Urgent Frontiers: Earth Systems Science Eyes Trouble in Both Hemispheres

Image Credit: NOAA. Shows arctic haze, suspected to be responsible for increasing the artic ice melt.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080407132120.html

Science Daily recently reported on a NOAA Airborne science campaign: The Arctic is changing before our eyes,” said A.R. Ravishankara, director of the chemistry division at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “Capturing in detail the processes behind this large and surprisingly rapid transformation is a unique opportunity for understanding climate changes occurring elsewhere.”

Observations from instruments on the ground, balloons, and satellites show the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe. Summer sea-ice extent has decreased by nearly 40 percent compared to the 1979–2000 average, and the ice is thinning.

Industry, transportation, and biomass burning in North America, Europe, and Asia are emitting trace gases and tiny airborne particles that are polluting the polar region, forming an “Arctic Haze” every winter and spring. Scientists suspect these pollutants are speeding up the polar melt.

NOAA is mounting an airborne campaign to assess the impact of arctic haze on the accelerating melt of arctic ice.
For further discussion regarding rapid recession of the arctic, I suggest readers see Al Gore's newest global warming presentation. Gore claims scientists are taken aback by the rapid loss of the north pole, and that the pole will be gone in 5 years. This in turn, according to Gore, will place increasing pressure upon the Greenland ice sheet. (Gore video from TED is at the headline).

Meanwhile, the 2008 hurricane projections promise a busy season- not as bad as 2005, but well above the norm. More importantly, accumulated evidence from the last several years show a higher probability of storm landfall.
Some key climate experts attribute this to normal Atlantic variability, and not to climate change, per se. Others are not so sure.
Earth systems science will be called up to continue to step up and attempt to determine if these northern and southern troubling, and potentially catastrophic, phenomena are related. The question is: will U.S. climate resources for this research be made available before, or after, the next American climate calamity reaches our shores?