Arctic Ice Discussion - 2010 Freeze Up

[knocker]

But we also know that certain types of conditions during solar cycles can also create the same effect....

Chicken or egg??

Could you explain that with a little more detail. Because as far as I'm aware solar cycles are still not not that well understood.

Edited January 9, 2011 by weather ship

[PersianPaladin]

[knocker]

And your point is what?

Edited January 10, 2011 by weather ship

[pottyprof]

Could you explain that with a little more detail. Because as far as I'm aware solar cycles are still not not that well understood.

Totally agree with you on that one.

Lockwood's latest study shows that when solar activity is low, the jet stream becomes liable to break up into giant meanders that block warm westerly winds from reaching Europe, allowing Arctic winds from Siberia to dominate Europe's weather.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627640.800-whats-wrong-with-the-sun.html?full=true

[Gray-Wolf]

Sept's ice volume amount. "Recovery? I see no recovery....."

EDIT: And ,if you missed it , the line we appear to be tracking has us 'seasonal' this sept........

Edited January 10, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

The Arctic will continue to surprise, despite being watched and studied more closely than ever - it isn't (by far) the most accurate measure of climate change, never has been. At best, it's the pretty poster boy used to draw attention, nice to look at but nothing more than eye candy.

[Gray-Wolf]

With every dimension of the Arctic in a studied long term decline I can see no 'scope' for surprises (unless you are surprised to see a 'seasonal Arctic Pack'?)

As for it being 'eye candy'??? We are a 'weather site' and , as such, must all have a small grasp of what drives our weather?

I find the 'Arctic Amplification' link to our recent 'polar evacuations far too compelling to dismiss so lightly and the cost (both in broken bones and to the economy) of such a 'new pattern' across the N.Hemisphere (in late Autumn/early winter) is also something that demands further study (as many of our Govt's have sanctioned).

To me , in my understanding, this change to the pole (over Autumn/winter) marks the start of a rapid climate shift that will merely re-reinforce the direction global climate is headed in. 'Rapid' ,in the past, has meant 'over a ten year period' so the weather/climate extremes we have been witnessing this past 10 years ( as the final phase of Arctic ice melt/change from 'old' to 'New' Arctic) will continue to impact and expand in those impacts until both their occurrence and generation are fully accepted.

Many folk do not need more 'data' to know which way to look to find answers to the UK's winter 'extremes' (If we had a 30c anom atop of us in late Oct we'd all both know about it and know that it must impact other areas equally) and that this situation is one that is 'expanding' .

The studies quoted cover the Barents and Kara sea areas but , since those study began, Beaufort/Greenland/East Siberian and ,this year to come Arctic basin have been ice free over summer leading to the same 'sluggardly ice growth' come Autumn and temp anoms in the 20 to 30c range. No surprise we have another stonking AO -ve again this winter?

[cuckoo]

I was watching the Arctic programme by Bruce Parry last night and a couple of remarks he made really hit home as to the scale of some of the changes taking place up there.

He was on Disko Island in Greenland with a geologist who was prospecting the mineral deposits. The geologist said that just a few decades ago the huge mountain sides of rock they were flying over were under ice 60 metres thick. Nowadays the bare rock is exposed and with the ice long gone the mining companies are moving in to extract the billion dollar deposits of zinc that were contained in the virgin hillsides.

I am sure many on here are fully aware of these changes having read the relevant research papers but as someone who only picks up limited information from the media I found the scale of changes quite shocking and the fact the minimg companies were already there blowing up the hillsides kind of shattered my preconceptions about Greenland still being a place virtually untouched by man.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Sept's ice volume amount. "Recovery? I see no recovery....."

EDIT: And ,if you missed it , the line we appear to be tracking has us 'seasonal' this sept........

A pretty clear and worrying trend there, though, despite what the graph shows, I'd say it's very unlikely we'll move to a fully seasonal pack this September. Even another 07 would probably leave us with a little ice up there!

Another drop in extent on the first update today after 2 drops and a small 1k increase over the last 3 days.

Some very mild uppers around the Bering Strait at the moment, >5C in places, which is really knocking the ice back there and reducing the NH ice extent.

Some very cold air moving over Hudson bay now which should finally finish off the refreeze there over the next few days.

Also plenty of cold over Barents, Baffin and the sea of Okhotsk which should slowly increase extent over these areas. I'd like to think that the growth in these areas would be make up for the loss over the Bering sea but it's hard to say.

Looking ahead to t72, we see the mild air over the Bering strait moving into the Arctic basin and raising temperatures there above -10C for a short period.

Otherwise, cold air still in the same regions as above which should lead to a steady ice growth with the core of the cold spread well away from the Arctic basin, which is good for Northern Hemisphere extent growth but not too good for thickening up the ice that needs to last through the summer...

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

Still have to admit that the current ice levels are deeply worrying. Anyone got a copy of the full series of ice plots from the last 30yrs to bring todays levels into perspective.

[barrel1234]

Not worrying at all.

The cold is at last building over the Hudson Bay/Greenland area (a few days later than I had predicted a couple of weeks ago) In the next week there should be a catch-up in Ice area.

Worried????? I would be worried more if the Ice levels were increasing above normal for recent times, with the increased demand on heating and energy and shortened growing seasons this what should worry people and current ice levels are certainly not worrying for me.

This is currently no death spiral, and there won't be, the world is going to cool on average for the next 20 years at least and it may take some time but the arctic will respond accordingly.

[Gray-Wolf]

Look forward to it barrel. You will explain ,come Sept 23rd , why we saw the lowest ice level ever recorded this coming melt season though won't you?

As I see it we are looking at very salty F.Y. ice with only 2 months to 'mature' before the Arctic edges hit spring (March).

Come the full moon of March 19th we'll all get to see how 'Tough' this 'rebound ice you're promising us is eh?

[BornFromTheVoid]

Today marks the point when we've had a full month of record low ice extent, despite a 90,000km2 gain yesterday.

First update today gives a 30,000km2 gain, though I expect this to be over 50,000km2 later as it looks like there have been some good gains, especially in the Barents sea and Bering sea, where a change to slightly more northerly winds has allowed the ice to start spreading back southwards.

[Gray-Wolf]

I'd be wary of 'Barents' as a 'gain', the Di-Pole has shunted the main body of the pack, from Bering through to Svalbard, so some of the 'gains' across Barents will be 'infill' from the central basin as it drifts towards Fram?

[NorthNorfolkWeather]

Look forward to it barrel. You will explain ,come Sept 23rd , why we saw the lowest ice level ever recorded this coming melt season though won't you?

As I see it we are looking at very salty F.Y. ice with only 2 months to 'mature' before the Arctic edges hit spring (March).

Come the full moon of March 19th we'll all get to see how 'Tough' this 'rebound ice you're promising us is eh?

I'll mark this post GW, as we'll see how that prediction works out

[BornFromTheVoid]

I'd be wary of 'Barents' as a 'gain', the Di-Pole has shunted the main body of the pack, from Bering through to Svalbard, so some of the 'gains' across Barents will be 'infill' from the central basin as it drifts towards Fram?

I dunno GW, with 850s around -30C and surface temps of below -20C I'd say it's mostly new ice forming.

What's surprising is the lack of ice growth in the Baffin sea. Surface temps have been below 0C here for a few days now with no significant change.

Anyway, with surface temps now very low across Hudson, I'd be very surprised if the freeze-over wasn't complete by Monday. At least then nobody can place all the blame on it for the low NH sea ice extent (presuming it is still close to record low).

Impressive air pressure anomalies over the last month!

[Gray-Wolf]

Sorry BFTV! I mean that there is a 'drift' of ice from Bering toward Fram. I'm sure there is plenty of 'new' ice forming where we had open water too but the loss of older ice (to be replaced by 'fresh' ice) is what I'm attempting (poorly) to highlight? Come summer the 'late developed ice' will not endure so the more 'fresh' ice we end up with ,replacing ice lost to the Atlantic, makes ice retention over summer doubly difficult.

This is the second melt season we have seen without the 'collapse and spread' phenomena and with last year seeing off that plume of Paleocrystic that was forced out into Beaufort (behind Bering) we have little of the central pack of any age at all. We are constantly being reminded how poorly F.Y. ice fares over summer (esp ice 2m or less) so this year we will see a lot of 'in-situ' losses and be less needy of synoptics to drive a low min (May the Gods help us if we do get the 'wrong' synoptics' as the younger ice travels fast and breaks easily aiding it's ablation).

Maybe the folk who do not think that the Arctic is beyond any 'tipping point' will take note if we see major losses without the aid of a 'perfect storm' synoptic?

As you know we have 'challenged' the freakish low of 07' each year since ( and ended with less volume than the 'volume' of 07) and those years have been 'average' summers in the Arctic (a mixed bag of synoptics that flush away ice and synoptics that keep ice in the Basin) . With us looking to start the melt season on another record low volume for the time of year we must accept that any 'average' ice max. means a very thin spread of ice throughout the basin.

With the Canadian Archipelago bereft of it's thick bay ice/Paleocrystic ice we can also expect an early opening of the NW Passage and more losses from the Basin through the newly opened channels into Viscount Melville and off into Baffin. At present our only store of 'thick ice' is behind C.A./North Greenland and so it's loss via Nares/Fram/C.A. will only compound the poor state of the Arctic ice and plot out the way we can expect the basin to act in future.

I don't know about you but I was quite shocked to see how fast the 'North Pole Cam buoy' exited the Basin? It was deployed on April 19th and out of the Basin (into Fram) by mid Oct (cam2). When deployed it sat on 2nd/3rd year ice and all of that ice must have also passed into the Atlantic allowing F.Y. ice to fill in the 'void'. With even the heart of the basin filled with salty ,weak F.Y. ice I'm expecting an interesting 'Pole Cam' this season?

Edited January 14, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[BornFromTheVoid]

Ah right, I get what you mean now! I think the speed that cam left the NP caught everyone by surprise.

Gain of 45,000km2 on the first update today, which should be increased at the update as there were some large gains in Barents, Bering and Hudson seas.

Looking ahead to t48

The main areas of note look like the Baffin sea, where some bitterly some bitterly cold air is situated which should give the sea ice a much needed boost, and the Barents sea where southerly winds and milder air may do some damage to the fresh ice that has been forming and has a set up like a tamer version of this time in 2006 when quite a lot of ice was lost in this area.

By t120,

There's not a whole lot of change with very cold air over Hudson and Baffin sea, with mild air pushing up into the Greenland sea. Over the Barents sea, the uppers are slightly cooler, but the southerly winds should prevent the ice from expanding southwards

So still difficult to see exactly what will happen, it mostly comes down to how the Barents sea reacts to the southerly winds which it hasn't really had to deal with yet this winter.

In 2006 a more extreme version of what we might get really decimated the ice from Barents up into the Arctic Basin as you can see here

[knocker]

http://www.ijis.iarc...aice_extent.htm

Still have to admit that the current ice levels are deeply worrying. Anyone got a copy of the full series of ice plots from the last 30yrs to bring todays levels into perspective.

I haven't but I don't know whether this is of any interest from this paper or even if it has been posted before. The paper:

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/docs/ArcticAND_Globe.pdf

Observed and projected trends in Arctic sea ice Lemke et al. (2007) argue that sea ice decline in the Arctic may

date back to the early 1970s. Between 1979 and 2007, Arctic sea ice extent decreased significantly by −0.52×106 km2, or 5% per decade totaling an area of 1.76×106 km2 (Deser and Teng, 2008a). The magnitude of this negative trend increased from −0.35×106 km2 per decade during the 1979–1993 period, to −0.9×106 km2 per decade observed between 1993 and 2007 (Comiso, 2006; Deser and Teng, 2008a). Between 1979 and 2007, the trend was greatest during summer at−0.7×106 km2 per decade, or−3.4% per decade, whereas during the winter it was approximated at −0.5×106 km2 per decade, or −9.0% per decade. Both, the summer and winter magnitudes are statistically significant at the 99% confidence level. Changes in sea ice extent and concentrations have not been geographically uniform across the polar region. Deser and Teng (2008a) found the trends to exhibit distinct spatial patterns depending upon time period and season examined. Between 1979 and 2007, for instance, winter sea ice declined in all the marginal seas, with the exception of the Bering Sea. During an earlier period, between 1979 and 1993, on the other hand, concentrations increased in the Labrador and Bering Seas and decreased in the Greenland and Barents Seas and in the Sea of Okhotsk. Since 1993, sea ice has been declining throughout the marginal seas in winter, with greatest amplitudes observed in the Atlantic sector. During summer between 1979 and 2006, sea ice concentrations have been declining throughout the Arctic with largest changes occurring in an area stretching fromthe Laptev Sea eastward to the Beaufort Sea. Up until 1993, however, sea ice declined in the East Siberian Sea and expanded in the Barents, Kara, and eastern Beaufort Seas. Since 1993, summer sea ice concentrations have been on the decline throughout

the Arctic.

There is a fair bit more but youv'e probably already read it.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Small increase in NH ice extent this morning, just ~16k. A similar increase at the update later should finally take us back above lowest on record and should keep us there for a while as 2006 lost a lot of ice between the 14th and 21st, which I presume won't happen this year.

[songster]

Well, we ticked above 2006 yesterday, but this morning's update is a loss of ~41k square kilometres - who knows what the afternoon will bring? 2011 and 2006 may yet slug it out for last place.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Back to losing sea ice again today, with a drop of around 40,000km2 after the first update.

The majority of the loss has come from the Barents sea where the southerly winds I'd mentioned have arrived and are driving the pack northwards much faster than anticipated. This looks like continuing for the next 5 days at least, which is a slight worry, as it appears the gains over Hudson haven't even been enough to balance things out here...

The main hope for us not to follow the trend of 2006 is if the cold air situated over the Baffin/Newfoundland sea (which now has the largest negative anomaly in the NH) starts causing some rapid ice gains and if we can get some more ice growth around the Bering sea similar to last year

[Gray-Wolf]

'Similar to last year' won't do this year BFTV!

You saw (along with all of us) the last blobs of Paleocrystic ice in Beaufort melt out (in -situ) last year so we know we have nothing but young ice across the basin now (less than 4 years old).

We also saw the ice that formed the 'Pole' last summer washed into the Atlantic 2 months into 're-freeze'.

We also have a lot of ice just forming that should have formed nearly 3 months ago.

We dare not comfort ourselves by comparing the 'extent' of the ice, come March, with other years (even as recent as 06'?) without bringing it's 'provenance' into the equation.

Not only 'thin' ice but also weak ,salty, 'new' ice. I suspect we'll have that 'deathly silence' from late May onward, once the melt starts in earnest, as we shall see lot's of 'in-situ' losses from all of this 'new' ice. Add into that a period of rapid loss through Fram (as we've seen in most melt seasons the past decade) and we will have a lot to fret over come Mid-Aug.

The Article I posted in 'News' regarding the Albedo 'feedback' would have me hoping that N.H. snow cover lasts longer this year (and no repeat of a record low a few weeks after a 'record high' being announced like last year!) and that we can hold onto the central pack for more of the season?

[Gray-Wolf]

Though we may be tracking above 06' now be mindful of the amount of 06's ice that was the Paleocrystic (prior to the 07' losses and the completion of those losses in the years following?) and the impact that 'thick ,endurable ice, had on the following melt season.

Even if we get ice extent back into the pack proper we are at the end phase of this years freeze and still some areas are refusing to freeze as 'normal'. This is the first time in recorded history that Hudson had not been frozen come the new year with sections posting a 20c anom in the first week of Jan.

With daylight now creeping back into the polar regions and a full moon tide running under the 'thin ice' we may find some disruption to the pack prior to the L.p. system disruption that the models seem to be forecasting over the coming days. The moon in a months time should be even more disruptive with some 'growth' in extent possible as the pack breaks and floats apart (stretching extent but not falling below the 15% ice criteria).

With Nina 'peaking' and the possibility of a 'strong Nino/High solar' for 2012 we have to wonder where we will find ourselves over the next 18months?

[knocker]

Shrinking snow and ice cover intensify global warming.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The decreases in Earth's snow and ice cover over the past 30 years have exacerbated global warming more than models predict they should have, on average, new research from the University of Michigan shows. To conduct this study, Mark Flanner, assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, analyzed satellite data showing snow and ice during the past three decades in the Northern Hemisphere, which holds the majority of the planet's frozen surface area. The research is newly published online in Nature Geoscience.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-01/uom-ssa011811.php

The abstract.

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1062.html