quest4peace

8c and a dewpoint of 1.6c now here in Telford, no wonder the snow has melted so quick but not ruling the winter finished yet P.s good old cheshire gap snow, just could of been the favoured direction earlier in the winter

About 2 cm's this morning but wasn't long before the sun started melting it away

We can do quite well from cheshire gap snow here, Cheshire gap and snow was always the key words i used to look for on the local weather forecasts lol!

Just been battered by hail here in Telford, probably as wintry as it will get lol!

All the very attractive ice laiden trees have only just melted here today Sure sign it's finally above freezing what an awesome site it has been though

My walk down the silkin way in telford about an hour ago Brrr Temp 0.5c Dewpoint 0.4c

Current conditions here in telford according to http--www.cranfold.co.uk-weather-gauges.htm weather station somewhere around here 0.4 Air temp 0.3 Dew point :smilz38:

About an inch in untouched places here so can't grumble though Thaw may set in soon though if we get the +3 forecast during the night by the bbc

Current Temp -1.9 Dew point -2 Looking interesting for my part of the world and as i type the flakes are growing larger

Might be good news for some of you guys to hear, it's still very much snowing here in south Telford snow is very heavy now Not huge flakes but quite intense. To give you an idea, a car in my road moved from it's spot about half hour ago, and you already can't see the bare patch under it because it's covered in snow Hope it continues

Proof that we have snow in telford This a picture from ketley This was 21 mins ago

Snow light/heavy again, but with small flakes. Saying that though it's slowly adding accumulation here in south Telford just over 1cm

Still snowing but annoyingly drizzly

Brookside mate Don't know if us being higher has anything to do with it

About an even 1cm in my part of Telford heavy but tiny snow flakes here

Snow falling here in the brookside area of telford 145m asl Everywhere is completely white all be it agood even dusting B)

Lol! Looks like the ice has been instantly vapourised by an atomic bomb :ph34r:

Hi thanks for your reply I think most people would grab those years with both hands It is a massive crime that we have lost a lot of the oldest ice in the ARCTIC but I notice that there is more of a flutter when the ice is dropping like a stone, and all be it little rises are ignored?, i notice not many people have commented on the fact that we have had a bit of a levelling of the 2011 line. This september will be four years since 2007's heart attack inducing levels and yet (i hope i'm not proven wrong this year) we haven't been below it since (by september) even though i do see we were lowest on record earlier in the melt season :unsure: even though i've been reading, that each year since then, would only be a downward trend and we would of been well below by now or worse, ice free all together All these things are what us amateurs are relying on these sites to answer for us

Are we seeing a slight recovery here (maybe recovery is the wrong term)? or is it just teasing us before it makes another dive for it? I'd take a 2006 kind of slowdown right now,anything to get us away from 2007.

To be honest the reason i am so interested in the Arctic, is the conservation side to be honest I mean i grew up watching david attenborugh's (sp?) programs on the arctic and the effect that losing the sea ice has on wildlife up there and also the effect it has on our weather. As a kid you are taught that, if you get a wind direction from the the north or northeast here in the uk you have the strong possibility of getting snow because it's more than likely you have an Arctic wind origin and thus may get snow And i wasn't ignorant to the fact that the Arctic had to be cold enough to bring us this weather. Which fascinated me hugely as a kid because of the chance of the white stuff Lol!. About ten years ago when i first had acess to a computer, i decided to look more in depth as to what affects our weather . The internet opened the floodgates to info and images i had never imagined before,and i found the various websites that had all the information i could dream of. So it started from there. Hi pottyprof Well said ,the personal argueing also spoils it for people like me, who while not "professionally" knowledgable on all things Arctic related i and many others i would guess, rely on you guys to teach me through reading everybody's posts and trying to make my own mind up about each side of the arguement and how it all works. B)

Your welcome on the methane article I wonder how much effect the ice breakers are having on single year ice? Even if they only contribute a small percentage of damage, what are the possible repurcussions of breaking the ice up?

Hi Gray wolf Thanks for kindly replying It can't be denied that all that gas going into the atmosphere is quite worrying :ph34r: What is the actually property of methane? as in relation to warming? Methane is of course flammable (slightly worrying) Lol!. I know from what i've seen on all the programs about the Arctic wildlife on the bbc that you can burn the methane that escapes from the ice by simply lighting a match above it i have a map of the early earth on my wall and it is fascinating to see how the place we live is the way it is I knotice britain is missed off the picture representing modern earth Lol! An article from 2010 "New York Times" Globe-Warming Methane Is Gushing From a Russian Ice Shelf 12digg Behind the ongoing back-and-forth fights over climate change that usually focus on carbon, there has lingered the threat of the powerful greenhouse gas methane being released into the atmosphere and causing even worse trouble. In August we reported on a study that noted methane bubbling up from the seafloor near islands north of Norway, giving scientists a scare. This week in Science, another team reports seeing the same thing during thousands of observations of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf on Russia’s north coast, which is even more worrisome because it’s a huge methane deposit. The shelf, which covers about 800,000 square miles, was exposed during the last ice age. When the region was above sea level, tundra vegetation pulled carbon dioxide from the air as plants grew. That organic material, much of which didn’t decompose in the frigid Arctic, accumulated in the soil and is the source of modern methane [Science News]. Now underwater, it’s covered by a layer of permafrost. But that permafrost seems to be becoming unstable, thanks to the fact that the water on top of it is warmer than the air it was exposed to back when it was on dry land. The study said about 8 million tonnes of methane a year, equivalent to the annual total previously estimated from all of the world’s oceans, were seeping from vast stores long trapped under permafrost [Reuters]. Study leader Natalia Shakhova says methane levels in the Arctic haven’t been this high in 400,000 years. While we’re not about to teeter off a cliff—that 8 million tons is a small portion of the global emissions of 440 million tons—we should be concerned, the scientists say. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, absorbing at least 25 times more heat, NOAA says. It is possible that climate change could be contributing to the release, with warmer seas causing more methane to come out, creating a feedback loop. But methane has long been leaking, and there’s no record of the previous levels with which to verify how much methane emissions are increasing, or whether people are playing a part. While Shakhova says the warmer runoff into the Arctic ocean is probably contributing, the team can’t say that for sure. What they can say for sure is that the methane levels there are extremely high. Most undersea methane oxidizes into CO2 as it enters the atmosphere, but Shakhova says the East Siberian Ice Shelf methane is too close to the surface for that to happen. As a result, she said, atmospheric levels of methane over the Arctic are 1.85 parts per million, almost three times as high as the global average of 0.6 or 0.7 parts per million. Concentrations over the shelf are 2 parts per million or higher [The New York Times]. hI noiv Thanks for your in depth reply I Have always, since a child, looked at life from the outside viewpoint, by this i mean that most people are just born, live their life as dictated to and blindly carry on till death. But i have always been fascinated by absolutely everything around us. Nothing is purely black and white to me There are multiple coloured areas between black and white that people don't comprehend. As i see it there can only be certain amount rules about the world around us that will always be true, but there will always be that that one event that throws everything we know out of the window (well,some of what we know ) Red line is heading swiftly back towards 2007 and the pack i see It's certainly playing some mind games with us Lol!

Hi Gray wolf I always find your posts interesting as i do others B) i haven't got the knowledge to disregard anything of what is said on here, but i have this nagging feeling that there is more than meets the eye here While the threat of the methane and such is a real risk, is this all happening because of us alone?.Or is it in a natural phase in which we are unlucky/lucky enough to be caught in?:blink: I mean the earth, from what i do know, has been through cycles of ice and no ice at each pole. Was there not methane release at these other times in the distant past as well?.

Hi Thanks for your reply. I've bookmarked those links and will watch with great interest There is going to be a lot of questions in this post which i would love you regulars to answer We can only be absolutely sure of what the sattelites have shown us over the last 30 years.I wonder how the year to year ice would of looked if we could of had the technology 100 years ago There is obviously something very wrong up there at the moment i mean look at the sea surface temps on the edge of the basin obviously caused by the anomalous temps :blink: And i'm not ignorant to the fact that we have lost so much of the really old ice The higher than norm sea temps is quite clearly the melting factor? Sea surface temps in the Arctic http://ocean.dmi.dk/...te/index.uk.php Can it not just be, that for whatever reason the ARCTIC is having a freak period?, is it due to the solar minimum disrupting the flow of air across the globe?.I admit i haven't the knowledge :blush: why these winds are getting into the edges of the basin,admittedly at the cost of the ice?. And that maybe it's happened before? and does every now and again? 2003's high of 39c? in kent? was a prime example of what wind direction can do in our own neck of the woods isn't it And the thing is, just because we had reached those temps that summer didn't mean that it was going to become the norm here. Also because we had a run of stupidly mild winters i remember some "experts" and people saying on here saying cold winters were history Just like 2008 and 2009 was was supposed to be even lower ice extent wise in the arctic?. And we were incapable of really cold winters now, and that they would be rare Lol!. And then the past few winters have totally gone against that, and got gradually colder despite these claims. i mean last winter was the coldest on record in dec and january .I wish i knew what the answer was,but i think just like our ancestors thought they had certain areas of science figured totally out, and we have disproved a lot of what was set in stone back then, we might be proven the same.

Hi guys from a total amateurs point of view (so i might be way off ) And looking at the ijis graph, it does paint rather a morbid picture of the ice in the arctic but, as far as beating the 2007 ice minimum i'm not sure because the curve of decline seems to be heading back towards the rest of the pack (or is that wishful thinking?):blush: I might be wrong but look at the amount of ice in the basin area compared to 2007 (Cryosphere today) yes granted, the extra extent in the basin over 2007 looks a bit thin but it is there non the less.If i remember (and please correct me if i'm wrong :0p ) but the melt of previous years has slowed down massively in august? Around the 15th?. I might be clutching at straws :blush: but if the extra ice (over 2007's basin ice extent) can last a bit longer till slowdown would that stop a new minimum record? and could it become 2 or 3rd year ice? B) Edit: Here is the map updated for yesterday.