Snow and Ice Northern Hemisphere - Winter 23 /24

Midlands Ice Age · October 31, 2023

I hadn't appreciated this morning how strong the ice growth is becoming -

Masie says that this year is now exceeding both 2021 and 2022 for the current date, after gains of (+189K) , (+100K) and today (+286K) respectively after starting well behind in late September.. No doubting now that the weather at this time of year is dictating the early refreeze season.

Todays leap is general with gains in Beaufort (+40K) - almost reaching to the coastline, Chukchi (+19K), ESS(+17K) - filling in the few open areas left to ice, Kara (+31K) - icing up the eastward side of the Zemlya chain, Barents(+22K) - actually with polar ice, entering into Svalbard now,

Baffin +(52K) extending down into the ocean, CAA (+49K) extending down to the southern islands and the entrance to Hudson Bay, Hudson itself doubling (+32K) as ice spreads south into the lower areas. The North American continent is reacting quickly to the cold outbreak,

All areas gained today, (unless already full)., even Bering doubled in size as ice starts to form in the more sheltered bays.

Snow in the North American continent is also spreading very quickly now, as the predicted very cold outbreak (tor time of year) spreads south. and east

This season seems to be on its way to challenge some of the earlier 2010's for its wintriness.

Even I am quite surprised, following a slightly pessimistic start to the season.

MIA

Edited October 31, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

Bradley in Kent · October 31, 2023

Wow just a week ago there was barely any snow around especially in North America where some Arctic coasts were still snow free around northern Canada. Things can change quick!

cheeky_monkey · October 31, 2023

29 minutes ago, Bradley in Kent said:

Wow just a week ago there was barely any snow around especially in North America where some Arctic coasts were still snow free around northern Canada. Things can change quick!

and back again..much of the snow south of 48 and in Western Prairies will melt over the next few days as temps rebound to near average values

Kirkcaldy Weather · November 1, 2023

@Midlands Ice Age

Bradley in Kent · November 1, 2023

Although from a selfish, IMBY POV, I'm cautious of North American cold anomalies as it they seem to spell doom for weather in Northwestern Europe by revving up the Jetstream.

Always feel better when the cold anomalies and subsequent snow/ice occur over the Russian side.

Again though, purely a selfish perspective!

Midlands Ice Age · November 2, 2023

Time for a further update as 2 - 3 days since my last.

Ice and snow growth has slowed down to more normal rates.

- No one can accuse me of only posting when things are positive.

Snow has retracted back into Russia by 2 - 400 miles from Europe as the full strength of our storms won the first battle of the winter. I sound like a Sky broadcaster in the Ukraine.!!

Scandinavia has held up quite well and the snow has moved south a bit into Mongolia.

Snow continued in Canada, but as CM mentioned might occur, as more normal temps have returned to southern States, the snow level has retreated back north a little. Lake effect snow is still happening in the northern areas.

Arctic sea ice has yo yo'd a bit with gains of (+87K) Km2 and (-27K) KM2 in extent today.

Most of this fall occurred in Barents (which fell back from Svalbard) by -57K.

Gains continued though in Baffin, CAA, Beaufort and Hudson.

and today

- Thought i'd do a piece on ice volume for you guys.

After a dodgy looking start it has improved quickly in the last 3 weeks in keeping with the extent values, and now compares with last years figures -

and last year -

As can be seen the ice is nowhere near as thick in the Western Arctic (US based), but is now much stronger in the East (round Kara and Barents) - (which is covered partly by the volume graph).

It is usually calculated as extent divided by area. so is used as a reminder to the state/robustness nature of the ice. Sea ice depth was thought to be declining due to the lesser amount of multi-year ice, at the end of last season, but so far now it is holding up well.

The volume situation was originally coupled in with the arctic temperature (by early CC) but it is also varying greatly, and in fact we have recently seen it increase as the temp has started to fall properly now.

Graph from the now updating correctly DMI (ECMWF based)

which shows the steep fall under the anticyclonic conditions then a rise and now a new fall to under -15C again now the weather is changing.

More on the weather in the next update...

MIA

Aleman · November 3, 2023

Heavy snow and -15C temperatures saw a slightly early start to ice formation on Hudson Bays west coast but it has since melted back as snow eased and central water temperatures of about 2C are not cold enough yet for significant advance. As the cold front moved eastwards and ongoing snow intensified a bit , freeze up even started in southern Hudson Bay as speculated might occur a couple of days ago. This is a week or two early but I expect this could all melt out again as snow moves away and daytime temperatures rise back above freezing and water temperature in the south remain a balmy 5C away from the coast.

Midlands Ice Age · November 4, 2023

2 days since last update so here goes again..

Snow seems to have stalled now at slightly above average levels for the time of year.

Sea ice extent has had 2 average days, with Masie gains of (+124K Km2) and (+108K Km2) .

So still topping the last 5 years (only just). This refreeze mirrors last years in total extent, but is very different in make-up. Last year seeing early freeze in North America, whereas this year is being dominated by the Russian oceans.

eg

Kara

CAA

Greenland

Beaufort -

My last report was on sea ice thickness and volume and the ASIF has come out with the end of month figures for October.....

which again show the 'average' nature this year for the last 10-15 years, and the eastern bias for the ice thickness figures.

The apparent 'dip' during October in the chart is thought to be caused by underlying bottom melt - which carries on long after surface ice has refrozen.

It normally ends around Nov 1st as the water cools to lower and lower levels.

The Arctic temperature is dropping steadily now that most open water has disappeared. The average temperature above 80 degrees, has consequently now dropped to -17.5C.

C.R. shows this very clearly with the wide extent of temps below -30C.

and speaking of temperatures, some people may be interested in historical climate - (all obviously collected by proxy), But interesting as to when the Northern hemisphere first started to freeze and produce the Artic ice sheets -

It seems that ice first started to form in the North about 40 million years ago. It was about 5 million years ago when it covered the Arctic.

A more long-term representation -

Also showing Antarctica ice formation.

This chart has clearly been adjusted by people interested in the next 100 years!!!! and who are better at forecasting than many experts, (or even possibly than the proxies used for the data)!!

See you again soon....

MIA

Edited November 4, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

nobble · November 4, 2023

Hi MIA

what date arewe expecting the ice bridge from Shetland to Iceland

in all seriousness ice in a good position again

it continues

Midlands Ice Age · November 5, 2023

12 hours ago, nobble said:

Hi MIA

what date arewe expecting the ice bridge from Shetland to Iceland

in all seriousness ice in a good position again

it continues

I took this to mean Greenland to Iceland, since the Shetland to Iceland bridge hasn't occured since the last ice age.

I know it is very unlikely, but it is not impossible. (the former)

A couple of years ago all the northern fjords in Iceland were filled with ice.. (Maybe as a result of a heavy snowfall in the area).

We are now seeing extra amounts of ice moving down the East Greenland coast, (in the Fram Strait), and this year it seems to be widening.

IF, the two things coincide then we have the right conditions for a temporary bridge.

MIA

Edited November 5, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

nobble · November 5, 2023

Cheers for the reply MIA

yes we may have to wait a while for it to get to Shetland

although the northern lights are getting closer so who knows

Midlands Ice Age · November 7, 2023

A quick update for today ...

Snow although slowly retreating back north in North America, sees a huge cold blast into China (very early).

Yesterday's snow charts from Rutgers show this spreading to keep levels above average.

whilst the NSIDC chart shows it is continuing to move southwards and by the end of the week is expected to be approaching the Pacific and even Bejing -.

This will be a massive change in weather for this region as only last week they were reporting record heat.

Sea ice extent is now slowly moving upwards again after a slack last 2 days.

increases are apparent in all sea areas, but the big predicted increase in the CAA and the Baffin Ocean is now in full swing.

Masie still to update with the values.

Forgot to post this as wife fell ill. (She's OK now)

MIA

Midlands Ice Age · November 7, 2023

I feel that people will be pleased with the Masie sea extent output today.

First of all sorry for not posting the post above this lunchtime as I got side-tracked, but all is well again now. Its lucky that the recovery app, works just fine on here!!

The big news is that Masie has risen by (+289K) today, following previous 2 days of (-62K) and (+18K).

I certainly wasn't expecting that gain, although I could see that things were building up.

As mentioned previously gains in North America were extensive with CAA (+81K), Baffin (+43K), Hudson(+26K), Bering (+2K) and Beaufort (+40K), along with Chukchi(+16K).

Additionally Beaufort has now connected up with Alaska...

... and Kara (+34K) is about to join the Novoya Zemlya Islands -

- (Whilst ice floods back to Svalbard (+28K), including some coastal ice (see below)) -

But the best news is that the Baltic is showing its first ice this year (+2K) as ice also spreads westwards along the western Russian coastline towards Archangel. This area will also be critical for any cold reaching the UK later in the winter.

- Whilst the SOO (+12K) has responded very quickly to the cold air moving into China.

MIA

Edited November 7, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

Turnedoutniceagain · November 9, 2023

September 6th v November the 6th.

Impressive !!

Midlands Ice Age · November 9, 2023

6 hours ago, Turnedoutniceagain said:

September 6th v November the 6th.

Impressive !!

YES!!!

The way the ice has grown in extent (from admittedly lower numbers than we saw 20 years ago) in the last 3 years surely indicates that the ice will not be completely disappearing from the Arctic for quite a few lifetimes just yet. It still gets cold enough enough to freeze most of the sea water in the Arctic Basin in a couple of months. (even if the temperatures are 2-5C higher!).

and remember ......... If necessary it still has 4 more months left of refreeze!!. It all depends upon how quickly the ice melts in the spring Arctic months, and currently they are colder than they used to be (Apr, May, June)..

Sea ice extent is currently running (similar to last 3 years) at between 5 and 15 percent growth/increase on the average for the last 10 years (in fourth position this year) for ice growth from minimum.

Some numbers (with thanks) to the ASIF on Jaxa sea ice extent -

The following are quotes -

- Area gain from minimum on this date is 4,910 k, which is 577 k, 13.3% more than the 10 year average of 4,332 k

- Extent gain from minimum on this date is 4,676 k, which is 293 k, 6.7% more than the 10 year average of 4,383 k.

So way ahead of quite a few in the last 15 years (according to the last table), and showing (in col 5 (the gains at this date)), certainly not showing a drop in the trend.

There is a big discussion taking place over on the ASI Forum currently, concerning the year for when the Arctic will hit their BOE (when ice extent drops below 1,000K KM2 in summer (Not - no ice).

Half a dozen people (approx 10%) are now saying that we will not reach a BOE until after 2100. A massive change over the last few years, (when 80% were going for before 2030).. and many people have extended their estimates.

(Hopefully OK to reproduce..) with thanks

Back later with Masie details when it is reported.

MIAj

Midlands Ice Age · November 9, 2023

I have been very 'interested' in today's Masie, despite it looking fairly 'normal', with gains of (+162K) and (+82k) respectively, and pushing this year back on top again for the last 5 years..

This is no longer surprising to me as I have been posting regularly on the possibility.

Gains were experienced in similar areas to the last report with the CAA , Hudson , Baffin, Beaufort leading the way, and with Kara an Barents consolidating further (particularly around Svalbard) .

But (and this the interesting bit), yet another of the outer sea areas started to show ice. This time it is the Cooke Inlet, (Only small at 200 km2, but it is very early to be showing any ice.)!!

It follows on from Bering, Baltic, SOO. and is the 4th of the outer areas (5 altogether) to show ice.

I found that this hasn't happened before at this time on Maise (see data below for my averaged analysis). Now some of the early data in Maisie (2006 /2007) is suspect, so I ignored that clearly suspect data from the average analysis figures below.

How is this happening when supposedly the climate (weather) is supposed to be 5 degrees warmer in the Arctic and far Northern Hemisphere???? These areas ought to be the ones being impacted.

I looked for the date at which the extent for the ocean/area first exceeded 1000 Km2 . (not the date when ice first appeared) as some years the ice (early on) came and went again before the final freeze up. - The analysis is for each individual sea area. for each of the areas is shown below.

I used 3 fairly arbitrary sub-group of years for data analysis purposes, and based the analysis on day 300 of the year as the starting point (therefore negative represents before this date and positive is after this date. Actually it is Oct 27th 28th.....

Sea Area 2006 - 2014 2015 - 2020 2021 - 2023

_____________ ______________ _____________

Bering -4.5 days +4 days -10days

Baltic +36 +34 +20

SOO +8 +5 -0.5

Yellow Sea +45 +50 +49*

Cooke Inlet +34 +36 +13*

Totals 118.5 days 129 days 71.5 days

* does not include this years data. (so far)

So what might have caused the ice to start freezing so much earlier outside the Arctic Circle in the latest 3 year period?

This was not the result I was expecting to see considering our rapidly warming world.

Could it come down to La Nina conditions which have been so evident in the last 3 years. I thought that worldwide SST's were so high that the result must be wrong so I checked my figures. Still the same result.

So what mechanism could be at play?

MIA

Edited November 9, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

Midlands Ice Age · November 10, 2023

10 hours ago, Midlands Ice Age said:

I have been very 'interested' in today's Masie, despite it looking fairly 'normal', with gains of (+162K) and (+82k) respectively, and pushing this year back on top again for the last 5 years..

This is no longer surprising to me as I have been posting regularly on the possibility.

Gains were experienced in similar areas to the last report with the CAA , Hudson , Baffin, Beaufort leading the way, and with Kara an Barents consolidating further (particularly around Svalbard) .

But (and this the interesting bit), yet another of the outer sea areas started to show ice. This time it is the Cooke Inlet, (Only small at 200 km2, but it is very early to be showing any ice.)!!

It follows on from Bering, Baltic, SOO. and is the 4th of the outer areas (5 altogether) to show ice.

I found that this hasn't happened before at this time on Maise (see data below for my averaged analysis). Now some of the early data in Maisie (2006 /2007) is suspect, so I ignored that clearly suspect data from the average analysis figures below.

How is this happening when supposedly the climate (weather) is supposed to be 5 degrees warmer in the Arctic and far Northern Hemisphere???? These areas ought to be the ones being impacted.

I looked for the date at which the extent for the ocean/area first exceeded 1000 Km2 . (not the date when ice first appeared) as some years the ice (early on) came and went again before the final freeze up. - The analysis is for each individual sea area. for each of the areas is shown below.

I used 3 fairly arbitrary sub-group of years for data analysis purposes, and based the analysis on day 300 of the year as the starting point (therefore negative represents before this date and positive is after this date. Actually it is Oct 27th 28th.....

Sea Area 2006 - 2014 2015 - 2020 2021 - 2023

_____________ ______________ _____________

Bering -4.5 days +4 days -10days

Baltic +36 +34 +20

SOO +8 +5 -0.5

Yellow Sea +45 +50 +49*

Cooke Inlet +34 +36 +13*

Totals 118.5 days 129 days 71.5 days

* does not include this years data. (so far)

So what might have caused the ice to start freezing so much earlier outside the Arctic Circle in the latest 3 year period?

This was not the result I was expecting to see considering our rapidly warming world.

Could it come down to La Nina conditions which have been so evident in the last 3 years. I thought that worldwide SST's were so high that the result must be wrong so I checked my figures. Still the same result.

So what mechanism could be at play?

MIA

Continuing on from the above post (and a good night's sleep!), I realised that I may be able to answer most of the question marks in my post by looking a little deeper/further.

Four of the five outer ocean areas are surrounding the Pacific. (EASTERN oceans) The exception is the Baltic - but that still showed the same trends as the east 'oceanic' areas.

It was also obvious that the 4 areas were more likely therefore to be effected by the 3 year long Pacific based La NIna - Mechanism - possibly by a cooling down of the major Asian continent during La Nina, (if not the whole world!), (that is if the SST's have not dropped?). ( No one else has ever suggested this, as far as I know?) So could be a load of xxxx.

So to check this idea I thought - look WEST----- old man. I am getting quite ancient now!!....

So I intend to look at the 'outer' enclosed western sea areas next. These are Hudson, and also the CAA. I thought that I would also include Baffin as it too tends to lose most of its ice in summer, and is shielded from the inner central areas by Greenland.

Its more difficult to analyse these areas since some ice sometimes remains in summer and I will probably need to apply 'human' intervention to decide when freeze up has really begun.

To start off with I might set a quick arbitrary 10,000 KM2 rather than 1,000Km2 used for the smaller areas, and then see what happens.

I have (again), no idea what it will show, but I will report back later. Hope I am not off topic on the thread, and also not boring you too much, when presenting (developing) my own ideas.

MIA

Edited November 10, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

Midlands Ice Age · November 10, 2023

Completed the review of the N American sea ice as described above.

Only, as I suspected, it was much more complicated. The use of the spreadsheet didn't really help at !0K KM2, so I ended up having to use my intuition as to when the Ice started to refreeze seriously..

Hudson was quite straight forward so I used the 10K date cut-off. (same as the smaller areas above).

CAA was the most complicated as it in some years (see below) it never dropped below 400K. However ,If possible for all years including 2006-12 and 2019- 2023, I used 300K as a cut-off. 2013 to 2018 was totally different in some years, it never dropped below 400K, so I used judgement as to when the ice started its refreeze.

Baffin was similar in the same dates, but the level was lower and I used 60Km2 as the cut-off point.

I grouped them in slightly different years (cf the first post) as I could see they were totally different to the 'pacific' based ones I reported above , and that the period 2013 - 2018 had exceptionally large amounts of ice in North America....

I ended up having 3 year groups as prev, with the initial period being similar (2006-2012), the next group varying wildly, and then settling down again at the end rom 2019, with similar data to the first period (though unlike the pacific based ones) at a slightly later date of refreeze..

All are days in year compared to Day 300...

Ocean 2006-2012 2013 - 2018 2019- 2023

______________ ______________ _______________ _______________

Baffin -18 days -24days* -16 days

CAA -26days -35days* -20 days

Hudson -5 days -20 days +1 day**

*Using intuition for some years - probably understated the start of refreeze...

** Includes 2 years (2019 and 2021 when the ice was greatly delayed. (otherwise -3 days was the latest average..

So looking more like as was expected, and nothing like the Pacific grouping with a very cold middle (for ice formation) standing out in N.A.

So why did the ice suddenly 'increase'/find it easier to remain frozen, and to form in the period 2013 - 2018 in North America? . These were the major El Nino years and occured during high solar periods. Otherwise I have no idea. Perhaps the upcoming El Nino will tell us more.

It does tend to suggest however that the La Nina effect suggested for the first set of data (Pacific oceans) is a realistic effect.

So why?.

Oh yes, and when I have a little more time I'll perform the same operation on the Jaxa data.

MIA

Edited November 10, 2023 by Midlands Ice Age

WYorksWeather · November 10, 2023

Thanks @Midlands Ice Age - this is some interesting work. One other factor I thing may be worth considering is the slowdown in the AMOC. Interestingly, I did find a few sources that seemed to suggest that an AMOC slowdown would delay an ice-free Arctic.

This article below is a fairly accessible explanation as to why this might be the case. Essentially, there is somewhat of a negative feedback between the AMOC and sea ice. A weaker AMOC helps to preserve sea ice in several important regions.

Cryospheric Sciences | For Dummies: How Arctic sea ice and the AMOC interact

BLOGS.EGU.EU

In this post, I will talk about two famous characters of the climate system; I will define them and see how they have changed in the current context of climate change. I will also show you how these two characters interact...

alexisj9 · November 10, 2023

14 minutes ago, WYorksWeather said:

Thanks @Midlands Ice Age - this is some interesting work. One other factor I thing may be worth considering is the slowdown in the AMOC. Interestingly, I did find a few sources that seemed to suggest that an AMOC slowdown would delay an ice-free Arctic.

This article below is a fairly accessible explanation as to why this might be the case. Essentially, there is somewhat of a negative feedback between the AMOC and sea ice. A weaker AMOC helps to preserve sea ice in several important regions.

Cryospheric Sciences | For Dummies: How Arctic sea ice and the AMOC interact

BLOGS.EGU.EU

In this post, I will talk about two famous characters of the climate system; I will define them and see how they have changed in the current context of climate change. I will also show you how these two characters interact...

Makes perfect sense to me, warm water moving north at a slower rate, equals pole easier to cool, so quicker ice formation.

WYorksWeather · November 10, 2023

1 hour ago, alexisj9 said:

Makes perfect sense to me, warm water moving north at a slower rate, equals pole easier to cool, so quicker ice formation.

Yep, interesting to see that there's proper scientific backing for the idea was more what I meant.

matty40s · November 10, 2023

Interesting report here on the previously thought to be stable North Greenland Ice shelf. Similar to Antartctica that the sea is undermining the shelf, glaciers along with the underground meltwater exacerbating the demise.

Rapid disintegration and weakening of ice shelves in North Greenland

WWW.NATURE.COM

North Greenland ice shelves have lost more than a third of their masses, thinning dramatically from below due to increased ocean temperatures. In response, grounding lines have...

johncam · November 10, 2023

1 hour ago, matty40s said:

Interesting report here on the previously thought to be stable North Greenland Ice shelf. Similar to Antartctica that the sea is undermining the shelf, glaciers along with the underground meltwater exacerbating the demise.

Rapid disintegration and weakening of ice shelves in North Greenland

Rapid disintegration and weakening of ice shelves in North Greenland

WWW.NATURE.COM

North Greenland ice shelves have lost more than a third of their masses, thinning dramatically from below due to increased ocean temperatures. In response, grounding lines have...

Could that be one of the reason of the sea ice is recovering every winter, a lot of fresh water entering the Arctic?

Midlands Ice Age · November 10, 2023

1 hour ago, matty40s said:

Interesting report here on the previously thought to be stable North Greenland Ice shelf. Similar to Antartctica that the sea is undermining the shelf, glaciers along with the underground meltwater exacerbating the demise.

Rapid disintegration and weakening of ice shelves in North Greenland

Rapid disintegration and weakening of ice shelves in North Greenland

WWW.NATURE.COM

North Greenland ice shelves have lost more than a third of their masses, thinning dramatically from below due to increased ocean temperatures. In response, grounding lines have...

Matt...

this an 'old' report published in 2021.

If you checked you will see that during 2021 - 2022, and 2022 - 2023, and also so far this year the SMB (accum) has increased compared to the longer term average.

I will leave this for you to digress - (from the daily polar portal website) which gives up to date information on all the Greenland data.

and the same for 2022...

In the last 3 seasons extra snowfall has 'appeared' over Greenland.

Some of the glaciers have stopped decreasing and a couple of increased slightly again.

MIA

ANYWEATHER · November 10, 2023

30 minutes ago, Midlands Ice Age said:

Matt...

this an 'old' report published in 2021.

If you checked you will see that during 2021 - 2022, and 2022 - 2023, and also so far this year the SMB (accum) has increased compared to the longer term average.

I will leave this for you to digress - (from the daily polar portal website) which gives up to date information on all the Greenland data.

and the same for 2022...

In the last 3 seasons extra snowfall has 'appeared' over Greenland.

Some of the glaciers have stopped decreasing and a couple of increased slightly again.

MIA

Yes ,for instance the " Jakobshavn " Glacier had been steadily growing for a number of years now ...

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