Arctic Sea Ice Discussion 2015: The Melt Season

[keithlucky]

As far as Arctic warming is concerned the snow went before the ice!

 

Earlier and earlier melt out dates were being recorded at the end of last century and the noughties saw this trend step up. Obviously the loss of land/ocean snow cover leads to lower albedo and so higher temps ( record high temps are constantly being set around the basin since snow cover failed).

Funny that with all the doom and gloom around Arctic sea ice seems quite stable, Piomas records Arctic sea is at 2 meters thick ,same as 2006 http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/Bpiomas_plot_daily_heff.2sst.png

Edited June 13, 2015 by keithlucky

[BornFromTheVoid]

 

Funny that with all the doom and gloom around Arctic sea ice seems quite stable, Piomas records Arctic sea is at 2 meters thick ,same as 2006 http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/Bpiomas_plot_daily_heff.2sst.png

 

Average thickness is not the same as average volume.

Arctic sea ice could be reduced to a sliver of 5 meter thick ridged ice and you'd be claiming massive recovery because the average thickness has grown.

[stewfox]

 

Average thickness is not the same as average volume.

Arctic sea ice could be reduced to a sliver of 5 meter thick ridged ice and you'd be claiming massive recovery because the average thickness has grown.

 

We know ice volume,thickness ,multi year ice is all up on previous years. IJIS extent is now no longer the lowest in the last 30 years or 'on record' if that's better.

 

How does one measure 'recovery' cf 1980. Recovery has to start some fragile though it maybe.

 

We may yet get a record IJIS low but no indicators show that.

 

Remember many folk were saying arctic ice free 2013 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm

Edited June 13, 2015 by stewfox

[BornFromTheVoid]

We know ice volume,thickness ,multi year ice is all up on previous years. IJIS extent is now no longer the lowest in the last 30 years or 'on record' if that's better.

 

How does one measure 'recovery' cf 1980. Recovery has to start some fragile though it maybe.

 

We may yet get a record IJIS low but no indicators show that.

 

Remember many folk were saying arctic ice free 2013 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm

 

Well, if 3 years after a record low volume, extent, and area we didn't see an increase, then something bizarre would be going on.

 

Rather than shouting "recovery" every year after some low has been set, why not wait until we see signs of a sustained change? See if we can get a substantial increase in volume, like back to even 90s levels and maybe average annual temps across the Arctic moving back closer to average. I think those would be signs of a recovery.

 

Your link shows just one modelling study that got a headline because of a dramatic result, I really don't think that counts as "many folk". Anyway, given how during the short warm spell last July we managed to lose over 1 million km2 in a week (something that's only occurred on a handful of occasions, all after the 90s), and 2012 managed to shatter all previous records despite conditions not being nearly as bad as 2007, what do you think will happen the next time we have a 2007-esque melt season?

 

In my opinion, all we need now is 1 or 2 years with poor weather and we'll turn effectively ice free (less than 1 million km2). That could happen this year and next, or it could be in 15 years or more. But I see no reason to think it won't happen in the next 2 or 3 decades.

[4wd]

 

 

Your link shows just one modelling study that got a headline because of a dramatic result, I really don't think that counts as "many folk". 

Good line, will re-use next time the BBC-Guardian gets trumpeted by many folk on here.

[4wd]

Also very useful for the recent "no hiatus" modelling study that grabbed headlines. 

[Interitus]

We know ice volume,thickness ,multi year ice is all up on previous years. IJIS extent is now no longer the lowest in the last 30 years or 'on record' if that's better.

 

How does one measure 'recovery' cf 1980. Recovery has to start some fragile though it maybe.

 

We may yet get a record IJIS low but no indicators show that.

 

Remember many folk were saying arctic ice free 2013 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm

 

That prediction was made after the stunning ice reduction in 2007. Yet in the following years 2 from 7 have managed even lower extents and 4 from 7 have had lower minimum volumes.

The extent and volume are lower now than this stage in 2007 while area just slipped behind a couple of days ago.

So all you are actually celebrating is an incorrect forecast, because a recovery seems slim to non-existent at present.

[Methuselah]

Good line, will re-use next time the BBC-Guardian gets trumpeted by many folk on here.

One does tend to opt for the real science, 4. It's even better, when it's presented without a token fluff-piece rebuttal concocted by some oil-junkies' hack...

[knocker]

Melt Pond May 2015

 

May is the month when melt ponds first start to form on the floes of the Arctic sea ice pack. Melt ponds are important because they soak up more sunlight than the ice would, speeding up the melting process and thus preconditioning the sea ice. When there is lots of melt ponding, something I call melting momentum is built up, sustaining a stable melting rate throughout the rest of the melting season, as we saw in 2011 and 2012. Of course, the reverse is also true, as we saw in rebound years 2013 and 2014.

 

Because this preconditioning through melt ponds seems to be correlated to the September minimum, scientists are trying to determine the so-called melt pond cover fraction (the percentage of total ice pack area covered by melt ponds) in different ways. Some look at satellite observations, like Anja Rösel from the University of Hamburg did back in 2011, using MODIS satellite data (see here). Others use models, like David Schröder's team from the University of Reading (see here, and more on that below). Yet others, like Christopher Cox from CIRES, look at radiation data around the Arctic to estimate how much sunlight is reaching the ice pack (I attended Dr. Cox' presentation on this subject at the EGU general assembly this year).

 

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2015/06/melt-pond-may-2015.html

[oldsnowywizard]

Interesting article... interesting comment 2 though...any evidence anyone can find about the large drop for wednesday of 350 ish k..

[knocker]

ASI 2015 update 3: what's it going to be?

 

Today is the day of summer solstice, when the Sun reaches its highest point as seen from the North Pole, beating down 24 hours per day on the sea ice below (when not blocked by clouds). The period preceding and following this event is very important for how the melting season plays out, as it is during this time that large parts of the Arctic sea ice pack are preconditioned through melt ponds.

 

This preconditioning in turn influences melting momentum. A lot of momentum almost guarantees high melt rates, whereas little momentum does the opposite, depending on weather conditions during July and August as well, of course. Last week I wrote a blog post in which I tried to assess the amount of melt ponding through May, by comparing this year to previous years.

 

The first half of May was extremely cold, with the second half of May showing almost the exact opposite. Still, indications were that relatively few melt ponds have shown up during May and the first half of June. This is now changing, as can be seen on the animation at the upper right hand corner of this blog post, where sea ice concentration is showing a very large blue patch of lower concentration on the Pacific side of the Arctic. That's because weather conditions conducive to melting shifted from the American side to the Siberian side of the Arctic, as was forecast two weeks ago.

 

Below an assessment of what's been happening in the past two weeks, and what is going to happen next week.

 

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2015/06/asi-2015-update-3-whats-it-going-to-be.html

[stewfox]

ASI 2015 update 3: what's it going to be?

 

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2015/06/asi-2015-update-3-whats-it-going-to-be.html

 

 

Clearly melt pond activity is going to increase now as we head towards July

 

I cant find the prediction for September ice cover, based on melt pond activity up to end of May for 2015. I can find predictions for 2014 etc.

 

http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR585844.aspx

 

 

"""""Satellite records show that the year with smallest pond fraction in late spring (11% in 1996) had the biggest sea ice extent in September; and the year with the largest pond fraction (34% in 2012) featured the all-time low extent come the autumn."""

[BornFromTheVoid]

Clearly melt pond activity is going to increase now as we head towards July

 

I cant find the prediction for September ice cover, based on melt pond activity up to end of May for 2015. I can find predictions for 2014 etc.

 

http://www.reading.ac.uk/news-and-events/releases/PR585844.aspx

 

 

"""""Satellite records show that the year with smallest pond fraction in late spring (11% in 1996) had the biggest sea ice extent in September; and the year with the largest pond fraction (34% in 2012) featured the all-time low extent come the autumn."""

 

They did make a prediction for this year, it was in Neven's previous update:

 

Based on our simulated May melt pond fraction we predict a September 2015 mean ice extent for the Arctic of 5.1 +/- 0.5 Mill. km2. Our value is slightly lower than in 2013 (5.4 Mill. km2) and 2014 (5.3 Mill. km2), but considerably larger than in 2012 (3.6 Mill. km2).

 

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2015/06/melt-pond-may-2015.html

Edited June 21, 2015 by BornFromTheVoid

[keithlucky]

Arctic ice showing increased density over previous years. Northwest passage blocked for hundreds of miles in the Beaufort sea area by very thick sea ice

Edited June 22, 2015 by keithlucky

[stewfox]

Ice extent continues to slow. Some of the alarmist rhetoric of the last few weeks not born out. Still early days but could this be another good year for recovery ?

[Methuselah]

Are we in 'recovery' again, guys?

[Geordiesnow]

Ice extent continues to slow. Some of the alarmist rhetoric of the last few weeks not born out. Still early days but could this be another good year for recovery ?

 

I'd like to think so but I just can't see it, just look at those SST's around the Chukchi Sea resulting from the hot spell that has experienced, look at how thin the ice is in the East Siberian Sea also, IF the HYCOM model is accurate then the sea ice imo looks in quite a bit of trouble, especially with melt ponds apparently being quite widespread on the Pacific side of the Arctic.

 

Havant looked at the HYCOM model for a while but I was shocked too see how thin the ice looks especially seeing as its only the 23rd June, the next 30-40 days could tell us a lot about where this melt season could end up, it certainly is interesting for sure. 

 

The weather conditions in the next few days or so does look better for the Sea ice but there has been hints from the models of another warm spell coming in from Siberia and that could well be a big blow to the Sea ice however the models have been a bit wayward regarding the details of this with some runs looking quite severe and others much less so. 

[BornFromTheVoid]

I think calling for either recovery or disaster based on short term weather patterns is equally pointless.

 

The sea ice cover is still quite low. Melt pond predictions are going for an extent less than the last 2 years but greater than 2012 and 2007. There are a lot of warm SSTs around but the weather patterns haven't been too bad for the central Arctic and the extra volume should make the ice a little tougher to melt.

 

What will happen during the rest of the summer is a mystery to all, so for now it's just a case of wait, watch and speculate.

[Hocus Pocus]

I think calling for either recovery or disaster based on short term weather patterns is equally pointless.

 

The sea ice cover is still quite low. Melt pond predictions are going for an extent less than the last 2 years but greater than 2012 and 2007. There are a lot of warm SSTs around but the weather patterns haven't been too bad for the central Arctic and the extra volume should make the ice a little tougher to melt.

 

What will happen during the rest of the summer is a mystery to all, so for now it's just a case of wait, watch and speculate.

The most realistic post on here BFTV and one I tend to follow regarding summer ice loss. Too much speculative analysis/nonsense from both sides on here and it would be nice to just to read what's actually happening rather than what we want to happen. Thanks BFTV.

[Interitus]

The most realistic post on here BFTV and one I tend to follow regarding summer ice loss. Too much speculative analysis/nonsense from both sides on here and it would be nice to just to read what's actually happening rather than what we want to happen. Thanks BFTV.

 

Of course it's right to take a balanced and cautious approach, but the current extent and area figures are boosted by ice in Hudson Bay which will go, Baffin Bay most of which should go and the Greenland sea where it is ultimately doomed sooner or later. Temperatures from stations around the Arctic ocean 'proper' show that warmth has been washing in from most directions - these can be seen handily on Ogimet for example, and throughout June have been largely above those in 2007 or 2012. This can be seen clearly in the Chukchi right now where a spell of high temperatures plus high SSTs flowing from the Bering straits is visibly degrading the ice rapidly. In the last couple of days the land fast ice has disintegrated round Wrangel island - this is a month ahead of the last couple of years. The one area which has avoided too much damage so far is the Laptev which was freakishly clear last year.

Of course things could change during the rest of the melt season, but if similar or worse conditions continue this won't be considered a rebound year.

[stewfox]

Of course it's right to take a balanced and cautious approach, but the current extent and area figures are boosted by ice in Hudson Bay which will go, Baffin Bay most of which should go and the Greenland sea where it is ultimately doomed sooner or later. Temperatures from stations around the Arctic ocean 'proper' show that warmth has been washing in from most directions - these can be seen handily on Ogimet for example, and throughout June have been largely above those in 2007 or 2012. This can be seen clearly in the Chukchi right now where a spell of high temperatures plus high SSTs flowing from the Bering straits is visibly degrading the ice rapidly. In the last couple of days the land fast ice has disintegrated round Wrangel island - this is a month ahead of the last couple of years. The one area which has avoided too much damage so far is the Laptev which was freakishly clear last year.

Of course things could change during the rest of the melt season, but if similar or worse conditions continue this won't be considered a rebound year.

 

Hudson Bay melt out happens every year and is fairly consistent (although a little lower then average at present) so will the other areas you mention

 

In recent years we have seen melt out above 80N in the west, i cant see that this year with 2000km3 more volume

Edited June 25, 2015 by stewfox

[keithlucky]

Slow melt season ,weather forecast if correct shows sub zero temperatures for the Beaufort sea in fact Arctic is showing gains in Arctic ice according to masie

Region 93 days ago End Last 92 Last 28 Last 14 Last 7 Last 3 Last 1 Greenland Sea 633,474 568,836 -64,638 -54,599 -32,117 -44,540 14,664 -5,439 Hudson Bay 1,260,903 949,644 -311,259 -124,265 -66,741 -39,331 -12,990 -2,736 Canadian Archipelago 853,214 787,239 -65,975 -61,803 -3,985 -3,084 907 -1,085 Chukchi Sea 966,006 714,215 -251,791 -210,118 -62,936 -33,739 -5,484 0 East Siberian Sea 1,087,137 1,068,760 -18,377 -17,312 -8,723 -15,277 -8,091 0 Laptev Sea 897,845 856,557 -41,288 -19,750 29,604 31,286 27,103 0 Kara Sea 935,023 561,190 -373,833 -312,527 -131,358 -41,178 -1,933 0 Barents Sea 596,771 149,562 -447,209 -260,637 -80,873 -20,563 -5,683 0 Central Arctic 3,247,614 3,192,930 -54,684 -45,862 -33,116 -7,122 5,232 0 Bering Sea 667,281 2,758 -664,523 -97,789 -4,942 -1,117 0 0 Baltic Sea 9,702 0 -9,702 0 0 0 0 0 Sea of Okhotsk 551,895 36,190 -515,705 -100,807 -27,864 -2,898 -1,392 0 Yellow Sea 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Baffin Bay Gulf of St. Lawrence 1,754,107 738,087 -1,016,020 -407,207 -187,410 -38,538 -9,581 2,131 Beaufort Sea 1,070,445 994,290 -76,155 -12,178 35,937 46,176 34,261 33,291                   Northern Hemisphere (Total) 14,534,052 10,621,786 -3,912,266 -1,724,853 -574,571 -169,542 37,012 26,162                   NH (Average Loss per Day)     -42,067 -61,602 -41,041 -24,220 12,337 26,162

Edited June 26, 2015 by keithlucky

[Gray-Wolf]

Slow melt season??????? Have you even cared to notice the wholesale destruction of thickness across Beaufort over the past few days? With the Alaskan current delivering waters directly from 'The Blob' , through Bering, it doesn't look good for that side of the basin and into CAB. Aug PIOMAS Figures will be the ones to watch.

 

And a hint for KL, ice melts without disappearing........ it's only when the last bit melts that it disappears.......... Doh!!!

[keithlucky]

Slow melt season??????? Have you even cared to notice the wholesale destruction of thickness across Beaufort over the past few days? With the Alaskan current delivering waters directly from 'The Blob' , through Bering, it doesn't look good for that side of the basin and into CAB. Aug PIOMAS Figures will be the ones to watch.

 

And a hint for KL, ice melts without disappearing........ it's only when the last bit melts that it disappears.......... Doh!!!

Sorry i thought ice forms in sub zero temperatures.

[keithlucky]

Slow melt season??????? Have you even cared to notice the wholesale destruction of thickness across Beaufort over the past few days? With the Alaskan current delivering waters directly from 'The Blob' , through Bering, it doesn't look good for that side of the basin and into CAB. Aug PIOMAS Figures will be the ones to watch.

 

And a hint for KL, ice melts without disappearing........ it's only when the last bit melts that it disappears.......... Doh!!!

Arctic  sea ice from Piomas shows good density ATM.

Edited June 27, 2015 by keithlucky