weeks, I put in offers that got turned down. Finally, in April, my offer got accepted and thus started the downhill slide into home ownership. My escrow was 21 days and it closed on May 19th, three days after Silverstate. So I was physically and mentally tired.

The trifecta of this story is that work also ramped up at this point in a major way. My duties and responsibilities were doubling and tripling. I am not complaining, but I am just saying that when I got home after work, the last thing I wanted to do was run. I wanted to sleep. I did not sleep. I pulled weeds and moved furniture. I made many trips to Home Depot and Target. I paid bills and sorted files and went through all my old clothes. But I barely ran.

Fast forward to now. Today my average miles per week are about 30, if I am lucky. I am snacking more than I would like. My pants are starting to get a bit snug. The only thing saving me is my daily commute to work. But who am I kidding; the commute is not saving me, it's only prolonging the inevitable. So I need to buck up and get back on the horse and stop making excuses.

But I don't want to. I would rather bake a cake (and eat half of it in one sitting while watching Top Chef and making excuses).

How do you get out of a slump? 

Strong winds and high waves are hitting the Arctic Ocean from both the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

Above image shows waves as high as 12.36 m or 40.5 ft near Greenland on December 8, 2015.

The image on the right shows cyclonic winds with speeds as high as 142 km/h or 88 mph near Greenland on December 8, 2015.

The image further down on the right shows that waves as high as 14.04 m or 46.1 ft are forecast to hit the Aleutian Islands on December 13, 2015. Strong winds and high waves are forecast to subsequently keep moving in the direction of the Arctic Ocean.

The image below shows strong winds and high waves that are heading for Arctic Ocean, with waves as high as 17.18 m or 56.4 ft forecast to be moving toward the Arctic Ocean on December 13, 2015.

As warming continues, this situation can be expected to get worse, with extreme weather events hitting the Arctic Ocean with ever greater intensity.

The video below, created with Climate Reanalyzer images, shows strong winds over the period from December 5 to 15, 2015. The video illustrates how cyclonic winds are hitting the Arctic Ocean both from the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

Such winds and waves can move a lot of warm water into the Arctic Ocean. There currently is only a very thin layer of sea ice present in the Bering Strait, which is prone to be broken up by strong waves. Moreover, warm water may move underneath the sea ice and cause warm water to mix down all the way to the seafloor, where it can destabilize sediments containing huge amounts of methane in the form of free gas and hydrates.

Furthermore, strong winds can dramatically speed up the currents that are moving sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean into the Atlantic Ocean. The Naval Research Laboratory animation below shows ice speed and drift, illustrating how strong winds are pushing huge amounts of sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean along the edge of Greenland into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Naval Research Laboratory animation below illustrates that the thicker sea ice has hardly grown recently, while large amounts of thick sea ice also get pushed out of the Arctic Ocean along the edge of Greenland into the Atlantic Ocean.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The image on the right shows that, on December 11, 2015, sea surface temperature anomalies off the east coast of North America were as high as 18.1°F or 10.0°C compared to the daily average during years 1981-2011.

At the same time, the lid over the North Atlantic is expanding, due to heavy melting of glaciers and due to the large amounts of sea ice that are getting pushed out of the Arctic Ocean by strong winds. Expansion of the freshwater lid over the North Atlantic is cooling the sea surface of North Atlantic and is making the atmosphere over the North Atlantic cooler than it would be without this lid, as it makes that less heat gets transferred from ocean to atmosphere, as discussed in earlier posts such as this one.

The result is a widening difference in atmospheric temperature between the area off the east coast of North America and the North Atlantic. This widening difference causes stronger winds to flow to the North Atlantic, in turn causing more sea ice to be moved out the the Arctic Ocean and further speeding up this feedback (#28 at the feedbacks page).

The end result is that, due to this loss of sea ice occurring now, the sea ice will be in a very bad shape when the melting season starts again next year. Furthermore, this expanding lid on the North Atlantic will prevent heat transfer from ocean to atmosphere, resulting in warmer water arriving in the Arctic Ocean below the sea surface.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.

Waves as high as 12.36 m or 40.5 ft near Greenland on December 8, 2015. From the post 'Strong winds and High Waves hit...
Posted by Sam Carana on Tuesday, December 8, 2015