Barentsz and Kara

I had grown accustomed to writing Barentsz Sea without the Z, as everyone does. But I've decided to no longer scorn my Dutch roots. The Barentsz Sea has been named after Willem Barentszoon, a Dutch explorer and cartographer who died looking for an open Northeast Passage (now known as the Northern Sea Route) towards the end of the 16th century. At that time family names weren't used universally yet, and many people went through life with just a patronym, just like in Russian classic literature. Hence Willem was known as Barentsz., short for 'Barents zoon', the son of Barent.

The Barentsz Sea and its neighbour the Kara Sea are giving us an exciting prelude this year, as we await the melting season to start in about a month and a half from now. Large swathes of sea water that ought to be frozen by now, are still open or have opened up in the past fortnight.

According to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute this is what an average January (1976-2006) looked like in the region:

And this is how it looks now, one week into February:

The difference is quite marked, but that has a lot to do with the 30 year baseline that comprises many years that had even more ice cover than shown on the map with the average from 1976 to 2006. And so, as usual, I have downloaded Uni Bremen sea ice concentration maps from years of the recent new Arctic regime (2005-now), and cropped them, so they can be compared to the current situation:

I have been looking at the Arctic sea ice from up close for about two years now, but this is definitely one of the most spectacular things I have seen so far. Two weeks ago 2012 somewhat looked like 2006 and 2008 (although there already was more open water around Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya), but where the ice cover grew in those two years, it just keeps on getting smaller this year. It's almost as if the melting season has already started in the Barentsz and Kara Seas, two months earlier than normal.

What could be causing such an early retreat of sea ice cover? The answer is probably manifold. First and foremost is the big high-pressure system over Northern Siberia that formed about 10 days ago and is helping Ded Moroz to hold Europe in a late frosty grip. At the same time this high draws in winds from the west, pushing the ice back in the Barentsz and Kara Seas. These winds also bring warm air and rain from the North Atlantic. Take for instance this data from the weather station at Svalbard for the latest 30 days:

Average temperature was -3.3 °C, 12.2 °C above the normal. Highest temperature was 4.8 °C (29 January), and the lowest was -15.0 °C (25 January). The total precipitation was 61.3 mm. Highest daily precipitation was 25.9 mm (30 January).

And of course the winds probably take the warm waters from the North Atlantic Current some further still into the Arctic, to places where the sea water that was already exceptionally warm last melting season never really cooled down enough (relatively speaking) for some proper ice formation:

One last factor that is not exerting a great influence right now, is sunshine. Solar radiation melts ice directly and indirectly by warming up sea water. Due to the Earth's axial tilt the Arctic receives very little of it during winter, but slowly the Sun's rays creep northward every day, reaching more and more of the frozen land and sea surface.

To give an idea, here's a sun chart from the University of Oregon that shows the angle of the Sun over Kara Strait (70N, 57E), the channel of water between the southern tip of Novaya Zemlya and northern Russia that connects the Barentsz Sea with the Kara Sea:

The Sun is barely rising over the horizon right now and remains visible for only a couple of hours. But this will soon change and it won't be long before there is enough light for us to start gazing at the MODIS satellite images. Whether the sea ice will retreat even more in the meantime or whether we will see a late freeze-up in the Barentsz and Kara Seas, remains to be seen. But as things currently stand, the Atlantic side of the Arctic looks spectacular. Spectacular and ominous.

Comments

[adelady]

Thanks for this, Neven.

I've been looking, mystified, at the SST anomaly maps for the last couple of weeks. You'd almost think someone had put up some kind of dam wall across the strait and bottled up warmer water east of Novaya Zemlya.

The resulting SIA anomalies for the Kara Sea are downright strange!!?!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.7.html (I do wish these regional graphs routinely showed 2 years the way the NH total SIA graph does.)

How any 'freeze-up' could compete with increasing insolation here to come up with a 'trend' lasting more than a few days I can't imagine.

[Tor Bejnar]

Thanks for the explanation for the zed at the end of Barentsz. I was curious, but not curious enough to find out on my own. (My Dutch ancestor sailed his ship to New Amsterdam - not quite so adventurous.)

The last of your Uni Bremen maps has the wrong date. I'm sure it's 2-5-2012, not 2-5-2011. (and once fixed, this note can be canned).
Thanks for all you do!

[idunno]

Hi all,

Ho-hum, just wrote a long one that Typepad chewed :{

The increase in SSTs in the area of perennially ice-free Arctic Ocean North West of a line from the South tip of Greenland to the North tip of Scotland has been going on for decades. In all seasons.

Decadal SST anomaly maps can be generated here:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

I think that this can easily become a vicious circle. Normally, the Kara Sea is enirely ice covered at this time of year, and the Surface Air Temperature something like minus 30 Centigrade. So the Surface Ice Temperature should fall towards minus 30 Centigrade.

As long as the Sea Surface is liquid, it must be above minus 1.8 Centigrade. Furthermore, surface ice that is cooled by colder air above it gets colder. Surface water that it cooled, but not frozen, by colder air above it, sinks. As it sinks, it is lost to the equation, and replace by warmer water from below or, ultimately, from the South West - the Carribean.

IIRC, the Gulf Stream conveys energy equivalent to 100 times all human energy consumption.

Simultaneously, this surface water, as it cools and sinks, warms the air way out of its normal temperature range, and warm air doesn't freeze ice well.

(Ah well, the first version of this post made sense).

Honest!

[idunno]

Erratum:

Para 2: North East, not North West.

[Mike]

idunno, well I dunno either, is this the start of the melt season? On a personal note, I am already checking cryosphere today, is this ominous? From a scientific point of view I see the anomally in the maximum as a tad curious.

[Kris]

So, according to the Oregon university chart the Kara sea starts to be warmed up by sun power around the 10th of March (taken into account the 15° elevation rule).

Right or wrong?

[Neven]

Thanks, Tor, I've corrected and updated the image.

Kris, I believe you are correct.

[Reasonablemadness.wordpress.com]

More amazing than the Cyrosphere Today regional chart is the MASIE regional chart for the Kara Sea:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r05_Kara_Sea_ts.png

There you can directly compare the ice coverage with the last 5 previous years and the anomaly is really remarkable.

[Bob Wallace]

So, given that no significant ice forms in the next month, does this mean that we go into the melt season without the normal choke on the drift of ice into the Atlantic?

Does this offer the possibility of a great flushing of ice when the pack breaks up a bit and the winds/currents start the transport?

If the Sun starts hitting the open water in mid March isn't it likely that Central Arctic ice will be pushed into melting waters prior to being expelled into the final Atlantic melt? That only the big chunks will be left by the time the ice reaches the Fram?

Looks like an opportunity for record lows to me....

[Neven]

Looks like an opportunity for record lows to me....

Definitely not to be ruled out on the Atlantic side of the Arctic. But the Pacific side, and especially the Beaufort and Canadian Archipelago are a bit of a mystery to me right now.

[cynicus]

There's a new paper from R. Jaiser, K. Dethloff, D. Handorf, A. Rinke, J. Cohen discussing the climate teleconnection between low sea ice area in the Barentz/Kara seas and cold winters at lower lattitudes (e.g. Europe):
"Impact of sea ice cover changes on the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric winter circulation"

Afaik, this is the second paper that discusses this teleconnection, the first one being this well known paper from 2010 by V. Petoukhov and V. Semenov.

Might be of interest here.

[Neven]

Thanks, cynicus. This paper is getting a lot of attention in the media (online articles discussing it have been popping up in my Google Alerts every day for over a week now). I've been planning on writing something up for a while now, but as it deals with research papers I somehow can't bring myself to it. ;-)

[cynicus]

Yes, it's reading the blogs that brought it under my attention.

I'm a bit skeptical though. Looking at the Uni-Bremen sea ice maps I see big changes between 2005, 2010, 2011 and 2012 when we had cold snaps (in otherwise not extreme cold winters overall).

2012 is obviously an outlier, but 2011 has a lot of ice there (compared to the other years) and 2010 wasn't spectacular either, while the theory of these papers relies on big high pressure systems building above large areas of open ocean. I simply don't see it.

It's worth checking out though...

[cynicus]

On the other hand, if these papers are correct and there really is a teleconnection between iceless seas in the Arctic and bitterly cold winters in lower lattitudes (e.g. Europe) then we're in some serious shit. What would happen if these (small still) reductions would increase seriously?

Unfortunately we have a large percentage of old badly insulated homes and rising dependencies on Russian gas for instance...

[Werther]

Cynicus, I think we both agree the Arctic has changed since 2007. Feedbacks are kicking in. But they’re on a time lag. Cold snaps dec 2009-jan 2010 and dec 2010 were part of a ‘normal’ AO variance that have occurred before, although they fitted into an ever increasing sea-saw.
But meanwhile, in 4 years, today’s pattern has settled in. Forced through rising ocean heat content and maximum Atlantic Decadal Oscillation, circulation patterns in the Barentsz Sea are changing. Read FI M.Artun,Eldevik et al from Bergen Uni , on Atlantic inflow.
Last year, anomalous blocking focused on the Hudson-/Baffin Bay. This year, unfortunately from an Arctic sea ice point of view, it is the Atlantic region. The ‘Kara bulge’ (into the high troposphere) is no feature by hazard, it thrives on four years of anomalous sea ice retreat and ocean warming.
IMHO the current popular representations FI of what AO does are too coarse. They do not express in depth the correlations that develop between ocean and atmosphere.
To finish, there is no ‘one way’ road to disaster. It ‘ll be haunting everywhere through space and time.....

[idunno]

Hi all,

It occurs to me that the same mechanism that causes the Kara high to push colder air into Europe could also push greater cold towards the Canadian coast...

[Werther]

Idunno... To me the ‘Kara bulge’ is not about an SLP high. In fact, a lot of lows have been seeping in since September last year. But that happened all while advection of heat created the high 500mb dome on the middle and high troposphere. The outflow should, after a time lag, force general Arctic SLP to rise, creating a negative AO. Secondly, it should be compensated by higher SLP to the south. Initially, the cold blast took shape out of Kazachstan, not Nenetsia.
I had expected the show to start mid-december. But it panned out 6 weeks later...
During 2010-11 such an exceptional dome showed initially over Alaska, later over Baffin Island.

[Kevin O'Neill]

Regarding Jaiser et al: Chris R at Dosbat has explored these connections at length in several posts. His most recent post on the subject was Dr Jennifer Francis on Arctic weather impact that concentrates more on the loss of sea-ice and its effects on Rossby waves and the jetstream.

Dr Judah Cohen (one of the coauthors of the Jaiser paper) sent Chris a preprint of his most recent paper and Chris covered that in Cold Winters: The Snow Advance Index.

Chris has several other articles exploring the work of Overland & Wang as well as Screen & Simmonds - all related to the same subject. If the changes in arctic circulation due to sea-ice loss interest you, then you should stop by Dosbat and engage Chris with your thoughts.

[Kevin O'Neill]

While the general theory holds that there *will* be colder winters across Europe/Siberia/North America, this cannot hold long. The overall warming should smooth the thermal latitudinal pressure gradient. The more the arctic warms the smoother the gradient becomes.

While increased snow cover in Siberia might encourage colder European winters (due to an albedo effect), eventually - with enough warming - that snow *turns to rain* and then the albedo effect is diminished.

There are so many things happening/changing at once in the arctic and they all seem inter-related that it's impossible to keep them all straight in your head. Simply watching ice grow or melt is much simpler :)

[Twemoran]

Set the display to all images, hit play and watch the show around Svalbard. Also seems like a lot of heat coming in from the Pacific side.

http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/satellite/animateweb_e.html?imagetype=satellite&imagename=hrpt_dfo_ir_m_..................jpg&nbimages=1&clf=1

[Apocalypse4Real]

The Masie Greenland Sea graph also depicts declines and lowest extent in 2012 over the last 5 years:

ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r07_Greenland_Sea_ts.png

Perhaps the heating is also impacting the Fram flow and Greenland Sea ice loss.

Surface temps in Iceland and the SE coast of Greenland are above 0 C - even at midnight on 080212.

http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWarctis.gif

While we could write it off to negative AO, observation of whether this activity continues might be of interest.

[Steve Bloom]

The paper discussed here finds that all of the western boundary currents are warming up (much more than the global average) and moving poleward, so it is unsurprising that the Gulf Stream (with an assist from Agulhas Current leakage) should be pushing the ice back in the area of the Barents.

[Kris]

Acopalypse wrote:

Perhaps the heating is also impacting the Fram flow and Greenland Sea ice loss.
*****

Yes, we can be pretty sure about that. The drifting ice seems to melt away and to disappear at all ± 300 km south of Iceland.

Thank you for the chart.

Did you notice the -17 °C at the buoy deep in the Beaufort sea?
It's stunning, isn?t it?

[Neven]

While we could write it off to negative AO, observation of whether this activity continues might be of interest.

Yup. That's what it's all about. I'm very eager to see how much is going to refreeze and how all of it will keep up when the melting season starts for real in April/May.

I'll look at Bering next week.

[Christoffer Ladstein]

Nice focus upon Svalbard and "The neighbourhood"!

A stunning +7 C at Longyearbyen, Svalbard, this morning, crunching the old record from 2005 with 1 C! They've had 14 days with + degrees up there now, just 10 degrees from the Northpole!

[Kris]

Neven wrote:

Yup. That's what it's all about. I'm very eager to see how much is going to refreeze
*****

As the 6th of February 2005 looked a tiny bit simular to the actual situation, and in order to compare, I took the liberty to manipulate somewhat the Bremen 01 March 2005 chart.

Vedremo.

Meanwhile they'll have probably the last day with positive temperatures at Svalbard. From Friday on thing will go back to normal, whatever could be considered as "normal".

[Neven]

Grazie, Kris. Coincidentally, I looked some more into 2005 yesterday evening:

The ice started retreating at the end of January, as you can see on this sea ice concentration image on February 1st 2005. Just like this time it was caused by winds blowing in from the west (see this SLP image from ESRL: big high, big low, with Novaya Zemlya right in between). By February 8th ice started reforming again.

Hmmm, that's weird. One would think the ice expansion would be due to a switch in weather pattern, but I'm not seeing a very pronounced one. The ice reforms, but then shrinks back a bit, reforms, shrinks back a bit, and then covers the sea all the way to Kara Strait by the end of the month, and then more or less stays that way until May.

So maybe rather than a change in weather, the water had finally released enough heat to the atmosphere to start to freeze over for real? It's too bad AMSR-E went offline. IJIS also had a great resource that allowed one to compare SSTs with previous years. I would have loved to compare SST for January 2012 with other years.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the weather changes next week, how much and how fast the ice cover grows back, and when it starts retreating again.

[idunno]

Hi Neven,

The long-term graphs page has a map of 2011 temp anomalies at 1000 metres which may be relevent; it shows a huge anomaly centred on NZ.

The NASA GISS site, my link above, will eventually allow you to compare Jan SSTs, but the data doesn't seem to be processed yet.

[Neven]

I forgot to thank you for the link, idunno. I had a quick glance, but it looked to me like it was only for air temperatures. Guess I will have to look again!

The long-term graphs page has a map of 2011 temp anomalies at 1000 metres which may be relevent; it shows a huge anomaly centred on NZ.

Ah, I forgot about that one! Even though I made it just 3 weeks ago. Thanks, idunno! I'll compare to previous years. It could come in handy for the update.

[Neven]

Okay, I've looked at anomalies from Sep-Dec for the period 2005-2011. The SST anomaly really stands out in the Novaya Zemlya area from 2011 minimum to the end of the year. I'm going to think about where I'm going to use this piece of the puzzle next (either an update to this post or for a piece next month or so). Thanks again, idunno!

[paoloc]

We begin to see Kara sea in the satellite images, free of ice :-)
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r03c05.2012039.terra
(no white image, see bottom right! )

[Steve Bloom]

(the sea ice is disappearing) "± 300 km south of Iceland"

This location is pretty much where the most globally-prominent ocean temp anomaly was idenified by mid-Pliocene (~3.3 mya) paleoclimate studies, and looks to me like more evidence for the strong combined effect of the Gulf Stream and Agulhas Current.

[Kris]

Christoffer Ladstein wrote:

A stunning +7 C at Longyearbyen,
******

It will be something like 6,6 °C, but we have to wait till tomorrow to have that confirmed. Nevertheless, stunning it is.

IMHO even more stunning is the fact that is is raining again all day there, and it still is raining after midnight.

Rainfall like that drops tons of megajoule (MJ) of energy (warmth) into the ocean. We even can't think of the amount of MJ.

That's why in my opinion there won't be much of a solid freeze anymore around Svalbard nor Nova Zembla.

[Kris]

Stupid me wrote:

t will be something like 6,6 °C
******

It just has been confirmed, at Svalbard on 8 february 2012:

Avarage 4,0 °C Maximum 7,0 °C Minimum 2,3 °C

Christoffer, my apologies.

[logicman]

NSIDC February news is up:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/02/arctic-ice-extent-low-overall-high-in-the-bering-sea/

We may expect the usual suspects to announce "recovery" based on the Bering Strait extent.

If I may paraphrase Bruce Lee: the finger points at Bering Strait. Do not look at the finger or you will miss all the losses on the Atlantic side.

Key points:

The greater-than-normal ice extent in the Bering Sea partly compensated for low ice extent on the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean, but ice extent as a whole remained far below average.

Overall, the Arctic gained 765,000 square kilometers (295,000 square miles) of ice during the month. This was 545,000 square kilometers (210,000 square miles) less than the average ice growth rate for January 1979 to 2000.

Based on the satellite record, before 2005 average January ice extent had never been lower than 14 million square kilometers (5.41 million square miles). January ice extent has now fallen below that mark six out of the last seven years.

-------
My predictions for summer 2012

Very rapid and dramatic drop in extent commencing in May.
Open water at the pole by July.
By summers end, open seas (not just leads) along Greenland's coast above Nord.
New September minimum extent.
NWP virtually ice free again, by August.
Petermann calves again, by July end.

There is a form of ice bridge in Petermann fjord. Given that there is a sill below, it may be that waters in the Nares Strait and Petermann fjord are not mixing.
Any scientific hypotheses, speculations, wild guesses, anybody?

That's all for now - very busy with urgent 'library' - i.e. internet - research.

[Neven]

We may expect the usual suspects to announce "recovery" based on the Bering Strait extent.

It'd be great if they did, but I don't think they will. There's not one credible 'skeptic' left when it comes to sea ice. They all blew it in the last two-three years.

But as long as some of the ice is still there in September, they can do their thing. There's a good chance it's game over once that point is reached. Let's hope so.

[ThE SnYpEr AzZ]

Most of the northern U.S. and Southern Canada has zero or little snow cover right now. This is unusual for early February. Anecdotally, late winter and early spring temperatures are correlated (inversely) with snow cover where I live in Southern Ontario. I wonder how much the reduced albedo will impact this year's March-April temperatures. I know there are localized effects (normally, fast-melting snow suppresses daytime temperatures on otherwise warm days ; not this year it seems) as well as more widespread effects from the lower albedo.

[Jim Pettit]

"But as long as some of the ice is still there in September, they can do their thing. There's a good chance it's game over once that point is reached."

But then they'll simply change their argument, claiming that the satellites have it wrong, or ice loss isn't that big a deal anyway because the water is still cold, or the ice was that low back in 19-whatever, and so on.

CT area saw its largest drop in three weeks yesterday (58,998 km2). I should note, however, that in 2007, February 7 was the beginning of a 10-day stretch during which nearly 650K km2 of ice area was added.

[Neven]

But then they'll simply change their argument, claiming that the satellites have it wrong,

Yes, they are already tentatively moving in that direction, but 1) at a certain point chnging arguments doesn't convince as well as in the good old days, and 2) the more honest ones will not be able to bring themselves to continue the counter-propaganda (as they see it know, 'it's okay, because Al Gore does it too'). The Arctic sea ice is going to melt a lot of denial. What I think will happen, is that they seamlessly start to advocate geoengineering.

CT area saw its largest drop in three weeks yesterday (58,998 km2). I should note, however, that in 2007, February 7 was the beginning of a 10-day stretch during which nearly 650K km2 of ice area was added.

The weather is going to turn any day now in the Barents-Kara region. That's when it's going to get really interesting.

[Neven]

Holy cow, CT has already updated and what a drop it is. I thought Jim was referring to yesterday's decrease (for Feb 6th).

Well, 2012 is taking the lead very aggressively, but this is bound to change. Based on previous maximum dates there's 17-30 days left to go.

[Kevin McKinney]

"What I think will happen, is that they seamlessly start to advocate geoengineering."

I think that's psychologically and sociologically astute. (I'm picturing Mel Gibson as a noble geoengineer, overcoming evil bureacrats' obstructionism and violently defeating more criminal machinations in some future iteration of this meme. . .)

And FWIW--much more, probably, than my imaginary Gibson geopic--Gwynn Dyer suggested a similar split in one of his scenarios in "Climate Wars." (Dyer does, after all, hold a doctorate in history, and has spent decades reporting on politics.)

[Climate Changes]

"I think that's psychologically and sociologically astute. (I'm picturing Mel Gibson as a noble geoengineer, overcoming evil bureacrats' obstructionism and violently defeating more criminal machinations in some future iteration of this meme. . .)"

Picture Bill Gates and Branson instead...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/06/bill-gates-climate-scientists-geoengineering

[crandles]

10 minute game / survey re geoengineering:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L9N9NXP

AFAICT I think it is scientist lead and I think this is probably a similar crowd to where I got it from:
http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10411&p=97930#p97930
so hope that it is ok to provide link here.

I think I may have already given more away of what it is about than I am suppossed to. CPDN link provides more information so may be better to take part first before looking at CPDN link.

[Jim Pettit]

On this day in 2011, there were still 29 days until the maximum was reached; during that time a net total of 396,834 km2 of ice was added, for a mean average of 13,684 per day.

In 2007, there were just 19 days until the max; during that time a net total of 668,612 km2 of ice was added, for a mean average of 35,190 per day.

While it doesn't seem likely given the current state of things, is it possible we could see another 700K or 800K km2 of area added before the peak? A net gain of less than 688,045 km2 will, I believe, produce a new record low maximum area.)

(CT SIA used for all the above.)

[idunno]

Hi all,

Global sea ice Anomaly century break!

The chances of a new minimum have gone up quite a bit - would require a further loss of 700k.

[Twemoran]

Snyp

'Most of the northern U.S. and Southern Canada has zero or little snow cover right now'

No snow yet here west of Toronto and no local media coverage of an historic event. Very, very strange.

Probably time for a letter to the editor of the local rag.

[Kris]

People,

Perhaps we should have a look at a bit larger a picture. For a starter, we could compare the monthly averages over a year at Svalbard to the "normal" monthly mean temperatures.

The picture we get then is as stunning as the merely passed "heatwave". Each months average was above normal. July "only" one degree, the other months much, much more.
No wonder the ice is receding there!

[D]

Thanks for all your efforts everyone, I worry that this year the terms anomolous extreme amazing and extraordinary may become common parlance when speaking of N.H. weather/climate, as things shift from record breaking to chaotic driven by a new regime in the north.

[L. Hamilton]

And in line with Kris' Svalbard temperatures and the Kara/BarentsZ hole, sea ice area (CT) and extent (DMI) remain at record lows for this date:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_N_this_date.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_DMI_this_date.png

[Steve Bloom]

They'll go to advocating cheap adaptation for a while before they step into geo-engineering.

But one thing of note is how WUWT, which seems to have become the clearinghouse for denialist lies, has turned in to a full-on Gish Gallop, with so many posts per day (about six as best I can establish) that the errors quickly disappear down the the memory hole. It's a kind of iterated Big Lie technique.

[Kevin McKinney]

AJP--Do you see Gibson as Gates or as Branson, then?

[Neven]

Thanks for that Svalbard temperature overview, Kris.

Two more days (according to ECMWF) and temps will probably drop over Svalbard and ice will start to regrow south of Novaya Zemlya. How much? How fast? Let's see...

[Steve Bloom]

When it comes to geo-engineering it's more a matter of seeing Gates or Branson as Gibson, Kevin.

(Normally I'd end something like that with a smiley, but in this instance it seems somehow inappropriate.)

[Steve Bloom]

I want to remind folks that a recent paper by Mahlstein and Knutti (discussed here at the time) found that they key way to separate the GCM wheat from the chaff was the ability to show open water precisely where we're seeing it now. Their basic point was that missing open water there means that Arctic amplification is being missed to a substantial degree, and that this in turn will result in (incorrect) low sensitivity.

Someone mentioned, in another thread apparently, that the new crop of models is supposed to be doing better with Arctic sea ice overall. Does anyone have details, and are more of them getting the distribution right?

As the AR5 WGI FOD has been leaked and posted on the internet, I suppose I should gird my loins and read through it, as this issue would certainly be covered.

[Steve Bloom]

Here's the Arthun, Eldevik et al. paper Werther mentioned above, finding a direct correlation between Atlantic inflow and sea ice coverage in the Barents region. In effect, the divide between the two oceans is moving north (and east). It looks like there'a lot of work being done on this subject, appropriately enough.

The Arctic Ocean has a very small volume compared to the Atlantic, so this struggle has only one possible outcome.

[Steve Bloom]

Hmm, reading through the Chapter 9 draft, I see no claim for a meaningful improvement. The Mahlstein and Knutti proposal is cited, but not discussed. Sounds like politics to me, especially as there's a Chinese co-chair this round and the sole Chinese model is widely (was for the AR4 anyway) thought to be the worst of the litter.

If we want to talk about politics affecting the WG1 process, this would seem to be the big issue, yet it hardly ever gets mentioned.

[Kris]

As the "heat spell" at Svalbard has gone by we can have a survey of an exiting fortnight. The date have been taken directly from "Svalbard lufthavn" meteo, not from wonderground.com which at times isn't a reliable source.

Meanwhile the temperature is back to normal in Finnmark, Troms and the Northern part of Finland. Temperatures still are deep below normal the Southern part of Finland and the Europian part of Russia (Saint-Petersburg, Moskva).

On the other hand, Alaska enters now the 3th day of it's own "hotspell".

Maximum temperatures at Svalbard 24 Jan till 10 Feb:

[Kris]

As has been told already, during the first seven days of January temperatures have been above avarage too. Not as spectaculair as the 26 Jan hot spell, but still worth to be listed.

Maximum temperatures at Svalbard lufthavn 1 Jan till 7 Jan .

[Chris Reynolds]

Steve / Anyone else.

Can anyone post a link to the leaked AR5?

If not. Steve, have you yet checked what it has to say about the ESAS?

[Chris Reynolds]

I ask, and only THEN do I find it..
http://www.davidappell.com/AR5/

[Neven]

Kara SIA has shot up, as has Bering: A gain of 83K for CT SIA today.

[Peter Ellis]

I see Steve Goddard has claimed the low ice in Barentz/Kara is a good thing, as it "proves" that the wind patterns have been retaining ice in the main basin.
http://www.real-science.com/arctics-dirty-secret

I think we should have a sweepstake to guess when he'll start making his annual claims of "the melt season is tracking 2006 this year". :-)

[Chris Biscan]

I see that Goddard has stopped his crazy AMSU temp data talk. Now that global TLTs have risen back to the normal pack of 2002-2011.

As far as the ice pushing towards the Bering. IT has a bit....

but he is a freaking lying sack of bleep.

Oct-Early January has seen tons of MYI get sent out of the Fram, Wow, I can't believe how horrible of a person and a liar that man is.

EDIT: I just read about 10 min of his blog.

He can't possibly have a mirror in his home, no way he can look at himself with that lack of integrity.

[Peter Ellis]

10 minutes? That's about 16 posts from that logorrhoeic moron.

[Stuart Preen]

OK been following this site for a year or so and I thought I'd check this guy out as he couldn't really be that bad could he?
It was an interesting site and I think I may be developing an understanding of the American phrase "batshit crazy"
The idea that I was particularly taken with was that because a radio mast on the Greenland ice has been buried in ice over the last 40 years it shows that the ice is growing in Greenland. LOL. As a small child I used to make a pile of sand on the path by the sandpit and put a toy car on the top, I would then take sand from around the edge and add it back to the top, the pile never got any higher but the car got buried anyway.
Same principal but he totally ignores the fact that the ice is disappearing from the bottom faster than it's added to the top in Greenland.

[Stuart Preen]

Oh and by the way Neven, excellent site I am slowly developing a basic understanding of the subject from what I read here and enjoying the process. Keep up the good work.

[Neven]

Thanks, Stuart!

I totally agree with the qualifications, which is why I would advise not to spend much time on that blog. The guy is a frustration vampire. Let's not clog this thread.

We should be seeing ice cover increase around Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya any day now. Or should we?

[idunno]

Hi Neven,

With the current pattern of winds, it seems to me that any increase in ice in the Barentsz Sea would most likely come from the tongue of ice which extends from Franz Josef Land towards Svarlsbard being blown into the Atlantic Stream. The prevailing winds are currently blowing from the North, perpendicular to this tongue.

Also possible is that we will now see more and more holes in the ice to the North of this, in the segment of the Arctic Basin running up the Greenwich meridian to the Pole and across to Severnaya Zemlya.

It is quite hard to see using my old-fangled analogue Eyeball technology, because of the scale of the graphs, but there is also an anomaly of between 100k-200k in the Arctic Basin. This is not as high as the Barentsz and Kara anomalies, but it is on the same scale, and highly unusual for February, surely?

There is also a "frontline" between Arctic Basin ice and open water extending from North of Svarlsbard to North of Franz Josef Land. Ice is currently being blown across this front.

[Artful Dodger]

*** DING DING DING DING DING ***

(BALLOONS DROPPING, APPLAUSE)

Peter Ellis is the first Commenter to use the SUPER SECRET MAGIK WORD on the ASI blog!

"logorrhoeic"

Here's your prize, Peter: a custom-made full-digital encounter at the Walls of Castle Ignoranti.

Words fail me... just watch it:
(starring Peter as King Artur, and you-guess-who played by T.Mutts)

Quest for the Wholly Incohert

[Kris]

Neven wrote:

We should be seeing ice cover increase around Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya any day now. Or should we?
*****

According to the Danish site ...

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/weather/temp_latest.big.png

... temperatures are still at zero or above between Nova Zembla and the Russian coast. At Svalbard minimum temperature hovers around -10 °C, which still is 6 degrees above avarage. Not cold enough to freeze the sea given the direct impact of the Gulf Stream.

By the way, the increase of a mere few square km we saw in the last days is IMHO due to the ice increase in the Sea Of Ockhotsk and the Saint-Laurens River delta.

Temperatures in the Bering Sea are between +2 °C around the Aleutian Islands to - 3 C° at the Bering Street. Far to "hot" to have an increase of ice.
On the contrary, the heat polynya grown bigger there while the ice concentration drops.

[Twemoran]

An interesting link for Barentsz temperatures is:

http://www.barentsportal.com/barentsportal09/index.php?option=com_gmapspro&task=viewMap&Itemid=28&mapId=3&lang=en

Perhaps someone with a smattering of Russian or Norwegian might find a history section.

[Neven]

Thanks for the link, Terry.

It is quite hard to see using my old-fangled analogue Eyeball technology, because of the scale of the graphs, but there is also an anomaly of between 100k-200k in the Arctic Basin. This is not as high as the Barentsz and Kara anomalies, but it is on the same scale, and highly unusual for February, surely?

I don't know how unusual it is, idunno, but it is obviously caused by the big polynya between Svalbard and FJL, which lies in the CT Arctic Basin region. This happens in most years, but this year is quite pronounced.

[FrankD]

Terry's link shows the wind swinging around, bringing some cold weather out of central Russia - forecasts for Novaya Zemlya drop as low as -20 C and neighbouring regions hitting -15 by mid-week, together with some winds which might favour an increase in the Kara Sea.

In the Barentsz, we might get a bit of "grease", but cold in the SE is balanced by continuing mild weather around Svalbard.

[Kris]

Terry asked:

Perhaps someone with a smattering of Russian or Norwegian might find a history section.
******

It's only a fwe clicks away:

http://www.yr.no/place/Russia/Arkhangelsk/Novaya_Zemlya~519406/

Now we have finally something reliable from that region.Thank you very much.

[Apocalypse4Real]

Neven, Divergence on AO forecasts

According to the ENSM forecasts, we should see a shift toward positive Arctic oscillation in the next week. However, the GSF forecasts keep us with a negative oscillation until the end of February, and closer to the end of melt season.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_mrf.shtml

It might be helpful to add this to the short term graphs.

[Neven]

Thanks, Apocalypse. I already have the ensemble forecast there, and I can't fit both in. Or is the GFS much better/different than the ensemble?

[Werther]

On to the max…
I’ve just finished a comparison 4 – 11 februari. On the Atlantic side there is a rebound on it’s way. Could be 180K. Most in the East Greenland Sea (+100K), but growth of grey ice is visible on the Nenets and Kara coast northern Russia (+40K) and a southward pushing iceboundary between Svalbard and Frantsa Yosefa (+40K).
It’s well in line with what’s to be expected for the last weeks up to march. Very thin regrowth, spread out of the northern Barentsz ‘ice-arm’ and advection along the Greenland coast.
It might save the max record if this pulls through, but it just hides the weakness...

[idunno]

Hi all,

The Arthun/Eldevik paper linked above by Steve Bloom and Werther finds that the increased failure of the Barentsz Sea to freeze in winter is due to an increase in the volume and warmth of Atlantic inflow. Especially volume.

I would like to suggest that this could be a vicious positive feedback loop.

As more of the Arctic Ocean is not covered by ice in winter, and the sea water is directly in contact with the air, the heat exchange between water and atmosphere should greatly increase - as the heat exchange increases, the more water should be drawn in from the Atlantic - more open water in the Arctic, more heat exchange, more Atlantic water drawn in...

The comparison with what happens in a firestorm, where air is drawn into the fire, and thus fuels the fire to burn brighter, is overdramatic, but the best I can do.

[crandles]

>" as the heat exchange increases, the more water should be drawn in from the Atlantic"

Does evaporation have any significance in water currents? Presumably someone can do some sort of calculation.

Hmm. 12900 cubic kilometers of water in atmosphere with average residence time of 11 days...... I can quickly convert that to "I don't know".

[Werther]

Two tantalizing images are being revealed through rising sunshine on the Arctic seaboard.
The first is the Lena Delta. I thought the myriad of creeks would only show when ice and snow would have melted, somewhere around day 115. But the beginning of the ‘cauliflower’- structure is visible on day 44! Temperatures around Tiksi have been comparable to last year. Quite cold. Is it low snow accumulation? Or are Lena’s waters already alive?

The second is an impressive image of the southern Barentsz Sea and the Kara Strait. A fierce southwesterly is cooling the Nenets coast. Young ice is being formed, but ripped into the Pechora Gulf. The cold air (-25dC)is sharply defined against warmer air to the northwest (-2 dC).
Large clouds rise up high from the Kara Sea in the upper part of the image, after the winds have passed Novaya Zemlya. Towering heat release.
The contrast with last years’ image is striking. Then, the Kara Sea was solidly frozen over, the Strait blocked (to open day 60). The Pechora Gulf was filled with thin FYI. Cloud structure and sea colour are very different.

[Werther]

On volume influx from the Atlantic...
Great to see the Uni Bergen research being read and discussed! Now you bring it up, Idunno, it makes me wonder whether the volume influx may be related to the region where deep water is formed. That used to be in the Barentsz Sea, but there’s no ice to ‘do the job’.
It may well be the warm surface waters head right through towards the Laptev Sea and the Arctic Basin, denying sea ice formation on last summer’s boundary and going right under the ice further on. Finally, it would cool to -1.5dC north of Severnaya Zemlya, shed it’s cold brine and dive into the deep Eurasian Basin.
That far off dive could draw in more volume through the Barentsz Sea?
I find the small polynia’s on the east side of Severnaya Zemlya and 83 degrees supportive of such a representation.

[Kris]

Idunno wrote:

more open water in the Arctic, more heat exchange, more Atlantic water drawn in...
****
That's not quite correct I'm afraid.

Even on immense large ice fields, such as Antartica, water transforms directly from solid into vapeur. "Evaporation". Remember the "Dry valleys" in Antartica. The snow, ice and humidity are evaporated away there due to winds descending from the nearby mountains.
So, it may be as cold as -40 °C, if the air is dry and winds are heavy a mass of ice will be transformed directly into it's gas status (vapour).

Bottom line, these phenomena depend on a series of parameters we even can't think of.

Which we quickly can convert to "we don't know" indeed. :-)

[Neven]

When do you think we can see all of Novaya Zemlya on MODIS, Werther? Two-three weeks?

[crandles]

We'll see a lot of it in just one week:

http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2011051.terra.4km

Could do with less cloud to compare
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c05.2012041.terra

http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c05.2011044.terra

[Werther]

In 12 days we’ll have Novaya Zemlya right on our plates, Neven. Severnaya Zemlya in twenty. NW Passage in 6...
Hi Crandles... divin'in head first together..

[Neven]

Awesome...

[idunno]

Hi Kris,

That sounds like "sublimation", not evaporation. And I think it is irrelevent to my concern, as I am not interested in the transfer of H2O from either ice or water to the air, only in the transfer of the heat contained in the H2O to the air. This happens more readily when the H2O is liquid.

Sorry, if this is still unclear, am having terrible problems with Typepad chewing any text that is much longer than this.

[idunno]

Trying again...

(For the 7th time - 4 versions of original - 3 of this follow-up)

Thesis: Heat passes more readily from liquid H20, than from solid H2O, to air.

Thus, more H20 cooled in open water areas. But does not float, as ice. So must sink, as air is way below minus 1.8C.

If sinks, lost to Arctic Sea Ice heat budget for 1600 years. And more water cooled = more water sinks in non-ice covered areas.

Increased volume of Atlantic inflow> larger open water area (Approx 1.3 million km2 anomaly today> more water cooling and sinking> increased volume Atlantic inflow> etc, ad tippingum pointium.

[Chris Biscan]

Both the Euro and GFS form a Dipole anomaly for the next week or two.

More heat pumped into the Atlantic Russian Side with MYI being pumped out of the fram...also warm air pumped into the Pacific side from SLPs sitting West of Alaska.

Pretty much terrible for the ice.

[Artful Dodger]

Idunno: to work well with the Typepad server, do the follow routine before you post:

1. Copy the entire entire draft of your to your clipboard

2. Reload the page

3. Click the 'Post' Button

4. Reload the page to ensure your new Comment appears at the top of the list.

5. If not, paste your comment again and repeat.

[Artful Dodger]

6. Make sure you answer the 'Challenge' question if Typepad prompts you after clicking 'Post'.

[Kris]

Idunno wrote:

That sounds like "sublimation", not evaporation.
******

Indeed, my mistake.

Thank you and I stand corrected.

[Mike Constable]

I am wondering - if the N. Atlantic water is not being cooled enough to produce ice and the extra saline deep water - is it just flowing under the ice and resulting in a surface flow out of the arctic between Siberia and Alaska?
That might also help explain the extra ice in that area, when other parts of the N. Pacific still have less ice than usual.

[crandles]

>"It may well be the warm surface waters head right through towards the Laptev Sea and the Arctic Basin, denying sea ice formation on last summer’s boundary and going right under the ice further on. Finally, it would cool to -1.5dC north of Severnaya Zemlya, shed it’s cold brine and dive into the deep Eurasian Basin.
That far off dive could draw in more volume through the Barentsz Sea?"

A couple of minor points:
'warm surface waters' I thought atlantic water came in as sub surface.
'shed it’s cold brine and dive' isn't it the cold brine than sinks after sheding fresh water to evaporation/freezing

But the longer the distance the more heat and salinity that is lost on the way. That is bad news for the ice. However, if more salt is lost on the way, does that mean the volume eventually sinking is less so that less volume is drawn in? If so, does that compensate or more than compensate or am I missing more important effects?

[crandles]

>"Thesis: Heat passes more readily from liquid H20, than from solid H2O, to air.

Thus, more H20 cooled in open water areas. But does not float, as ice. So must sink, as air is way below minus 1.8C.

If sinks, lost to Arctic Sea Ice heat budget for 1600 years."

I agree with the thesis sentence. I think the so must sink and lost for 1600 years appears dubious. Heat is lost before getting near ice sufficient to sink to become sub-surface water. So why not heat exchange with atmosphere and sink to sub-surface rather than deep water?

The part that happens near ice is shed fresh water by freezing to ice (and maybe some to evaporation?) becoming saltier and cold so sinks to deep water. If this part is driven by salinity, evaporation would have to play a major role to cause an increase in volume sinking, wouldn't it?

[Kris]

As we might underestimate a bit the consequences of rainfall, perhaps we could have a look at the eyewitness report made by Ursula Schauer in August 2007, at the Polarstern near the North Pole.

Remember, hitherto 2007 remainded the year of the years.

*****wrote Ursula Schauer*****

Towards the end of last week we reached our northernmost position at 88° 40N. Of course, we had expected that even here the ice would be as eroded and loose as in all other regions that we visited during the past weeks which has allowed us to maintain a speed of up to 6 kn. But a whole day of rain within 150 km of the North Pole came somewhat as a surprise! For the past few weeks, one low-pressure system after another has continuously carried warm air from northern Siberia (15°C at the Lena estuary!) towards the central Arctic Ocean. In this way the sea ice disintegrates more and more right before our eyes.

http://www.awi.de/en/infrastructure/ships/polarstern/weekly_reports/all_expeditions/ark_xxii/ark_xxii2/2_september_2007/

[idunno]

Hi all,

Thanks for the several comments, especially Artful, cheers, yes, hadn't thought of that.

Good to see this article up on Climate Progress, Well done, Neven!

[crandles]

Haven't normally had problems with typepad, but usually save. Now I have saved still having problems. Maybe linked to posted to wrong thread, abandoning challenge and trying to post to right thread. I'll get there eventually (maybe a long wait required).

[Kris]

Found another weather station, of intrest now due to the anomalies in the Barents sea region, at Franz Josef Land. An archipel which the Sovjets even didn't care to rename in 1926.
Tomorrow and Thursday temperature wil rise there from -27 °C to -8 °C.
Anomalies don't seem to come to an end.

http://www.yr.no/place/Russia/Arkhangelsk/Franz_Josef_Land~562426/long.html

[Kris]

Incidentally, the weather station at Nova Zembla is situated at an attitude of 411 m.

So, depending of the weather type, we might add 2 à 5 degrees Celcius to correct to sea level.

http://www.yr.no/place/Russia/Arkhangelsk/Novaya_Zemlya~519406/