Carinthians Latest Arctic Reports

[Interitus]

Ozone depletion didn't suddenly kick in a year ago, or less than a year ago, after which we have witnessed an almost unprecedented surge in sea ice levels. Current Southern Hemisphere sea ice levels may have another explanation.

I didn't say it had. BFTP selectively quoted from the article and I restated the explanation given. Though if more ice is released from land then the ice extent is bound to increase temporarily (-for temporarily this may be in the order of a few, tens or hundreds of years or more). Once again this will just go round and round pointlessly so I will butt out again.

[oldsnowywizard]

CT charts have been drinking again.. so wont get a good representation for a week or so.. i notice some -40 2m temps in greenland again.. anyone know what the normal temp is and what the record cold would be for Greenland at this time of year?

warmer temps keep moving up through Canada so seeing some melt going on in coastal areas.. a comparison of this year vs last year..

Bearing is doing much better..

Beaufort is doing worse

Kara is doing better

ice concentrations are much worse.. not suprisingly due to the massive loss of multiyear ice last summer.

next month we should see the start of the mass melt....

[SIG100]

i notice some -40 2m temps in greenland again.. anyone know what the normal temp is and what the record cold would be for Greenland at this time of year?

The May record low is -45,6 °C.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Baltic_s...ogists_999.html

As expected the Baltic regions had a very poor winter for the formation of ice. If we remember the temp anoms up there over winter we can see why.

[carinthian]

Latest shot from the North Station of Spitsbergen continues to show freezing conditions. May temperatures are currently meaning 4C below average with the Arctic Ice still locked in the North and East of the Archipelago. A strong Arctic pressure block continues over much of the Basin with no sign of melting ice just yet. The Midnight sun has been in effect from 24th April and will remain above the horizon until 18 th August. Melting of ice had already started this time last year.

C

[Turnedoutniceagain]

http://www.nilu.no/niluweb/services/zeppelin/

A glorious morning in Svalbard. Though a tad nippy at -11c

[SIG100]

May temperatures are currently meaning 4C below average

Hm.

Source?

According to data from met.no (the Norwegian Meteorological Institute), Svalbard airport is currently (1st to 19th) 2.6 °C above average.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Nice pictures guys and it certainly looks cold up there. C the arctic fairing better than last year so far?

BFTP

[carinthian]

Hm.

Source?

According to data from met.no (the Norwegian Meteorological Institute), Svalbard airport is currently (1st to 19th) 2.6 °C above average.

Hello,

Svalbard longer temp average at mid-month is around 0c. So far this month temperatures haveemained below zero. I do not know how they have produced that figure.

C

[Thundery wintry showers]

One useful site for assessing global temperature anomalies is here: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/clim/glbcir.shtml

Stratos Ferric was the first to refer me to the site, and it seems to be very good on the whole- I have a few question marks over their modelling of the Antarctic temperatures though, as they always show strong -ve anomalies in Southern Hemisphere summer, and strong +ve anomalies in Southern Hemisphere winter.

Anyway, Svalbard is shown as being at near average temperature for May as a whole, and it looks rather below average for the past week, and anomalies for today are indeed running at around -4C.

[SIG100]

Well, why don´t we go straight to the source (met.no is the operator of the meteorological stations on Svalbard).

Daily values for Svalbard airport: http://retro.met.no/observasjoner/svalbard...havn/index.html

(Døgn temp. is the daily mean temperature)

Compare with the normal (daily mean temperature) http://retro.met.no/met/normaler_ekstremer...l_svalbard.html

[Mr Sleet]

Nice pictures guys and it certainly looks cold up there. C the arctic fairing better than last year so far?

BFTP

I think an ice area minimum comfortably exceeding last years minimum is now a foregone conclusion.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I wouldn't be so certain, it's looking good at the moment, but remember how quickly and suddenly the ice melted in June last year despite temperatures not far above the average.

Strange discrepancy between Svalbard Airport's anomalies and the anomaly maps there- which is inaccurate?

[Mr Sleet]

I wouldn't be so certain, it's looking good at the moment, but remember how quickly and suddenly the ice melted in June last year despite temperatures not far above the average.

Strange discrepancy between Svalbard Airport's anomalies and the anomaly maps there- which is inaccurate?

Hi TWS;

Reason I am so confident is that it would need a considerably steeper decline than even last year to beat the record. It's a foregone conclusion

Not sure about Svalbard....

[SIG100]

Strange discrepancy between Svalbard Airport's anomalies and the anomaly maps there- which is inaccurate?

Maybe they're both correct?

It seems that NOAA and met.no use different reference periods (1985-95 and 1961-90).

[osmposm]

Hello,

Svalbard longer temp average at mid-month is around 0c......

I don't think it is, C - at least not at the airport.

I've just followed SIG's links to the Norwegian Met Office actual figures, and worked it out. The 1961-90 May 1-15 av seems to be -6.2C, and for 15 May itself it's -4.2C.

This year it was -3.6C for the 1-15 av (i.e. +2.6), and -2.5C for the day (+1.7).

The daily mean for 1-15 June, however, is indeed near zero: it works out as +0.75C

Ossie

Maybe they're both correct?

It seems that NOAA and met.no use different reference periods (1985-95 and 1961-90).

Ah, just seen this, SIG. I suppose that may account for some of the difference, but I can't imagine the mean has risen by 6-odd degrees C between the two. Maybe they use different places to measure at - where is Svalbard Airport?

[SIG100]

Ah, just seen this, SIG. I suppose that may account for some of the difference, but I can't imagine the mean has risen by 6-odd degrees C between the two. Maybe they use different places to measure at - where is Svalbard Airport?

I agree. It seems strange.

As far as I know, NOAA doesn't have their own weather stations on Svalbard. All data comes from the Norwegian stations (there's seven of them - including the airport).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Airport

[ScandiHigh]

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute(met.no) uses the WMO recommended reference periods, e.g. 1931-60, 1961-90, etc.

The Svalbard normal for May is indeed below 0, as others have said. People who follow the Svalbard temperatures will notice that a below average month is a rarity these days. September 2005 was the last below average month at the Airport.

More Svalbard observations:

http://retro.met.no/observasjoner/svalbard/index.html

[Interitus]

Hi TWS;

Reason I am so confident is that it would need a considerably steeper decline than even last year to beat the record. It's a foregone conclusion :lol:

Really?

"Although there is more ice than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of April was 6,000 square kilometers per day (2,300 thousand square miles per day) faster than last April.

Estimating September extent based on past conditions

As discussed in our April analysis, the ice cover this spring shows an unusually large proportion of young, thin first-year ice; about 30% of first-year ice typically survives the summer melt season, while 75% of the older ice survives. For a simple estimate of the likelihood of breaking last year's September record, we can apply survival rates from past years to this year's April ice cover. This gives us 25 different estimates, one for each year that we have reliable ice-age data (see Figure 2). To avoid beating the September 2007 record low, more than 50% of this year’s first-year ice would have to survive; this has only happened once in the last 25 years, in 1996. If we apply the survival rates averaged over all years to current conditions, the end-of-summer extent would be 3.59 million square kilometers (1.39 million square miles). With survival rates similar to those in 2007, the minimum for the 2008 season would be only 2.22 million square kilometers (0.86 million square miles). By comparison the record low extent, set last September, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles).

Forecasting September extent with climate predictors

Sheldon Drobot at the Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and colleagues have developed a sophisticated forecasting technique. The forecast considers sea ice extent, ice age, summer and winter temperatures, cloudiness, the phase of the Atlantic Oscillation, and climate trends as predictors (see the papers cited below for details; visit the Arctic Oscillation Index). As reported last month, the Arctic Oscillation was in its positive phase through the winter season, associated with a wind pattern helping to flush thick ice out of the Arctic, leaving thinner ice. This is one of the factors helping to set the stage for pronounced ice losses this summer. Drobot predicts a 59% chance of a new record minimum this year; read the press release. Todd Arbetter of the U.S. National Ice Center tells us that his group is working to implement a version of Drobot's analysis scheme for operational forecasting.

Ronald Lindsay of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and collaborators recently published results from their own ice prediction system, based on a retrospective analysis of the modeled state of the ice and ocean system (see the paper cited below for details). The model is successful in explaining around 75% of the year-to-year variations for the past few decades; for 2008, the model implies a very low, but not extreme, sea ice minimum. Lindsay cautions that sea ice conditions are now changing so rapidly that predictions based on relationships developed from the past 50 years of data may no longer apply."

source: http://www.nsidc.com/arcticseaicenews/

A record minima or thereabouts looks to be very much in the balance. Even if it doesn't fall quite as low as last year it would be absurd to claim a recovery based on one year's ice extent.

[Mr Sleet]

Really?

"Although there is more ice than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of April was 6,000 square kilometers per day (2,300 thousand square miles per day) faster than last April.

Yes, really . There was a steep decline for 2 weeks in the middle of April which has long since levelled out. You need to look at the gradient from last year from this point onwards, and we will need to exceed that to beat last years minimum assuming that the minimum will be reached in the middle of August, as in 2007.

[Interitus]

Yes, really . There was a steep decline for 2 weeks in the middle of April which has long since levelled out. You need to look at the gradient from last year from this point onwards, and we will need to exceed that to beat last years minimum assuming that the minimum will be reached in the middle of August, as in 2007.

Whatever

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7417123.stm

[Iceberg]

Interesting article Interitus I missed that.

AMSRE shows various larger sea ice cracks appearing between what's left of older + year ice and this years. This seems to be a very good indication of the thiness of the new ice. Anyway we are entering the start of the big melt, by the end of June most of the Hudson and the rest of the none arctic basin ice that goes every year will have melted. (Hudson currently right on que atm).

[reef]

I have a feeling that as we enter the hotter months (June, July and August) that there will be a rapid melt of the first year ice which formed over the winter. Already there are quite a few cracks and areas in the Arctic basin that are showing reduced concentration. More worrying however are huge fissures present in areas which are usually occupied by multiyear ice. These include the areas to the north-east and north-west of Greenland. There are also several early polynas around:

http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/...MSRE_visual.png

I definitely think we're on for another year as bad or even worse than 2007.

Edited May 24, 2008 by reef

[Thundery wintry showers]

I have to say that Interitus's arguments do sound convincing. We may well have been lulled into a false sense of security by the recovery in ice extent over the winter. But since a much larger percentage of the ice is newly formed, that can easily facilitate the steep declines that Mr Sleet dismisses.

Not sure how 1996 managed to retain so much ice following the significant melts of 1995. I know it was an unusually cool year by recent standards over north-west Europe, but that was mainly due to the synoptics (unusual frequency of easterly winds during the winter half-year) and I would expect those patterns to be associated with anomalous warmth elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, including parts of the Arctic (e.g. January 1996 was unusually warm to the east of Greenland). Summer 1996 wasn't notably cool in the Arctic either, just average.

I can't see this year being another 1996 though. I think we passed a point around 2002- before that, the Arctic ice sheet melted only slowly and erratically, and the temperatures of our cold air sources in winter didn't warm significantly- since 2002, the Arctic has warmed alarmingly especially in winter, and the summer melt has been extreme.

I note the BBC article mentions that it's an "indicator of climate change". I wonder if by that they mean AGW, or literally just mean changes in climate. I think it's pretty well documented that the general global warming trend in itself encourages the kind of thing we're seeing, but that natural cycles may well be making events even more rapid than they would otherwise be.

[Interitus]

I think the article is probably insinuating that the change is suspected to be due to AGW. However a critical contribution has been the flushing of older ice from the Arctic basin past the east coast of Greenland. It may be that it took only marginally warmer temperatures to allow the break up of the ice enough to facilitate this, but I suspect will need significantly lower temperatures to re-establish. It's a little like a dam or levee breaking - once it starts to go it's quickly gone.