Peeking through the clouds 4

Commenter dabize has sent me the latest 'declouded' version of the False-Colour Composite images Environment Canada makes of the LANCE-MODIS satellite images. They give us an excellent view of week to week changes. Due to some resolution incompatibilities I had to exclude last week's image (it's in the 3rd instalment of this Peeking through the clouds series), which makes the changes caused by the Arctic summer storm even more pronounced:  

Comments

[Twemoran]

Dabize - Neven

This is a great way to visualize the melt.

Only an oil company exec. or a Harper Conservative could fail to grasp the significance.

Terry

[Artful Dodger]

Sadly Terry, they DO grasp the significance, and it has them drooling.

[Susan Anderson]

The final frame is a marvel of symmetry, beginning to look rather like a magnified snowflake!

(considered visually)

[Steve Bloom]

Just eyeballing this, the remaining ice appears to be in very poor shape, much worse than other graphics seem to indicate. Optical illusion?

[Neven]

Steve, from what I can see through the clouds on the LANCE-MODIS satellite Arctic Mosaic a large part of the outer fringe of the ice pack is looking dispersed. CAPIE is still lowest of all years in the 2005-2012 period.

Keep in mind that this is a composite based on the last week. So some of the light blue, especially on the Pacific side, is already gone by now, for instance that large sliver that almost looks detached.

[dabize]

Been kept away from here by my day job, but am impressed as always by how Neven can take the epileptogenic GIFs I send him and turn them into something worth looking at!

BTW, I apologize for the resolution issues that plagued the last image - I found that my old method of removing the cloud didn't work as well, and I was rushed. Disorder all around. Call it the Haruhi Effect...

Any discussion of the 3 million km SIA milestone? Part of me was hoping that somehow that wasn't going to fall as fast as it did........

[Neven]

Yes, the 3 million km2 SIA milestone is being discussed in this thread. But that is all ancient history now. The focus is on the record. ;-)

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

The researchers onboard the icebreaker Oden run a blog (in swedish) where you can comment. They are very close to the pole (at N 88.37° W 65.76°).

I am going to ask them a couple of questions and wonder if there is anything you guys would want to know?

[Klon Jay]

This section, pole at lower right, now looks like it has some melt-in-place going on, or perhaps just dispersion, of formerly solid pack.
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c03.2012230.terra

[Artful Dodger]

I don't think the clear skies will contribute to a lot more melt next week, but it will sure be nice to get a good look at the Central Arctic Basin before MODIS sunset, on or about day 250 (Sep 6).

[dabize]

Klon Jay,

I did composites of that quadrangle at 205-214 vs the past few days (226-230).

High contrast images show a clear migration of a "fragmentation line" (i.e. area over which some open water is visible, rather than solid ice) from the upper right corner (i.e. closest to the pack edge) toward the CAA over this period.

The increase amounts to about 5% of the total area of r04c03, finishing at around 25% (eyeball estimate)

Doesn't sound like much, except that r04c03 contains the thickest ice in the CAB.

Also, 2 weeks earlier (190-192) there was a spell of clear weather showing NO such changes anywhere

[William Hughes-Games]

The rate of melting increased sharply following the storm of Aug6. Was this due to a mixing into the surface waters of the deep, warmer Atlantic water. a single meter of water which is one degree above the melting point of ice contains enough heat to melt 12.5mm of ice. There is more than enough heat in the artic water to melt all the ice many times over. Have any salinity measurements been made to see if such mixing did occur.

[Neven]

William, you should check out the Arctic summer storm posts on this. Rob Dekker wrote a fantastic comment about mixing which I reproduced in Arctic summer storm open thread 1.

[Werther]

Hi Dabize,
What you call 'fragmentation line'is probably equal to what I describe as the boundary of the 'mesh pattern'.
Last time I did a CAD estimate I found 1.4 Mkm2. That was two days ago, I think.
I agree with you that fragmentation/pattern loss is still advancing. Indeed on r04c03, also in cloudless spots on r03c03 the process seems to start.
The 'intact' sheet is now under 1.3 Mkm2.