Arctic Ice Discussion - 2010 Freeze Up

[BornFromTheVoid]

A large drop in ice extent yeasterday from 9,383,125km2 to 9,356,094km2, which may be a November record (IJIS) if it doesn't change too much. This is mostly due to a loss of ice around the Chukchi sea as mild air pushes up through the Bering strait. This looks like continuing for the next 3 or 4 days at least, so the possibility of further losses or a stall in growth in that area during that time...

Ice around the Kara sea continues to grow though and conditions only look like improving here for the foreseeable future, so I'd imagine extent/area back to average or above within the next week here. Similarly with the Barents sea as very cold air remains over the area for the next week or so, extending down over Scandanavia. Sea ice the the Gulf of Bothania before the end of November?

Baffin sea ice is beginning to improve though still way below average and in Hudson bay, some very cold air has arrived and should start lowering those SSTAs, which are over 5C above average in place when they should be freezing around now.

[Gray-Wolf]

Cheers for that BFTV!

I thought it odd that we should still be having 'slow days' but losses? maybe we need look at the 'slow areas' for our answers but also recognise that we are still losing ice as well as growing our winter ice (something that used to be staunched by F.Y. ice welding together flows of paleocrstic ice in Nares and Fram. A look at fram yesterday;

http://www.woksat.info/etcsk18/sk18-1233-g-sv.html

shows both the scale of the Exodus but also the tell tale 'swirls' of melted out ice.

The right hand side of this image shows the ice ready to ship out into fram and the fracturing that shows the movement underway;

http://www.woksat.info/etcsk18/sk18-1233-h-grn-n.html

Whilst we focus on the production of F.Y. ice let us not be ignorant to the continued loss of 2nd, 3rd, 4th year ice.

[oldsnowywizard]

Not sure but I think you have your death spiral tinted glasses on there... Fram always has ice going out I. Some way shape or fashion... Never has there been a great big iceberg stopping ice flow from this area...

Some bad charts for cold over the basin coming up as the cold get displaced over Canada and into scandi but only a temp thing as the cold rebuilds back where needed over the ice.. Barents should start picking up quite a bit I would have thought..

[Gray-Wolf]

I'm sorry OSW but I think you're forgetting all we have seen happen over the last 5 years? Have we not been told that there is no ice beyond 5 years old in the basin? Do we not know that their is little (or no) Paleocrystic ice, of the dimensions we're accustomed to see in the Arctic , around the top of Greenland and across into Barents (bridging the gap between NE Greenland and Svalbard) slowing the exodus.

If a 'spiral' is something getting smaller and smaller over time what better way would you have to describe the current trends in ice area/volume over the sat. period?

If you wan t to look back through the records of ice loss, over winter,, through Fram you may find some interesting data there?

[oldsnowywizard]

GW im not disregarding what has happened in the past 5 years.. we have, fact lost significant amounts of multi year ice, we also had the lowest sea ice levels in 2007.. however things are not as simple as warmer SSTs, more energy and heat being absorbed or the fram express, which are your top repetitive posts..

2008 saw thin ice lasting and recovering quite substantially... why? everything you post should imply that 2008 would be worse than 2007.. but... it wasnt..

2009 and 2010 also have not followed the doom and gloom posts... the ice levels and ice quality should equate to some kind of spiral but they havent... weather conditions had the fram express running in full mode for large parts of this summer, we had large areas of dark, energy absorbing water, and yet we have the earliest re freeze start of the past 10 years... how ? why? what? it just shows there are more complex forces at work here and we clearly dont know enough about what is really going on up there... yes we will have soon scientific satellites but we cant compare eggs with eggs for a further 5 years..

all i know is that we have now more areas of 2-4 year multi year ice which is struggling for survival and it might... just might hang on to the magic 5 year status... and this year things so far are working in favour of thicker ice in certain areas... of course you will pick out Baring as being lower than normal or Baffin... but of course you need cold air for ice to grow and so far the cold air has not been anywhere near these areas.. I would be most interested to see if anyone has access to Barents ice thickness or extent charts (not cryosphere)..

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi OSW!

08' had less volume of ice and the end of the season was augmented by the collapse and spread of the last remnants of the 'old perennial'. 09' was much the same as 08' and , this past year, we lost the 'collapse and spread ice' so we saw a closer approximation of what an 'average' year means to the Arctic. So even without the 'perfect storm' synoptics we post such a low figure from such a high start point yet your drift seems to be that we are ,in fact ,doing rather well for Arctic ice?

[oldsnowywizard]

Gw collapse and spread would not equate to that much extra extent you are merely trying to find something to match your purpose . A slab or block of ice does not suddenly become thin and spread out. Even if it did you would have so much thin ice that the warmer water which you keep bringing up would cause the ice to melt faster.

[Gray-Wolf]

Gw collapse and spread would not equate to that much extra extent you are merely trying to find something to match your purpose . A slab or block of ice does not suddenly become thin and spread out. Even if it did you would have so much thin ice that the warmer water which you keep bringing up would cause the ice to melt faster.

You remember , I take it , Prof Barbers "Circumpolar flaw lead study" on the Amundsen and what they found (eventually) out in the Southern Beaufort sea in sept of 09'?

That multi km ice floe effectively disintegrated in only 20 mins. It collapsed due to the swell (generated over on the Siberian side of the Basin) into chunks that matched the wavelength of that swell (100m slabs).

Are you proposing that the footprint of that floe was near identical both before and after the collapse?

In 07',08',09' how many such floes were there out in the Greenland/Beaufort, Barents sea areas and into what size chunks did they collapse? I think even Prof B's prediction of being without the older thicker sea ice "very soon" didn't envisage it being the very next year!

[songster]

Are you proposing that the footprint of that floe was near identical both before and after the collapse?

Of course it was. Which covers a larger area, a jigsaw or the original picture that is cut up to create the jigsaw?

[oldsnowywizard]

20 minute of observation or even days of observation in one place is not nearly enough scientific evidence GW come on.. and Jigsaw.?..

ok I give up trying...what will be will be...

arctic ice update... seems that ice extent is following 2006...

[BornFromTheVoid]

20 minute of observation or even days of observation in one place is not nearly enough scientific evidence GW come on.. and Jigsaw.?..

ok I give up trying...what will be will be...

arctic ice update... seems that ice extent is following 2006...

Yep, and 06 lost a lot of ice through Fram. What's the reason for us doing so badly this year then? Coldest summer past 80N in a long time, earliest refreeze in a long time, cold situated just where we want it, yet for weeks we've been flirting with lowest on record...

[pottyprof]

Yep, and 06 lost a lot of ice through Fram. What's the reason for us doing so badly this year then? Coldest summer past 80N in a long time, earliest refreeze in a long time, cold situated just where we want it, yet for weeks we've been flirting with lowest on record...

It's back to that sea temperature thing again isn't it?

[BornFromTheVoid]

It's back to that sea temperature thing again isn't it?

Perhaps... wish I knew for sure. Maybe the high SSTAs combined with the cold staying mainly over the Arctic Basin (up until now anyway)? The Basin filled up quick enough but since we reached the time of year where growth mainly occurs outside the basin, it slowed close to record low years. Now maybe that the cold is spreading away we could see some of that ice spead with it?

Going by the IJIS cocentration images, this has been the worst year for Hudson bay ice growth on record. The longer we go without it freezing, the further we're gonna move from all other years. The current cold air over it at the moment looks like being gone by the end of the week, not much time to cool those positive anomalies and start the freeze.

[Michael Hauber]

For the last year or so it seems as if the NW Atlantic has been unsually warm and the NE Atlantic while still above average, certainly a bit cooler than around 2007. At the same maps at ESRL PSD show that there has been higher pressure than normal SE of Greenland, which has weakened the westerly belt and seems to be allowing more warm Gulf Stream water to end up near Greenland and NE America, instead of in the far north Atlantic near Svalbaard. This is the time of year when growth in sea ice in Hudson Bay, and Baffin/Newfoundland areas dominates extent change, with growth on the Pacific side limited by the narrow Bering Strait (until near maximum where it spreads into NW Pacific), and growth in Atlantic limited mostly to the coast near Europe.

This seems to be a fairly persistent pattern, and unless it breaks down soon (due to La Nina?) I would imagine Arctic Ice will continue to be very to record low.

At the same time diversion of warmer Atlantic waters westward may help to increase melt in Greenland, and result in less warm water entering the Arctic from the Atlantic, and slow the reduction in summer sea ice.

[Gray-Wolf]

HI M.H.!

I think the Narwhals showed us that the Baffin area is certainly warming but they gave no support to the notion of N.Atlantic waters doing the job? There is an outflow of Pacific waters through there (and Grey Whales last year it seems?) and that flow , at it's entrance, is increasing. The other factor being the lack of ice cover allowing summer warming down to depth and the destruction of the halocline (as the Narwhals showed).

Since the last of the 'land-fast ice' was all cleared from the NW Passage (and the feeds from the Arctic Ocean) this past summer we may find an increase in flow through the passages and less 'modification' to this water as it travels. As such we might expect less ice around Baffin this winter and expect another early opening of the NW Passage next summer (unless it becomes clogged with Arctic ice passing through the three channels by Melville Island into the main channel?)

As for the Jigsaw.......my jigsaw board, box top and bottom, is still nowhere near enough room to lay out my pieces!!! (even though the completed jigsaw sits nicely on the board....)

[BornFromTheVoid]

Todays preliminary IJIS update has given us another loss, 11,000km2 this time. While it's enough to be easily overcome at thr update, it's going to be close IMO.

We're continuing to see strong growth in the Kara sea, but losses in both the Chukchi and Baffin sea.

Cold air looks set to return to the Bering strait in the next day so we should see an end to losses here. All the while, even milder air is moving up the west Greenland coast, so no improvement there likely, if anything a continued loss.

Cold air remains over Hudson until this friday, so hopefully we can see some fresh ice formation there. Our best chance for ice growth remains with the Barents and Kara seas, where frigid air looks set to remain for at least another week and we are already well above last year in these areas.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.woksat.info/etcsk21/sk21-1201-f-sv.html

Spot the Buoy (north pole cam 2, red track)

Not bad rate of drift seeing as it was positioned at the north Pole on April 19th! Of course all of the ice it was positioned on is travelling with it......

[BornFromTheVoid]

Well, it looks like none of us were close on the 10 million km2 date!

Anayway, breached the 10mil mark today, currently at 10,023,594km2, which leaves us just about 2nd lowest on the IJIS record. Hudson still hasn't began its freeze over properly, and most of this growth is occurring in the Kara and Barents sea.

Looks like a chance of the Baltic sea being frozen before Hudson!

[songster]

It may be fair to say that Hudson Bay is giving us real-world experimental proof of the "Arctic Amplification". Over the last couple of decades, the spring thaw has come earlier and earlier, leading to increased heat absorption during the summer, a later re-freeze, and thinner winter ice. The process is now so far advanced that it has changed the entire shape of the yearly melt curve - the early thaw showing up as more severe May negative anomalies and the later freeze showing up as more severe November negative anomalies,

Watching the kinetics of this play out over the next few years may give an indication to how things will progress at higher latitudes. Going by the amplification theory, we expect even earlier thaw and later freeze next year. Accordingly I shall predict a "bump" on the left hand side of next year's melt curve as Hudson melts out early and the overal melt then stalls for a little while, and a similar "bump" on the right hand side as Hudson fails to ice over until late in the year.

[Gray-Wolf]

A combination of the recent NASA study showing the worlds lakes warming faster than air temps and the 'Helpful Narwhals' in Baffin we can imagine just how 'messed up' the old temp/depth profiles are around much of Hudson?

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

anyone care to take a stab at why we find ourselves aiming at being the lowest Dec ice extent ever recorded?

From the Sept/early Oct clamour from many on here I'd expect some folk have some good notions as to why the Basin seemed very responsive yet the surrounding sea areas are not?

[Skiwi]

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

anyone care to take a stab at why we find ourselves aiming at being the lowest Dec ice extent ever recorded?

From the Sept/early Oct clamour from many on here I'd expect some folk have some good notions as to why the Basin seemed very responsive yet the surrounding sea areas are not?

Because the surrounding water has spent a few years now mostly ice free over the summer absorbing heat and slowing down the re-freeze process.

[BornFromTheVoid]

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

anyone care to take a stab at why we find ourselves aiming at being the lowest Dec ice extent ever recorded?

From the Sept/early Oct clamour from many on here I'd expect some folk have some good notions as to why the Basin seemed very responsive yet the surrounding sea areas are not?

I think the answer to that question has to be Hudson bay. But then the question arises of why Hudson is having such a late refreeze this year. Is it down to simply a lack of cold air leaving the Arctic until recently or a kind of "Hudson Amplification" influencing things?

Going by the graph below and the general lack of cold over Canada as shown by the image, it's probably a bit of both...

[barrel1234]

GW if we all listened to one of your previous posts about early refreezes insulating the water below some could interpret this as good news for the Hudson Bay, however I didn't and I don't, but having followed the anomaly maps for the polar regions its obvious to me that it is probably much more weather rather than climate factors causing the late refreeze of the hudson, so when it eventually decides to freeze we can expect a big catch up in ice area in my opinion. so lets see what happens.

* Just to note, looking at the anomaly forecast for the winter it looks like the hudson will be very late freezing (as it already is) with quite possibly also an early melt as well due to higher than average temps either side of feb2011. So there should be extra cold in other places with that usual area of cold being displaced somewhere else, as to how this will affect melt rates in the other places will remain to be seen nearer the time.

It also looks like the atlantic could start to cool following the strong la nina and apparent move over to a negative PDO and that would signal the start of a possible global cooling event (which I believe much more likely than continued warming)....... however obviously thats assuming that the anomaly forecast is fairly accurate.

http://www.cpc.ncep....3/glbT2mMon.gif

Edited December 4, 2010 by barrel1234

[noggin]

Being a simple sort of soul, may I hazard a guess that it could be because the "cold" has been displaced somewhat? The cold is here in Europe, rather than "there", if you see what I mean?