Snow and Ice Northern Hemisphere - Winter 23 /24

[Midlands Ice Age]

OK Lets start it up then now that the first few pixels have been spotted in central Siberia......

Though not expecting then to stay.

 I have noticed that snow is expected in Northern Canada (west of Elesmere Island in the next few days)

Just a few words...

Please keep CC out of the chatter... we want to just report the advance of winter... 

 

[Midlands Ice Age]

As mentioned above snow has just started to fall in North East Canada by Ellesmere Island.

It can just be seen on the Ice/Snow map for North America.

It is early for the area but probably will not be long lasting.

In Siberia the Climate Reanalyser 10 day outlook (GFS based) looks as though snow may fall on or around the 1st of September as the temps drop there..

Lets hope for an interesting and reasonably eventful winter season in the Arctic.

  

 

Sea Ice levels have undergone quite a large drop in the last 3 weeks, but  both extent and particularly area (3 increases in a row)  are now levelling off.

As always thanks to the ASIF for their animations.

               

     

Do not expect the sea ice to start to increase until around the 10th of September.

MIA

Edited August 26, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

[Midlands Ice Age]

To complete the intro data I present the current Marie extent chart, the current Arctic Pole temperature (80 degrees and above)  according to DMI,   and the current N Hemisphere sea ice and snow chart -

(all of which, no doubt,  I shall be showing in the next 6 months).

         

 

   

  

May we all enjoy what develops.

MIA

[Chesil View]

Thanks MIA. 

I always enjoy your work in tracking the build up of snow cover and the advance of the northern hemisphere winter season.

[damianslaw]

Any updates. This thread is notably quiet compared to recent years. Still its very early in the new season, hope to see more activity in coming weeks. 

[Midlands Ice Age]

On 31/08/2023 at 23:14, damianslaw said:

Any updates. This thread is notably quiet compared to recent years. Still its very early in the new season, hope to see more activity in coming weeks. 

Been out all day and had to buy a new laptop on thursday, as old! one got dropped and is capput.

Fortunately the backups, and Microsoft were able to recreate it very quickly. (Including 95% of passwords)!

Something  I dreaded happening.

Anyway to business on hand.

As I suggested last week we are normally unlikely to see much happening for snow until 1st Sep, and for sea ice until about 12th Sept.

We are now at 2nd Sept, and sure enough the first signs of snow are showing in  Siberia.

 

  

 

In addition, and to my surprise, Northern Canada  (around Ellesmere island) has retained its snow, and furthermore this week it is now looking as if it may extend further westwards, over Canada.. (particularly as the USA  is steaming).

Sea ice has continued to decline over the last 10days, but seems to be levelling out now as happens at this time of year.  

The following sea ice extent graphs from Maisie -

  

and from JAXA (thanks to ASIF) show how variable the sea ice has been over the last few days -

A longer term view of the extent position can be see below -

                       

Showing how August has been the month of faster ice melt.

Jaxa is currently showing the ice extent in 7th lowest in the last 20 years.

Really too early in the season for my brain to engage,  after its much needed summer hibernation, but the next 10days should see me shake of the summer hangover.

Sorry about the different font types  - I will get used to my PC soon.

MIA 

 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

Hope MIA is cool if i include Twitter content featuring snowfalls into Autumn as itl save creating a twitter thread for that season solely

 

[Midlands Ice Age]

7 hours ago, Kirkcaldy Weather said:

Hope MIA is cool if i include Twitter content featuring snowfalls into Autumn as itl save creating a twitter thread for that season solely

 

Hi KW..

I have had no problem with the Twitter links you have supplied (above) on my new PC.

On the old one,  on some it just said it was a security exposure and shut the link down.

I had to shut the  pc down to review it again, and even then it did the same thing.

I still get the same problem with some of the links that Eagle Eye supplies on other forums.

I suspect its a combination  of my security app (mcaffee) and the subscription on Twitter being used by the person copied.

Anyone else having similar problems?

 

Otherwise I would be delighted to have the abbreviated links on here - if you prefer and are OK with it.

To make it more on subject this mornings snow and ice chart

                        2 Sept         

With 'strong' snow spread over the northern hemisphere in 3 days, but still small losses in the sea ice. 

MIA

l

Edited September 6, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

[Beanz]

19 hours ago, Kirkcaldy Weather said:

Hope MIA is cool if i include Twitter content featuring snowfalls into Autumn as itl save creating a twitter thread for that season solely

 

Not to want to be an ass, but we debated this last year and decided on 2 separate threads.  I think the amount of twitter posts ends up being a scroll marathon (is that a scrollathon?) and means finding the snow and ice cover content difficult.

Some of us also don’t use Twitter, so it’s unreadable  

Edit: to try to be even less of an ass, can we keep it to one Twitter link per day, rather than multiple in one post? Best of both worlds

Edited September 6, 2023 by Beanz

[Turnedoutniceagain]

More Siberian pixels. Winter's started its slow march towards us

[HafrenLMP1]

I have a web camera permamently on Spitsbergen - and the last two days have brought a change:

 

Webcam - LNS Spitsbergen

WEATHERCAM.KYSTNOR.NO

---

Webcam - LNS Spitsbergen

 

 

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

*I read Beanz post after making this post, seperate twitter thread now active

Love seeing these snowy sights creeping up more frequently 

 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Kirkcaldy Weather

[Turnedoutniceagain]

[Aleman]

Good to see this thread back for another delve into the spread of winter. I used to live in the Pennines as a kid, and have happy memories of playing in 4 to 10+ foot snow drifts and unhappy memories of having to dig out through them, so I always wonder how winter will progress and If I'll ever see anything similar again.

I'm also interested in the sailing trials of those trying to get through the Northwest Passage. The NWP is already starting to freeze up early from the northern channels of the Canadian Archipelago after lots of snow. There is already doubt about it being navigable to non-ice class vessels in central areas after less than 3 weeks open during snow and colder than average weather (which followed a few weeks of very warm, sunny weather that helped it open). Numerous pleasure craft are heading west and south past Alaska, exitting the NWP into the Eastern Pacific. I've not been able to follow as closely this year but it looks like the number succesfully transitting the NWP will probably have made it into double figures. Although only open for a short period (so far) this year, it's been clearly open and numbers transitting are better than the last couple of years, even if falling snow will have made it tricky .

The Northeast Passage/Northern Route is still slightly blocked at Siberia but that is further south and could still possibly melt out briefly. There has been lots of snow everywhere, though, and plenty is in forecasts, so that could well remain closed to non-ice classes.

Https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/images/FullSize_CICE_combine_thick_SM_EN_20230914.png

After a snow-free summer spell across the Arctic (which does not always happen), it's been very snowy for about 3 weeks. With lots more predicted, especially for Siberia, this is now showing more signs of settling.

WWW.METEOCIEL.FR

---

Meteociel propose des cartes de prévisions du modèle americain GFS

The early start to winter snow extent expansion has eased back but this week looks set to push on again this week.

Https://ccin.ca/home/sites/default/files/snow/snow_tracker/nh_sce.png

Edited September 14, 2023 by Aleman

[Aleman]

Will this screenshot embed? Answer - No.

Just click on 6th box (NIC, Con) and delete others as you wish:

Polar View

WWW.POLARVIEW.AQ

---

A website about Polar View and related services in the Antarctic

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Aleman

[Midlands Ice Age]

Just over a week since my last update -

So here goes with my first real report of this winter refreeze season.

Snow - as has been reported earlier is building nicely particularly in Siberia (where quite a bit more looks to fall in the next week).

Canada too has benefitted from the snowfalls over the central Arctic.

Temperatures are now expected to fall steadily over the next few days -

 

        

Snow graphics =              

                         

 

Ice extent and growth has been slow for the last 6 weeks.

The last week has not changed much ( continuing its gradual reduction of melt as the temperature starts to fall), but today we saw for the first time a positive amount of growth recorded on JAXA . 

and we see that we are now at the normal minimum date -

   (within a couple of days).

 

So all in all we are probably in not so good a position as we might have thought at the end of July, though it is too early to make any meaningful comments.

 

Hopefully from here on in into  Autumn we will see rapid extension of ice and snow growth in the Northern hemisphere.

MIA

Edited September 14, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

[Turnedoutniceagain]

More snowy pixels and an increase in Polar ice >>>

[Aleman]

MIA - Not so good a position?

I could maybe disagree. There's quite a large area of less than 10% ice around Wrangel Island and the sea above 75N is starting to refreeze as temperatures are dropping quickly now. The multiple low system going through at the moment could churn it all up but it's expected to drop lots of snow on already cold water (as well as add considerably to Siberian snow cover which will drop land temperatures). If there is a good slush build up from snowy lows, the stall could be set for calmer colder northerlies on the tail end to kick off a substantial refreeze of a large area that has only just thawed out (according to models that stop at a lower limit of 10% or 15% concentration of ice).  There is a big cold area there ripe for refreezing quickly but it depends how much more churn there is in those lows.

 

[Metwatch]

[jonboy]

Good to see the optimism rather than the pessimism in the other thread

[Turnedoutniceagain]

[Bradley in Kent]

This is one of my favourite threads on NW! I'm looking forward to watching the advance through Autumn in particular. I enjoy the quality in depth analysis of data which makes it more understandable and enjoyable to follow!

EDIT: I think it's been quiet because of the hot weather where many have been in a belated Summer mode

Edited September 17, 2023 by Bradley in Kent
Extra info

[Midlands Ice Age]

On 15/09/2023 at 17:03, Aleman said:

MIA - Not so good a position?

I could maybe disagree. There's quite a large area of less than 10% ice around Wrangel Island and the sea above 75N is starting to refreeze as temperatures are dropping quickly now. The multiple low system going through at the moment could churn it all up but it's expected to drop lots of snow on already cold water (as well as add considerably to Siberian snow cover which will drop land temperatures). If there is a good slush build up from snowy lows, the stall could be set for calmer colder northerlies on the tail end to kick off a substantial refreeze of a large area that has only just thawed out (according to models that stop at a lower limit of 10% or 15% concentration of ice).  There is a big cold area there ripe for refreezing quickly but it depends how much more churn there is in those lows.

 

Thanks Aleman..

Didn't mean to portray a negativity....   I guess I am slightly less optimistic than last year... but too early to tell just yet.

Meanwhile there are shallow areas of low pressure over the Arctic at the moment.

The GFS outlook for the next 10 days shows an expected long flatish area of low pressure aligned along the northern Russian coastline and this will draw up strong easterlies across most of the Arctic even as far as the north coast of Scandinavia, and Iceland.. (this has happened in the last couple of years in the autumn season, though this time further west). With high pressure remaining supreme over Greenland we have a classic dipole (as longed for by enthusiastic climate changers in summer), though I am not certain what it means in Autumn. 

The overall impact is that the Arctic  will see cooler temperatures as this air is being drawn up from Eastern/Central Siberia where the temperature is cooling rapidly.... 

 

                 10 days -  (min temps)             SLP     

This chart also indicates that Alaska is also in for a cooling down in the next few days.

So expect considerable snowfall across the Arctic to add to that which has fallen already.

Sea ice extent has turned positive again today according to Jaxa (after the weekend having slight losses).  So we are now definitely at the point of turning, though as is suggested the 'churn' could hamper the extent increases, until it calms down again..

            

 

All for now.

MIA

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

[throwoff]

My absolute favourite thread, every year I get excited when we see the pixels!

[Guest]

The first snow has arrived in Longyearbyen: https://portlongyear.kystnor.no/

Looking at the archive it seems a little earlier than in the last few years.