Peeking through the clouds 3

Clouds blocking our view of events below make the False-Colour Composite images Environment Canada makes of the LANCE-MODIS satellite images very welcome (for further explanation read the first and second blog posts with the same title), especially after they have been 'declouded' by commenter dabize.

The latest animation showing weekly changes from July 3rd to August 7th:

Here's another panel dabize made showing the latest declouded false-colour composite image on the right, and changes compared to a month ago (red) in the image on the left, and to a week ago in the image in the middle (click for a larger version):

Thank you, dabize!

It will be interesting to see the declouded images in two weeks from now. Why two weeks? The Arctic has been so incredibly cloudy because of that huge summer storm that I wonder if we're going to be able to see much next week. But who knows.

As mentioned in Peeking through the clouds 2 with regards to the NWP:

Our attention gets drawn immediately to the spectacular changes in the ice pack from the East Siberian Sea to the Beaufort Sea, but also note in the right bottom of the animation how the ice in the Northwest Passage just vanishes overnight. It's not transported, it just melts in place (or in situ, as the Romans liked to say). An astonishing sight. No wonder the NWP is as good as open.

Today's Image of the Day on NASA's Earth Observatory website shows just how fast this melting has been with two images from July 17th and August 3rd respectively, which I've combined for this animation:

All of that ice has melted in situ. No transport, hardly any compaction. Amazing.

Accompanying text:

Ice retreated rapidly in the Parry Channel—part of the famous and elusive Northwest Passage—between mid-July and early August 2012.

These images, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, show significant changes over two weeks. The top image shows Parry Channel on July 17, 2012, when ice filled the channel. The bottom image shows the same region on August 3, when some ice was still clinging to the shores of Victoria and Melville Islands but open water otherwise dominated the region.

The Canadian Ice Service reported that ice cover in Parry Channel began to fall below the 1981–2010 median after July 16, 2012, and the loss accelerated over the following two weeks. On July 23, the percentage of ice cover in the channel was roughly 67 percent, compared to the median of 80 percent. On July 30, ice cover was roughly 33 percent, compared a median of 79 percent.

These photo-like images appear to confirm the Canadian Ice Service’s findings, given the widespread open water in early August. Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center cautioned, however, that while the Parry Channel appeared almost entirely free of ice, it was not necessarily open for navigational purposes. Sea ice can be thin enough to avoid detection by satellite sensors such as MODIS yet still thick enough to impede ships. A close examination of the image from early August shows lingering patches of ice south of Melville Island.

Read the rest of the article here.

Comments

[NLPatents]

What are the odds there will be an August minimum sea ice extent/area/concentration by this time next week?

[Neven]

I don't know about area, but forget about extent. And there's no such thing as a minimum concentration.

Area would have to drop 440K in 7 days, which amounts to 63K a day. Definitely not impossible, but my gut feeling says it won't happen.

[Jim_pettit]

Yeah, I don't see new records in either area or extent within just a week from now. As Neven said, an area record is possible by then, but not likely, as 2012 is still 435,452 km2 away from that goal. For what it's worth, however, a post XXXX.6000 finale like that seen in any other year of the record will result in a new record minimum--and a finale like that seen in 1984 would result in a record under 2 million km2 (http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/sia_7.png).

[Chris Reynolds]

If this year follows 2007 and 2011 area will fall until the end of August then stall, so we'd have a little under 3 weeks to go. If melt continues at the daily average losses for 2007-2011 from yesterdays CT area, then the area by 24/8/12 area would be 2.7041 M kmsq.

I'm not taking the actual numbers too seriously. But I do take the message seriously - at this stage something rather remarkable will have to happen to prevent the previous records being smashed.

[Artful Dodger]

Good chance on -440K in 7 days, I think. The average daily drop over the last 7 days was -82K. The seven before that averaged -73K. Climate data for the past seven days is -50 K. So best guess? 7 to 9 days for the record, half the time ;^)

[Frankd 1977]

The average SIA daily loss so far this August has been 93K, which is more than double the 36K average of the past 5 years. I agree that a new record within a week is possible, but I don't think it will happen.

[NLPatents]

So even odds on area, and long odds on extent - but what would have been a ludicrous statement in March is now in the realm of possibility.

Mind boggling.

Not as crazy as Bolt repeating in the 100 and 200, but pretty wild.

[NLPatents]

... By August 16 that is.

[Llosmith57]

In addition to SIA and SIE minimums I was wondering what the effect on Ice Age comparisons might look like? Will the remaining MYI be less than 10% of the total at minimum? Will next year be able to recover if MYI is less than 3% of the total or is the end of MYI near?

[R. Gates]

Lloyd Smith asked:

"Will the remaining MYI be less than 10% of the total at minimum?"

_____

Lloyd,

You ask an excellent question, and the ratio of FYI and MYI is certainly the topic of much research and discussion, both on this blog and elsewhere. I might first draw your attention this this chart:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/04/Figure5.png

Now if you look at it, you might notice that the proportion of FYI at the START of the melt season has been growing, steadily for many years, with some interesting "recovery" of older MYI after the big drop in 2007, but in general, the trend is down. But by the END of the melt season, in September, what ice remains is mostly all MYI (something over 80%), and of course, even the total amount of MYI is declining as well. In the long run, as we head to an ice-free summer Arctic, it means that at the START of the melt season, virually all of the ice will be FYI (with maybe some clumps of MYI clinging to areas of the Canadian Archipelgo) and since nearly all the ice will melt each summer, this pattern will then become the norm--- virtually 100% FYI at the start of the melt season, then virtually 100% melt and then new FYI forms during the winter.

Sometime in the next few decades, as FYI is the norm across the Arctic ocean, it will probably be able to be traversed nearly every month of the year, with only very light ice breakers in the winter, and normal ships in the late spring, summer and fall.

[Twemoran]

LLoyd

I wonder if we haven't opened up a new MYI advection area through the CA. Nares, a few years back was responsible for 10% of all ice advected and I'd expect the CA to be able to handle much more than Nares.

The CA and Nares should be close to 100% MYI as opposed to Fram, so if it opens I thing the long term damage will be substantial.

If only we could invent a technology that could see through clouds, and keep one aloft. :-{

Terry

[William Crump]

R Gates:

Where did you get the 80% MYI figure for September?

The link below from Maslanik tells a much different story. Most of the ice in September consists of first and second year ice not MYI.

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20111004_Figure6.png

[Frankd 1977]

The sea ice concentration is getting very very sparse.

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

[Frankd 1977]

Also, that big chunck at 165E, 80N looks like it is about to break off from the main pack.

[Paul Klemencic]

The Bremen map tonight is simply awful. The only good news is that the map should be the last really awful map until… well... until next Tuesday/Wednesday when an Arctic Dipole Anomaly should be in place.

As people may have noted from following the map in the past, the key color is green, the map color used to depict ice concentrations just under 70%. Once an area of ice turns green, it generally remains weak until it melts, or refreezes (in September). The large areas of green area in the map tonight means more melt in the future. The green areas extend up to 83N in the four quadrangles that took the brunt of the storm, and up to 86N in the Laptev bite.

Tomorrow and over the weekend, some of this 50% and 60% ice will dissipate and disappear, before it can be pushed back into the pack. In any case, the area it occupies will mostly clear over the next week.

With that in mind, both SIA and 15% SIE should show continued substantial declines.

If there was any doubt that 2012 could eke out a minimum higher SIE than 2007, tonight's map seals the deal. NO WAY.

[R. Gates]

William, I'm seeing this year more like 2007 when more of the FYI melted out by the September low. The Arctic basin will be the great majority of what's left come September, and most of that is MYI. Maybe 2.25 million sq. km. there (or less) and another few hundred thousand sq. km. in the Canadian Archipelago and northern Greenland Sea, for a total of around 2.5 million sq. km., and most of being MYI.

[Seke Rob]

Paul said:

If there was any doubt that 2012 could eke out a minimum higher SIE than 2007, tonight's map seals the deal. NO WAY.

Latest stacked bar chart with projection.
http://bit.ly/CTNHM2
With last 5 year August daily average of 36K and actual riding at 93K, also, the minimum average day hovering at around day 252, there can't be doubt left, and deep dismay that 2007 record will be broken so soon. Only the most desperate FSing Denialato will get on the skates now to proof that it's not paper thin.

[Rob Dekker]

I understand Neven's position that we should wait and see what the impact of the storm will really be after the clouds are gone, but let me tell you that I have a very bad feeling about this one.

Last year, with the "flash melt" during the November storm, I was confident that the "flash melt" was mostly caused by sea water flushing over the ice, which only temporarily (and artificially) confuses the satellite sensors in believing that large swats of ice have turned to water.

At that time, the ocean flux data from ITP buoys revealed that ocean water was stirred up down to 25 meter or so, which caused some salty water to bubble up to under the ice, with the potential to 'flash' melt out about 10 cm from the bottom of the ice pack.

This storm however, is completely different.

For starters, freezing has not yet started seriously, so any flushed-over ice will take longer to re-appear on the SSMI satellite instruments. Second, the ice pack in the Western Arctic was already heavily fragmented even before this storm even started. There were plenty of polynia and areas where ice concentration was no more than some 50 %. This means that the "flash melt" area starts to behave much more like "open ocean" than an area with a semi-solid ice pack.

But even worse, this storm seems to have stirred up not just the upper halocline at 20-75 meters, but even the lower halocline at a 200-500 meter depth. Two separate ITP buoys, separated by a few hundred km, record this disturbance so it is not just a local event :
http://www.whoi.edu/itp/images/itp41dat3.jpg
http://www.whoi.edu/itp/images/itp53dat3.jpg

Several studies show that the upper halocline can be disturbed down to some 50 meters, and these are great reads :
http://www.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/pdfs/yang_storm_jgr2004.pdf
http://www.whoi.edu/fileserver.do?id=84144&pt=10&p=25592

but I've not seen anything like this disturbance down to 500 meter over a wide area ever before in the ITP records.

What does this mean ? Well, the stratification layers in the West Arctic in the "flash melt" zone seem to be completely eliminated for the moment. This brings up 'warm' and more importantly, 'salty' water to the surface (and cool, fresh water downward). The saline anomaly at the surface is disturbing : it increased from 25 psu to about 31.5 psu over the past couple of days. That means that the melting temp of sea ice just reduced by 0.5 C, and this is even without counting the increase in water temperature towards the surface that the stirring down to 500 meters causes.

It's hard to estimate how much ice melt this will cause, but since the storm still is causing significant water movement along the ice (ITP53 reports rock-and-rolls of 0.8 m/sec) as well as up/down welling, and because the crumbled ice above has a large surface area to absorb the heat, melting may resemble sugar in a stirred cup of tea right now.

The real important question is, how long will this de-stratified state persist ? The short answer is that we simply don't know. Ocean models (even without ice cover) are simply not yet capable of simulating deep ocean turbulence effects after a storm. Here is a good read :
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/Courses/6140/ency/Chapter11/Ency_Oceans/Upper_Ocean_Mix_Processes.pdf

So after all is said and done, it seems that Neven was right and we need to wait out this storm to assess what it's long-term effects really will be. But at the same time, the de-stratification this storm has caused down to 500 meter depth and the mixing of salinity and heat content throughout that column over the area of this storm (about 1 million km^2) will most certainly have caused very significant damage to the already fragmented ice pack, to the point that it become hard to believe
that the entire area or even part of it will somehow magically re-appear on the satellite record.

I think the "flash melt" area is knocked out for the season, and on top of that this storm will leave a lot of salty water behind at the surface, which will eliminate small pockets of ice remaining and make it harder for the area to freeze up in fall.

What do you guys think ?

[Espen Olsen]

Healy just Dutch Harbor and is heading for the Polar Sea, and with her a web cam!
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP

[Espen Olsen]

Rob Dekker,

"and because the crumbled ice above has a large surface area to absorb the heat, melting may resemble sugar in a stirred cup of tea right now."

The combination of the much larger surface of crushed ice and salt plus warmer water is a deadly combination for sea ice in general!

[Espen Olsen]

DMI upward correction:

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

[Diablobanquisa.wordpress.com]

IJIS has updated:

08/08 5.585.313
09/08 5.510.313
10/08 tomorrow will be revised

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=687386516]

Rob Dekker/

Looking at the 0-250m or the 0-700m profile of ITP53 it is difficult to tell what is different now from what happened some 25 days ago (around day 560). The same mixing occurred then, and the profile was soon thereafter restored. Also the top 25 meters had some green color (warmer water) just before the storm which is now light blue (colder).

I guess what I am trying to say is that perhaps this is not that uncommon. It would be very nice with more bouys now.

[Rob Dekker]

facebook.com/profile...68738...
Indeed it is not uncommon for the lower halocline to release excess heat to the upper layers in the form of 'chimneys' releasing excessively warm salty water to the upper layers.

You see several of these chimneys in the ITP53 record, but for example in the 2-year ITP41 record they are completely absent.
That makes me believe these are 'local' events caused by excessive heat buildup (of warm Atlantic water) below the lower halocline. But note that these upwellings do not typically make it to the surface. They simply "take a step up" on the halocline staircase.

The upwelling from 200-500 meter all the way to the surface, recorded simultaneously on two different ITPs (and coinciding with a known and significant storm overhead) is, as far as I can see, unprecedented in the ITP record, and suggests that the entire area of fragmented ice under the storm was affected, instead of only a local chimney.

[crandles]

CT Area

2012.6000 -2.1992197 3.3401906 5.5394106
2012.6028 -2.3061333 3.2030327 5.5091658

137k drop
no flashback yet.

[Diablobanquisa.wordpress.com]

Over the Top?
Retreating Sea Ice and the Prospects for Rising Navigation in the Arctic
(p. 9-16)

http://www.zeitschrift.co.uk/International_Zeitschrift_8_1_2012.pdf

[Espen Olsen]

SIA: 3.203 and anomaly -2.306 WOW!

[Artful Dodger]

Note that the 3.203 M km^2 Sea ice area data is for Aug 8, 2012.

[Seke Rob]

With noon's data, another update to chart: http://bit.ly/CTNHM2

Based on the 3.20M Km^2 Area the following reductions would surpass the remaining 4 years with a lower minimum than 2012 has at present

Year -Need Min. Prsnt ToDo
2007 -0.30 2.92 3.83 -0.91
2008 -0.20 3.00 4.00 -1.00
2010 -0.13 3.07 4.13 -1.06
2011 -0.30 2.90 3.70 -0.54

Classic line chart with select years: http://bit.ly/CTAR01

And not loosing the planet out of sight, there being 2 halves to the whole: http://bit.ly/CTGB01

[Jim_pettit]

With the 137k drop in SIA others have noted, 2012 is now half a million square kilometers ahead of 2011 on day .6028, and 625k ahead of 2007.

There's just 298,294 km2 to go to reach a new record. By comparison, the smallest SIA loss after this date any year in the record has experienced is 443k (1988), while the smallest over the last ten years has been 607k (2005). (Just for fun: if 2012 experienced a post .6028 finale like that seen in 1984, the minimum would end up at 1.84 million km2.)

Today's SIA anomaly of -2.306 km2 is the 23rd largest on record. This is just the 64th day to ever see a negative anomaly greater than 2 million km2 (the tenth this year, and the eighth straight)

[Artful Dodger]

Healy is enroute to the Western Arctic, now about a quarter of the way from Dutch Harbor to the Bering Strait.

[Jim Williams]

I think that negative anomaly will be well over 3 million come October. There's just too much open ocean out there with significant temperature anomalies.

[Kris]

Jim_Petit wrote:

There's just 298,294 km2 to go to reach a new record

Depends on your point of view of course.

According to IARC-JAXA on the 10th of August the SIE is 5.370.938 km2.

That is still 1.000.000 km2 above the 2011 Bremen record minimum en 1.200.000 km2 above the 2007 NSIDC record minimum.

And exact 1.000.000 km2 less compared to the SIE begin this week according IARC-JAXA. Which is already startling enough.

Still, 1.000.000 km2, that's not about peanuts. In order to "break the record" more storms would be necessary. Which alas are on their way according to the forecasts.

Vedremo!

[Espen Olsen]

Kris,

You refer SIE (extend) and Jim to SIA (area)?

[James Benison]

We are witnessing the consequences of failing to act decades ago.

When I was an undergraduate student in the early 1990's anthropogenic global warming was already a recognized fact.

Now what do we do?

[Apocalypse4Real]

Jim and Seke Rob,

Thanks for the data and charting, it is invaluable. Jim, given the potential SIA declines, we might need a new color on your chart for the 2 million km2 range.

[NLPatents]

Seke Rob - excellent graphs - August 16 SIA record it is. I have no idea what the expected Tues/Wed. dipole anomaly is meant to do (flush ice out by Iceland?), but assume it is a bad thing for ice.

Evening news next Friday (when no one watches),

"We normally report these things in mid to late September, but 2012 has been a humbling year weatherwise. The artic sea ice area, historically waxing and waning between 13 million and 5 million square kilometers [this is non-us news] hit an all time low today of 2.9 million square kilometers and still melting. It beat out record of 2.92 million square kilometers set between September 13 and September 15, 2007. Experts predict another 4 weeks of unusually strong melting due to the exceptionally weak nature of the ice and the high salt content of the surface, both due to recent summer storms.

Is this good or bad?

With us to discuss is Talking Head from Shell Oil who plan ..."

Game of Thrones has nothing on the Game of Oil.

[Seke Rob]

For sure, per http://bit.ly/CTAR02 , we're now running [full length record] anomaly at -3.4 stand.dev.

[Apocalypse4Real]

With the rapid change in Arctic ice concentration and thickness, I decided to begin posting the Godiva2 ice concentration and thickness imagery on a blog. It is a work in progress and comments/critique is welcomed. My plan is to add more previous days data and the updated imagery daily through Sept.

The Godiva2 data is hosted by the ESSC at the University of Reading, UK. It is based upon the GHRSST data which is compiled at a 5-10 km2 level. The postings are snaphots of the imagery created in Google Earth.

The blog link is:

https://sites.google.com/site/apocalypse4real/home/sea-ice-concentration-and-thickness-comparison

[Apocalypse4Real]

Jim Benson:

"Now what do we do?"

Given the problem, the US and other countries and organizations are beginning an effort to reduce human black soot and methane emissions. See my very long post in

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/further-detachment.html

[Kris]

Espen Olsen wondered:

You refer SIE (extend) and Jim to SIA (area)?

Yes, and on purpose from my part.

It's not clear to which SIA Jim is referring to, but if it would be "the usual", then a strip of 50 km along the coasts is excluded from the data - as we had to learn here a few days ago. Of course, in stripping off anything he doesn't like, anyone could fabricate his own personal record, which IMHO would be completely senseless.

Anyway, before speaking about "a new record" the missing 50 km strip at the Greenland and Canadian (and still the siberian) coasts should be added. Which isn't ecactly in our league, is it?

[Ian Allen]

Kris, records tumble index by index, and are not mitigated by saying one is higher than another used to be. They all have their idiosyncrasies and are not all measuring the same thing.

[Espen Olsen]

Apocalypse,

Great images! I have bookmarked it next to this blog, in my Firefox!

[Espen Olsen]

Kris,

The 50 km off shore limit we were referring to the other day is DMI Ice extend graph, and that is a third Graph of many!

[Seke Rob]

For current quantification, I'm presently getting a projected CT-SIA minimum of 2.66 M Km square **, somewhere round a quarter million below the 2011 record low of 2.90M. The number is now printed in http://bit.ly/CTNHM2 (Ctrl-F5, though it's hard ATM to get refreshes to show with Photobucket)

** surely that was already figured out from the 3.20 printed over the last bar, minus the 0.54 *on* the bar top segment as 'to-go'.

[Pete Williamson]

I've got a question about the Atlantic side of the ice pack.

There's been a near straight line stretching from Sevemaya Zemlya Islands (??) to Greenland. The CT comparison tool shows a slower, steadier retreat in his region compared to the recent big changes on the other side. It still looks as though melting in that region is greater than previous years though.

Any thoughts on why this is? Or what effect it might have on the final minimum extent?

[Artful Dodger]

In a brilliant comment Rob Dekker asked "What do you guys think?" I think you're right, especially regarding the widespread changes to salinity and the haloclime .

The effects of this storm, like it's scale and timing, are unprecedented. There is now enough area of open water INSIDE the ice pack for ocean swells to form.

This continuous mixing of the surface layer strips fresh melt water away from the ice and prevents bottom refreezing. This is an important way that multiyear ice survives the melt season so much better than salty first year ice. Thus wave action within the multiyear pack ice becomes a positive feedback for enhanced loss of sea ice.

[Seke Rob]

MASIE did a little catch-up through a 189.4K extend reduction for the 9th: http://bit.ly/MASIEA

Comparing MASIE CAB with that of Atmos http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.jpg, ignoring their different area/extent outline they include, both show a similar negative anomaly for the same date of year... somewhere over 100K. Apart from Laptev/Chukchi, Hudson Bay pockets continue to run a positive anomaly [even increased], but looking at the Bremen-SSMIs http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/arctic_SSMIS_nic.png, the 86K total [MASIE indicates], smells largely as artifact, where CT does not show any difference with last year http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.13.jpg, but for area. The Dragon King's dark cloud is creeping up on me.

[Jim_pettit]

Kris wrote:It's not clear to which SIA Jim is referring to, but if it would be "the usual", then a strip of 50 km along the coasts is excluded from the data - as we had to learn here a few days ago. Of course, in stripping off anything he doesn't like, anyone could fabricate his own personal record, which IMHO would be completely senseless.

Anyway, before speaking about "a new record" the missing 50 km strip at the Greenland and Canadian (and still the siberian) coasts should be added. Which isn't ecactly in our league, is it?

Well, of course I am referring to CT SIA. That's what I generally mention, and it's explicitly stated on the charts and graphs I maintain. I didn't say so in this morning's comment, true, but in my defense I spoke of a drop in SIA others had noted--those others being Seke Rob, Artful Dodger, Espen Olsen, and crandles, all who had posted comments immediately prior to mine. Crandles was the first of that batch to mention area, and he was the only one to explicitly refer to CT SIA; I (and, apparently, Seke Rob, and Artful Dodger, and Espen Olsen) made the mistake of assuming that, given the context and the thread, the 'CT' qualifier didn't need to be restated in every comment to follow. Mea culpa. I'll be sure to include it from here on out in every post for those who grab random comments out of context and are thus likely to become confused.

At any rate, I'm certainly doing no "stripping of anything I don't like". First, the CT SIA data that I've seen doesn't break out any 50km coastal ice. And second, in the data set I use, any such coastal ice has been included in every year since 1979, and it's the year-to-year comparisons that count here, right?

The bottom line: a new record low minimum in CT Arctic sea ice area is all but guaranteed at this point. In fact, I would place good money on it happening.

Cheers!

[Frankd 1977]

I'm starting to think the Mayan Apocalypse prediction of 2012 was referring to sea ice.

[Neven]

I believe Kris was referring to DMI SIE, extent with a 30% cut-off, and as Espen told us a couple of days back, with a 50 km-thingy they do with coasts.

BTW, you guys are going to fast for me again. Don't do that. ;-)

[Paul Klemencic]

Seke Rob: Regarding MASIE, I posted this on the Further Detachment thread.

The MASIE data has finally started to show the declines caused by the storm.

The data reported for August 8th was a total SIE of 6.3M sq km, which seemed to match the total for August 3-4 period. Today's report shows 6.1M, and the E.Siberian region finally showed a big drop. Over the next five days, the data on the regions should register on the MASIE graphs, and will be make for belated, grim reading.

[Paul Klemencic]

Rob Dekker: I find your comment extremely well written, and perhaps should be copied over to Dot Earth (with an entry saying the comment is a bit technical) as an antidote to the misleading suggestion there that the primary impact of storms is the thermal energy being carried in by the winds (even though this certainly isn't negligible, and is important considering how much heat these storms pull up into the Arctic ocean).

Your comment should give even neophytes the impression that overturning warmer saltier waters in the water column has a devastating impact on ice melt.

[Paul Klemencic]

BTW Seke Rob, I sent another followup email to NSIDC (followup to last year's correspondence) to check into changing the dating on their MASIE data to more accurately match the dates the data was collected. I don't know if they will finally fix this glitch.

[Espen Olsen]

Just received an email from 87 north.

Very varying ice conditions between 1.5 - 3.0 meter, from edge of ice (south Fram) between 0.5 - 1.0 meter.

[Dave Leaton]

More fun with numbers:

CT Area loss for the 2012 melt season (day 88 to present, by my count) is now 10.5054 million km2, the third highest area loss in the record, with roughly 30 days to go. With such a short melt season, that makes the average daily loss gigantic (currently 79,587 km2 per day, almost 19k km2 per day greater than the next highest (yet full-season) total (2003)).

[Espen Olsen]

Jøkelbugt North East Greenland:

All of the remaining fast ice is now on the move. Including the area down to Shannon Island. It happened last time in 2004!

That means no fast ice, to speak of, is left in all of Greenland!!

[SteveMDFP]

Apocalypse wrote:
The blog link is:

https://sites.google.com/site/apocalypse4real/home/sea-ice-concentration-and-thickness-comparison

If anyone here hasn't seen this page, please look. The sea ice thickness images for the arctic look simply horrifying. I'd be interested in anyone's comments. Visually, it looks like the arctic, in terms of volume of ice, has simply collapsed.

[Espen Olsen]

Steve,

My comment is, we are watching a very scary movie in Super Slow Motion!

[William Crump]

R Gates:

While your estimates of total ice for September 2012 appear accurate, I am not able to confirm the statement that 80% of the September ice pack is MYI using the September ice age graph provided by the NSIDC at:

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20111004_Figure6.png

While there was a dramatic decline in Arctic ice in 2007, the decline of first year ice was not as severe as you indicate. First and second year ice increased slightly as a percentage of the Arctic ice pack and made up approximately 60% of the ice pack in September of 2007!

In September of 2008, there was a dramatic increase over 2007 for the portion of the ice pack that consists new ice that survived to become first year ice as the percentage of the ice pack that consisted of first year ice went from 40% to 60%.

In September of 2011, more than 40% of the ice pack consisted of new ice, which became first year ice. First and second year ice combined made up more than 70% of the September 2011 ice pack. This was down slightly from 2009 and 2010 when this ice made up almost 80% of the September ice pack.

Your comment leaves the impression that FYI is currently melting out 100% and is declining at a faster rate than MYI. This is not correct. Significant portions of newly formed ice are surviving the September melt to become first year ice.

All indications are that MYI is declining faster than FYI. For example, see the study released earlier this year by Josephino Comiso titled "Large Decadal Decline of Multiyear Ice".

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/thick-melt.html

"In the new study, Comiso and colleagues looked at multi-year ice that had made it through at least two summers. They wanted to see how it diminished with each passing winter over the past three decades. Results showed that the extent of multi-year ice, which includes areas of the Arctic Ocean where multi-year ice covers at least 15 percent of the water's surface, is shrinking at a rate of 15.1 percent per decade."

The oldest and thickest portions of the ice pack show the greatest decline as ice older than three years appears to only make up about 10% of the ice pack in September of 2011.

The September 2012 chart will be available in early October, but I would expect to see more than 40% of the ice pack to be newly formed first year ice and more than 20% of the ice pack will be second year ice.

[Twemoran]

Steve -Apocalypse

What is the source for those thickness graphs.

It's the scariest thing I've seen in a very scary season.

Terry

[johnm33]

SteveMDPF, have to agree if correct those images indicate a huge area primed for an astonishing collapse

[dingojoe]

Espen--re: Jokelbugt

It looks like the outer ice is still in place. I don't know what the bathymetry is of that area, but something holds that ice in place while ice closer to shore breaks up and lifts out.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c03.2012223.terra.500m

[Seke Rob]

Paul K/Lodger, for CT, I've succumbed... all leap years have a one day up shift, though from an uninterrupted record sequence for 2012 we have 220 line entries now, I've devised an absolute reference table, skipping Feb.29 for historic comparisons [lest a max record would get set on the 29th ;>]. Spend several hours cleaning up the raw data as there are for whatever reason, inconsistencies in them, such as this one:

2008.4410 -0.9695799 9.3289776 10.2985573
2008.4438 -0.9495078 9.2806721 10.2301798
2008.4438 -0.8914949 9.2806721 10.1721668
2008.4465 -0.9525858 9.1494131 10.1019993

What is this double April record?... It's in the cumulative averages for me. Also the fractional numbers for the first 10 years are not consistent for 1979-1987, for non-leap years. Sometimes 0.0001 sometimes 0.0002 off, sometimes not skipping up by .0027 or 0.0028, but 0.0013 or 0.0014. Excel does not like this in lookups, that's for sure when looking for absolute, day of year comparisons. Bet you it's going to bite me come the 366th record going by 2013.0000 (Dec.31).

Now, the charts that have CT data in them say "printed:", where it's a given that all available data through the day before is included. Problem solved, no one able to get panties in a knot, (or was it knickers). On the whole though, it's irrelevant... it's the sum of the numbers which says in http://bit.ly/CTARCA , that on 365 days rolling, only 2011 has a slightly higher anomaly, and that one is going to the round archive within the next 2 months, that is, if the 0.5M [negative] lead is maintained.

[dabize]

That imagery from Apocalypse4real is simply amazing.

Looking at these ice loss images makes me want to add my metaphor for impending doom, since it has changed recently.

It used to be the reoccupation of the Rhineland by you know who; an act met with no effective resistance from distracted and fearful governments in both France and Britain. It suffers from banality, Godwinism and seemed too alarmist to boot. Now I think it is not alarmist enough.

Now I move the drama back a few years to scene from Tuchman's "Guns of August" a ministerial level meeting of the French government in Paris during the first days of September, 1914. von Kluck's First Army has crashed through Belgium and is 80 km away - sweeping toward Paris with no effective opposition. The ministers are sitting around their table calmly discussing their diplomatic response to a move by Albania. After a few minutes, the general in charge of the defense of Paris (Gallieni) can't take it any longer and shouts: "To hell with Albania!"

I think I have reached my "To hell with Albania" moment watching this melt season here............

[Neven]

Two new posts are up.

You can discuss Apocalypse4Real's new website here:
New site with new thickness maps

And the Arctic summer storm here:
Arctic summer storm open thread 1