2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #34

A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Aug 16, 2020 through Sat, Aug 22, 2020

Editor’s Choice

Expedition shares scary photos from the North Pole

Loose and weak ice with lots of melt ponds, partly open water, and no signs of multiyear ice. The powerful photos from the MOSAiC expedition reaching the North Pole on August 19 show the dramatic impact of climate changes.

Arctic Sea Ice MOSAiC Expedition Icebreaker Aug 2020

The sea ice is surprisingly weak, has lots of melt ponds, and the expedition ship Polarstern was able to easily break through. Photo: Steffen Graupnerice / MOSAiC

Few photos are better proof of the climate crisis than those taken by the members of the MOSAiC expedition over the last few days. The Barents Observer has obtained permission to repost some of them, showing the current ice-cap on the top of the world.

The photos clearly underline how several recent climate studies, predicting ice-free Arctic summers by 2035, is not a theoretical scenario but rather an unavoidable fact.

The expedition ship Polarstern sailed from the northern Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard to the North Pole this week.

“I’m very surprised to see how soft and easy to traverse the ice up to 88° North is this year, having thawed to the point of being thin and porous,” said Captain Thomas Wunderlich.

“Even after passing 88° North we mostly maintained a speed of 5-7 knots; I’ve never seen that so far north,” the Polarstern captain said.

He added: “The current situation is historic.”

Expedition shares scary photos from the North Pole by Thomas Nilsen, The Barents Observer, Aug 20, 2020


Articles Linked to on Facebook

Sun, Aug 16, 2020

Mon, Aug 17, 2020

Tue, Aug 18, 2020

Wed, Aug 19, 2020

Thu, Aug 20, 2020

Fri, Aug 21, 2020

Sat, Aug 22, 2020