IPCC Busted?!

This Reuters story reports that the Arctic Ocean is melting a lot faster than predicted in the (deliberately conservative) IPCC reports.

the ocean at the top of the world could be free or nearly free of summer ice by 2020, three decades sooner than the global panel's gloomiest forecast of 2050.

No ice on the Arctic Ocean during summer would be a major spur to global warming, said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado.



Ice has a very high albedo, reflecting most incoming light back into space, but open water has a low albedo, hence less ice means more sunlight absorbed.

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