Interesting websites for watching the ice

Over at Skeptical Science there's a blog post with a small collection of websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice. I want to show these websites and a few others here as well. I'll be updating the post with interesting suggestions in the comments. Here's one already: Over at Lou Grinzo's The Cost of Energy blog you can view some of these graphs and a bunch of other long term graphs and graphs of specific areas in the Arctic.

fredt34 has gathered some of these graphs on his personal Google page, so you just have to visit one site if you want to have a quick look at the current situation in the Arctic. I have replicated fredt34's great idea and made a small web page that collects the main graphs and maps for a quick daily check.

Happy bookmarking!

Satellite images

I'll kick off with MODIS and its Arctic mosaic because of the stunning satellite images that are very rich in detail and are updated every day.

 

A similar site is this one, with Google Maps-like pictures of the Arctic.

Sea Ice Extent graphs

There are several of these. Most popular is the one by IARC-JAXA that I'm also using for my regular SIE updates:

 

Their sea ice area graph can be found here:

The Arctic ROOS graph doesn't correspond as well with others, which makes it extra interesting to watch:

 

Another popular graph is the one by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre:

Here's one from the Danish Meteorological Institute:

And last but not least an ice extent graph from the University of Bremen:

 

Maps of the Arctic

Very popular is the Arctic sea ice concentration map on the Cryosphere Today webpage, which has heaps of other information (such as 30-day animations) as well as a mobile web application:

There's also a graph by the University of Bremen, archive is here:

NSIDC has the very nice Sea Ice Index webpage that allows you to look at extent and concentration in all kinds of ways:

The Canadian Cryospheric Information Network has a great sea ice extent graph with a Play-button below it!

 

Yet another sea ice concentration map from the O&SI (Ocean and Sea ICE) SAF consortium (with maps of previous dates below it):

Ice thickness and volume

CAUTION: these are models! ;-)

Here's a graph from the Polar Science Center that has been getting a lot of attention lately due to its modelling of a catastrophic decline in sea ice volume:

 

The US Navy has a more conservative - and according to some outdated - model called PIPS 2.0 (you can also watch ice concentration and ice displacement maps there):

Temperatures

A nice looking map with surface temperatures from the NOAA/ESRL Physical Science Division:

On this map from the very informative Athropolis you can click on weather stations for an up-to-date weather report:

The Danish Meteorological Institute has a graph of Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degree North (that's the upper part of the Arctic, which starts at a latitude of 66º 33′):

This is a really cool interactive map from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that provides near real-time graphs of polar clouds, surface temperatures and radiation:

Here's a map of the world with current sea surface temperature anomaly plots from Unisys:

NOAA also has a sea surface temperature anomaly chart:

Here's a map with actual daily sea surface temperatures from Environment Canada:

This map from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) is perhaps the best map if you want to know what current sea surface temperatures in the Arctic are:

Various other sites

Here's a site from NOAA that monitors the Arctic Oscillation:

The Canadian Ice Service has a map that displays the latest known ice cover in Canadian waters (via the home page you can access maps of specific areas):

This map from the International Arctic Buoy Programme tracks buoys in the Arctic sea ice:

 

There's a Russian website that like PIPS 2.0 closely follows ice displacement and makes forecasts for up to 6 days (hat-tip to Lord Soth). Be careful, they have the map upside down:

 

And if all of that still isn't enough you can knock yourself out with a plethora of weather maps from the University of Cologne (for instance click on 'current weather maps' and then 'Arctic', but there are pictures from some hot models as well):

If, on the other hand, things have gotten too overwhelming and you're experiencing information overload, you can chill out and watch one of the two Arctic webcams, deployed by the North Pole Environmental Observatory:

Please let me know if there are more interesting graphs and maps out there!

The more pretty pictures, the merrier.

Comments

[Gareth]

University of Cologne Arctic weather maps.

[Gareth]

NOAA SST anomaly charts.

[Gareth]

Canadian Cryospheric Information Network

[Gareth]

Canadian Ice Service.

[Lou Grinzo]

My "Quick Graphs" page has links to many of these: Quick Graphs v3.01

[Neven]

Gareth, those links you provided are great! I have just finished updating the post.

[Gareth]

Worth checking out the Seasonal Ice Forecast from the North American Ice Service (available from the Canadian Ice Service here. Gives a good overview of the current state of the ice, and the dates when areas are expected to clear for navigation -- most of them early...

[Patrick Lockerby]

Map with Arctic weather stations providing - mostly - daily weather reports.

http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm

[Kevin McKinney]

Great resource--I'll have to be careful; you could while away a whole lot of time with these. . .

[Neven]

Patrick, thanks yet again. I've added that one

Gareth, the Seasonal Ice Forecast is very interesting (worth a whole article in fact), but I'm confining this list to things you can watch on a daily basis.

Is there a good graph somewhere of daily updated temperatures in the Arctic? I know there aren't that many weather stations, so perhaps there's nothing there. I must admit I haven't been looking very hard either.

[Neven]

There's the DMI graph with Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degree North, of course.

[Neven]

I found another great page here: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/data.html

Added another sea surface temperature graph from Environment Canada.

[Neven]

I've added a really nice interactive map from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under Temperatures.

[Neven]

I found two more graphs via the comment section of an article on WUWT. My thanks goes to Przemysław Pawełczyk and jakers.

[fredt34]

Hi, nice to find your site. The Russians have very nice maps here : http://www.aari.ru/odata/_d0015.php?lang=1&mod=0&yy=2010 (since 2006) - old maps and data from 1997 to 2008 are here, http://www.aari.nw.ru/clgmi/sea_charts/sea_charts_en.html

Of course, Tenney has a huuuuuuge compilation of links, articles and images here: http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/ (237 posts about "Arctic melt season" only)

Being lazy, I mashed most nsidc / jaxa... graphics on some personal page here : http://sites.google.com/site/refsdefred/ - only 1 site to visit to get my daily depressing image

I'll come back later with more links

[Neven]

That reference page of yours is great, Fred! If you allow it, I'd like to put it on top of the article.

A good idea too, to make a page with the most important graphs. I'll try and do the same once this list is complete (25+ graphs so far).

[fredt34]

Of course you can link it... I've just added some links (by the images) to jump to the belonging sites (hurricanes.gov for instance). btw click on Jaxa Extent image, it links to a hi-def image.

You're right, not enough sites provide this centralized arctic stuff - I thought about it, but... still watching my personal links, as google provides no nice way to share them yet.

Keep the blog concentrated, and go on with this nice effort !

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawn4S99JJRLrNfgA838BLqx0pzoN7lqRBgI]

Oi ! Plagerism!
Okay, just kidding. This has been up for a few years.
http://freespace.virgin.net/biker.59/
I updated it about a week ago. Nothing there that you aren't already using though.

[Neven]

Thanks, that's another good overview of long term graphs.

I've added a really good Arctic SST map: http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_sst_NPS_ophi0.png