Arctic Sea Ice

Nares Strait 2012 Ice Arch Collapsing

It looks like the ice arch in at the southern end of Nares Strait has started to collapse, according to yesterday's satellite image from LANCE-MODIS:

This break-up is occuring 10 days later than last year. Back then it took about two weeks for all of the ice to start moving across the entire strait and transport from the Lincoln Sea to get underway. Looking at the weather forecasts and the fact the ice is blue and breaking up at the other side as well, I don't think it will take much longer. High time too, as Baffin Bay has almost run out of ice.

But if you want to know the real deal about Nares Strait, I urge you to go to the Icy Seas blog. This blog is run by sea-going physical oceanographer Andreas Münchow, who has actually been to Nares Strait and will soon go back there to retrieve all kinds of gadgets full of data on ice thickness, volume flux and what not. He graciously allows me to re-post his latest blog post:

Ocean heat flux

There are many factors involved in the current long-term decline of Arctic sea ice. From relatively small ones like river discharge, precipitation and soot, to bigger factors like atmospheric patterns and air temperatures.
The possibly biggest factor of all is also the
factor that is the most unknown and uncertain: ocean heat flux. How much heat are ocean currents bringing into the Arctic?

To quote the first paragraph of this 2011 article by Ron Kwok and Norbert Untersteiner: "The surplus heat needed to explain the loss of Arctic sea ice during the past few decades is on the order of 1 W/m2. Observing, attributing, and predicting such a small amount of energy remain daunting problems."

Ocean heat flux is what separates the aggressive and famous forecast by Wieslaw Maslowski (Arctic essentially ice-free by September 2016, ± 3 years) from more conservative estimates that predict the thing to happen between 2050 and the end of this century. As explained in this BBC article from 2007:

Siberia burns

This hasn't anything to do with the Arctic sea ice directly, but as everything in and around the Arctic is inter-related and inter-connected, I wouldn't call the following news article a dissonance on the Arctic Sea Ice blog. Of course those fires will also probably cause some soot to fly towards the ice pack. Things are apparently even worse than in 2010.

Earth Observatory Image of the Day:

On June 18, 2012, a total of 198 wildfires burned across Russia and had charred an area that covered 8,330 hectares (32 square miles). Many were in central Russia, where firefighters have battled uncontrolled fires for months.

The latest flare-up prompted Russian authorities to declare a state of emergency in seven regions, including the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous area, the Tyva Republic, the Sakha Republic, Krasnoyarsk, Amur, Zabaikalsky, and Sakhalin.

Webcam art

Every now and again the North Pole webcams produce beautiful images (like last year). This one is a bit artsy:

When will the first puddles show up, I wonder?

ASI 2012 update 5: when graphs agree

During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Central to these updates are the daily IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) and Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers, which I compare to data from 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, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything that can be of particular interest.

Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website
for daily updated graphs, maps and live webcam images.

* There are still two weeks left to vote on the polls in the right hand bar.
One is for Cryosphere Today minimum daily sea ice area, the other for NSIDC minimum monthly sea ice extent (the one that is used for the SEARCH SIO projections). More info in this blog post.

June 15th 2012

When even odd man out Arctic ROOS - popular in certain quarters during certain seasons - says that 2012 currently has the lowest sea ice extent and area, then you know we're talking business. Since the last ASI update things started out slow at first, but then trend lines dropped off a cliff, on some graphs even approaching vertical conditions, century breaks everywhere you look. Practically all graphs are in agreement, except for one.

So what is causing the Arctic to scream extra loud (just in case somebody out there is still not hearing it)? There are two obvious reasons. First of all, the easy ice is going. All that extra ice that gave rise to the late and relatively high maximum, was wafer-thin. The second reason is that prolonged clear skies, especially over the Beaufort Sea, has caused a lot of melt ponds to form. These cause satellite sensors to see open water where there actually is none.

This 'goodbye, easy ice, hello, melt ponds' theory explains a lot, but I don't think it tells the whole story. There are other factors as well. Either way, it's one hell of a start to the melting season. But will it last?

Sea Ice Extent (SIE)

So if even the Arctic ROOS graphs indicate that 2012 has the smallest ice cover for this time of year, which graph could possibly be disagreeing? Why, it's our beloved IJIS SIE graph that hasn't quite come around yet:

It's getting there, but it still has 2012 in third position. Maybe this is because of the switch from AMSR-E to WindSat, I don't know, and it doesn't really matter either in this phase of the melting season. Nevertheless, 2012 had the highest daily SIE decrease for the last 9 days, a series including 6 century breaks.

The current difference between 2012 and other years (without the unrealistic last data point that gets revised upwards) is as follows:

Fringe fries

With things looking so serious in the Arctic right now, it was high time for another corny pun!

Instead of doing three different posts, I'm combining three different comparisons of fringe regions for today's date. Of course, I'll be using the excellent University of Bremen sea ice concentration maps. If you prefer the holistic view, you can go to the concentration maps page on the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs site. A reminder from the UB webpage: "As we are using SSMIS data instead of AMSR-E data, the quality of the resulting maps has yet to be assessed." There are probably some differences between this year's SIC map and those of previous years - probably in colouration -, but IMO they're small enough to discard.

Let's start with Bering and Chukchi (click on the image for a larger version):

2012 seems to have made up the deficit and looks very similar to all other years except 2011. Which is not surprising as the Bering Sea is almost devoid of ice. Yes, all that ice that was used to mislead a couple of extra people here and there in some quarters, is now gone. On the MASIE chart we can see 2012 right in there with the other years, except for 2011 diving down:

Northwest Passage still chock-full of ice

The season of contrasts continues. The conclusion after the freezing season that the ice on the Atlantic/Siberian side of the Arctic looked vulnerable and the ice on the Pacific/Canadian-Alaskan side of the Arctic should be thicker than usual, is extending itself into the melting season: Whereas the Northern Sea Route could be opening up in record time, the fast ice in the Northwest Passage has still to start breaking up.

We now have four seasons of wonderful satellite images provided to us by the LANCE-MODIS data system, and so we have an animation that allows us to compare this year's situation with that of previous years:

Even though yesterday's image (day 164) is 4-5 days behind the other years, it's as clear as day that this year the NWP is very slow to open up. One partial explanation for the discrepancy with other years so far is air temperature. Take for instance the temperature anomalies for the first three months of the year (source: NOAA daily mean composite page):

SEARCH 2012 Sea Ice Outlook: June report

There it is, the first Sea Ice Outlook of this year. The SIO is organized by the interagency "system-scale, cross-disciplinary, long-term arctic research program" SEARCH (Study of Environmental Arctic Change), and is a compilation of projections for the September 2011 Arctic sea ice extent, based on NSIDC monthly extent values. These projections are submitted by professionals as well as amateurs, such as our own Chris Randles and Larry Hamilton.

Here's the summary for the June report:

With 19 responses for the Pan-Arctic Outlook (plus 6 regional Outlook contributions), the June Sea Ice Outlook projects a September 2012 arctic sea extent median value of 4.4 million square kilometers, with quartiles of 4.3 and 4.7 million square kilometers (Figure 1) [The median value for the 2011 June SIO was 4.7 million square km, N.]. This compares to observed September values of 4.6 in 2011, 4.9 in 2010, and 5.4 in 2009. Both the 2012 quartile values and the range (4.1 to 4.9) are quite narrow. The 2012 June Outlook differs from all previous Outlooks in that there are no projections of extent greater than 5.0. It is always important to note for context that all 2012 estimates are well below the 1979–2007 September mean of 6.7 million square kilometers.

And here's the figure showing all the projections (click for a larger version):

These are the September monthly average minimums in the 2005-2011 period:

Phytoplankton: a negative feedback?

There are several potential negative feedbacks out there that I still haven't properly researched and written about, such as ocean snow effect, river discharge, salinity, inversion, clouds, ice drift (I know, some of them turn out to actually be positive feedbacks), but lately it occured to me that an increase in algal blooms might actually pull out more CO2 from the atmosphere and thus in a sense be a negative feedback. I didn't think any more of it, as I'm prone to do.

This week, however, there has been a wave of reports in the media about a research result from last year's IceScape mission (here, here, here, here, here, and many more). Contrary to what was thought, phytoplankton is also growing under the ice. With Arctic sea ice thinning ever more, it is expected that algal activity will also increase. The news articles are based on this research paper by Arrigo et al., that is due for publication in Science next week.

Here's a video explaining the whole thing (h/t Climatecrocks):

NSIDC Arctic sea ice news May 2012

Better late than never, here's NSIDC's latest analysis for the month of May. Most things are known to most of us, but I find the bolded excerpts towards the end very interesting:

Arctic sea ice extent for May 2012 averaged 13.13 million square kilometers (5.07 million square miles). This was 480,000 square kilometers (185,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average extent. This May’s extent was similar to the May 2008 – 2010 extent, but it was higher than May 2011. May ice extent was 550,000 square kilometers (212,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, which happened in the year 2004.

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