Commenter Dr Tskoul posted a link to this Youtube video he made from the MODIS Terra satellite for days 90 to 143:
It looks spectacular, doesn't it? All because of the large and strong high pressure system I mentioned in the first ASI update. Check out the animation of DMI SLP images and focus on that big yellow/orange/red blob over the Beaufort Sea.
Last year that region looked quite spectacular as well:
A little over a month I looked at the situation in the Bering Sea, with sea ice cover larger than it has been for the last decade. This hasn't changed as NASA's Earth Observatory shows with the following satellite image of the day and accompanying text I have reproduced below:
For most of the winter of 2011–2012, the Bering Sea has been choking with sea ice. Though ice obviously forms there every year, the extent of the ice cover has been unusually widespread this season. In fact, the past several months have included the second highest ice extent in the satellite record for the Bering Sea region, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
The natural-color image above shows the Bering Sea and the coasts of Alaska and northeastern Russia on March 19, 2012. The image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Black lines mark the coastlines, many of which have ice shelves or frozen bays extending beyond their land borders.
NSIDC reported that ice extent in the Bering Sea for January was 562,000 square kilometers, at least 104,600 square kilometers above the 1979 to 2000 average. Though numbers were not released for February, the pattern persisted through to March 2012.
Continue reading at NASA's Earth Observatory website...
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:
Now that the formidable ice plug in Smith Channel has finally broken up (see this blog post from a few days ago) the rest of the ice in Nares Strait gets a chance to start moving.
The coming days a high pressure system is forecast to roam the area, meaning 1) high temperatures and insolation that will further fragment the ice, and 2) clear skies that should deliver nice, clear MODIS images of the event. So the coming weeks I will update this animation that shows the whole of Nares Strait.
As always I advise to focus on one part of the animation, instead of trying to take it all in at once.
It looks like I'm back just in time to witness the breaking up of the ice plug in Kane Basin. This just in from the Aqua satellite:
It's a bit vague, but it looks as if the lower part of the plug is crumbling. If it is breaking up, how long will it take for ice transport to get going through Nares Strait?
This page will be updated the coming few days. Stay tuned...
Apparently we human beings have a brain that is specialised in understanding and interpreting faces. Carl Sagan believed we are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face because it increases our chances of survival if we're able to discern friend from foe quickly. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces (a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia).
A very famous instance of pareidolia is the Face of Mars, and not a week passes by where somewhere around the world someone claims to have seen the face of Jesus Christ in some object or other. They see them on Google Earth images, ultrasound pictures, pieces of pizza, Sussex hawthorns, chicken feathers and IKEA toilet doors. What, you've seen the Lord's face in some shroud? Boring!Look what I saw when I opened a jar of Marmite this morning.
I'm not writing this blog post to inform you that I've seen our Saviour's face appear somewhere in the Arctic sea ice (although I probably could if I wanted to), but it is definitely funny to see facial patterns when looking closely at the MODIS satellite images. Here are some examples:
People sometimes say that watching the Arctic sea ice melt is like watching paint dry. Well, let me ask them this: does their freshly painted wall have a NASA satellite monitoring it? Because if they do, I'm coming over with a beer and a bag of salted pistachios.
Yes, we're finally there. The MODIS white ball has been growing smaller and smaller and will be gone in a couple of days. And this means the gazing for things out of the ordinary is resuming. Of course, speculation has already started here and there, as the fringes of the ice pack have been visible for quite a while. I had a look at the situation in the Bering Strait, and Patrick Lockerby's first guest post here focused on the ice in Baffin Bay. Over on Patrick's blog, in the comment section of Arctic Ice March 2001 Update #2, we already had a bit of a look at Nares Strait, which is one of the most interesting things to keep an eye on in the Arctic, especially around this time.
So to celebrate the return of the full Arctic Mosaic I'll give a brief overview of the current situation in the Nares Strait:
It looks like the ice floes in Baffin Bay didn't compact too well during the winter. Instead of slabbing and compacting, the floes appear to have merely become congealed together with winter ice. That ice is now first year ice. 'First year' doesn't imply year-old: the ice which surrounds older floes in Baffin Bay is just over 6 months old.
As ice forms over sea water it traps pockets of water. Over a period of time the ice in effect squeezes the salt water out through the bottom. This makes older ice less salty. Salty ice is a matrix of ice crystals surrounding pockets of water. That structure makes the ice somewhat flexible and weak: the younger the weaker. Salty ice also melts faster than fresh-water ice.
Recent images from the Arctic mosaic show cracks in the newer ice running outside of the older ice. This appears to me to be yet one more positive feedback in the ice-melting saga. Previously the ice in Baffin Bay has built up in thickness by slabbing. It takes much more energy to crack thick multi-year ice than to crack the first year ice that surrounds last year's floes.
The images below, all taken from Arctic mosaics, compare ice on March 22 2009, 2010 and 2011.
March 22 2009
March 22 2010
March 22 2011
March 22 2011 in more detail
My expectation is that this ice will break up, disperse and melt rapidly as the melt season gets fully under way. Baffin Bay ice usually presents a great obstruction to the export of ice from Nares Strait and the Canadian Archipelago. I suggest that it will not continue to do so for long.
Images courtesy http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Now that the MODIS white ball in the middle of the Arctic Mosaic is receding more and more, it's high time we start looking at what's going on down below (some of you who weren't hibernating already did of course). As the skies above the Bering Sea and its Strait have been exceptionally clear lately I decided it was a good exercise to get my animation skills in shape for the coming melting season.
Here's what's been happening in the past ten days, from March 5th (day 64) to 14th (day 73):
There's obviously a lot of mobility with ice being transported into the Arctic Basin (!). Lots of big leads along the coasts as well. What a difference compared to last year:
I figured this would be worth de-hibernating for (hat-tip Gas Glo). From the ESA homepage:
1 February 2011
Scientists can now tap into a flow of new data that will help to determine exactly how Earth's ice is changing. This information from ESA's CryoSat mission is set to make a step change in our understanding of the complex relationship between ice and climate.
Considering the loss of the original CryoSat satellite during launch in 2005, scientists around the world have had a long wait for information on ice thickness – making the release even more of a milestone for the mission.
ESA's CryoSat Mission Manager Tommaso Parrinello announced the release at the CryoSat Validation workshop currently taking place. He said, "We are pleased to announce this important milestone, which comes only few weeks after the end of the commissioning phase.
"As of today, the international science community will have free and easy access to all of the measurements from CryoSat. This will amount to a unique dataset to determine the impact climate change is having on Earth's ice fields."
CryoSat's polar orbit reaches latitudes of 88°. This orbit brings it closer to the poles than previous Earth observation satellites, covering an additional 4.6 million sq km – an area larger than all 27 European Union member states put together.
Credits: ESA /AOES Medialab
Continue reading at the ESA homepage...
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