Arctic Sea Ice

Temps June 2011

In anticipation of the next SIE update I'm going to look back at what air and sea surface temperatures did in the past month, and compare that to what happened in previous years. This month of June saw the AO Index go negative, which means that large parts of the Arctic have been relatively clear. In the month of the Summer solstice this is bound to influence temperatures.

Air Temperatures

As in the previous blog post on temps in April I have made use of the Daily Mean Composite page, compiled by the Physical Science Division of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory. Thanks to comments in that previous blog post I have managed to improve the images.

This is the mean composite image of temperature anomalies for June this year, that's to say, until June 26th, as it takes a few days for the NOAA/ESRL/PSD to process the data. I don't expect these last 4 days to make much of a difference:

As we can see temperatures over Siberia were relatively high, on the other side not much higher than the long-term average. Here's what June looks like in previous years (click for a larger version):

Trapped under ice

No, this is not the Metallica song (which I used to like, God knows why), but some lovely footage rw langford sent me:

 

 

2011 New Siberian Islands Animation

I can't predict how often I will update this animation as it is very cloudy over the Siberian coast when sea level pressure is low (more clouds), but this is an important point in the Northern Sea Route and the fast ice around the New Siberian Islands has started to break up.

Update July 1st: Added yesterday's image (day 181). Things are breaking up pretty fast.

Update July 2nd: Added today's image (day 183). Things are breaking up very fast.

Update July 4th: Added today's image (day 185). The ice is visibly moving westwards, which has everything to with the large high-pressure area dominating the Arctic (See SIE update 10) causing clockwise winds over a large area.

Update July 13th: Added today's image (day 193). What a difference 9 days make.

2011 Century Breaks

It took a while, but century breaks have started rolling in this month. As you all know (and if you don't, read last year's Century Breaks post) a century break is the name I have given to daily extent decreases as reported by IJIS that surpass 100,000 square km. The name is based on one of the best and toughest sports in the world: Snooker. On the image to the right you see Ronnie 'The Rocket' O'Sullivan, one of the best snooker players of all times. If you want to know why, you can watch the video in this post from last year.

With 4 century breaks so far 2011 is behaving like most recent years, with the exception of 2010, which had already compiled 8 century breaks by the end of June. But it didn't go on to break records as July was a very bad month century break-wise.

Here is everything you need to know about the IJIS century breaks:

Across the North Pole

Last year we had two Norwegians (successfully) trying to sail both the Northern Sea Route and the Northwestern Passage in one single season. This year we have two Frenchmen who are taking things a step further. According to the Fairbanks Daily:

Two French adventurers are about to embark on a journey over the top of the world, if everything goes to plan. Sébastien Roubinet and Rodolphe André and a small support team are traveling north to Deadhorse after making a brief stop to enjoy the amenities of Fairbanks. Once there, they hope to gain permission from the administrators of the Prudhoe Bay oil field to launch their two-man catamaran into the Arctic Ocean with the goal of crossing the North Pole and ultimately reaching the Norwegian island of Spitsberg in the Svalbard Archipelago, roughly halfway between the North Pole and mainland Norway.

Yes, you read that right: Across the North Pole. And they propose to do it with this very light 200 kg catamaran, the ti-Babouche, which they tested out a few weeks back in Quebec:

SIE 2011 update 9: back and forth

During the melting season I'm regularly writing updates on the current sea ice extent (SIE) as reported by IJIS (a joint effort of the International Arctic Research Center and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and compare it to the sea ice extents in the period 2005-2010. NSIDC has a good explanation of what sea ice extent is in their FAQ. I also look at other things like sea ice area, concentration, volume, temperature and weather forecasts, anything that can be of particular interest. Check out the Arctic sea ice graph webpage for daily updated graphs, maps and live webcam images.

June 24th 2011

This year's melting season has so far been very similar to last year's, in size, if not so much in shape. In 2010 around this time sea ice extent was dropping spectacularly fast, leaving all other years in the dust. But at the end of June the decrease suddenly had a blowout, of which it only slightly recovered towards the very end of the melting season.

This year's rate of decrease has more or less matched 2010's free fall, even if there has been a bit of a slump since the last SIE update that saw two consecutive century breaks putting 2011 comfortably in the driver's seat. 2010 has jumped into the gap and regained the lead, as 2007 is about to start its impressive streak of century breaks (18 in 40 days).

Has 2011 bumped into the limit 2010 bumped into last year or will it fire up again, just in time to try and fend off 2007's offensive? Summer solstice has passed, but the coming weeks the Sun will shine almost incessantly. With abundant clear skies anything is possible.

Sea ice extent (SIE)

Here's the IJIS SIE graph:

2010 and 2011 are still intertwined, slightly apart from the rest, but this year's slump is clearly visible. Extent decrease has been picking up over the past few days (86K reported for the 24th), but we'll have to see if and for how long it can be sustained.

The current difference between 2011 and the other years is as follows:

Barrow Break-up 3

This blog post was preceded by Barrow Break-up 1 and Barrow Break-up 2 (both containing more general info).

The Sea Ice Group of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has been issuing break-up forecasts for almost three weeks now. Their current forecast is for the grounded ridges approximately 5 miles off the coast of Barrow to give way on July 9th. They have been making precise forecasts since a couple of days, as break-up can be forecast no more than 16 days in advance.

Their forecast is based on the mean shortwave flux, or in other words how much energy from the sun reaches the surfaces (in W/m2). Confused and silly as I am, I had called this 'solar flux', which I believe is something else entirely.

Here is their graph:

Lots of insolation when the forecast was first made, but since then Barrow seems to have clouded over. Nevertheless, we have seen the sea ice between the ice ridges and the coast continue to melt on the Barrow webcam.

I have again retrieved images from this archive (2006 and 2007 are still images from these time-lapse videos) to compare them with this year's image on June 22nd (click for a larger vision):

Hudson Bay

After having kept a close watch on the Bering Sea (which is now practically empty of sea ice), we turn our attention to the Hudson Bay, by comparing this year's sea ice concentration with that of previous years.For this I have again gratefully made use of the University of Bremen archive of sea ice concentration maps:

If we disregard the colours and just focus on the shape of the ice pack in Hudson Bay, we see that 2006 and 2010 had less area covered than this year. It looks quite similar to 2005 and 2007, although the ice pack in those years seems to be less concentrated than now.

When the melting abruptly stalled last year towards the end of June there was some speculation that this had to do with the rapid melt of the 'easy ice' in Hudson Bay coming to an end. This might have played a role at first, but the slow decrease of sea ice area and extent continued all the way to mid-August due to weather patterns.

This year the rapid melting seems to have taken place elsewhere (Siberia) as 2011 is approximately 200K square km behind 2010 in Hudson Bay, according to Cryosphere Today:

New ice thickness map of the Arctic unveiled

From the ESA webpage:

The first map of sea-ice thickness from ESA’s CryoSat mission was revealed today at the Paris Air and Space Show. This new information is set to change our understanding of the complex relationship between ice and climate.
 
From an altitude of just over 700 km and reaching unprecedented latitudes of 88º, CryoSat has spent the last seven months delivering precise measurements to study changes in the thickness of Earth’s ice.

Check out their first map of sea ice thickness data (for Jan/Feb 2011) that they made to show what will eventually be the deal:

I want to get this out quickly, so I haven't checked yet to compare this image with the ice thickness models. But I will at some later point.

It's important to stress that however exciting all of this is, we're still some way off of 100% accurate data. Calibration will be an ongoing issue and as CryoSat-2 has now gone into its second year of data delivery and a substantial time series is being built up, its true value will start to emerge more and more.

2011 Northwest Passage Animation

If you want to see regularly updated animations, check the new Animations Page. Also check last year's NWP animation (here and here) if you want to compare. The ice was breaking up much faster last year.

Update July 11th: Added yesterday's satellite image (day 191). The NWP is fractured all over the place, but a strong wind from the East is keeping it together for now.

Update July 18th: Added yesterday's satellite image (day 198). Check out the in-situ melting around Byam Martin Island.

Update July 23rd: Added yesterday's satellite image (day 203). Somebody made a funny joke that cracked up the NWP.

Update August 7th: Added yesterday's satellite image (day 218). Finally a decent image. The difference with just two weeks ago is mindnumbing.

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This image shows the concentration of multi-year ice in the NWP in the past couple of years (h/t Diablobanquisa):

Here's a comparison of June 19th of this year with June 18th of 2009 and 2010: