Polar Ice Extent

[doctormog]

Yes that little (unrepresentative) area shows up well in the surrounding thicker cover as highlighted by the NASA imagery . Here's the bigger picture in the vicinity.

The area in question is largely obscured by cloud towards the bottom (west/southwest) of the image:

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2010234/crefl1_143.A2010234220500-2010234221000.1km.jpg

And in hi-res (warning large image)

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2010234/crefl1_143.A2010234220500-2010234221000.250m.jpg

It's amazing how much you can read into/extrapolate from a single photo. I guess if it fits the argument who needs context eh?

Edit: To be pedantic the ship has yet to reach 80 degrees north - it has just in the last hour reached 79 (current location: N 79°00', W 145°18' ).

Edited August 23, 2010 by doctormog

[Gray-Wolf]

Dr M your images show the northern shore of the Canadian Archipelago (and the last of the contiguous ice in the Arctic currently flowing towards Fram) the latest image with the ships position included would be either;

http://rapidfire.sci....php?T102350300

(central line of longitude)

or:

http://rapidfire.sci....php?A102350010

(bottom left quarter)

EDIT: sorry meant to include this on the above post;

http://mgds.ldeo.col.../aloftcon/2010/

(this is the webcam on the Healy with hourly updates so you can see how much thin ice has been ploughed through today)

By the way , thanks Dev!

Dr M ,There is nothing to be 'hidden/twisted/mis-represented about the state of the Arctic today I was just very surprised to find such poor ice conditions when Brememn has over 80% concentration throughout that area?

If you run through all the hourly updates you'll see the ice is all as rubbish as we see in the image posted.

This may be because Bremen is out of date by a few days and if that is the discrepency then we are all in for a shock as all of that ice would be lost (to 'extent maps') by Sunday if 80% cover can reduce to that over 3 days!!!

EDIT:EDIT; If you look through enough images you can start to build up a 'feel' for the ice type with the thicker chunks quite obvious by the ice below the waterline showing up clearly. All through todays images is merely a thin skin of ice?

Edited August 23, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[doctormog]

They both cover the area in question.

Do I also need to annotate the image to highlight that?

To clarify:

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T102342205

Edit: I did read the blog post Peter.

Edited August 23, 2010 by doctormog

[Devonian]

They both cover the area in question.

Do I also need to annotate the image to highlight that?

To clarify:

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T102342205

Edit: I did read the blog post Peter.

And the icebreaker webcam pictures for today. Many of them beautiful sunlit vistas, and, by the flat look of the ice in most most of them (or am I talking out of context :winky:) very little tough multi year ice on view but a lot of wet single year stuff.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Devonian

[Gray-Wolf]

Exactly Dev!

I've just been wading through the images for the past number of days and you can see the thicker ice (which seems to appear in the areas with little or no ice present i.e. the thin stuff melted out and the old rubble is all that's left). I was (and still am) genuinely surprised at the images I'm seeing as some folk do use C.T./Bremen to base opinions on and the sight of what 80%+ concentration looks like is truly worrying as it could be 30ft thick covering 80%+ of the ocean or as we see it in the images from today.

Until we have reliable real time thickness data we'll not really know how the ice is doing will we???

Anyhoos that has me very concerned about Beaufort sea (even though NSIDC told us the old ice was melting out there) and now wondering just how close to my 4 million we'll actually get before re-freeze sets in?

[doctormog]

And the icebreaker webcam pictures for today. Many of them beautiful sunlit vistas, and, by the flat look of the ice in most most of them (or am I talking out of context :winky:) very little tough multi year ice on view but a lot of wet single year stuff.

Anyway, I'm really not sure what the point is. The webcam pictures show the route the ship has taken - a route that the satellite imagery shows is either clear or with broken ice. It's not anything different to the satellite image I showed of the rest of the region. The ship will be going up to 85 degrees north where the ice is currently thicker - that won't show anything either (apart form more ice).

I go on this thread day after day and see the same doomsaying yet it changes the reality not one little bit. I shall read on and continue to be unsurprised by the usual protagonists. Mind you it's same over the whole web/"blogosphere" wuth Watts on one side and Taminos on the other. A bit like punch and Judy while the world continues to do what it does.

[Gray-Wolf]

I go on this thread day after day and see the same doomsaying yet it changes the reality not one little bit. I shall read on and continue to be unsurprised by the usual protagonists. Mind you it's same over the whole web/"blogosphere" wuth Watts on one side and Taminos on the other. A bit like punch and Judy while the world continues to do what it does.

Well that's the thing isn't it? We are living through some of the most exciting (or so history will view it!) changes to the planet in a long while and 'Joe Public' won't be bothered unless there's a mega death event or it upsets his day personally.

At some point we will get to the nasty side of what we are driving and it will be within most folks lifetimes. I just wonder how they'll feel when facing folk and saying " I just couldn't be bovered wiv it...."

[Devonian]

You#re talking out of something anyway :winky:

I'll remember that next time you claim the moral high ground...

Edited August 23, 2010 by Devonian

[Nights King]

Well that's the thing isn't it? We are living through some of the most exciting (or so history will view it!) changes to the planet in a long while and 'Joe Public' won't be bothered unless there's a mega death event or it upsets his day personally.

At some point we will get to the nasty side of what we are driving and it will be within most folks lifetimes. I just wonder how they'll feel when facing folk and saying " I just couldn't be bovered wiv it...."

I am not convinced... even if your predictions of drastic runaway melt and warming were to become true it would have very little "real" effect on the british way of life unless you lived on a very exposed flood plane etc and I don't think even if we lost all the summer ice in NH it would cause any Death event! so why should people be bothered? I don't think its going to happen but if anything it could increase horticultural productivity in uk?

Maybe alot of people are concerned with events abroad weather related or otherwise but if you speak to most people on a general day to day basis they just don't care unless it is direct risk to their way of life or standard of living.

Edited August 23, 2010 by mullender83

[Michael Hauber]

The more I read about the Arctic Ocean the more I realise that this must be beyond 'natural variation' as we still had an intact Halocline layer in place (to support the 'old perennial submerged in it)

before the turn of this century.

Only today I was reading another article (NY Times) about a bod on the top U.S. Ice breaker. He made a point of highlighting that the 'swell' was not an issue, in past years as it ploughed it's way to the pole, but that today it is. When you read up on the ocean processes you find that swells propagate down through the ocean mixing up (in other oceans) the top layer. In the Arctic ocean this 'mixing' is now destroying the Halocline and eroding the oceans ability to hold thick ice as it gets melted out from below by mixed up ocean waters. The Southern ocean shows how normal oceans work with a 'seasonal' Halocline layer building under the new ice each winter.

Do you know of any evidence that the halocline in the Arctic is actually eroding? If the Souterhn Ocean works with a 'seasonal' Halocline layer, can the Arctic work the same way? The southern ocean is much more exposed to giant swells from the stormy weather over a wide open ocean.

Why have we lost the 'old perennial' ? it melted. It melted out from below and collapsed in the way Dr Barber described on his trip last Sept. All summer we have had reports from on the ice of it's strange condition and of the swells passing underfoot. The old Arctic ocean, and it's unique nature, is passing away into history. The Halocline formed under the deep ice of the last ice age and was 'sealed in' since under the permanent pack. Once the pack opened and swells travelled under the ice the mixing began to occur. We have had 8 or 9 years with mixing spreading across the basin. This year it appears that the last Bastien has been breached and the ice island behind Greenland/C.A. is now mixing.

When we get the Cryosat2 data I'd not be very surprised if we see ice thickness limited to around 3m by the process of bottom melt (with extra 'snowfall' pushing the ice base into warmer waters leaving a very odd pack of compressed snow and thin ice as some of the foot travellers found this spring and one 'Otter' aircraft). This '3m' seems to also be the depth of ice that will melt out over a single season so we are left awaiting another 07' to bring summer ice down to 'seasonal ice' levels.

I think we lost enough of the old Perenial by 2007 that losses since then don't really matter much. I don't think the loss of multi-year ice is going to cause anything much more than what we have already seen since 2007. If the reduction in multi-year ice was helping to increase the overall rate of ice loss then this period is over, and the rate of loss may now slow. However looking at PIOMAS and extrapolating the trend, we could reach an almost zero ice volume any year now; if June's loss's had been repeated in July and a little extra through August, we would have been basically at zero. So it will be interesting to see whether cryosat confirms this spectacular loss of volume. I'm half expecting that the satellite will show that we've only lost half as much volume as PIOMAS shows, which will be an opportunity for propogandists to say 'look the models are wrong yet again, and we aren't going to lose all the ice in 10 years'. And avoid any mention of the fact that we are going to have to wait 20 years instead to lose all the ice.

One thing I have noticed this season is that some of the thickest ice at the end of winter was near Siberia, where the big -ve AO of last winter piled the first year ice up against the islands in that region. As far as I can make out that ice has drifted a little towards the pole, is thicker than ice at the pole, or the multi-year remnants near Greenland, and is set to become 2nd year ice next year. I think the thicker first year sea ice in this region has been far more relevant to holding up this years melt than any of the multi-year ice.

[Gray-Wolf]

I am not convinced... even if your predictions of drastic runaway melt and warming were to become true it would have very little "real" effect on the British way of life unless you lived on a very exposed flood plane etc and I don't think even if we lost all the summer ice in NH it would cause any Death event! so why should people be bothered? I don't think its going to happen but if anything it could increase horticultural productivity in UK?

I'm thinking of the global impacts of major circulation changes to both atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Tell me how many monsoons need to fail before we have major starvation issues? How many Bangladeshian flood events? How many Chinese droughts/S. American droughts before mass migration raises the spectre of war? How many Pakistani floods/drought do we need before those Nukes end up in the hands of whichever group overthrows the Govt?

I'd love to live in your world of stability but I'm still stuck in the old world of food riots and anarchy (blame Maggie's Britain for showing me how easy it is to have law and order break down on a local scale over local issues.......god help us if we faced national issues as pressing!).

Do you know of any evidence that the halocline in the Arctic is actually eroding? If the Souterhn Ocean works with a 'seasonal' Halocline layer, can the Arctic work the same way? The southern ocean is much more exposed to giant swells from the stormy weather over a wide open ocean.

I'm sure there are plenty of oceanographers doing just that! The depth of any seasonal halocline does not support any deep ice (as we see in the Southern ocean) leading to a 'seasonal ice pack'. For us to move back to the time where we had a permanent ice pack we'd need both the 40% + 'Old Perennial' plus the ability for the ocean to make more. As we have seen this year any increase in precipitation across the polar regions (snow!) pushes the ice cover deeper into the water and out of the seasonal halocline leading to a pack that is mainly snow (and you know how quick snow melts in water) for summer melt. Some of the ice reports from the teams on the ground point to a type of pack that hadn't been experienced before (and these folks have worked around the pole all their lives so have a good grounding in the workings of the 'old Arctic'). Surely we have to figure out for ourselves what may be occuring there?

[stewfox]

I'm thinking of the global impacts of major circulation changes to both atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Tell me how many monsoons need to fail before we have major starvation issues? How many Bangladeshian flood events? How many Chinese droughts/S. American droughts before mass migration raises the spectre of war? How many Pakistani floods/drought do we need before those Nukes end up in the hands of whichever group overthrows the Govt?

I'd love to live in your world of stability but I'm still stuck in the old world of food riots and anarchy (blame Maggie's Britain for showing me how easy it is to have law and order break down on a local scale over local issues.......god help us if we faced national issues as pressing!).

Your talking about weather, in an ideal world every rain drop could be down to man and climate change but its not.

Weather can kill , always has I’m afraid with increasing populations will tend to kill more and hit the head line more so then in 1750.

We use to pray to various deities etc for salvation.

A 30k loss yesterday a repeat of 09 looks very probably now

[Gray-Wolf]

Your talking about weather, in an ideal world every rain drop could be down to man and climate change but its not.

Weather can kill , always has I’m afraid with increasing populations will tend to kill more and hit the head line more so then in 1750.

We use to pray to various deities etc for salvation.

A 30k loss yesterday a repeat of 09 looks very probably now

I would agree that we are indeed between a rock and a hard place! With a 6.8 billion population to feed any 'natural' catastrophy has many more folk to impact but there will come a time that mans influence over his environment results in major impacts on human life. Be it dust bowl or flood our food producing areas need to rapidly adjust to the human populations needs. Our move towards 'Meat' means that instead of needing 1kg of grain to eat we need the equivalent of 7 kg or so (to feed the critters we want to eat) so we are not only increasing the population but also the amount the population 'demands' to be fed.

As with the discussion on the other thread we will reach the point where man's fingerprint will be on the altering climate to the point where denial is not an option. Should we let things move that far then we are going to face the 'mega death' scenario for sure.

Antarctica is still moving down towards the 79/08 average with less than 1/2 million over the odds (not much for such a huge expanse of ice)........I'm seeing plenty of 'See' but not much 'saw'......

[weather eater]

I'm thinking of the global impacts of major circulation changes to both atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Tell me how many monsoons need to fail before we have major starvation issues? How many Bangladeshian flood events? How many Chinese droughts/S. American droughts before mass migration raises the spectre of war? How many Pakistani floods/drought do we need before those Nukes end up in the hands of whichever group overthrows the Govt?

I'd love to live in your world of stability but I'm still stuck in the old world of food riots and anarchy (blame Maggie's Britain for showing me how easy it is to have law and order break down on a local scale over local issues.......god help us if we faced national issues as pressing!).

And there’s more, we don’t grow enough food to feed ourselves, we rely on imported raw materials, in any case relatively small sea level rises could flood some of our best farmland. To see how much of our food stuffs are imported a quick look at food labels in a supermarket is all that’s needed. then there would be mass migration from areas of the world where, floods, droughts, loss of land to desert, inundation by the sea, etc. Any Amateur historian understands the impact of climate change on populations and how that has fuelled conflict over the century’s, to think that we would be immune to that is utterly naive.

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks w.e.! we need to understand just how finely balanced our continued existance is on our climate. Look at global grain prices since Russia stopped exports this year...0 inflation? not a chance....We are being lead to believe that the Russian drought (and wildfires) are a common event but I'd wager that this is by far the most globally expensive (esp. for the needy as nations hoard their grain instead of giving it out as famine relief) and costly in human lives over the next 12 months.

The 'changes' that altered atmospheric circulation brings include the Mid -west wheat fields (as we've seen over the past years), the Russian wheat producing areas and , soon enough I bet, the Chinese production areas. With Africa and S.America not 'online' yet (many Nations are buying up land to grow their nations crops there) we may well face shortfalls in food production over the next 10yrs which ,in turn, impacts national ecconomies with inflation issues (pay me more so I can afford my food etc.)

Edited August 24, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[4wd]

Trying to link the Asian Floods and Russian heat to AGW is nothing but speculation.

There have always been floods and droughts.

It's also well off topic in this thread.

[weather eater]

Trying to link the Asian Floods and Russian heat to AGW is nothing but speculation.

There have always been floods and droughts.

It's also well off topic in this thread.

Who is doing so, we were talking about the melting ice caps, the situation in Russia, China, Pakistan, were just being used as examples of the devastation that weather events can bring, if they were being linked to AGW I can assure you I would be the first to express reservations. But you're right that we are wandering off topic.

[Gray-Wolf]

Trying to link the Asian Floods and Russian heat to AGW is nothing but speculation.

There have always been floods and droughts.

It's also well off topic in this thread.

If changes in the northern ice fields are allowing changes to global atmospheric circulation how can this be off topic? You can't go from frozen desert to open water (with attendant evaporation and cloud formation/cyclonic cyclogenisis) without that impacting systems in lower latitudes can you 4wd (plenty of studies showing the 'alterations' both published and ongoing).

How can you not see the potential for change when you see the scale of changes daily 4wd?

EDIT: Today's JAXA losses.

If we look at Fram we'll see quite a large area now with sea ice (entering the Straight) so I imagine the low loss figure is a mixture of 'increases' and declines. This will go on for a few days as the ice tounge flows down Fram. This will then reverse as the ice starts to melt out faster than it grows or the ice behind (feeding the tounge) get's so stretched that areas drop below 15% cover (remember images are realtime and JAXA is a day out!).

EDIT:EDIT;

WOW! I'd never run the 30day animation for ice in Antarctica on C.T. before! Doesn't that show the circumpolar winds/current well?

Edited August 24, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[BornFromTheVoid]

Unfortunately it looks as though low pressure is going to remain on the Russian side of the Arctic for the foreseeable future, with relatively high pressure over the Canadian side so the ice will continue being pushed towards the Fram strait.

T24

T96

T144

[Gray-Wolf]

I'd also keep an eye on the hurricane remnants as they may also enter into the mix by the swells /winds they might introduce Across our side of the pole.

I'm enjoying the views of 80 degrees north from the mast of the Healy;

http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/reports/aloftcon/2010/

helps me put flesh on the bones of the extent/concentration maps we get. I bet in years past the ice at 80%+ would have been a heck of a lot thicker than that we are seeing today!!! (3m+ was the norm beyond 80 degrees north)

[doctormog]

I bet in years past the ice at 80%+ would have been a heck of a lot thicker than that we are seeing today!!! (3m+ was the norm beyond 80 degrees north)

Opinion or fact? Have you a link stating that was the "norm" for all areas north of 80 degrees?

As you can see now the Healey is heading further north it is encoutering much thicker ice. If you look back at its past track you will see it has chosen and aletered its route to find the path of least resistance (i.e. areas where the ice is thinnest). This is clear on its track where it had to double back after 14th Aug and then take a route with less ice. As you say though it's interesting to see the imagery - the latest one is beautiful and sens a shiver down my spine.

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi Dr M!

I'd dig out those Sub logs and see what conditions they reported up top? As it is I was under the 'opinion' that sea ice used to be around 9ft thick across the pole over summer in the 'old Arctic'?

The last Healy shot is what I was expecting to see the first time I looked and here we are , 2 days on?, finally finding what I'd expect. As for there route, if you were mapping the sea floor how much could you expect to deviate from a straght line before you started missing areas of sea floor? When I've watched progs on telly doing sea floor maps they always seem to keep as straight as possible (god bless sat nav.!)?

[doctormog]

Thanks re. the data. As for the ship's route - you can keep an eye on it yourself here:

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP (You may need to soom out to get the track since 14th August)

Perhaps they always planned that route but it does seem to coincide with the areas of least ice.

[quest4peace]

Hi guys take a look at the sea temperature chart of the same site Where there is generally sea temps of no higher than eight degrees c there is an astonishing 13.8c to the north east of scandinavia/lapland

http://www.sailwx.info/tmp/4c73d088_5533_0.png

And current world temps

http://www.sailwx.info/tmp/4c73d182_584c_0.png

Just wondering what thoughts you more knowledgable guys could say about it

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi guys take a look at the sea temperature chart of the same site Where there is generally sea temps of no higher than eight degrees c there is an astonishing 13.8c to the north east of Scandinavia/Lapland :o

http://www.sailwx.in...d088_5533_0.png

And current world temps

http://www.sailwx.in...d182_584c_0.png

Just wondering what thoughts you more knowledgeable guys could say about it

I've looked through other SST graphics and anoms but see a cooler than average sea in that area? (granted it's the only area of the arctic that's colder!!) so I've no idea where the 'rogue' comes from? Maybe the Ruskies accidentally mussed with one of their discarded Nuke reactors whilst cleaning up the Northern sea route in July???