Cyclone warning!

I have postponed this post until I was sure that what follows is going to happen.

Remember the term 'flash melting'? That's when from one day to the next large swathes of ice disappear on the University of Bremen sea ice concentration maps. We witnessed one such instance last year when a relatively large and intense low-pressure area moved in from Alaska over the ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Sea regions (see blog post). It lasted about a day or two and then quickly faded, but the effects were spectacular.

Well, it looks like we have something bigger coming up this year. This is the ECMWF weather forecast for the coming four days (click for a bigger version):

Not only does this low-pressure area, or cyclone, look bigger, more intense and longer-lasting than the one from last year, the ice also seems to be in a weaker state than ever, as evidenced by the fact that 2012 trend lines on both sea ice area and sea ice extent graphs track lower than previous record years, despite weather that until recently would completely stall the decline.

There are many things that cyclones do to cause flash melting:

• Diverge the ice pack through wind force (gales), creating open water between ice floes and pushing ice floes towards warmer waters, for instance in this coming event towards the Beaufort and Laptev Seas, where waters are anomalously warm.
• Churn the ice, fragmenting it into smaller pieces which are easier to melt out, turning floes upside down even, with their darker bottoms (due to algae etc) showing up, soaking up more sunlight.
• Increase wave action, especially when there's no thick ice to dampen the waves, flooding floes with saltier water that melts the ice, but can also temporarily fool satellite sensors into thinking there's open water. Therefore some of the flash melting 'unflashes' the next day, and then flashes again, and unflashes, until it's really gone.
• Increase vertical mixing of the waters below the ice. Remember, the top layer is much colder and fresher due to the melting of sea ice than the layers below. Wave action and something called Ekman pumping (which I'll explain in the near future, but here is a good discussion) cause upwelling of these warmer layers. As Artful Dodger commented earlier today: "Predicted wave heights in the Chukchi sea are 10-12 feet during the gale. That means about 30-36 feet of the sea surface layer will be churned by wave action. This will bring warmer, saltier water up from the depths and inundate the sea ice. All surfaces of the ice flows will be exposed to warmer water, and the fresh melt layer will be quickly and continuously washed away, preventing refreezing. Look for massive loss of SIA, which may not be detectable until after the storm clears, due to the clouds masking the passive microwave satellite sensors."

So that's what we can expect: big losses in sea ice area, and perhaps in sea ice extent as well (with a lag). I'm going to try to cover this as real-time as I can, so make sure to check in for updates. This could become very big and should make for some spectacular images. Too early for conclusions wrt to minimum records. We'll know more Thursday/Friday.

Comments

[Neven]

There's a bunch of guys trying to row from Alaska to Siberia. This is what one of their team members ashore wrote today:

There is a “weather system” happening in the area, which one of their analysts tells them is “an event seldom seen in the Arctic”. I’m not sure what makes it so unusual, but the bottom line is that the storm is pushing mass amounts of ice in the direction of Barrow, and right into our 4 friends in a rowboat. If the ice comes close enough to shore, which it’s predicted to do, it could push the boat right up on to the beach, which wouldn’t be dangerous for the guys, but would likely damage the boat enough to end the trip. That said, icebergs sit deeper in the water than rowboats do, so there’s a decent chance that the ice could run aground before reaching the water’s edge, and a channel of open water could remain. Theoretically.

I think those guys need to get out of the water. Seriously. A few weeks back I coincidentally got to translate footage from another expedition last year with two Frenchmen trying to cross the Arctic Ocean from Barrow to Spitsbergen (wrote a blog post about it at the time). If they hadn't encountered technical problems with their batteries, which would eventually make communication impossible, I think they would have made it too. An amazing feat that would've been.

Anyway, some of the footage was taken during last year's cyclone. They were, of course, stuck for three days in their little catamaran, after they had found a sturdy looking ice floe to weather out the storm. That ice floe was 100 square metres (if I remember the numbers correctly) before the storm, and just 10 square metres after it.

Okay, these French guys were way into the ice pack, but still, I think those rowers need to go ashore asap.

[Seke Rob]

Considering how high up ice can get piled up to the point that buildups on the coastline are at risk at times, they better would get out.

[Neven]

I know there are people watching buoy data closely. Please let us know in the coming days if there are changes.

[Neven]

I believe to have seen radar images showing cloud movement etc somewhere on Environment Canada, but I can't remember where. Does anyone know?

[Artful Dodger]

Well, this will be brutal to the remaining sea ice, SW winds @ 35 knots and 11 foot seas. Here's today's wx warning for Pt Barrow:
http://www.arh.noaa.gov/zonefcst.php?zone=p235

[Artful Dodger]

Canadian Weather Radars are here:
http://text.www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html
but I don't think you'll find any civilian doppler radar sets in the Cdn Arctic :^(

[Neven]

I think this was it. It shows just a bit of the Beaufort Sea.

[Eli Rabett]

Another effect is that the saltier water from down below has a lower freezing point. Coating the ice with that stuff will result in serious melting as in throwing salt on your sidewalk.

[James Benison]

Absolutely crazy looking plankton bloom in the Barents Sea. I thought it was an artifact at first.

Upwelling?

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c05.2012218.terra

[Neven]

Approximately the same place as last year, James, but ten days earlier.

[James Benison]

Here's another one from July 19, 2003.

Perhaps not unusual, but it sure stands out.

http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect14/Norway.jpg

[Paul Klemencic]

Excellent summary Neven. I agree with virtually all that you wrote. I will do a little prognosticating (forecasting, guessing, whatever) in my next comment.

But for now, let me start by reposting my recent comment on the effects of the gathering storm:

Storm already causing ice pack degradation

The low pressure system is moving into place but won't intensify greatly until Monday, with the most intense storms likely on Tuesday and Wednesday. But the icepack already shows effects of the gathering low-pressure system cyclonic circulation in today's Bremen map.

Ice in the East Siberian region seems to be suffering the worst so far, as it melts out and floes are pushed toward the Bering Strait. In the Chukchi and Beaufort the ice floes seem to be spreading out with reduced concentrations. But the dropping ice concentrations around the periphery of the central Arctic basin is most important.

The most important color on the Bremen map is the green areas, because this indicates when the ice concentration level drops below 70%. Colors like yellow and lavender indicating higher concentrations come and go, but weak ice concentration areas indicated by green tend to stick around. There are now significant areas of green along the 80N parallel extending from Severnaya Zemlya to 180E and on to 150W.

Here is a link to the MASIE central Arctic Basin region.

As you can see, most of the Central Arctic Basin has ice coverage, with only the portion near Svalbard and Franz Joseph Land, and Severnaya Zemlya, showing open water encroaching above the 80 N parallel into the CAB.

But now a large section of the periphery of the CAB region has ice concentrations falling below 70% nearby. And the east side between 15E and 90E has open water extending well above 80N. This opens up space for the central Arctic basin pack to fracture apart with floes moving into the empty space.

The Bremen map tomorrow should show this process continuing, and on Monday the process should accelerate as the storm strengthens.

The key question: How far will fracturing eat into the pack before the weather turns?

[Twemoran]

Neven

There is an experimental
forecast/visualizations page that can only be accessed by going to:

http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?lang=En&n=A592A030-1#mosaics

And clicking "Arctic wind forecasts and AVHRR Imagery"

Lots of pretty things including detailed wave charts for Beaufort.

Terry

[Kris]

Neven warned:

I think those guys need to get out of the water.

Absolutely!

This 9 August 2009 cam snap looks convincing enough, doesn't it?

And I wonder about responsabilety, as these August storms come as a regular pattern, thus everybody should know, especially those working in these area.

[Neven]

Excellent, Kris. Those webcam images could be interesting to look at in coming days. Their archive doesn't seem to have been updated since March. Hmmm...

[Paul Klemencic]

More on gathering storm impact:

The IJIS extent shows two century breaks for the last two days of reliable data, August 3 and August 4 (ignoring the prelim for August 5).

What is in store for next week w.r.t. ice extent?

Currently there is 700k in the Beaufort region, 700k in the Chukchi region, and 800k in the E. Siberian region, for a total of 2.2 M sq km at risk. The storm could easily take out one third of this extent this week, and scatter the rest.

But more importantly, the storm should strip the protective boundaries from the Central Arctic Basin and expose the 3.1 M sq km in the CAB to pack edge/ shattered pack melting.

[OldLeatherneck]

Recipe for a "Polar Slushy"

Elevated SSTs
Gale Force Winds
12 Foot Seas

Mix violently for 3/4 days

[Paul Klemencic]

The MODIS Mosaic for today shows some evidence of the CAB pack shattering. As Neven and others have pointed out, the r04 c04 tile is the critical tile in the Mosaic. The corner at the bottom left is quite close to the NP, and the tile is 1020 km across.

Today you can see continuous pack near the NP, but the pack is shattered to within 350 km of the NP. The progression of the shattered pack edge has been moving toward the NP. The rotation of the winds in the current LP system is moving the shattered floes toward the Laptev and away from the NP pack, apparently causing the progression of the shattered edge toward the NP.

We may not see completely open seas this year at the NP, but for a period of time, we may see a shattered pack with a connected matrix of polynyas at the NP.

Once the edge of the CAB pack is exposed, the edges of the pack could shatter this way around most of the periphery of the CAB pack.

[Paul Klemencic]

The MODIS Mosaic for today shows some evidence of the CAB pack shattering. As Neven and others have pointed out, the r04 c04 tile is the critical tile in the Mosaic. The corner at the bottom left is quite close to the NP, and the tile is 1020 km across.

Today you can see continuous pack near the NP, but the pack is shattered to within 350 km of the NP. The progression of the shattered pack edge has been moving toward the NP. The rotation of the winds in the current LP system is moving the shattered floes toward the Laptev and away from the NP pack, apparently causing the progression of the shattered edge toward the NP.

We may not see completely open seas this year at the NP, but for a period of time, we may see a shattered pack with a connected matrix of polynyas at the NP.

Once the edge of the CAB pack is exposed, the edges of the pack could shatter this way around most of the periphery of the CAB pack.

[Paul Klemencic]

I should have mentioned that to see the cracks in the pack, even before the floes are shattered from the pack, view tile r04 c04 using the 500m option. Then look across the very bottom of the tile, realizing the entire distance across the tile is 1020 km.

You can see a progression from left to right, of continuous pack with snow drifts, emerging cracks diagonally from upper left to lower right, then shattered blocks and floes, then free floating floes.

[Neven]

Indeed, Paul. I'm curious to see what effect, if any, the cyclone will have on that area of dispersed floes near the North Pole. Will we see a North Hole like we did in 2010? So far this season reminds me of 2010 the most, except that this year so far the weather doesn't seem to matter.

[Aaron Lewis]

One of my problems with the IPCC sea ice projections is that I expect just such a cyclone event to abruptly tip us to a seasonally Arctic sea ice free regime.

That is, I expect to go from a sea ice area of 2 or 3 million km^2 to almost nothing in one melt season as a result of a storm driven by the temperature differential between the sea ice and the surrounding environment.

[OldLeatherneck]

Quoting Paul Klemencic

Currently there is 700k in the Beaufort region, 700k in the Chukchi region, and 800k in the E. Siberian region, for a total of 2.2 M sq km at risk. The storm could easily take out one third of this extent this week, and scatter the rest.

Paul, how much of that 2.2 M sq km at risk could be gone by the end of this year??

[Chris Reynolds]

I've been watching this too, if this low is as severe as ECWMF indicates then I think the substantial low concentration area will be wrecked. As I've said in my most recent post I expect most of that area to be gone within 10 days.

With regards the minima this year. I've been digging into the area data, and the results have surprised me.

Take the area loss from a certain day, Day N, from the area at Day N to the minima for that year. Repeat this for years 2007 - 2011 and make a table of losses. I've used 10 day intervals. Then calculate the average losses for each Day N over the period 2007 - 2011.

The prediction is done by subtracting the average loss for each Day N from the area at Day N in each year. This makes the following table of predictions.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7273/7711293774_03bfe069ac_o.jpg

Note how from day 170 the predictions for 2012 are consistently low in comparison with almost all the figures in that table. If anyone knows what happened from day 170 I'd be gratefull.

The errors of the predictions are calculated as prediction - actual area at minima. The errors are in this table.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8430/7711293954_642d4e286d_o.jpg

The errors tend to the high side.

Now if I take the average of the preedictions in each year and compare to the actual I get these results.

Averages .2007 .2008 .2009 .2010 .2011
Whole... 2.879 3.124 3.496 2.987 2.839
Limited. 2.917 3.168 3.517 2.860 2.861
Actual.. 2.919 3.003 3.425 3.072 2.905

Whole is for 10 day intervals from day 150 to day 250. Limited is from day 150 to day 210 (most recent available data). Actual is the actual daily minimum.

Using the Limited period, the prediction using this method for this year is 2.619 M km^2.

For more detail see:
http://dosbat.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/further-down-rabbit-hole.html

[R. Gates]

Old Leatherneck said:

Recipe for a "Polar Slushy"

Elevated SSTs
Gale Force Winds
12 Foot Seas

Mix violently for 3/4 days

_____
And a dash of salt. Don't forget all the salt that will be brought up from deeper waters and spread around throughout the slushy.

[R. Gates]

Many of you probably have watched this, or a similar video, but as the Arctic sea ice loss comes into the news over the next few weeks, some of your less educated friends may wonder "Why do we care?" This video from Dr. Francis at Rutgers is long, but explains it very well. I encourage you to pass it around. This is new and very big picture stuff, relating the loss of sea ice to the stalled weather patterns we've seen this summer and causing so much misery. Grab some popcorn and have a watch, you won't be disappointed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRvcXUIyZg&list=PL61B096B67AD0EE3E&index=10&feature=plcp

[maltose]

With PIOMAS being a model, it would not seem that the upcoming August 2012 data can integrate events such as this freak cyclone that is ripping apart the ice. If this weather event does what people are predicting, then the PIOMAS value for volume at the end of the month will be high. I understand that they run an ensemble of simulations, but as the ice gets thinner with time, there are going to be events that the model does not take into account for the near-term. Thoughts?

[Chris Reynolds]

Maltose,

The A in PIOMAS stands for assimilation - it assimilates NCEP/NCAR wind and air temperature fields that then drive the ice/ocean components. So it should reflect the impact of this low pressure system.

[maltose]

Chris,

Thanks for the reply. I knew that PIOMAS did assimilate data, but I did not think it was possible to do it on a "real-time" basis. I thought it was more of a long-term incorporation of weather data. Their work is impressive indeed!

[maltose]

Well, I should say that I thought it was possible, but it seemed to be a very difficult undertaking!

[Chris Reynolds]

Maltose,

It is impressive, frankly the main person behind it, Zhang, is very hot on maths. Frankly, I can't follow a lot of his maths it's way beyond me.

[Paul Klemencic]

R. Gates: Here is a shorter version of the Jennifer Francis video. This extremely important.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4spEuh8vswE&feature=related

[L. Hamilton]

Not to distract from the excitement of cyclones ... and I know it's just fast ice ... but how many Manhattans do you reckon we got here?

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c03.2012218.terra.250m

[Eli Rabett]

wrt the Bremen maps which Eli has featured for a long time at RR, can anyone get them to kill the white for ~ 98%, it makes absolutely no sense visually to go from deep purple to white to a lighter purple. They could slot in a deeper shade of red, btw red and purple. Also the dark green and the lighter greens need to be shifted about to make the scale more intuitive. Where is Tufte when you need him

[AmbiValent]

I think Manhattan is only a reasonable unit when it comes to calving glaciers. The effects of melting thin ice (by exposing surfaces, Ekman or simply drifting into warmer waters) would affect much larger areas. If it's really bad, the answer would be "one doctor".

[Neven]

Houston, we have lift-off:

[Kris]

Yes, the vanguard has reached Barrow already.

Look for the white tops at the waves.

Wind at 46.3 km/h. Gales at 66.7 km/h.

[Paul Klemencic]

OldLeatherneck asked: Paul, how much of that 2.2 M sq km at risk could be gone by the end of this year??
(asking about the E. Siberian, Chukchi, and Beaufort regions)

This is a very important question, and not easy to answer immediately. It is even connected to the "Arctic Amplification Fuels NH mid-latitude extreme weather events" issue.

The amount of heat required to melt 2.2M sq km of ice with a thickness of 1.5-2.0 meters is huge. To appreciate what is going on with heat flows in the Arctic, let me throw out some rough estimates.

Net Global Heating due to AGW is estimated at roughly 100 x 10^20 J per year.

All my numbers below will use 10^20 J per year.

Net Ocean heating 90
Net Ice cap, ice sheet, and glacier melt 4-6
Net Soils heating 2
Atmosphere heat buildup 1

Fossil Fuel heat released to environment 4

Heat moving around the world:
Gulf Stream peak heat transport 440
Gulf Stream heat delivered to Europe annually est. <100
Gulf Stream heat delivered to Europe winter est. <20

Additional heat added to Arctic ocean due to current Arctic Amplification compared to prior normal:
Based on my very rough estimate of average difference of 200w/sq meter over 2.0 million sq km of exposed Arctic ocean waters for 60 days = 20

(Arctic amplification over normal changes with ice extent coverage etc. and will increase over time… doesn't include loss of NH snow cover with change in albedo, and doesn't include normal albedo change in Arctic, and doesn't include change in albedo for Greenland.)

Heat to melt ice volume below historical levels:
Graphs show 5000-8000 cubic km of ice lost each year below normal ice melt minimum. I used 6000 cubic km.
Heat required to melt ice below historical = 17

Heat retention necessary to raise Arctic water 2 deg C, that was covered by ice at beginning of season, to a depth of 50 meters (adjust to your desire):
Based on rough estimate of 8M sq km this is 400k cubic km of water.
Estimate roughly = 34-38

Estimate of heat released by additional 5 cm of precipitation over six million sq km of ice extent = 9
Estimate for additional 10 cm = 18

Heat release by addition 5 cm over 2.2M sq km = 2.5
Heat release by additional 10 cm = 5

Now in order to answer your question, which in turn requires the answer to this question:
Is there enough heat available to melt the 2.1 million sq km in the Beaufort, Chukchi, and E. Siberian regions?

Estimate to melt 2.1M sq km of approximately average 2.0m ice (this is about 4000 cubic km) = 12

Heat from Arctic amplification over normal conditions in these regions is much smaller than on the other side of the pack because the ice covered these seas longer this year;
The heat added due to Arctic amplification probably less than 6 …
and with most of that in the Beaufort, and not in the Chukchi and E. Siberian. The ocean current heat added in these regions is also smaller.

So its likely there isn't enough heat to melt all the 2.1 million remaining ice, unless there is a store of heat from last summer left, and likely not without substantial heat transport through the atmosphere.

These current storms may move enough atmospheric heat in to do the job, but that seems like a long shot.

In 2007, the problem was solved by an Arctic Dipole. The CAB ice was pushed into the Fram, and the remaining E. Siberian et. al. ice was compacted into the central arctic.

This year, the large melt ponds and heat absorbed in the Laptev, Kara, and Barentsz regions might be transported, and augmented by Siberian heat transport, to move heat into the E. Siberian and Chukchi to do the job. I don't know…

My guess is that less than 30% survives, but its likely that some will survive. If we get compaction with a late season Arctic dipole, then the surviving extent could be lower.

Please note that these are very rough numbers. I would love to see a more comprehensive and accurate calculation of Arctic ocean heat flows, especially if it included regional estimates.

[Steve Bloom]

Chris, do you have a pointer to any documentation as to how PIOMAS can handle a storm like this? Models in general are notoriously bad at this sort of thing. OTOH it seems reasonable that PIOMAS would be able to adjust in light of the data from the aftermath of the storm, if that's what you meant, although I still have my questions about how accurate that can be.

[Al Rodger]

Hi maltose,
PIOMAS is explained in most detail/complexity in Schweiger et al. 2011 which is available in full PDF here. The IC-SST output we see is one of three configurations. It assimilates both Ice Concentrations (IC) and SST. Of the others, one assimilates IC only and the other is just the model.
So how would the IC-SST model fare coping with splintered ice cover in the aftermath of a major Arctic storm? Perhaps here comes the opportnunity to find out.

[Paul Klemencic]

Now to an even more important question:
How much additional heat is being absorbed in the Arctic ocean, and being released in the fall and winter?

According to my estimate for heat to melt the additional 6000 cubic km of ice each year at 17 x 10^20 Joules, this heat is re-released from the Arctic ocean waters when the ice refreezes in the fall.

But the water has to cool an extra 2-4 deg C before refreezing, so we have to add this heat as well. I estimate this adds another 15-25 x 10^20 Joules to the heat release.

So we are likely already seeing 32-42 x 10^20 Joules annually absorbed in the summer, and released in the fall and early winter.

This large amount of new heat source has to have an effect on NH weather systems, as Jennifer Francis stated in the video. If we get a big Arctic ice cap collapse this year, then next year (a likely El Nino year) will see some extraordinary weather in the NH. This makes Arctic ice issues one of the most important issues in the world today.

[R. Gates]

Paul,

Have you looked at the heat entering the Arctic via the 5 major river systems that deliver massive amounts of warm water to the Arctic? See:

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/land-river.shtml

You'll notice that heat anomalies in the Arctic often correspond closely to where these rivers drain. Water temps of these rivers have been running higher than average for years...just sayin'

[AmbiValent]

And for years, Arctic ice volume has been shrinking almost continually... just sayin'

[OldLeatherneck]

Response from Paul Klemencic
"My guess is that less than 30% survives, but its likely that some will survive. If we get compaction with a late season Arctic dipole, then the surviving extent could be lower."

Paul, my sincerest thanks for the time and effort you have put into replying to what I thought was a relatively simple question. As I'm not a scientist, there was much of your response that sailed over my grey matter, yet most of it tickled enough brain cells to understand your answers and the complexity of what still needs to be learned about everything that is currently happening in the arctic regions.

I've always thought that the only way to learn something is to have conversations with people who are more knowledgeable than yourself.

BTW, I've shared your response with others who will more fully understand and appreciate your effort.

Thanks Again

[Paul Klemencic]

R. Gates: yep, no doubt the MacKenzie is delivering enough heat into the Beaufort; and the lower latitude Beaufort itself likely contains enough heat to melt the entire 2.2 M sq km of ice extent floes off. The problem is that most of the ice is over a thousand kilometers away in the Chukchi and E. Siberian regions. The heat in the water has to encounter the ice to melt it.

Last year, I did a calculation that estimated the cooling effects on the top layer of water from melting one meter of ice, and its significant. The impact on heat transfer is even bigger, because the temperature difference (delta T) declines and reduces the heat transfer rate. What is needed for rapid ice loss, is a well mixed system.

Which brings me back to this storm. If we wanted to design a storm to destroy ice pack, I don't think we could do it any better than the current reality.
This storm will pick up moisture from Siberia and the Laptev, it already has picked up moisture from the Kara, and it will move all this thermal energy into the E. Siberian and Chukchi. Furthermore, it will churn things up big time and bring up warmer saltier water. The ice pack is weak and fractured at this point in the season, so wave action won't be quashed, as it would normally.

And the storm will push ice toward the Beaufort with its relative warmth, then even pick up more moisture and warmth to carry back over the Central Arctic.

As the wind rotates around the low, it will push the fractured edges of the CAB ice pack away from the pack and toward the Laptev, which also has plenty of warm water. And churn things up along the way.

The storm will keep this up for 6-8 days, although the peak will last 3-4 days. This is plenty of time to do lots of damage.

And finally, the storm hits right after the peak solar period ends, but before the surrounding seas and atmosphere begins cooling down into autumn.

This really is "A Perfect Storm".

[Neven]

Indeed, if this were happening two weeks later, around the same time as last year, I would be a tad less excited about this. The effect on SIA and SIE wasn't huge, not only because the cyclone only lasted for a day (or two at the most), but also because of refreezing conditions starting to take hold.

Anyway, we will see. It will be a great learning experience. And probably depressing as well.

[Anthonywobrien]

Slightly off topic.
Last year you did a post about the effect of rivers, at the time I thought you were overstating the case. But it looks pretty obvious this year.

[Artful Dodger]

Larry, I make that ice island at 1295 km ^2, or 22 Manhattans.

[Chris Biscan]

the cyclone is down into the 972-974mb range now.

The models Euro and GFS have it bomb out over the next 30 hours or so in the 964-967MB range.

We could reach 960mb.

Models are hinting at a Dipole like pattern after this and warm flushing the pacific side big time.

[Steve Bloom]

The new Dai paper on drought and drying is out with text free to read. This is a big-deal paper. From the abstract:

I conclude that the observed global aridity changes up to 2010 are consistent with model predictions, which suggest severe and widespread droughts in the next 30–90 years over many land areas resulting from either decreased precipitation and/or increased evaporation.

[Twemoran]

Dodger

Regretfully I have to disagree with your calculation. 1295 km2 actually works out to 21 Manhattans, a Boilermaker and a very dry Martini.

Terry

[Bob Wallace]

U Bremen has updated to Aug 5. Big change from the day before. Real or detection problems?

Aug 4
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmisdata/daybefore/arctic_SSMIS_nic.png

Aug 5
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/arctic_SSMIS_nic.png

[Paul Klemencic]

OK, the new Bremen map is up, and I have really underestimated the impact of this storm. The damage is huge in the Chukchi and the E. Siberian, and elsewhere (notably the Beaufort and Laptev regions) the ice pack is coming apart.

And the storm hasn't even hit yet.

[Steve Bloom]

Hmm, some sea ice expert, can't recall who, said several years ago that the first ice-free event would be quite sudden. Perhaps this was the anticipated mechanism.

[Steve Bloom]

Not that it's important, but present conditions seem to make it likely that the pack will lose contact with all of the small archipelagos, leaving contact with only the QEI and Greenland.

[R. Gates]

For those who want to see what this growing cyclonic monster in the Arctic might be doing to the ice by Friday, August 10th, have a look:

http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicespddrf/nowcast/icespddrf2012080418_2012081000_035_arcticicespddrf.001.gif

[Daniel Bailey]

Thanks, Steve, for that Dai paper. Yes, it's a really big deal. And not in a good, Pollyanna-esque way.

[Chris Biscan]

ooz GFS is coming out, I can't wait to see the modeled pressure. Anyone have buoy readings in the area?

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w109/frivolousz21/1344224825498057956044306.gif?t=1344223773

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w109/frivolousz21/1344224825498054140586876.gif

[R. Gates]

Steve Bloom, it was Professor Peter Wadhams. The full quote is:

"In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly. It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040."

He made this statement to the BBC in 2007 in this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm

[Daniel Bailey]

According to R. Gates' linked image, we're gonna need a bigger Arctic...
(cue Jaws music)

[Chris Biscan]

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w109/frivolousz21/1344224825498052648135670.gif?t=1344225491

[Artful Dodger]

Haha Terry, you sound like a < a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7YsE-wQn9c">Boy From New York City ;^)

Cheers!
Lodger

[R. Gates]

Here's a buoy's pressure data from near where the cyclone is setting up currently. Note the rapidly falling pressure:

http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/irid_data/2011J_pres.png

Already at the lowest pressure in nearly a year, and falling...

[Chris Biscan]

00z gfs still goes to a compaction pattern that would crush the Laptev Bite.

[Johannes]

Here is an animation of two previous days of Bremen maps.

http://imghost.me/images/DkWNu.gif

Some flash melting.

[Artful Dodger]

Terry, you sound like a Boy From New York City ;^)

Cheers!
Lodger

[Chris Reynolds]

Steve Bloom,

From Schwieger's paper on PIOMAS uncertainty -

Daily mean NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data are used as atmospheric forcing, i.e., 10-m surface winds, 2-m surface air temperature (SAT), specific humidity, precipitation, evaporation, downwelling longwave radiation, sea level pressure, and cloud fraction. Cloud fraction is used to calculate downwelling shortwave radiation...

[Chris Reynolds]

Steve,

I should add; don't confuse this with the sub-grid box scale nature of cyclone physics in GCMs. PIOMAS has higher resolution and the physics of the cyclone itself is taken care of in the NCEP/NCAR model, which is basically a forecasting model - and forecast models serve us well on a day to day basis forecasting the weather on local scales.

[Twemoran]

Env. Canada is seeing 2M waves riding 3M swells in Beaufort - and the storm hasn't hit - yet.

Terry

[AmbiValent]

And the ice pack already looked under attack from all sides - before the storm hit.

[Russell McKane]

Surfs up at Barrow - check out the web cam. Those are serious waves. Also think of the land erosion right along the actic coast - this is permafrost so big damage can be expected.

[Phbeckwith]

The GFSx polar plot is showing that this cyclone does not weaken until 8 days out.
http://weather.unisys.com/gfsx/gfsx.php?inv=0&plot=hght&region=nh&t=9p

This storm is going to completely hammer the sea ice, already a huge shift in the ice in one day (From Aug 4th to 5th). Will not be much ice left in a week or so...

[Account Deleted]

DMI crash!

[Artful Dodger]

Well this certainly is a large, deep depression with Gale force winds and decent wave heights. But we can't get real excited until such a storm occurs with central pressure drops below 920 MB. Now that would be an Arctic Hurricane, and I hereby predict one for the first sea ice free Summer. But then I've already gone on record here predicting Arctic Hurricanes ;^)

[Artful Dodger]

Hi Terry. Do you have a link to the Environment Canada site you spoke about? Those 10 foot seas in the Beaufort will like mix the surface layer enough to breakup the freshwater lens caused by the Mackenzie River runoff. If we have salinity over 30 psu and high SSTs in the Beaufort after this storm passes, then it's well howdy...

[Peter Ellis]

Dodger: hurricanes are warm-core systems and require water temperatures of at least 26-27 degrees in the top 50m. Not going to happen. Intense polar lows, yes. Hurricanes? No.

[Neven]

First daily update is up: Arctic storm part 1

[Neven]

Oh, and BTW, thanks for your comment, Russell McKane. It reminded me of an article I read last year. Quoted it in the new post.

[Artful Dodger]

Hi Peter. I think a 920 MB depression will happen soon enough. Paleoclimate records show that the Arctic has had SSTs in the 27 C range, but that will likely occur after the Arctic is perennially ice free. My guess is 40 years after the first ice free Summer (with a range of 30-50 years). I expect to live to see it, but not looking forward to the day. This will be the proverbial bull elephant in a china shoppe.

[Artful Dodger]

Since we're on the topic of Arctic Hurricanes, Artful Dodger wrote on July 05, 2010 at 11:46

"While it's true there are occasional large cyclonic Arctic storms, they tend to blow out in less than 48 hrs, and have max. winds of around 50 mph: hardy Hurricane status.

"However, one of the inevitable consequences of a perennially ice-free Arctic ocean will be genuine Hurricanes in the Arctic Basin. The three requirements for a Hurricane are:

1. SST's of 28C or above. This is the source of energy that drives the vortex. The warmer SST, the stronger the winds and faster the storm development. We know from paleoclimatology that the Arctic ocean has been this warm in the past, when it was Ice-free year-round.

2. A source of rotation. In the Atlantic, it the interaction of the trade winds and the Coriolis effect. In the Arctic, it will be the Beaufort gyre, also caused by the rotation of the earth. I suspect rotation will be amplified near the pole, compared to the equator.

3. The absence of wind shear (which can destroy a Hurricane in its formative stages). This is left to the random vagaries of weather, and will eventually occur in the right combination with the other factors to allow a Hurricane to form.

"I expect the Storm track will follow roughly the Transpolar Drift, and with luck MAY hit Greenland or Svalbard rather than Northern Europe. This last of course is the nightmare scenario for an Arctic Hurricane. Unless we build offshore Oil platforms in the Barents and Kara seas...

"Time frame? As soon as an Ice-free Arctic ocean can warm to 28C surface temperatures. Under the 24 hr / day sunlight of the polar summer, this may occur much sooner than we expect. Perhaps by the 2040 time frame that Climate Deniers currently expect a seasonally ice free Arctic?

"I suspect it will be sooner, if CO2 levels continue to increase at 2 ppm / year. It all depends on how fast Arctic permafrost methane release ramps up."

| end of quote from July 2010 |

So as our friend Larry is fond of saying, I guess I'll have to stick with that!

Cheers,
Lodger

[Al Rodger]

Paul Klemencic
I think you lost one in a comment way up this thread. That is, it's 16,000 cu km not 6,000. Sadly this will throw you interesting calculation into turmoil.
A check/double-check I often finding myself doing when calculating melting ice is a visit to the bottom paragraph of the PIOMAS site. 16,400 cu km requireing 5e21 J to melt.

[Seke Rob]

The Mediterranean, which is a quite isolated water gets those temps. Here one of 2010: http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/coast_sea/todays-sea-surface-temperature/todays-sea-surface-temperature. The North Sea is not getting them and they have benefit of the Mex Gulf Stream. Paleonthology will probably also construct that the Earth's obliquity etc re Milankovic, was more in optimum for insolation. In the strictest sense with that we should be cooling now... the outside agency being the CO2/CH4. The known unknown is coming at us whether it's a bull elephant or a mastodont... too many could not care less what's not happening ITBY.

Reminds me, Rutgers July snow cover could be coming up any day now. Really Really cant wait to see that major sideshow.

[Artful Dodger]

Q. Why is the Coriolis force greater at the poles than at the equator?

A. "Because places at the equator do not rotate in the same way that places at high latitudes do. A man standing at the north pole with arms outstretched finds his right hand advances towards the Sun during the day, and it is the left hand which advances for someone at the south pole, but a person at the equator does not turn about his own axis at all. Without such turning there is no Coriolis effect.

"The opposite directions of turning in the two hemispheres explain the different directions of the Coriolis effect. One may thus consider the effect as positive in one hemisphere and negative in the other, from which it follows that it is zero at the equator between."

h/t to Dr. Bart Geerts, UWyo
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap11/conversation.html

[Paul Klemencic]

Al Rodger: Well, yes, according to the PIOMAS the total change in Arctic ice volume during prior normal period was from about 28000 cubic km in winter to about 12000 at the minimum, or a change of about 16000 as you stated.

I was trying to show the additional heat required to melt ice down to the more recent minimums of around 6000 (compared to previous minimums of 12000). The heat associated with cooling the surface layers of water (which overturns) and replace the additional 6000 cubic km of ice, is a new additional source of heat for the NH during fall and winter. I estimate this heat at roughly 32-42 x 10^20 Joule, which is comparable to the actual winter heat delivered via the Gulf stream to Europe.

This additional heat source is likely disrupting NH weather systems.

[Ian Allen]

But the Coriolis Acceleration, and thus the lean on a plumb bob amongst other things, maxes out at 45 degrees
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap11/coriolis_acc.html

[Paul Klemencic]

More on the heat balance and heat transfer limitations to ice melt:

The point I was trying to make to OldLeatherneck, was that we need to realize that melting all this ice takes an enormous amount of heat. And as the ice melts, it cools the neighboring water layers which reduces the heat transfer rate and slows the melt. Storms help replenish warm water next to the ice, and help carry addtional heat into the melting region via atmospheric transport of warmer moist air. So storms can really help speed up the melt process, but there still has to be enough heat available at the melt location to melt the ice.

We might look at it this way, melting the first meter of ice in a storm is easier; the second meter is much tougher, in spite of the dispersed and broken floes, because a lot of the available heat has been used up.

Or, considering another view, melting the first 50% of ice in an region during a storm is easier, the remaining 50% is much tougher; even though the amount of heat transfer area has increased substantially, the driving force (delta Temperature) will have declined.

But these really big storms in August seem to transport a huge amount of heat into the melt regions (see stream of cumulus clouds), as well as churn things up and increase heat transfer rates. So the really big long lasting storms remove the two key limits to ice melt; available heat, and better heat transfer.

[L. Hamilton]

That DMI drop is -282k.

[Neven]

Is it an artifact, Larry? Oh, and please answer here, the first daily update.

[Janne Tuukkanen]

Good ole Coriolis... force... eh, effect... eh, something:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wda7azMvabE

[Artful Dodger]

Do Australian toilets really swirl the other way?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJn4AU_QHJM&NR=1

[Neven]

It depends on what you had to eat. If you're not careful, you get aurora coriolis.

[dabize]

Does that cause coriolitis?

[Artful Dodger]

Now that's a drop.

[dabize]

Paul,

Won't the net driving force be augmented substantially in a storm due to the increased removal of fresh meltwater from the boundary layer?

Without the increased water movement due to the storm, there would be a tendency for the meltwater to stay at the surface due to its relatively low density, which would prevent saltier water (with its depressed freezing point) from coming in contact with the ice. I would think that this effect should normally amplify the self-limiting tendency that you describe. It is presumably minimized by storminess.

[Seke Rob]

Aural coriolitis aka vertigo

http://bit.ly/CTAR01

May have to extend the axis

[Janne Tuukkanen]

This might be OT, but as main discussion has moved under an other post, I want to remind here, that NASA's new rover managed to land. ("to mars"?) Awesome! That skycrane thing looked so weird when I heard it first time few years ago. But apparently it worked. Planetary sciences in extreme, I would say.

Then you could wonder, what science we could do on Earth with those billions. But let's not compare apples to potatoes.

[Artful Dodger]

Janne, this 256x256 colour thumbnail image just arrived from Mars>>>