You know what's missing in #scicomm ? A repeated reminder why losing #Arctic #seaice is so bad.
Am just reading again something about #WillSteffen where he mentions it and had to stop and think hard: why is that bad, again?
Not only do #PolarBear cubs lose their playgrounds for growing up on when summer seaice dwindles and eventually, is gone.
We lose the known weather patterns, too. Bad for agriculture. *
Bad for human and animal health, including insects, when heatwave length and heatwave occurrence increase. Pollinators lose fertility in heatwaves; offspring conceived in heatwaves has yet lower fertility, and so on.
Stationary heat in In Alaska's and Canada's warmed-up rivers is bad news for salmon – and that is bad news for other animals which used to feed on them.
With less sea ice, #permafrost thaw also speeds up. ...
When the #jetstream slows down in summer in lower temperature difference from pole to equator due to lack of seaice,
stationary heat evaporates water from boreal forest and causes bigger fires. So we lose a carbon sink. And in Siberian cities but also in Moscow, the air in summer becomes unbreathable from the smoke.
In the permafrost regions, the ignited peat from a fire started in summer heatwaves can smoulder on through winter under the snow, and burn again in earnest next spring, hot or not. #GhostFire
* A PNAS paper last year explained that the Azores high expands then, and pushes the Iceland low AND its rains, further North. Regions fall dry which used to get their summer rain from the Iceland low (or even winter snow – when the Azore high expands in winter but due to #AMOC slowdown).
Northern Italy, France, the Alpes, Benelux, Germany... dry when we lose sea ice.
And northern Europe receives more rain. Maybe too much - causing flooding, esp. in cities and around deforested areas.
Not sure now about North Africa and Spain and Portugal. The Mediterranean IS influenced by the (then expanding) Azores high. But I don't know how and I don't know details of the Mediterranean's own "weather regions" and how they interact with Azores high expansion.
Arctic sea ice, and lack thereof, also impacts China's monsoon. But I forgot how.
Lastly, what I'm also not quite sure about, right now, is an interaction between lack of sea ice in the Barents Sea, La Nina, and the occurrence of #SuddenStratosphericWarming #SSW in winter. IIRC, a paper suggested statistical connection of the three but lacked an explanation for the potential cause.
After a SSW in winter, the polar vortex collapses and cold air leaps south. Then Texas' power grid falters and Europe has to turn up heating. If SSW occurs in spring, like last March 31st, and the year before, it kills the potentially already budding plants, like cherry trees.
If loss of sea ice does result in more frequent SSW, loss of crop increases.
Now, because that paper made the statistical connection between #LaNina, #BarentsSea ice, and SSW,
I add another paper (Matt England et al) to the mix: if AMOC slows down, they suggested last year, it causes a permanent La Nina state.
A permanent La Nina state, beyond its well-own implications in terms of drought or flooding in various world regions,
together with dwindling sea ice, would then increase the frequency of SSW events.
More cold snaps.
And more crop loss if the SSWs occur in spring.
Ha. I do remember quite a lot of stuff wrt Arctic sea ice. It's just hard to keep it all in short-term memory, tho, for when I'm reading or watching #clicomm scicomm.
I should condense what I know into succinct but complete bullet points I can memorize 
regained 
air defense systems in 
airspace 2.5km into the territory in the eastern part of the Gulf of 
& 
to send a 
A raging fire has ignited on a Russian anti-submarine ship which has been taking part in war games alongside vladolf 
