Arctic Sea Ice Discussion 2016: Melt Season

[Geordiesnow]

9 hours ago, BornFromTheVoid said:

That's what I'm thinking too, unless the weather turns quite bad in July and August. Current surface melt extent is down around the bottom of the last few years. If the warm weather since the winter had continued into June, we would have been in a really bad place, but this month has been relatively cool compared to 2012.
Daily NSIDC extent is now above 2012 too.

I think its too early to forecast a minimum just purely on melt ponds, lots of factors will come into play and you can't rule out a big storm to stir things up. One thing to note this year is just how warm the landmasses are on a widespread scale and the further outlook does suggest some warmth will once again enter the basin itself. Uncertain how the weather will play out with some runs suggesting low pressure will stay in charge as in one rounded low like the GFS 12Z run is hinting at whilst other runs suggest after the low deepening, it will fill and things become slack again although not as cold as they are now. Rather ironic the GFS 12Z run is actually quite cold with its rounded low but the downside could be how deep the low is(nothing too excessive albeit) which may affect the ice in some way.

One thing the models do seem to be agreeing on though is Beaufort is going to warm up significantly and could well stay on the warm side for a while and with the ice the way it is there, that is something to keep a close eye on. 

 

[Thundery wintry showers]

Another factor that could help the sea ice is the loss of the El Nino.  While we still have record-breaking warmth across the globe at present, it's not as bad as it could have been, because the anomaly has declined somewhat since April and, significantly, the decline has included the mid to high lattiude Northern Hemisphere.

Unfavourable synoptics could still result in a similar minimum to 2012 but it is looking unlikely to me that we will finish significantly below the 2012 value, and more likely that we'll end up somewhere between the 2007 and 2015 minima.

[Gray-Wolf]

I think I'm getting my own view, on how the basin changes to become open to melt out events most years, a little clearer in my mind?

I have been fascinated with the ice fracture events since the noughties. then I would await the spring tide moons to see just how some regions were 'disrupted' by it.

Since the 2012 'record low' we have seen late winter fragmentation events in late winter each year. This years was really bad!.

We know to expect volume to bleed away , leading to ever thinner ice whilst winter extent holds to current values? This leads to weak ice that is open to fragmentation events whenever the forcing presents.

A quick look at the MODIS tiles shows that all the older , larger floes, show scarring where they have broken apart and the that lead closed and refroze . This places a weakness along the 'repair'. 

This year in Beaufort we have watched the floes collapse along these old fracture lines producing ever smaller floes.

Is this the future for the basin? An ever reducing floes size prior to max insolation ( leads and not melt ponds soak up the heat?).

We all saw just what happens to pods of small floes at the end of the 2012 melt season so is this how we end up with a basin, showing similar forcings as today's, able to produce a full melt out? A shattered pack sees 'pods'/section of floes captured by lows/High pressure forcings and pushing the ice into unfriendly waters?

This year the ice does not have to travel far to find itself in 'hot water'! we already have two warmed areas that appear active in ice melt ? The Atlantic side at the north of Fram and the open water in Beaufort. 

If we see this type of 'home grown ice kill zones' then we will begin to view lows quite differently? Instead of them 'protecting ' the ice they will drive it into unfriendly waters ( this might happen over the coming week as the lows pile into the basin?)

In the end smaller , more mobile floes, will be pushed into melt zones and melt opening up more water to warm into melt zones, stir and repeat. By late Aug little extent would survive.

Edited June 19, 2016 by Gray-Wolf

[Singularity]

GFS:

   

ECM:

   

 

Both show a bit of a dipole pattern followed by high pressure taking over the Arctic in combination with exceptional warmth invading the Pacific side from Alaska and western Canada. ECM's more aggressive with the high and GFS with the 850 hPa temps (+4*C nearing the pole by day 11, +12 close to the Alaskan/Canadian coast).

 

I'll leave it to others to draw deductions, as work no longer permits me to share my own here.

[Geordiesnow]

I guess whilst the pattern looks nearly set that low pressure will set up around Laptev and high pressure over beaufort, the questions will be, just how deep that trigger low will get as it starts to mix in with that warm air over Kara and the next question afterwards just how much warmth will the Arctic get from Beaufort. Next week is certainly looking interesting weather wise. 

The interesting thing about the ECM run is that whilst the low is quite deep(and is deeper and more tightly packed than the GFS/UKMO), the air under it is quite cold for July so unlike the 2012 storm where the air in general was quite warm, I wonder if that cold air will help the ice somewhat or will the strong winds still play a big part? Of course if the ECM is over deepening the low and its more like the GFS I would imagine any negative impacts on the ice will be rather minimal.

Whats more concerning is what is going on Beaufort, the break up ice there is now melting and open water is now becoming more widespead and the only other year where it looks like this is possibly 2008 where ice in Beaufort did melt really quickly. The next day or so still looks poor for ice retention there until a brief respite perhaps then maybe a surge of proper warmth come in but the twist could be how much wind will there be? I do believe with the ice as thin as it is, wind could well play more of a part these days than it used to be so if we get strong winds coming in from Canada then that open water could very well get bigger quicker than it would if high pressure was more or less on top. 

Its an interesting melt season because whilst June was quite cold in some areas, in others it has been quite warm and the landmasses has been especially warm and the upcoming set ups look similar, areas like Laptev could be quite cold yet just on the other side of the Arctic, it will be "baking hot"(of course baking hot for the Arctic climate!).

[knocker]

You could say low pressure over the Pole

[stewfox]

I like most of the new lay out but wish they kept the extent figure in the title

https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent

Probably sub 8m kms 2 by tomorrow. That's about 16 times the area of France , for mid july

[knocker]

2016 melting momentum, part 3

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2016/07/2016-melting-momentum-part-3.html

[Gray-Wolf]

Well this is my 'make or break' time for my 'preconditioned' pack! The extra 'preconditioning' we have seen , across the basin , since Feb should now make itself known as the long open water turn their accrued heat on the pack.

Read this over at Neven's;

http://www.megiddo666.apocalypse4real-globalmethanetracking.com/2016/07/iced-lightning-lightning-strikes-at-80.html

looking at the sudden uptick cg strikes in, and around, Barrow and North slope. interesting eh?

[stewfox]

On ‎13‎/‎07‎/‎2016 at 17:21, Gray-Wolf said:

Well this is my 'make or break' time for my 'preconditioned' pack! The extra 'preconditioning' we have seen , across the basin , since Feb should now make itself known as the long open water turn their accrued heat on the pack.

Read this over at Neven's;

http://www.megiddo666.apocalypse4real-globalmethanetracking.com/2016/07/iced-lightning-lightning-strikes-at-80.html

looking at the sudden uptick cg strikes in, and around, Barrow and North slope. interesting eh?

No suggestions its new and of course modern equipment a bit better then 1915

Extent falling off now as expected as we approach peak melt season

 

 

 

[Northernlights]

Just an observation from further south but thunderstorms have increased here in the last 50 years from being confined to mid summer in late July early August in my childhood to occuring today from late April to end of September. Outwith this I have seen lightning in December 2010 over the hills .

Another observation is the increase in forked lightning today compared to 50 years ago when sheet lightning dominated in my area. Please feel free to move if off topic. This culminated in my first ever loss of a cow and calf to lightning three years ago in early July.

 

 

[Gray-Wolf]

Not wishing to get stuck too far 'off Topic' but maybe Stew had better read up on his meteorology? Anyhoo's the folk who occupy the far north are certainly noting this new inundation with CG lightning since before 2012 but with 2012 providing a large uptick in such occurrences?

We've lost nearly 500km2 over the past 3 days so some of that 'shattered ice' is now giving up the ghost. Any further mixing prior to Sept refreeze will bring a lot of thin, broken ice into active melt out zones and open more water to mixing?

I believe that this is the 'New Basin' evolving before our eyes! Once ice thickness became so thin late winter shatter events were inevitable. We now have a basin full of 'glued together' floes and it appears that the 'glue' ( late formed FY ice) is not up to the job?

[Geordiesnow]

On 15/07/2016 at 13:41, Gray-Wolf said:

Not wishing to get stuck too far 'off Topic' but maybe Stew had better read up on his meteorology? Anyhoo's the folk who occupy the far north are certainly noting this new inundation with CG lightning since before 2012 but with 2012 providing a large uptick in such occurrences?

We've lost nearly 500km2 over the past 3 days so some of that 'shattered ice' is now giving up the ghost. Any further mixing prior to Sept refreeze will bring a lot of thin, broken ice into active melt out zones and open more water to mixing?

I believe that this is the 'New Basin' evolving before our eyes! Once ice thickness became so thin late winter shatter events were inevitable. We now have a basin full of 'glued together' floes and it appears that the 'glue' ( late formed FY ice) is not up to the job?

I think its a bit too early to talk about "new basin" as this upcoming winter could well be colder than the last one and as we saw in 2013, the ice can be stubborn on the Pacific side of the Arctic if it wants too but as for this year, the ice does indeed look rather vulnable and weak and I do fear a record low or 2nd lowest on record is looking increasingly likely. 

Of course, one negative about winds blowing from the ice in Beaufort is that it can transfer into those warmer waters although on the flip side, it could perhaps cool those SST's down a bit in Beaufort which may help as we enter the latter stages of the melt season.

Its been a bit of a strange summer as parts of the Arctic has been quite cold yet whenever heat has enter the basin, it actually has been quite strong and the early melt in Beaufort is most certainly having an affect on how the ice is around there at the moment. It also been a bit of a stormy summer which of course as been mentioned could be a negative for the ice these days giving how thin it is. 

Talking of heat, I don't think I ever saw a year like it on the Northern Russian coastline towards Kara, its been southerly winds galore with very hot air continually blowing if albeit the wind direction in general is not necessarily blowing towards Barents however SST's are looking quite "warm" there. If we get a set up during the winter months where the Russian high dominates and low pressure over Barents, we could very well have a ice free Kara Sea for the first time? 

The upcoming set up once this low eventually gets into Beaufort and blow cold winds there is for pressure to rise but the models are struggling just how long this high pressure will stick around for, some are going for potentially the high to remain whilst others go for the high to slowly fade and lower pressure starts to dominating but instead of one size low dominating the basin, things start to end up quite slack which you would think would be the best conditions for sea ice. Whilst the high never sets up as a dipole, I would rather see the conditions becoming slack with lower pressure but its one to watch over the coming weeks. 

[Thundery wintry showers]

Recent GFS runs have, as far as I can tell, been putting a low pressure system near the North Pole with relatively limited input of warm air masses into the Arctic Ocean, so I think we can expect a slow down of the melt rate around 20-25 July, although over the next few days the Beaufort Sea, and the area to the north of Siberia, may take quite a hit. 

The lack of sea ice has resulted in continued exceptional warmth around Svalbard.  Longyearbyen's weather station is looking set to smash its previous warmest July record, 8.2C in 1998, and there is no obvious end in sight to the anomalous warmth over Svalbard.  Over the past week this warmth has penetrated into the Franz Josef Land area, which had much closer to average temperatures during June, but it looks like cooling off closer to normal there in about a week's time.

I'm still expecting a final September extent somewhere in between the 2007 and 2015 values.  With unfavourable conditions later in the summer it could drop below 2007 but I think it will be a tall order to beat 2012.

[knocker]

ASI 2016 update 4: breaking point

Quote

uly 20th 2016

Three weeks have passed since the previous ASI update, but I must say that I haven't become much wiser since then. I was expecting this year to start falling behind on the extent and area graphs, as weather conditions that aren't really conducive to melting, have continued to dominate the Arctic.

More than one month and a half of cloudy weather, not exceptional warm, little compaction, hardly any Fram Strait export, but this year somehow still manages to stay among the lowest on record. Such circumstances would have inevitably led to a major stalling on the graphs in previous years, but not this year. It would seem the lack of melting momentum is being compensated by another kind of momentum, brought on by the mild winter, early melt onset/opening up, extreme low snow cover and anomalously high sea surface temperatures.

The question still is whether this year has the oomph to end up in the top 3 September minimums, but whereas three weeks ago I thought it probably wouldn't, I'm not so sure anymore.

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2016/07/asi-2016-update-4-breaking-point.html

[BornFromTheVoid]

NSIDC extent has dropped back to 4th lowest on record, despite big falls in the last 2 days.

We're now getting close to dropping below the first minimum of the 80s too.

 

[BornFromTheVoid]

The 5 day average NSIDC extent has dropped below the first previous minimum set in 1980. We're now also within 500k of 6 other years, 1982, 83, 86, 88, 92 and 96.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Latest situation with regard to previous NSIDC extent minima (using the 5 day average)

Diff...........No of Years.....Percentage
Below 0..........1................3%
0-100k...........0................0%
100-250k........5...............14%
250-500k........6...............16%
500-1000k......4................11%
>1000k.........21...............57%

[Gray-Wolf]

Well what an odd sort of a season this year is proving to be!! For a nondescript kind of melt season we're still bumping along with years that caused a lot of interest as they happened? Are we now all desensitised to the annual loss of sea ice that we have seen this past decade or are we still holding our breath in the hope that it'll keep above the other low years? For such a 'slow' year we are still seeing a very ( to me) vulnerable looking pack as we enter the last third of melt season?

Do others feel that we still walk a fine line between 'alright' and 'another shocking year for the ice' or is that just me?

What we do not need is either high drift or compaction as we have a lot of 'hostile' waters that we do not need ice drifting into but also such a loose pack that compaction would see extent plummet? 

[stewfox]

4 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

 

Do others feel that we still walk a fine line between 'alright' and 'another shocking year for the ice' or is that just me?

 

I said at the beginning of the melt season we will have to wait till the end mid/ late September to see where we are. Too many variables to predict 3/4 months ahead.

We knew at the start of the season we have a poor winter re volume and extent.

I think we will end up in the bottom 5 but nothing like a 'record year'

However as we have seen in recent years there is probably a lot of melting to come.

Given the start we could have been in a much worse state

 

 

Edited July 25, 2016 by stewfox

[John Badrick]

Will just leave this here

[BornFromTheVoid]

1 minute ago, John Badrick said:

Will just leave this here

That's using the ADS extent so it doesn't take much to check the actual stats, the data is available from their website.

It hasn't been the lowest on record. The melt since the start of June has been small, 3.65 million km2 (compared to largest, 2012, with 5.08 million km2) but it is still well higher than 2004 (3.15 million) and even well above the 80s average melt of 3.30 million km2.

 Sure, it's not looking as likely that there will be a record low come September, but saying there definitely won't be one now is as bad as saying there definitely will be back in May.

[Geordiesnow]

I still would not rule out a record low just yet but I think 2nd lowest is looking quite likely just looking at the shape and look of the ice pack, its just look like an ice pack that as soon as any bit of warmth gets to it, it will eat away at it before you know it.

This melt season does show how early open water of the ice can really start the momentum even if weather conditions have not been all that extreme. Beaufort is a good example of that, very early polyna formed there which got quite large and since then, the ice has not really recovered and its just broken up and we see just how little ice there is now in that region. 2014 is another good example in the Laptev region where open water was observed quite early and in a fairly unusual location also. 

It has been quite a stormy summer and you can see that has damaged the ice and there is some more cyclones along the way, how will the upcoming cyclone for this weekend affect the arm of ice stretching out into the Chukchi sea? its quite a small deep low and with the ice looking weak there, I would not be surprised too see some flash melting there. The models are indicating quite strongly recently of quite a widespread southerly flow coming from the Pacfic via a high pressure cell, so could be a double whammy on the way? 

[BornFromTheVoid]

Huge drop on the single day NSIDC extent, down 230k, but still 4th lowest on record.

Using the 5 day trailing average, we have now dropped below the minima of 6 of the 37 previous years.

Below are the stats with regard to all previous minima and current 5 day extent.

Diff..........No of Years.....Percentage
Below 0..........6...............16.2%
0-100k...........1.................2.7%
100-250k........5...............13.5%
250-500k........0.................0.0%
500-1000k......7................18.9%
>1000k.........18................48.6%

[Gray-Wolf]

From looking at sat/Buoy/Healy aloft cam the ice looks terrible. The floes are dropping into such small ones ( thanks to the preconditioning 3 years of 'crackopalypse events' have given us?) so along with 'bottom melt' we should expect 'side melt' to also bring impact? ( surface area to mass ratio drops to a point that allows heat to better penetrate the mass so melt out the floe).

I think we have been watching the pack 'reorganise' itself into a seasonal one? Eventually even years like this will melt out the volume we came into melt season with. It will become possible due to the changes we have seen to the amount of first year ice now in every years pack, this allows 'crackopalypse' to occur. We see the summer's heat accruing in the ocean below and winter temps moderated by WAA as the PV disorganises due to Jet Augmentation.