Apologies for the corny title.
As promised in the previous post on Hudson Bay I have had another look at how this year's melt compares to other years. 2011 is still around 200K behind last year:
Here's how it looks based on sea ice concentration maps from the University of Bremen archive:
Things don't seem to have changed much from what I concluded in the previous blog post:
If we disregard the colours and just focus on the shape of the ice pack in Hudson Bay, we see that 2006 and 2010 had less area covered than this year. It looks quite similar to 2005 and 2007, although the ice pack in those years seems to be less concentrated than now.
Hudson Bay will be free of ice in a couple of days.
During the past week, the ice in Hudson Bay has been getting thinner, and is going from closed pack to progresively more open.
This has dropped the area numbes, but the extent numbers are lagging behind.
Over the next week we should see several century melts, with Hudson Bay being a contributing factor.
Last night we had a melt of 85K, with only a 3 K correction.
The AO is heading more negative again, and should stay with way for at least another 10 days.
We are now switching from 2010 mode to 2007 mode. Prepare for shock and awe.
Posted by: Lord Soth | July 02, 2011 at 17:34
I agree. In fact, when I read this, I was just writing the SIE update conclusion. And so I decided to include it. Thanks for bringing it up like this.
Posted by: Neven | July 02, 2011 at 22:31
Neven, THESE are the things MASIE is useful for... also as L.S. pointed out, when breakup within a basin leads to an increase in local extent, thus dragging down the Arctic-wide daily average.
Posted by: Artful Dodger | July 03, 2011 at 10:04
Yeah, I know. It's just that I'm watching so many things right now that I have to make myself fit it into my daily routine.
Posted by: Neven | July 03, 2011 at 11:30