Arctic Sea Ice

Sea ice extent update 9: break a leg

I'll be 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 2006-2009. The JAXA graph is favoured by almost everyone, probably because it looks so nice compared to other graphs (like the one by Arctic ROOS, the University of Bremen and the Danish Meteorological Institute). All the years have a nice colour of their own which makes it easy to eyeball the differences between trends. Most of the betting on minimum SIE is based on the IJIS data. NSIDC has a nice explanation of what sea ice extent is in their FAQ.

June 29th 2010

I have been writing these SIE updates every 3 days, but things are changing so fast at the moment that I've decided to do an update at least every second day. I think that's not unwise with the July onslaught about to start.

So what happened in the past 2 days? On the first day we almost had another century break: 96,094 square km. This was easily compensated by yesterday's melt which was reported to be a whopping 141,975 square km, 2010's 5th century break in June, equalling the 2007 record. 2010 has 2 more days to claim a new record for June. Either way, 2010 has extended its lead over 2007 by another 79K since the last SIE update. Will it be enough to withstand 2007's awesome run of 10 century breaks in just 15 days (including a double century break, ie more than 200K in one day) that started on tomorrow's date?

In the next 2-3 days there's a good chance as well that 2010 will lead 2008 and 2009 by more than 1 million square km, as these two years didn't start producing century breaks until July 2nd. The current difference between 2010 and the other years is as follows:

• 2006: -453K

• 2007: -682K

• 2008: -967K

• 2009: -982K

Kelly O'Day produced this chart that shows average daily melt for June:

That record is in the pocket.

Here's the IJIS graph:

I'm sure everybody is curious to see what happens next. Steven Goddard has proclaimed that 'in three days, the slope of the Arctic extent graph will begin to drop off' because all the ice in Hudson Bay has melted spectacularly fast and there's none left. He could be right, especially as the Arctic Oscillation remains negative for the time being. But somehow Goddard's track record doesn't inspire confidence, and that's putting it mildly. Let's see what happens.

TIPS - Other interesting blog posts and news articles concerning Arctic ice:

Patrick Lockerby has written a new blog post: Arctic Ice July 2010. I suggest reading that twice. His track record for this year has been very good so far and his "prediction for July is that Arctic sea ice loss will accelerate."

A new study shows the Arctic climate system may be more sensitive to greenhouse warming than previously thought, and that current levels of Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide may be high enough to bring about significant, irreversible shifts in Arctic ecosystems. Read on.

There's a fantastic must-read article on the BBC Science & Environment webpage explaining what the recently launched Cryosat-2 satellite will be doing the coming 5 years. It will put the PIPS 2.0 vs PIOMAS controversy to rest, that's for sure (if this season's melt doesn't do that beforehand). The scientific community is about to be fed indispensable data from this satellite.

Animation 4: McClure Strait

Another very valuable comment in today's 2010 vs 2007 Uni Bremen Comparison blog post pointed me to a considerable partial disintegration of the ice bridge in McClure Strait. This is the last part of the direct route of the Northwest Passage, and, excepting the large amounts of ice floes in Melville Sound and Parry Channel (which are easily blown out towards the warmer waters of Baffin Bay, see image), the only thing that is preventing a very early opening of the Northwest Passage this year.

I had already been saving images this past week because of the reasonably clear skies over much of the Canadian Archipelago, and together with this latest image they show the break-off very nicely:

Notice also the breaking off of floes in McClintock Channel in the middle left of the image. I'll be updating this image the coming few days, so we can see what is happening to those ice floes and the rest of the ice bridge.

Update June 29th: Added yesterday's image (day 179). Some floes are breaking off at the bottom of the ice bridge. Check Nick Barnes' comments below for further observations.

Update June 30th: Added yesterday's image (day 180).

Update July 1st: Added yesterday's image (day 181).

Update July 2nd: Added yesterday's image (day 182). Nick Barnes has commented in the SIE update 10 thread:

Check out today's Terra image for the crack showing the next big loss at the eastern end of the ice bridge in the NWP: a big triangle of ice, with its base across the whole of Viscount Melville Sound (about 140km N/S, and maybe 60km E/W). The Aqua image shows that two more triangles are ready to come after that, after which there'll be about 150-200km of ice bridge remaining in the deepwater channel. The other side of Stefansson Island, there's another 30km chunk breaking off in the McClintock Channel.

The eastern end of the ice bridge in the picture is the lower end. Maybe I should rotate the image?

Update July 3rd: Added yesterday's image (day 183). Ice floes keep breaking off.

Update July 4th: Added yesterday's image (day 184). There's some serious cracking going on in the eastern side (lower side of the picture) of Melville Sound.

Update July 5th: I've made a new and improved animation. No more updates here.

Arctic Basin drop

Please tell me if I'm overreacting, but in my last post comparing 2007 and 2010 ice concentration maps Evilreductionist mentioned a huge drop in current Arctic Basin sea ice area over at Cryosphere Today. I looked at this graph a few days ago and nothing much seemed to be happening, but look at this:

It corresponds well with this graph and its extraordinary updates in the past few days:

I think this is exceptional (I have to, I'm an alarmist). Either way, it's on my 'to keep an eye on'-list as of this minute.

2010 vs 2007: Uni Bremen Comparison

As 2010 and 2007 are preparing to battle it out in July I figured I'd try and make some ice concentration map animations from the University of Bremen of both years, to see how they compare. The archive for these images can be found here.

As always I advise to focus on specific parts of the maps and not try to take it in as a whole. I've slowed the animation down a bit (2 sec. per frame) to make it easier to compare. Here it is:

When focusing on specific parts of the Arctic there's plenty of differences to see of course. I'll mention one remarkable difference: Hudson Bay. At the 2010 end date of the animation there is hardly any ice left. This steep drop is plain to see on this graph from Cryosphere Today (hat-tip to Wayne Davidson):

Sea ice extent update 8: ...go!

I'll be 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 2006-2009. The JAXA graph is favoured by almost everyone, probably because it looks so nice compared to other graphs (like the one by Arctic ROOS, the University of Bremen and the Danish Meteorological Institute). All the years have a nice colour of their own which makes it easy to eyeball the differences between trends. Most of the betting on minimum SIE is based on the IJIS data. NSIDC has a nice explanation of what sea ice extent is in their FAQ.

June 27th 2010

I'm writing this update now, before today's revision of yesterday's reported melt, because I'll be gone for the day.

The provisional number is 105,468 square km, another century break after the 103,594 square km on the 25th. Until recently this number would have been adjusted downwards by at least 15-30K, but it appears to be that time of the year (after the switching of some parameters to account for melt ponds etc) when revisions get smaller and some time soon might even go the other way. Yesterday for instance we saw a revision of just 3K.

Edit: Another small revision has made yesterday's reported melt the 4th century break of this month (2007 had 5): 100,937 square km.

So 2010 had a reported century break yesterday and today also. The day before the first century break there was a reported number of 85K. Nevertheless, 2006 had the highest reported melt on the first two dates (since the last update) because of two century breaks, and 2007 had its first century break of the coming spectacular series yesterday. But 2010 came in second on all three dates and even extended its lead on all years except 2006.

The current difference between 2010 and the other years is as follows:

• 2006: -363K (59,609)

• 2007: -603K (63,328)

• 2008: -833K (56,474)

• 2009: -840K (55,938)

Between brackets is the average daily melt for June. 2010 currently has an average daily melt of 71,737 square km. Here's the graph:

 

The Arctic ROOS sea ice extent map has lost its interest ever since 2010 overtook all the other years there too, the Daily Arctic Oscillation Index is still slightly negative, the webcams are showing more puddling by the image, so here is something else, a video that Artful Dodger linked to in the last Animation blog post. It's a video of MODIS images of the melt season this far:

Check out noiv's other vids as well. Noiv wants critics to tell him what can be improved.

TIPS - Other interesting blog posts and news articles concerning Arctic ice:

Wayne Davidson has updated the news on his EH2R website, called 'Big Blue hits the world quite wide'. Quote:

The extent anomaly for Arctic sea ice is equal to the anomaly of 2008 at its summer end. Which is 2 months ahead of time in 2010, making 2010 the coming all time most melted Arctic Ocean ice ever.

ClimateProgress has a new Arctic-related post called When things were rotten: Arctic sees record sea ice shrinkage, headed toward record low volume.

There's an article on Before It's News called Worst Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice in Thousands of Years, announcing that a major international study of Arctic sea ice, involving 18 scientists from five countries and to be published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, has concluded that the recent, record-setting retreat is the worst in thousands of years.

AP has a story on our beloved alarmist symbol, the Polar bear. Sniff, I love Polar bears. And US senator Lisa Murkowski wants more heavy icebreakers to be more able to respond to Arctic emergencies. Somehow, I don't think she means bringing Polar bears to ice floes and back. Not unless the Polar bears know where the oil is.

Blogal Warming

It has been 20 days since I've started this blog and here's a short update on how it's going. So far I've managed to write about the things that interest me, I've learnt how to make small animations and I'm very happy that the blog has attracted some commentators that make invaluable comments. The amount of pageviews is definitely not an end in itself, but it shows the progress from the start:

I don't know if it's a good or a bad sign, but it actually reminds me a bit of this graph:

 

That steep drop on the last date corresponds to the Global Cooling that starts a few years from now.

I've contemplated upgrading to a more versatile version of TypePad, but I kind of like it the way it is now, simple and neatly arranged. Besides, I've decided to close the blog at the end of the melting season anyhow, so there's not much use in adding all kinds of widgets, Twitter messages, live graphs, polls and ads for selling oil stocks and buying gold.

I'll just keep continuing with the updates, the animations and of course other interesting news concerning the Arctic and its diminishing sea ice. Unfortunately I lack the knowledge and capacities for hardcore analysis, but I hope the commentators can keep coming back to provide some of that. We have an interesting summer ahead of us.

Webcam puddles

As Lord Soth has pointed out in the latest SIE update one of the NOAA webcams at the North Pole is showing what looks like a melt pond.

Click the image for a larger version or click here for a live version.

The other webcam is not showing any puddles as of yet. Update June 26th: it does now...

Here's a map of the current position of the webcams. POPS-13 (green) is for the webcam showing the puddles, the PAWS buoy (red) corresponds to webcam nr 2:

 

Someone sent me a great link to compare these webcam pictures to images from previous years.

Sea ice extent update 7: on your marks, get set...

I'll be 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 2006-2009. The JAXA graph is favoured by almost everyone, probably because it looks so nice compared to other graphs (like the one by Arctic ROOS, the University of Bremen and the Danish Meteorological Institute). All the years have a nice colour of their own which makes it easy to eyeball the differences between trends. Most of the betting on minimum SIE is based on the IJIS data. NSIDC has a nice explanation of what sea ice extent is in their FAQ.

June 24th 2010

This is the last day of relative easy melting, as the melting seasons kicks off in earnest. 2006 had two reported century breaks tomorrow and the day after, and then 2007 takes over with an onslaught of 11 century breaks in just 18 days. 2009 and to a lesser extent 2008 join the fray in the first week of July.

Meanwhile 2010 has consolidated its lead some more in the past 3 days, with a highest reported melt yesterday of 76K square km and a second highest reported melt the day before that (65K) and today (86K).

The current difference between 2010 and the other years is as follows:

• 2006: -386K (59,609)

• 2007: -593K (63,328)

• 2008: -745K (56,474)

• 2009: -733K (55,938)

Between brackets is the average daily melt for June. 2010's current average daily melt stands at 68,512 square km and some strange things have to happen for 2010 not to have the highest average daily melt for June, as it is likely to increase some more in this last week of the month.

Here's the graph from IJIS. 2010 is still at a safe distance trailing alongside its compatriots, but will most probably soon be joined by 2007 which is about to start its impressive drop:

2010 has also officially crossed 2008 to become the lowest extent for this date on the Arctic ROOS graph. Quite a feat, as this graph is known for its disaccord with other extent graphs, which makes it popular in pseudo-skeptic circles. Luckily for them they still have the Arctic ROOS sea ice area graph and of course the ice volume models.

Judging from NOAA's daily AO index it looks like the Arctic Oscillation might be on the upswing again:

Animation 3: Beaufort Sea

This post is a combination of several things. First of all, I wanted to make another animation of some part of the Arctic, because things have been changing a bit faster lately. Second, I've been planning to write a piece about the Beaufort Gyre for a while now, except that I cannot bake a whole blog post from it. Third and last, in the comments we had been discussing those huge swathes of red, yellow and green (and even a bit of blue) on the Cryosphere Today daily ice concentration animated map that have been showing up and disappearing again in the last two weeks. Some people remarked that this most probably had to do with melt ponds that more or less distort the reported ice concentration picked up by the satellite sensors.

So, let's start with explaining what the Beaufort Gyre is. The Lord praise the man who invented copypaste and also Ole Nielsen, who has written an excellent informative synopsis on his weblog:

The Beaufort Gyre is an ocean and ice circulation pattern in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska. I have marked it with a B on the map. This gyre moves in a clockwise direction. This circulation results from an average high-pressure system that spawns winds over the region. Ice that forms in or drifts into the Beaufort Gyre has historically remained in the Arctic ice system for years, accumulating snow and thickening each winter. Beginning in the late 1990s, the ice began melting away while in the southern parts of the gyre, before completing the circulation.

The short story is that Beaufort gyre is a result of the Coriolis force, the prevailing winds, and what is known as Ekman transport (in short: movement of water at a certain angle to the wind).

In Patrick Lockerby's latest piece, Arctic Ice June 2010 - Solstice Update, there's a recent picture from the MODIS Arctic Mosaic. As Patrick writes:

Ice color is a fairly good indicator of ice condition if the image resolution integrates polynyas and meltwater pools so as to make the ice look bluish-grey. The image below shows whiter ice within the circle and bluish ice outside of it. The Arctic mosaic images show the bluish-grey areas as highly fragmented, mobile and melting ice. That rotten ice probably won't last long. I give it 4 to 6 weeks.

I suggest that you have a look at some of that rotten ice in the Rapidfire images and then compare what you see with the following Cryosphere Today image.

So here's where my animation comes in. I've decided to concentrate on the MODIS Terra 1km True Color image (r05_c03) that shows the big polynya off the coast of Barrow and a big chunk of the eastern part of the Beaufort Sea. The animation shows the past 3 weeks, from June 3rd to June 23rd. Here it is (click for a larger version):

SEARCH September sea ice outlook: June report

There it is, the first SEARCH sea ice outlook for September 2010 (click for a larger version):

Overall it looks a bit conservative, except for Wilson. Compare this to last year's June outlook:

A quick calculation (leaving out the outliers of 3.2 million in 2009 and 1.0 million in 2010) shows an average prediction of 4.72 in June 2009, and 5.05 million this year.