Arctic Sea Ice

IJIS is back!

I guess that's what you get when you complain there is no daily data and so many satellites are crashing and burning. First the NSIDC released data from the NASA IceBridge Mission, that was turned into a map by commenter 'deconstruct' in no time flat. In between Cryosphere Today resolved its server issues and is putting out daily data again.

But the greatest news of all, and I had never expected that, was that IJIS (or IARC-JAXA Information System, a Japanese-US/Alaskan collaboration) resumed output  of daily data:

All of this happening on practically the same day. Wow. Amazing.

Time to work at my spreadsheets. This post will be updated a couple of times, with for instance the CAPIE graph (!). Ladies and gentlemen, we are back in business.

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Update May 17th:

If only I were smart...

It seems that a bunch of data from the NASA IceBridge Mission has been put online by NSIDC:

IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness Quick Look

The NASA IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness Quick Look data set is an evaluation product containing derived geophysical data products retrieved over the Arctic sea ice cover from 14 March to 02 April 2012 using the IceBridge Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM), Snow Radar, Digital Mapping System (DMS), and KT19 pyrometer. This quick look product is experimental and is designed to be applicable for time-sensitive projects such as sea ice forecasting. The data were collected as part of Operation IceBridge funded campaigns, are stored in ASCII text files, and are available via FTP.

Access the IceBridge Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness Quick Look product.

Feedback on this product can be submitted to nsidc@nsidc.org.

This could be another clue that tells us something about the thickness of the ice and what we might expect could happen this melting season. Unfortunately, I totally lack the skills and knowledge to work with these files (even if they are .txt files that I actually know how to open), but maybe some of the commenters find it interesting enough to take some time to make sense of the files?

UPDATE:

Commenter deconstruct has visualized the IceBridge flight data onto a NSIDC Polar Stereographic Grid (read more on it in his comment below):

ASI 2012 update 2: no daily data

During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of the demise of AMSR-E the IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) numbers are no longer central to these updates. Instead I now use Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers and compare them to the SIA numbers in the 2005-2011 period. NSIDC has a good explanation of sea ice extent and area in their FAQ. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, sea ice extent, temperature and weather forecasts, anything that can be of particular interest. Check out the Arctic sea ice graphs webpage for daily updated graphs, maps and live webcam images.

May 13th 2012

How depressing (image courtesy of Terrible Taxidermy). First we lost the great day-to-day extent data provided by IJIS. A couple of weeks ago ENVISAT stopped transmitting data, which means we no longer have these great radar images to check out the ice plug in Nares Strait. And since April 28th the good people over at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are having some server problems, which means their excellent Cryosphere Today page hasn't been updated since. So no daily sea ice area data either.

Apart from Larry Hamilton keeping us up-to-date every couple of days on the DMI SIE numbers, and Dr.Tskoul keeping an eye on MASIE numbers, there is nothing there to satisfy my curiosity and obsession with Arctic sea ice. And the basis on which these ASI updates are written is swept right from under my feet...

But let's stay positive, okay! At least it isn't September! And as long as we have eyes to see, we can still gaze at various graphs. So that's exactly what we're going to do in this ASI update.

The NSIDC SIE chart had SIE dropping fast, but it has leveled off again in the past week or so:

PIOMAS May 2012

Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center:

This year's trend line dipped below last year's only to go up again in the first two weeks of April, probably reflecting the late ice growth we saw here and there on the fringes of the ice pack, that also had trend lines on extent and area graphs flirting with the long-term average for a while. Very similar to 2010, but with thinner ice according to PIOMAS.

Here is Wipneus' graph for which he calculated the "expected" 2012 values, based on the same date values of 1979-2011 and an exponential trend. A caveat from Wipneus: "Note that the (not indicated) statistical error bars are quite large."Because there haven't been any updated CT SIA numbers I cannot update the average thickness map (PICT) I first posted last month. I'll update this post as soon as the sea ice area data comes online.

For the time being I'm posting the PIOMAS anomaly graph:

Arctic sea ice loss and the role of AGW

I like to think that it's pretty obvious that AGW has something to do with the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice. Or to quote Dr Jennifer Francis: How could it not? However, to prove it scientifically is another matter entirely. Dirk Notz and Jochem Marotzke from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology have given it a shot. (image credit: Dirk Notz / MPI for Meteorology)

From ScienceDaily (hat-tip to the Yooper):

Arctic Sea-Ice Loss Didn't Happen by Chance

ScienceDaily (May 2, 2012) — The ongoing rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is often interpreted as the canary in the mine for anthropogenic climate change. In a new study, scientists have now systematically examined the validity of this claim. They find that neither natural fluctuations nor self-acceleration can explain the observed Arctic sea-ice retreat. Instead, the recent evolution of Arctic sea ice shows a strong, physically plausible correlation with the increasing greenhouse gas concentration. For Antarctic sea ice, no such link is found -- for a good reason.

When scientists try to attribute some observed climatic change to a specific forcing, they usually use complex climate models. The scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), however, decided on a different strategy as they set out to identify the main driver for the observed sea-ice loss in the Arctic. Dirk Notz, lead author of the study that was now published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, explains why: "Sea ice is so thin that it reacts very sensitive to the large natural fluctuations of weather and climate that prevail in the Arctic. Because these fluctuations are inherently chaotic, their specific timing cannot be reproduced by standard climate models. Such models therefore aren't necessarily the best tool to examine if natural fluctuations did cause the observed sea-ice loss."

(...)

"In the end, only the increase in greenhouse gas concentration showed a physically plausible link with the observed sea-ice retreat. We expect a decreasing sea-ice cover for increasing greenhouse gas concentration, which is exactly what is observed," Notz explains. The physical link between greenhouse gas concentration and sea ice is quite straightforward, he adds: "Greenhouse gases increase the downwelling thermal radiation. This radiation, in turn, is the major player in the heat budget of Arctic sea ice."

Read the whole thing here. Paper available here.

2011/2012 Winter Analysis

I'm starting this blog post off with a conclusion that was reached a while back already: sea ice on the Atlantic side of the Arctic looks vulnerable, sea ice on the Pacific side should be thicker.

Right, with that out of the way we can now look at various aspects of the 2011/2012 freezing season, and compare them to previous years, to be precise the previous freezing season of 2010/2011, and the freezing seasons leading up to and following that other record year: 2006/2007 and 2007/2008. Simply put: I'll be comparing 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2012 before their respective start of the melting season.

I'll try not to use too many words, but I'll be using a lot of images. Click on them images if you want a bigger version.

Ice age

I'll start with the AARI ice age maps. These images are for the end of April, and they look upside down, because it's from the perspective of the Russians who produced them:

Live blog: CryoSat results

This was the live coverage of the whole event. Please discuss below.

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Refresh this page manually (F5)

On the ESA homepage it says:

Watch online: CryoSat results

Live from the Royal Society in London, watch the unveiling of the first map of the winter 2010–11 changes in Arctic sea-ice thickness measured by ESA’s CryoSat satellite. Join the event via live web stream Tuesday starting at 07:30 GMT (09:30 CEST – 08:30 UK time).

9.31: I have just managed to connect and am waiting for the broadcast to start.

9.32: Broadcast has started.

9.35: This is the audience:

9.37: It has started. David Williams from the UK Space Agency is doing a short introduction. Followed by David Willets, Minister of University and Education. Lauds the UK Space Agency, lauds Great Britain. :-)

9.45: It's Volker Liebig's turn, director of Earth Observation Programmes from ESA. Congratulates UK Space Agency with 50 year anniversary. Jumps to Arctic Sea Ice immediately, shows consecutive extent records. Shows Stroeve's graph of trend deviation from IPCC models. Arctic important for climate change, but also geopolitically and for shipping.