Home for a week

CHICAGO, IL -- I don't even remember the last time I was home for more than a full week. It must have been last Thanksgiving in 2011. I have taken a whole bunch of weekends, long weekends, and really long weekends, but I have yet to actually spend so much time at home - it is nice to be back!

I am flying back to California later tonight but will be back here this weekend and then again in early October for the upcoming Chicago Marathon!!! One thing that has been nice is running in different places here - I have done the same routes in California for 14 weeks in a row, with very slight differences. This past week I got in 5, 8, 5, and 12 mile runs in the Deer Grove Forest Preserve, one of the two trails I originally ran a few years ago when I first got into running. It is also home to the Midtown 5K, the first running race I ever did, way back in 2004. I got to participate in both 2010 and 2011, but sadly will have to miss this year's event. Anybody in the Chicago area looking for a great 5K to do (90% on asphalt and in the forest preserve), this year it will be on September 29th at 8:30am. All proceeds go to Bears Care charity.

Luckily it has been fantastic weather the past week. I got rained on a couple of times, which actually felt nice for a change (don't even remember the last time it rained in LA), and overall it has been 70s and sunshine - perfect for running and anything else. I hope it's the same weather for the marathon day. I'd gladly take a 55F temperature at the start and only warming into the upper 60s/low 70s! Fingers crossed!

One of the best parts about the week was taking the red-eye Sunday night (okay, so red-eyes suck, but I got bumped up to first class) and into ORD Monday very early. I told my immediate family, but being here for our family barbecue on Labor Day was a surprise for all of my extended family! It was great to see everyone. I worked the rest of the week, and then Saturday got to do a few information meetings for People to People. Two of the meetings were for delegations traveling to Australia, which was very exciting given I just got back from Australia a month and a half ago, and will be there again over New Years. I think all of the families were excited and understood the opportunity at hand, and I am very excited for those students who will be traveling abroad this summer!

Yesterday I met up with some friends and watched the most pathetic three and a half minutes of professional sports I have seen in at least five years. After that insanity came to an end, the Chicago Bears came out and whopped the Indianapolis Colts 41-21 on the first NFL Sunday of the year. It was a nice cool fall day too - we ordered some deep dish pizza and enjoyed.

Today has been a particularly productive work day - I have been cranking for the most part, with a nice lunch break and then a quick trip to the township office to get a new passport! The application fee (for a renewal) was $110, which is less than I remembered it being, a nice surprise. I was even more pleasantly surprised to find out that for no additional charge, you can request a 52 page passport instead of the standard 28 page version. This is particularly useful for anybody who has ever needed to get extra pages. My passport is only 5 1/2 years old (I could have continued using it for another 4 years), but since extra pages cost the same, I figured I'd rather just get a new passport with new binding, a new photo, etc. I did all of that and then through some emotional pain, handed over my current passport (required along with the application for a renewal). Why pain? That passport has stamps from all 7 continents in it, and I have a 50% success rate in getting old passports back from the State Department. I really hope I see it again along with the new one. It also still has some valid visas within it that can still be traveled on (along with the new passport) - Argentina, Brazil, and Turkey to name a few. It is also very strange not being able to hop on a plane and go absolutely anywhere on a whim. Not that I had plans to do that at the moment, but I feel very restricted. Hopefully it only takes them a few weeks to get the new one!

Alright, time to finish some work and then head out to the airport. The rest of the week will pretty much be cranking on work the entire time, but I'll be back for my cousin Elliott's Bar Mitzvah this Saturday! Have a great week everybody!

Arctic Sea Ice Reaches Record-Low

August 27, 2012

BURBANK, CA -- First off, a very happy birthday to my Grandma Joan in Texas! We celebrated with her a couple of weeks ago, but today is her actual 80th birthday.

Today we got evidence back from NASA's earth-monitoring satellites that confirmed Arctic (northern) sea ice has reached a record-low, as monitored yesterday (August 26, 2012). As Earth continues to warm, this is more or less expected every few years. Nonetheless, as the records are consistently broken, we have yet greater evidence proving global warming and rapidly accelerating global warming in the Arctic and Antarctic.

The previous record-low for Arctic sea ice was September 18, 2007 (see image below).

The fact that the record has been broken some three weeks earlier this time means that while the record was broken as of yesterday, the ultimate low is going to shatter the record. In 2007, minimum sea ice extent covered 1.61 million square miles. Yesterday sea ice covered 1.58 million square miles, but for the next few weeks, that is expected to continue to decrease. On average, the annual minimum occurs in mid-September.

Sea ice on August 26, 2012, yesterday. The line is the average minimum extent from 1979-2010.

One thing that the satellite data does not show is the thickness of the ice. Submarine data, by contrast, has proven that the sea ice is not only shrinking in surface area coverage, but it is indeed thinning too (this makes logical sense, but from a scientific standpoint it is important to clarify). It is this thinning that leaves sea ice susceptible to strong storms. Indeed, two weeks ago a huge storm came through and took a ton of sea ice with it. A few decades ago, the ice would have been thick enough for the same storm to have little-to-no impact.

Why is any of this important? Well, there are a bunch of reasons, but I will give you the two most important ones. Obviously melting ice turns to water. Arctic sea ice sits on the ocean, so the net result is as more sea ice melts, global sea levels rise. Melting another million square miles of sea ice would have an enormous impact in low-lying areas (Maldives and Tuvalu are appropriately-cited examples of countries that will literally disappear with such large sea level rises, but the impacts will occur worldwide - Manhattan wouldn't fare so well if these trends continue either). The second biggest impact, I would argue, is in a loss of planetary albedo. Snow and ice reflect massive amounts of sunlight and heat from the sun right back into space. Water and land, by contrast, do more to absorb heat instead of reflecting it away. This is a downward spiral effect. As there is less sea ice, more heat is absorbed into Earth's atmosphere. This in turn increases temperatures and thus melts more sea ice. The key is to stop this cycle before it becomes a runaway freight train. Cynics would argue it is already too late. I disagree - everyone can do their part to reduce their carbon footprints and thus the corresponding impact on global warming. Buy an electric or hybrid car. Stop driving so much. Recycle almost everything (a good goal that is also realistic is 75% of your waste should be recycled). Buy energy star electronic products, live and work in LEED-certified buildings, buy renewable energy from your utility providers, and use them yourself too. Charge your cell phone in your car instead of your house. Or in your house, use mini solar panels instead of the wall. Taken individually there is not a huge impact. On a global scale, it is a truly global impact.

UPDATE - Check out this article (September 6) about the impact of the continuing decrease in Arctic ice levels. This is going to have a huge impact on climate cycles in Alaska, Canada, and much more so in the UK and Norway.

UPDATE 2 - Another article linking the Arctic sea ice decline to global warming, this time from the Christian Science Monitor.