Century Breaks

I had to wait a while for the opportunity to write this post, although I have alluded to the term 'century break' before at the start of this blog.

I like to compare the Arctic sea ice melt to sports. The melt season itself is a horse race, with the individual years being the Arabian full-bloods they have turned into in the last decade. And when on a particular date there is a reported melt of over 100 thousand square km I borrow from the magnificent sport of snooker and call this a century break.

It looks as though 2010 didn't feel like waiting for the officious starting shot of the melting season on Summer Solstice and decided to be off to a flying start. Just a minute ago IJIS confirmed the century break that was reported this morning as the pre-revision number: 113,438 square km. It was this season's 5th century break, respectively 5 and 7 days ahead of 2006 and 2007, with 2008 and 2009 starting to produce their first century breaks in the first week of July. That is, not considering those first century breaks in April when the thinnest ice goes first.

Most sports enthusiasts have an infatuation with sport statistics. Oh, how I enjoyed watching ice skating when I was young (the Dutch have dominated this sport for years, and still are), waiting for those guys to finish their half minute rounds and calculate how many hundredths of a second their average had improved and estimate if they were on course for a new 10km world record. And later on in my teen years, watching the BBC for days on end for full coverage of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible or darts at the Lakeside Country Club, stoned to the bone! But I digress...

Just as with sports I think it is fun to keep an eye on statistics concerning the Arctic ice. Century breaks are perfect for that. So here are some of the numbers:

Century breaks so far in the season:

• 2006: 3
• 2007: 5
• 2008: 3
• 2009: 3
• 2010: 5

Century breaks in July:

• 2006: 3
• 2007: 11
• 2008: 4
• 2009: 11
• 2010: -

Total century breaks:

• 2006: 8
• 2007: 20
• 2008: 12
• 2009: 14
• 2010: 5

Most century breaks in a row:

• 2007: 6
• 2009: 5

Maximum Break:

• 2006: 191,094
• 2007: 201,875
• 2008: 145,000
• 2009: 168,437
• 2010: 142,344

Comments

[dorlomin]

Too carry on the snooker analogy we are now entering the crucible of the melt season.

[dorlomin]

Oh and on the subject of sports, I believe New Zealand had a football match the other day....

[Patrick Lockerby]

The pseudo-skeptics are saying the ice will screw back, but that's just top spin: a few more century breaks right on cue and the pseudo-skeptics will be well and truly snookered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bH7YelA86Q

:-)

[Kevin McKinney]

Looks like IJIS just missed another century break for 6/20--about 300 km2 short, unless there's a downward adjustment this morning.

[dorlomin]

Cryosphere today dropped from an anomaly of -1.225 to -1.425 They dont have the new graphic up yet but that is pretty rapid melting so far. Not convinced we will beat 2007 but it is on the cards.

[dorlomin]

Oooops too quick, they have revised it to -1.395

[Neven]

Patrick, that snookered-analogy is brilliant!

Thanks for mentioning the CT-update, dorlomin. I'll use that graph for today's SIE update.

[dorlomin]

The cryosphere today map is up for the 20/06
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

It is alarming. I really hope it is just a glitch in the processing or picking up melt pools on the ice as sea water, because it looks like alot of ice is starting to melt quickly. Hopefully a more knowledgeable person will be along to explain why I am mis-interpretating the image.

[Neven]

Yes, I have noticed it too, whilst looking for other maps to show in today's update. Do you notice that patch of blue in the Beaufort Sea? That's a first this season.

However, if you run the 30 day animation you see these large swathes of yellow, orange and green show up but then get swallowed again by the purple and pink. Something to keep an eye on the coming days.

IJIS revised today's number by 13K, still a very decent melt.

[Lord Soth]

The Cryosphere Today results are very susceptable to Melt Ponds on the ice. Take a look at the ice bridge in McClure Strait, or at the Laptev sea (near shore) in MODIS. Mostly bare turquoise ice with melt pools, but still consolidated. Cryosphere Today shows the area will only 50% ice cover.

However it is a mute point, because ice with little snow cover and with melt ponds, will soon be history. This make Cryosphere Today, a more predictive tool of things to come.

Another note of interest. If you take a look at MODIS from yesterday (June 20) and use the 1-3-5 color banding, you will see a thin streamer of clouds, going from Greenland all the way around to Alaska. An interesting weather pattern.

[Neven]

Here's another great tool for monitoring clouds over at the Environment Canada's Weather Office (hat-tip Wayne Davidson).

I'm not sure which picture is the best, but if you scroll down to HRPT (NOAA polar orbiting) and then click the medium pictures for Visible or 3µm (which according to Wayne are best) you can even play movies to see the clouds swirling.

I'm such a meteorological noob, otherwise I'd be writing great posts about how all of it works (clouds, Arctic Dipole Pattern). Alas, I'm no Jeff Masters.

[Gareth]

Re: dorlomin @ #2: One-all, one-all, one-all, one-all (to the tune of God Defend New Zealand). Should have been 1-0, too, if hadn't been for an outrageous diva dive in the penalty box...

Couple of things you've missed Neven. I put these two items up in my Twitter stream @hottopicnz yesterday:

Wired Science on Arctic ice forecasts (due out this week): one group predicts summer min of 1m km2! http://bit.ly/bue8Gy

RT @ICESCAPE2010 Take a look as we sail through the Bering Strait & start ocean sampling from the icebreaker Healy http://go.usa.gov/36i

[Neven]

Thanks, Gareth!

[Nick Barnes]

My Python script disagrees with some of your results. For instance, here are the maximum breaks in each year:
2002-07-27 142,500
2003-07-14 141,406
2004-04-11 154,218
2005-07-05 161,719
2006-07-05 191,094
2007-07-03 201,875
2008-08-06 145,000
2009-07-22 168,437
2010-06-05 142,344
Also possibly I'm misunderstanding the "Century breaks so far" heading; can you clarify it?

[Neven]

Nick, you are absolutely right! I overlooked the higher 2006 century break and it looks like I made a mistake when copying the new smoothed data between May 20th and June 11th (due to 2008 being a leap year). Thanks a lot for bringing this to my attention. At least my code is easier to clear than GISS's code, right? ;-)

And the 'century breaks so far' is poorly phrased, yes. With it I mean 'century breaks so far in the season', up to the date the blog post was written. Is that a better description?

[Gas Glo]

The average daily melt over last 2 week has gone over 70k though afternoon figure may revise to below that. Figures for 2009 56752, 2008 50424, 2007 60346, 2006 65100.

Are century breaks a bit too volatile? Wouldn't average daily rate over x days smooth things out a little and make a more reliable data set? If so, what is the optimum x?

Using 14 day average, 2006 and 2010 had higher melt rates in early May. For 2010 it seems reasonable to attribute this to unusually high extent in April. Leaving 2006 as just unusual?