Essential Reading For Budding Kindle Book Authors On Publishing And Promotion
Whether you’re a newbie publisher or a more established author, here is a trio of books from established authors that I found very useful and interesting. The following Kindle books are targeted at Kindle book publishing and Kindle book promotion.
First off John Locke’s How I Sold A Million eBooks In 5 Months.
John Locke, as i’m sure you all know – unless you’ve been on a desert island someplace – holds the mantle for becoming the world’s first self published Kindle author to sell over 1 million ebooks. His book on how he did it gives an honest and frank explanation of how he managed it, although I’m sure his books must also be very good to be selling by the bucket load. I’ve not read any yet, but millions have. An example of Mr Locke’s marketing skills is his ability to write a Western – hardly a popular genre – and make it a top selling Kindle book. Follow The Stone is still selling very very well. In fact, we are reminded from his website that “Every 7 seconds, 24 hours a day, a John Locke novel is downloaded somewhere in the world!” Not bad eh?
His book discusses the main promotional tools Twitter and blogging in some detail and his ability to reach potential readers through relevant and touching blogs which it seems go almost viral, spreading the word about his Kindle books in the process. See my Amazon review of his book HERE.
My second recommendation is Michael R Hicks’ book The Path To Self Publishing Success. Mr Hicks is a successful Kindle author with his SciFi “In Her Name” novels and recently gave up his day job after Kindle book sales took off. The guide gives a detailed account of all you need to know to turn your novel into a Kindle published book and then how to go about promoting it. Some interesting stuff about pricing structure, use of Twitter in particular and monetizing websites. Helps arm the author with the right tools to get on the path to Kindle publishing success. His novel Season Of The Harvest and its well worth a read. The authors website can be found HERE.
Finally, we have author J.A Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing. To be honest, I’m still only 75% through this ebook because it is one information-packed guide on literally (no pun intended) everything you need to know about the publishing industry. Here is a list of what the book contains;
BREAKING IN – Over forty essays on how to find an agent and sell your writing.
PUBLISHING – More than twenty essays about the publishing business, and how it works.
PROMOTION – Over fifty essays on marketing, advertising, and self-promotion.
TOURING – Extensive, in-depth details on how to do book tours and signings.
INTERNET – Dozens of essays on how writers can effectively use the world wide web.
EBOOKS – Speculation and real-life examples of digital publishing, the Kindle, print on demand, and self-publishing.
MOTIVATION – Over fifty essays guaranteed to enlighten and inspire your writing efforts.
Mr Konrath is the author of the Jack Daniels thriller series, where each novel is named after a well-known cocktail. His blog, A NEWBIE’S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING is essential reading for anyone wanting an insight into book publishing and promoting.
You really need to read this book to see how much effort this guy puts into promoting, touring and writing. In fact, I have no idea how he has time to blog! Amazing.
I hope this selection of helpful books helps you all in your writing careers. Good luck! Click the following link if you enjoy, or fancy trying ECO-THEMED THRILLERS.
Amazon KDP Select : Kindle Book Promotion
KDP Select is a relatively new promotional tool offered by Amazon to their Kindle authors who sign up to a 3 month exclusivity deal when you publish your ebook. You must agree to only publish your ebook on the Amazon Kindle platform to the exclusion of all other e-readers during the 3 month period. In return you get 5 days when you can offer your hard written book for free, and get the benefit of Amazon’s Kindle lending library.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?
You might be thinking? If your book is only available on the Kindle, what about all the lost sales from the other reading devices, The Nook, Sony or I-Pads that you probably service though your Smashwords account? Well, those sales will be lost, but how many sales were you really getting from those sources anyway?
I had 2 books selling via Smashwords and Kindle before I joined KDP Select. THE A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING and TIPPING POINT. Combined sales for both on Smashwords were about 10 a month. Sales via Kindle were a combined 30-40 a month. No big deal, but still sales. So, I decided to go exclusively with Amazon’s KDP Select programme and started by giving away Tipping Point for free for two days during the last weekend of January 2012.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Well, I was amazed to say the least. By Sunday evening, 4,500 copies of TIPPING POINT had been downloaded. Around 2500 in the UK and 2000 in the USA, not forgetting about 75 in Germany! So what’s the benefit of that You might ask? Well, 4,500 readers – hopefully they read and enjoyed the book – are now aware of me and my other two books, THE A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING and recently released Robert Spire thriller number 2 – IMPACT POINT.
Since then I’ve used all my 5 free giveaway days on both TIPPING POINT and IMPACT POINT. I’ve a few left for the A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING and I admit the subsequent giveaways weren’t downloaded at anywhere close to the level of the first 2 day giveaway of TIPPING POINT, but still a few hundred readers downloaded my books each time.
EFFECT ON GENERAL SALES
After the first free promotion ended, actual paid for sales of TIPPING POINT continued and I sold around 80 by the Monday morning and sales reached 360 for all 3 books in the month of February. That’s up from 30 sales for 2 books the month before joining KDP Select.
March sales were 152 for 3 books.
April sales so far are 92.
This translates to a quadrupling of sales following the free downloads after signing up for KDP Select.
AMAZON PRIME
Amazon Prime provides a free Kindle book lending service to Amazon customers. For an annual fee, Prime members receive free delivery of all Amazon products and can borrow one book a month from the lending library – you the author get paid however from money set aside by Amazon. The payment varies depending upon how many people have borrowed your books and how many other authors have lent theirs out. This month Amazon set aside $600,000. Payment is usually an amount equivalent to selling your book for $1.99 or so.
CONCLUSION
KDP Select increases your sales simply because the free downloads increase the visibility of your book both on Amazon’s rankings as the free books are downloaded and via the “Customers who bought this item also bought,” promotion. This has the overall effect of helping with your book sales as more and more readers become aware of it and the important part – hopefully enjoy reading it!
Well done Amazon!
Blue Whales And Asteroids
An unlikely combination I appreciate, but nonetheless the title sums up the story line of IMPACT POINT Kindle Thriller. So, how can whales and rocks from space be connected?
Well for one, both blue whales and asteroids and comets are pretty rare, but unlike asteroids and comets, blue whales are unlikely to harm you, unless of course your name is Moby Dick. OK, so it wasn’t a blue whale that got him, but you know what I mean! On the other hand, if a large asteroid or comet strikes the Earth, we would all be vaporized, much like the dinosaurs were 65 million years ago.
First of all, some facts. The blue whale is the largest creature that has lived, yes, even bigger than any dinosaur that ever existed. There are estimated to be only around 5-12,000 blue whales left in the world’s oceans, down from around 200,000 – 250,000 back at the start of the Twentieth Century, before man hunted them to virtual extinction. Thankfully their numbers are now increasing, but they still face numerous threats from shipping, global warming, increasing levels of ocean noise and being attacked by its natural predator, the orca whale.
In IMPACT POINT, Robert Spire’s adventure is kick started after a blue whale beaches itself in front of him on his local stretch of Welsh coastline. A second whale is discovered in South Carolina in the USA. What is the connection? It transpires that both whales have ingested the mineral olivine, to discover why, you’ll have to read the book otherwise i’ll give away too many spoilers! Suffice to say, Spire is helped in his task by marine biologist Dr Sally Rivea; her name is actually an anagram for Dr Sylvia Earle – American oceanographer and author of many a book on the world’s oceans and its lifeforms.
What about the space rocks? My fascination began long ago, when I first read about the massive comet that wiped out the dinosaurs. That comet is thought to have been 10 kilometers wide and left an impact crater – the Chicxulub crater – 180 km in diameter and 10 km deep in the Yucatan Peninsular of Mexico, which just happens to be the ancient home of the Mayans, who just happen to foretell the end of the world in December 2012, but that’s another story…
Back to space rocks. First some facts.
Asteroids, leftovers from the formation of our solar system generally reside in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and there are millions of them.
Near Earth asteroids have orbits that take them close to the Earth. NASA has found 19,500 objects between 100 meters and 1000 meters in size to date. There are 981 over 1000 meters in size, with an estimated 70 objects over 1000 meters still undetected. In November 2011, an aircraft-sized asteroid 2005 YU55 passed by Earth at only 201,700 miles away, closer than the Moon!
The next closest approach that we know about will be Apophis, when on Friday, April 13th – yes, that’s the genuine date – it will pass by at only around 18,300 miles away, a very close shave. Needless to say, NASA are keeping a close eye on it!
Meteoroids are generally classified as space rocks less than 10 meters across – these are the shooting stars that people often spot streaking across the night sky.
Comets are icy bodies with nuclei – ranging from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers across – comprised of ice, dust and rock. Just over 4000 are known about. The comet or asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was about 10 kilometers across.
Centaurs are objects that display characteristics of both comets and asteroids. They have unstable orbits that cross one or more of the giant planets. It is estimated there are about 44,000 of them with diameters over 1 kilometer.
Pholus, one such Centaur is thought to be partly composed of olivine.
So, if the above facts don’t scare you a little, try IMPACT POINT. Your thoughts when looking up at the night sky will never be the same again!
NASA’s Missing Moon Rocks and new Kindle Thriller - IMPACT POINT.
“The US space agency Nasa recently announced that many of the Moon rocks brought back to Earth from two Apollo space missions have gone missing. They were given as gifts to the nations of the world. So what happened to them?
Towards the end of the Apollo 17 mission on 13 December 1972, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt – the last men to have set foot on the Moon – picked up a rock.
Cernan announced: “We’d like to share a piece of this rock with so many of the countries throughout the world.”
His wish was fulfilled.
President Richard Nixon ordered that the brick-sized rock be broken up into fragments and sent to 135 foreign heads of state and the 50 US states.
Each “goodwill Moon rock” was encased in a lucite ball and mounted on a wooden plaque with the recipient nations’ flag attached.
Moon rock collected during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 was also distributed to the same nations and US states.
There were 370 pieces gathered for this purpose from the two missions. Two hundred and seventy were given to nations of the world and 100 to the 50 US states.
But 184 of these are lost, stolen or unaccounted for – 160 around the world and 24 in the US.
The rocks were distributed to countries ranging from Afghanistan to Trinidad and Tobago.
“Gaddafi’s government was given two Moon rocks – they’re missing. Romania is missing its Apollo 17 goodwill Moon rock,” says Joseph Gutheinz Jr, the Texas-based lawyer and former Nasa agent, who has become known as the “Moon rock hunter”. His search continues… story credited to BBC News
Speaking of missing Moon rocks, New Robert Spire thriller IMPACT POINT out now on the Kindle involves Spire in the investigation of multiple blue whale deaths after two of the world’s largest ever creatures wash up on both sides of the Atlantic. The mystery deepens following the discovery of the mineral olivine in the mammal’s blood.
The death of philanthropist Julian Smithies in the USA opens up a new lead after a rare and valuable olivine-rich meteorite is stolen from his home.
Spire finds himself on a dangerous adventure as he and marine biologist Dr Sally Rivea travel to the Bahamas in an attempt to uncover the clues. The more they discover, the more the terrifying truth is revealed. Can the seemingly inevitable cataclysm be prevented?
Robert Spire’s latest adventure might be the world’s last…
A-Z of Global Warming - Free on Amazon Kindle!
Interested in climate change? Global Warming? The environment? If so, get your hands on a free copy of A-Z of Global Warming today! Educate your Kindle with an A-Z guide on the complex subject for FREE!
Tipping Point - Free on Amazon Kindle!
TIPPING POINT Eco-Action thriller was free on the Kindle between 28th-29th January 2012, and i was amazed that 4250 Kindle owners downloaded it within 48 hours! To all those who grabbed the chance, i thank you. Hope you enjoy the read, if so please leave a review on Amazon if you get the chance…they all help!
Drop by for more free giveaways in the weeks and months to ahead...
Amazon and global warming
THE AMAZON
We start our A–Z journey on global warming with the Amazon Rainforest, which has an incredibly important role to play in maintaining balance in the Earth’s climate, in ways that are only just being understood. The Amazon is inextricably linked to the issue of global warming and therefore a very good place to start our inquiry into what may be the biggest threat to our existence on this planet.
AMAZON FACTS
The Amazon river basin contains the largest rainforest on Earth and covers approximately forty per cent of the South American continent. The rainforest is located in eight countries. Brazil has sixty per cent, with Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana between them containing the rest. The Amazon forest is a natural reservoir of genetic diversity, containing the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest that exists. The Amazon contains an amazing thirty per cent of Earth’s species. One square kilometre can sustain about 90,000 tons of living plants! It’s also amazing to consider that one in five of all the birds in the world make the rainforest their home. The Amazon basin is drained by the Amazon River, the world’s second longest after the Nile. The river is essentially the lifeline of the forest. It is the most voluminous on Earth and itsdaily freshwater discharge into the Atlantic is enough to supply New York City’s freshwater needs for nine years! New measurements recently taken by scientists, however, suggest that the Amazon may actually be the longest river in the world. No doubt this will be confirmed if true, at some point in the future!
A few thousand years ago tropical rainforests covered as much as twelve per cent of the Earth’s land surface, but today the figure is below five per cent. The largest stretch of rainforest can be found in the Amazon river basin, over half of which is situated in Brazil.
Why is the Amazon so important in the context of global warming?
The rainforest acts as a major store of carbon and produces enormous amounts of oxygen. The Amazon has been referred to as ‘the lungs of the Earth’ because of its affect on the climate. The way this is achieved is of course through photosynthesis, the process by which green plants and trees use the energy from sunlight to produce food by taking CO2 from the air and water and converting it to carbon. The by-product of this is oxygen. The Amazon therefore helps recycle CO2 by turning it into oxygen, and it is estimated that the Amazon produces about twenty per cent of this essential gas for Earth’s atmosphere.
Trees, plants and CO2
Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been measured since 1958, from a monitoring station located on Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. They show sharp annual increases and decreases in CO2 levels, similar to the tooth on a saw. The readings seem to mimic a breath of air being taken in and out, almost as if the Earth is breathing. They correspond to the amount of vegetation on the planet (most of which is in the northern hemisphere, as the landmass there is greater), taking in CO2, and giving out oxygen. During summer in the northern hemisphere, when the Earth is tilted towards the sun, Earth’s vegetation is able to photosynthesise, resulting in an uptake of CO2, causing worldwide CO2 levels to drop. In winter in the northern hemisphere, when Earth’s axis is tilted away from the sun, the opposite happens, causing CO2 levels to rise again. When one becomes aware of the correlation between the Earth’s vegetation and CO2 levels, it is easy to understand why the Amazon, and rainforests in general, are such an important part of Earth’s ecosystem.
The problem is, however, that although the measurements taken at the volcano in Hawaii show sharp up and down annual readings, the measurements also show a simultaneous steady upward trend in CO2 levels. The importance of CO2 in relation to global warming will be a recurring theme throughout this book, and will be looked at further in Chapter C.
What has been happening in the Amazon?
A worrying trend is the Amazon having experienced two consecutive years of drought, in 2005 and 2006. The drought in 2006, which left rivers dry, stranded thousands of villagers, and put regional commerce at a standstill, was the worst on record. A second year of drought is of great concern to researchers studying the Amazon ecosystem. Field studies by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Research Centre in the USA, suggest that Amazon forest ecosystems may not withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without starting to break down. Severe drought weakens forest trees and dries leaf litter leaving forests susceptible to land-clearing fires set during the July-October period each year. According to the Woods Hole Research Centre, it also puts forest ecosystems at risk of shifting into a savannah-like state.
A recent experiment carried out by a team of researchers suspended 5,600 large plastic panels between 1 and 4 metres (3.2– 13.1 feet) above the ground to mimic severe drought conditions, where as much as eighty per cent of a one-hectare plot is deprived of eighty per cent of rainfall. Measuring rainfall, soil moisture, leaf and canopy characteristics over time, it was found that after four years the rainforest trees began to die while leaf litter dried and became tinder for wild fires.
Another factor is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event, a climatic phenomenon that influences much of the climate in the region, particularly Northeast Brazil, and the northern Amazon. ENSO brings with it dry conditions in the above areas, and manmade climate change is thought to increase this naturally occurring phenomenon in the future. ENSO is further looked at in Chapter W. Some climate models have suggested that temperatures in the Amazon may increase by 2 to 3°C (3.6–5.4°F) by the year 2050, together with a decrease in rainfall during the dry period. If the drought continues, based on the results of the aforementioned experiment, 2007/8 could be a turning point for the forest, which may mean that a tipping point will be reached where the forest will start to die, with catastrophic consequences for Earth’s climate. If this trend continues, according to the WWF, between thirty and sixty per cent of the Amazon rainforest could become dry savannah, rendering the forest a source of CO2 instead of a sink/store of it, which it currently is.
There are ways in which we can all help try and sustain this vast and ecologically important expanse of rainforest, and these will be discussed in Chapter Y. The Amazon will be further considered in Chapter D, where the problem of deforestation is looked at.
Key points
The Amazon rainforest contains about thirty per cent of Earth’s species.
World rainforest cover has over thousands of years decreased from twelve per cent to five per cent.
The Amazon helps to recycle CO2, a gas which contributes to global warming and while doing so produces about twenty per cent of Earth’s oxygen.
CO2 levels rise and fall with the seasons. There is greater landmass and hence vegetation in the northern hemisphere, which means that when Earth is tilted towards the sun during northern summertime, CO2 levels drop as a result of there being greater uptake of CO2 from photosynthesis. During the winter, the opposite happens and CO2 levels rise again.
Enjoy this excerpt? If so, download your copy of THE A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING(US) (UK) now on Kindle or available on paperback.
IMPACT POINT - Action-adventure
thriller. 2012: The end of the world?
MYSTERIOUS WHALE DEATHS…
When the World’s largest ever creature – a blue whale – dies in front of Robert Spire on his local Welsh beach, the UKs Department of the Environment and local population are ill prepared. When a second whale washes up dead on Myrtle Beach on the opposite side of the Atlantic, the scientific community starts asking questions.
A QUEST FOR METEORITE FRAGMENTS…
Environmental lawyer Robert Spire; newly recruited to the UKs Global Environmental Command Unit – GLENCOM, flies over to South Carolina to investigate. Whilst there, he meets marine biologist Dr Sally Rivea, also assigned to the case. Meanwhile, ex-marine Travis Dexter is on the run in Nevada after he discovers the body of his employer – philanthropist Julian Smithies- murdered in his home. The only object missing is a recently discovered, rare and valuable meteorite.
A FUTURE GLOBAL CATACLYSM…
On the island of Andros In the Bahamas, four sport divers make a startling discovery at the bottom of Mystery Cave blue hole. Sixty miles offshore in the Caribbean Sea, drilling on the Proteus oil rig turns to disaster as the drill penetrates something hard on the ocean floor. Dr Rivea, at a loss to explain the high levels of the mineral olivine in the whale’s tissue samples, accompanies Spire to the Caribbean in search of answers, but what they discover doesn’t bear thinking about…
ECO-THRILLERS: A NEW GENRE?
Perhaps it’s time to treat your Kindle to a new thriller? How about an Eco-thriller? This blog is devoted to the books currently out there which combine action, adventure and thrills, with a threat – either natural or man-made – to the environment, which results in local or even global disaster and destruction. Sound like a good recipe? Read on…
You don’t have to be a ‘Tree-hugger’ – no offence to trees or hugging intended – to enjoy these types of books. In fact, although these titles are all fictional, not only do you get a decent story and fast-paced read, but the books are quite often very informative and laced with science, so the reader also usually learns something in the process…What could be better?
Eco-thrillers have actually been around for a good while. The 1950s and 1960s were laced with “Our planet is getting mad" themes, which were told through the numerous science fiction films that came out during that period.
“The Day The Earth Stood Still,” based on author Harry Bates’ short 1940s story, “Farewell To The Master,” which came with a message from outer space that Earth needed to be saved from mankind, is probably one of the most well-known of those films, but I dare say, not many people have heard of the book, or even the author.
More recently, movies such as “The Day After Tomorrow,” about the sudden halting of the Atlantic Ocean Thermohaline Circulation, based on the 1999 book, “The Coming Global Superstorm,” by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell, and Richard Matheson’s last man on the planet, “I am Legend,” based on a book of the same title, actually written in 1954, brought environmental disaster movies to the masses.
These are great examples of the eco-thriller disaster genre, which are based on books from decades ago. We also have British authors like JG Ballard who, in 1962 wrote “The Drowned World,” a story about solar radiation melting the poles, causing soaring temperatures which leave Europe and North America submerged in tropical lagoons.
Another British author, Charles Eric Maine was writing eco-thrillers back in 1958 with “The Tide Went Out,” about mankind’s nuclear tests busting open the Earth’s crust which causes all the ocean’s to run into the planet’s interior, and you guessed it, environmental disaster ensues…great stuff!
So, it seems the eco-thriller genre is really a sub-genre which has been around for decades, just more usually dressed up as science fiction it would seem.
I have read a decent selection of eco-thrillers and also written one myself. Below is a little information on my favourites. You can make your own minds up as to whether you think this genre is for you. There is also a list of the books that I haven’t yet read, but ones that are certainly on my Kindle download list!
I’m actually surprised that the eco-thriller genre doesn’t have its own niche on Amazon, but maybe that will change soon, as there’s plenty of great books out there. Whilst the world doesn’t face the same kind of threats as it did in the 1950s, one hopes, it does face mounting environmental ones. This should mean that the eco-thriller genre will be around for a long time to come.
Let’s just hope we're all around long enough to read them...!
So, in no particular order then, here’s my list;
The Rapture by Liz Jenson.
When a wheel-bound psychologist is assigned to help a young girl locked up in an asylum to decipher her seemingly crazy rants and random scribbling’s of natural disasters, her first thoughts are that the girl is crazy. When certain events appear to come true however, it soon appears that the girl might not be deranged as first thought, but have the ability to foresee a future global environmental catastrophe.
A well written, pacey novel with an interesting subject matter – 3.5 eco-stars
Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd.
Not so much an eco-thriller, but included on the basis that the main protagonist is a climate scientist. This book is about Adam Kindred who, following a fleeting meeting with a man in a restaurant has his life turned upside down after he has to go off radar in London whilst all the while trying to prove his innocence following a murder he didn’t commit.
A vividly written novel with simmering drama – 3 eco-stars
Arctic Drift by Clive Cussler.
The master of adventure novels pulls off another great adventure-thriller with a global warming/environmental theme. Dirk Pitt becomes involved with a search for a mineral which may be capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Expect science, thrills, adventure, action and good story-telling – 4.5 eco-stars
Tipping Point by Si Rosser – yes me!
An action-adventure thriller with an environmental twist is the best way I could describe my book. Robert Spire, the main character is an environmental lawyer, but little time is devoted in the book to any legal back-story, this is no legal thriller. Instead Spire is immersed in a global adventure following the mysterious deaths of two climatologists. Action and thrills take place in Wales, London, Paris, San Francisco and the Arctic as Spire goes on a quest in search of answers. Meanwhile global environmental disaster looms…
I won’t rate my own book, but here’s what the readers are saying;
“Tip top global adventure”
“Enjoyable action-thriller”
“Great yarn, couldn’t put it down”
“Well-crafted environmental thriller”
“Simmering suspense”
Terminal Freeze by Lincoln Child.
This book I thought was a great read. Again, you could argue that this is a techno-thriller, but in my view it has all the elements of an eco-thriller. A team of scientists monitoring climate change near an old disused Artic base discover something – a prehistoric creature frozen solid in an ice cave. The sponsors of a nature programme funding the project fly in to film the creature as it is thawed from its ancient resting place. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose!
Fast-paced, scary, vividly written Arctic thriller – 4.5 eco-stars
Here’s another bunch of great sounding eco-thrillers that are on my to read list; Enjoy!
Freezing Point and Boiling Point
I Am Legend
The Tide Went Out
Drowned World
Wet Desert
Thaw
The Wave
Wildfire
Vapor Trails
Melting Down
Ultimatum
Cold Earth
Flood
No More Ice
The term ‘albedo’ is used to determine how well a surface reflects solar energy. A surface with an albedo of zero means that it is a perfect absorber of the sun’s energy, such as a black surface. An albedo of one means that the surface is a perfect reflector, such as a white surface. Sea ice will reflect about fifty to seventy per cent of the sun’s energy. Open sea reflects about six per cent, whereas snow-covered ice about ninety per cent, simply because it’s white and therefore has a higher reflective surface.
Just as the Amazon regulates climate by absorbing and storing huge amounts of CO2, the ice-covered regions of Earth act much in the same way, by regulating temperature and reflecting large amounts of solar energy back into space. If these regions melt, then not only will ocean levels rise but temperatures will also increase.
HOW IS THE ARCTIC RESPONDING TO GLOBAL WARMING ?
The North pole sits right in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, which is fenced in by eight different countries. During the winter the ice extends over the entire ocean and onto the fringes of the land. During the summer, the ice retreats back into the ocean. Air temperatures in the region have, on average, increased by about 5°C (9°F) over the last 100 years, which is higher than anywhere else on the planet. This has caused Arctic sea ice to decrease by about fourteen per cent since the 1970s.
The local Inuit population have started to notice the warmer summers, the earlier break-up of the ice in spring, and extensive areas of melting permafrost in places like Alaska and Siberia. This in turn is affecting their hunting season, foundations of properties and other infrastructure in the region. Arctic sea ice has been measured by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) and NASA, using satellite data, and the findings are that massive reductions in sea ice are occurring at the end of the northern summer.
The sea ice extends to about 15,000,000 square kilometres (5,792,000 square miles) during winter, and down to an average 7,000,000 square kilometres (2,703,000 square miles) during the summer. It therefore loses just over fifty per cent of ice cover after the summer melt season. The annual average extent of Arctic sea ice has decreased by about three per cent per decade since about 1980, which is the equivalent of an area of about 750,000 square kilometres (289,575 square miles). The amount of ice left after the summer melt is also decreasing by about 7.7 per cent each decade.
NSIDC measures Arctic sea-ice extent, or the area of ocean that is covered by at least fifteen per cent ice, which typically reaches its minimum in September, at the end of the summer melt season.
In 2007, NSIDC data reveals that Arctic sea ice during the 2007 melt season plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979. The September sea-ice minimum went down to 4,130,000 square kilometres (1,594,000 square miles), the lowest September on record, shattering the previous record for the month, set in 2005, by twenty-three per cent. Computer models however have predicted the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer months from 2080 if the overall warming trend continues.
In March 2007, a fire onboard the British nuclear submarine HMSTireless forced it to the surface. Two sailors died in the explosion. The Navy had been conducting tests under the Arctic and the data retrieved indicated that the summer Arctic sea ice may actually be gone by as soon as 2020. This however appears to be a worst-case scenario.
Arctic sea ice is about 2 to 3 metres (6.5 to 9.8 feet) thick on average, so a loss of 7,000,000 square kilometres (2,703,000 square miles) times 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) (thickness) is a considerable amount of water. Melting sea ice however does not necessarily add much to sea-level rise when it melts, much like melting ice cubes in a glass do not cause the glass to overflow. Melting glaciers and ice-covered continents however are a different matter and when they melt, sea levels will rise.
A new NASA-led study found a twenty-three per cent loss in the extent of the Arctic’s thick year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. The scientists discovered less perennial sea ice in March 2007 than ever before. This drastic reduction is the primary cause of this summer’s fastest-ever sea-ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.
Record summer melting has also meant that the usually frozen Northwest Passage waterway, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific, has become fully navigable, a fact that may raise tensions between Canada, which maintains that the waterway lies in its territorial waters, and other countries in the region. The race is now on to exploit the Arctic’s natural resources as oil companies drill for oil there. A disaster along the lines of the Deepwater-Horizon spill, would be cataclysmic.
For a recent news article showing stark photographic differences over time between Himalayan glaciers, click here.
For more information on the subject of climate change, check out THE A-Z OF GLOBAL WARMING, the above article is taken from chapter N – No More Ice!
Alternatively for a fast paced eco-thriller, involving a race to prevent the Arctic from melting, give your Kindle a treat and try TIPPING POINT.
