Record dominoes 3: Cryosphere Today SIA

There are several scientific organisations that keep an eye on the Arctic sea ice cover and put out graphs to inform us of the amount of ice that is left. You can see most, if not all, of them on the ASI Graphs webpage. I expect the record on most of these graphs to be broken in weeks to come.

---

After Uni Bremen sea ice extent and Arctic ROOS sea ice area another big domino has fallen with Cryosphere Today sea ice area:

And the close-up:

Larry Hamilton's graph:

Here are the numbers of all the minimums since 2005:

• 2005: 4.09 million square km
• 2006: 4.03 million square km
• 2007: 2.92 million square km
• 2008: 3.00 million square km
• 2009: 3.42 million square km
• 2010: 3.07 million square km
• 2011: 2.90 million square km
• 2012: 2.88 million square km (and running)

As usual, Jim Pettit has the details:

Though it happened 23 days earlier than it did last year, today's CT SIA value is already 27,281 km2 lower than last year's record (which itself only edged out the 2007 record by fewer than 15k km2). 17 days elapsed last year between the date the 3 million km2 mark was passed and the record was set; this year, that only took four days.

Over the course of the record--1979-2011--the average CT area loss from this day to minimum has been 521k km2. Based on a straight extrapolation from prior years, 2012 SIA would/could/almost certaionly will end up somewhere between 1.92 million and 2.77 million km2, with a mean minimum of 2.36 million km2.

Tomorrow DMI sea ice extent?

Comments

[Seke Rob]

There's no keeping up with the speed of this game.

Primed for Domino X, the NSIDC minima in an evolved design from what I did for CT-
SIA [mentioned in other thread], the prior years minima merely represented by a white marker, the red, what 2012 has already undercut modern history: http://bit.ly/NSARMn If, you think it's an improvement, I'll backport this.(Got trouble getting the latest to show since setting up the google site... Ctrl-F5 even restarting browser only displays the first version uploaded)

Anyone thinking of using the blue pill, there's, there's a new one out laced with Prozac, for further disappointments ;>)

[Talha Khalid]

I have been following this blog for a couple of years now, as has been mentioned time and again it is very informative. I hope these dominoes are restricted to the arctic (which I know not to be the case) and don't start a domino effect spanning the whole planet. We have to WAKE UP!!!! as a species.

[John Christensen]

To Talha,

I know too many people, who by now have just accepted the reality that it is getting warmer and are brazing themselves for how this will impact them in the end.

At the political level you have probably all heard of the quest for the North Pole, and Denmark, with all its green policies CO2 reduction efforts, is exploring the mountain ranges at the sea bottom north of Greenland in order to explore the opportunity of claiming the North Pole to be Danish territory for future mineral exploitation, once the ice is gone.

US, Canada, Russia, and Norway, are researching the area as well for minerals, oil, gas, and are starting to plan for more shipping to go through the Arctic, which is a huge economic benefit. So while there are some efforts to manage CO2 emission levels, the Arctic ice has few friends, especially as the melting of it will not impact sea levels (at least not directly).

At the scientific level it is however, extremely interesting to watch history unfold as is happening these days; will the SIA somehow 'crash' in the coming weeks, or will the lowering sun start having a reverse impact?

[Jim Williams]

Jim Pettit I really miss seeing your distance to CT Area Record graph today.

[Bfraser]

@Seke Rob

Love that graph. However, you need to either include the date the minimum was reached or remove the y-axis on the right.

[Alan Clark]

I find it strange that the second area graph shows no obvious sign of the recent cyclone, while the extent graphs show a large reduction. It seems as if the cyclone merely compacted the ice without actually melting it very much!

[Seke Rob]

Re Bfraser | August 20, 2012 at 17:40

Thanks for the comment. Not sure, but the day number is printed on the bars below the red line-graph, and the right Y-Axis is to give a date reference [instead of day numbers, for those that have poor feel for where the numbers place on a calendar], but if converting the day number to a date [an always dicey activity on this blog, v.v. leap-years treatment], than you get this: http://bit.ly/NSARMn (hit Ctrl-F5 to refresh, if that works). If this gets more votes, then I'll settle on this and put it on the ATCC Extent page.

[Piotr Djaków]

NSIDC SIE drop to 4.45*10^6 km^2.
http://meteomodel.pl/index.php/arcticice
Third image on this page show what happens if SIE will follow 1979-2011 values.

[crandles]

Nice Graphs Piotr. :-)

[Jim_pettit]

Jim Williams wrote: Jim Pettit I really miss seeing your distance to CT Area Record graph today.

So you're the one! ;-)

Now that the record has been broken, that version is obsolete. I'm working on another version that shows forecasting in a better way, but a major IT implementation project IRL has limited my ice time this weekend. So maybe by Wednesday...

[Jeffrey Davis]

" ... and are brazing themselves for how this will impact them in the end."

I nominate that substitution ("brazing" for "bracing") as the Freudian slip of the day. We are definitely going to get brazed in the end.

braze v. Form, fix, or join by soldering with an alloy of copper and zinc at high temperature.

[Kevin McKinney]

A personal take on the SI crash now ongoing--most everybody here will have the scientific info presented already, but may want to check this out anyway:

http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/A-Love-Story-And-A-Clearance-Sale

[Twemoran]

Kevin - beautifully put & informative

Terry

[Bfraser]

@SekeRob

The thing I was noticing was that your old graph has the date of minimum information:

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/CT_SIA_Annual_MinimaProj.png

but the new one doesn't:

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/NSIDC_SIE_Annual_Minima.png

so the y-axis is confusing in this context. Either that or my browser isn't rendering correctly.....

Thanks for all of the time you've put into this project -- I'm just a nit-picker....

bill

[DrTskoul]

Can any smarty pants here calculate the icepack perimeter? I suspect that it will be one of the metrics that can correlate with the melting rate and the ice quality or (icepack area)/(icepack extent) ratio. ImageJ might have the appropriate tools?

Just a thought. Also I figured out that the fractal dimension of the icepack must increase the lower the quality and the higher the fracturing of the pack. Can be a simple metric?

[DrTskoul]

http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/6/2161/2012/tcd-6-2161-2012-print.pdf

Relevant, but not exactly what I am looking for.

[Seke Rob]

Re Bfraser | August 20, 2012 at 19:46

Bill, your browser cache is likely picking up the first draft version. The later have the dateline and also the annual 1 day minima printed on the red segments [now also the minimum values]: Photobucket gives this direct link, not seeing a difference in the path with the one you posted.

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/NSIDC_SIE_Annual_Minima.png

One thing that has my ire is how Photobucket and Google/Picasa cache images, and wont serve an update to the viewer if there are just small changes. Now with the Google Site I set up and that tapping into Photobucket, it could become worse, double whammy.

Copy of your post:
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/NSIDC_SIE_Annual_Minima.png
Link copy from Photobucket directly:
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/NSIDC_SIE_Annual_Minima.png

Spot the difference... none.

cheers

[Eli Rabett]

;(

[Kevin McKinney]

Thanks, Terry!

[Klon Jay]

"Can any smarty pants here calculate the icepack perimeter?
Posted by: DrTskoul"

Not I. I was just looking at the satellite images and wondering to myself about all the bits floating in about all the visible, between clouds, open water on the West(?) side.
http://www.arctic.io/observations/8/2012-08-20/7-N77.0993-E179.505027

[Artful Dodger]

It's not that hard too measure the SIE perimeter with Google Earth's "Measuring tool | Path" function.

You will have to learn how to overlay an image of SIE onto the globe, but it too is well documented online by the folks at Google Earth.

I'm not convinced it's that useful however, as forcing scale with the perimeter. So there isn't an exponential component here.

A better metric is CAPIE, which does capture the sea ice albedo flip.

[Sphaerica.wordpress.com]

Just as an observation... the paradigm is changing. I don't think it's necessarily correct to assume that we'll continue to lose more ice from this point because we have in the past. We almost certainly will, but the sun is getting very low in the sky, and what ice remains is getting closer and closer to the pole. We may well find that we've reached something of a wall, in that what doesn't melt by now stays, while the new "usual point of minimum" is early instead of mid-September (or even late August?).

We will reach a point at some time in the future when the melt happens fast enough (weakened by year after year of more and more multi-year ice loss) that it all goes very quickly, but I think at least for this year there is some chance (barring things like cyclones churning up what's left) that extent loss could slow to a crawl or even halt, because the ice that remains is out of serious reach of the sun by now.

I'm not really saying that will or won't happen. I'm just saying we can't assume that we'll have a loss from this point equivalent to previous years -- because the model has now changed substantially.

That's not to say that melt won't continue to occur, which gets us further and further behind for next year... but the melt may not have much impact on extent. It may focus on the thicker ice near the coast of Greenland, or on thick ice that's been pushed into the Fram Strait where it will now thin somewhat, but not get below that 15% threshold.

[DrTskoul]

For 3D geometry, the surface area concentration of solid spheres packed in a box(a measure of available surface area) is given by a = 6*(void fraction)/d, where d is the diameter of the spheres and void fraction = volume spheres/(total volume). CAPIE is the void fraction equivalent for 2D geometry. For a given CAPIE there is an infinite number of (perimeter/area ratio,average floe diameter) pairs, each of them has a different "energy state", with higher total perimenter/lower floe size pairs having higher energy (i.e. taking more heat to generate). That is why the perimeter to area ratio, combined with CAPIE gives a unique state of the ice pack. Even if CAPIE remains constant in the next few years, a higher total perimenter of the SIA will denote a lower quality of the icepack.

[fredt34]

The graphs are nice, but don't forget to watch and eyeball the map of Arctic (I watch Cryosphere map and their side by side comparison tool). The chunks of ice which were detached by the Cyclon near Tchukchi have quietly melted and I would not bet a cent on their survival. The ice colored in green on Greenland eastern side won't survive either - and the current in Fram seems to go South to North, further detaching this huge patch. That's quite a lot of ice to be removed.

I don't remember seeing any analysis of the duration or rate of thaw, function of "color" on the map and latitude. Worded differently, which of the blue, green, yellow, red... pixels will disappear in the next weeks?

[Al Rodger]

I rate very highly the two otherwise contradictory comments here.

Sphaerica I agree with because I see the narrowing of PIOMAS anomalies as the melt reaches its finale over recent years as showing that the ice up near the pole is certainly more difficult to get to.

But fred34 I feel is also correct in that there is a lot of ice far from the poles and/or looking vulnerable that will have a difficult time surviving the season.

There is more melt to come but at the same time the pole is still a difficult place for the warmth to penetrate.

[Twemoran]

The ice above Flade Isblink is headed south.

Offshore from Princess Margareth the ice broke up & the northern glacier draining Flade Isblink will soon be flowing freely to the sea. Watch out for those spring tides!

MODIS terra 203c03

Terry

[AmbiValent]

I would think we're in bottom melt season now... the poleward ice may be getting significantly less sun, but the heat that's already in the sea will continue to gnaw at the edges and between the floes, while area loss may slow down sooner since around the center of the ice holes will freeze over when neither sun nor water have enough heat to prevent that. So I guess we'll have volume melt for the next 3-4 weeks, even if an area minimum is reached earlier.

[Neven]

Lodger wrote:

Congrats, Neven you called it over at Tamino's. A new CT SIA record low on Aug 18. Well done.

Tamino's? When?

[dingojoe]

What are we watching for with the spring tides?

I have a question for anyone about the Zachariae glacier. While there is still plenty of fast ice on Belgica bank, the ample opening on the North end has enabled quite a bit of coastal ice and ice in the bays containing 79N and Zachariae to flow out.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c03.2012233.terra.250m

It's easy to see where the edge of the glacier is now calving. To the east of that there is an area of fast ice. Was that once part of the glacier and is it now really just an orphaned ice shelf? Or has that been considered a separate feature for some time now?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

[Anna May]

Sphaerica: I agree in principle that melting should slow down as we approach the minimum, as this is historically what has happened. However, just as a minor reminder of planetary geometry, the sun doesn't set north of 80 deg N until very close to the equinox, so that region is still getting 24 hours of sunlight! Qanaaq (77N) sees its first sunset of the season on the 22.Aug, and the "sunset line" move northward daily as we approach the equinox, reaching 90N exactly on the equinox. This means there's still plenty of solar input available to fuel melting.

[Frankd 1977]

Looking back at the Cryosphere Today SIA measurements for this year, we've not seen the "freeze backs" as Neven calls them that we have in the past few years (by now we would have normally seen 3-6 averaging 28K). In the last few years from the end of July to SIA minimum:
2011 saw 12, averaging -34K, totaling -408K.
2010 saw 10, averaging -29K, totaling -297K.
2009 saw 10, averaging -38K, totaling -382K.
2008 saw 10, averaging -20K, totaling -203K.
2007 saw 10, averaging -40K, totaling -401K.

2012 has seen only 2 of them, -13,267 & -252
which is about half that of the past 5 years.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why we are not seeing the usual late season SIA "freeze back"? Was it the great arctic cyclone? Sea ice being just too thin? Modifications to the satellite or how they crunch the data?

[Chapman]

Frankd 1977,

In most of these cases, there's really not much freezing going on in these "freeze backs". Instead, the freeze back day is showing the more accurate representation of the situation on the ground.

Periodically, a storm system with optically thick clouds will pass over the sea ice. The microwave sensor is not as good at seeing through these clouds as the more typical thinner clouds. The effect of these cloudy events is to reduce the concentrations under them by 5-15% as they pass by. When the clouds move out of the domain or clear up, the sensors get a more accurate picture of the underlying ice.

My guess is that cloudiness has not varied as much this year as in recent years.

[Bellemisc]

Although the annual minimum SIA and SIE are significant as canaries in the coal mine for climate change, as an energy engineer I am now on a quest see the differences, year to year, in annual solar energy absorbed. To that end, as a rough cut starting point I took annual solar gain data for Barrow AK for a horizontal surface (what you would measure on the roof of a building, clouds, sun, all weather), and created a daily gain profile for a year. I took NSIDC data for northern hemisphere: what they estimate for ice I gave an albedo of 0.6; open ocean is 16.2 million km2 minus what they estimate for ice and I assigned an albedo of 0.05. Then I sum solar gain each day for ice and ocean, and total for the year. The important part is that 42% of annual solar gains in Barrow occur by the end of May. It is more significant to have 1 million km2 of open water rather than ice throughout May than in September, because the solar gains are about 4 times greater. September ocean may look awesome, but having Barents sea, Baffin Bay and Hudson bay melting out early are a big component of extra annual energy gain to the Northern Hemisphere from the sun (I think in my simple model). Results: using 1990 through 1999 as a baseline set at 100%, I see that 2011 is the biggest gain year, with solar absorbed 7.5% above baseline, with 2007 second at 7.2% above baseline. That, over 16.2 million km2 is a lot of solar energy gain. The non-linear trend from 2000 is launched upward to 6% for the decade, looking like an s curve. 1995 was an outlier in the baseline at 103%, while 1992 was a cool 98%. Next I'd like to get solar gain data specific to each major sea.

[Bellemisc]

Oh, and 2012 is running about 1% lower than 2011, probably because of the early year high ice extent.

[Frankd 1977]

Thank you Chapman for your reply. I didn't know that dense clouds were partially opaque to the microwave sensors.

[Artful Dodger]

Neven, pardon. Was it over at Eli Rabbit's?

[Eli Rabett]

Bellemisc it really depends on how dirty and chopped up the ice is.

[TenneyNaumer]

@dingojoe

That ice shelf comes and goes. Once upon a time it was very thick and took a long time to break off. Naturally, while it is there it will buttress those two glaciers. In 2010 and 2011, I seem to recall it being absent for most of the melt season, and I was surprised to see it hang around this year for so long, then break off, then reform and now break off again. And this in spite of all the incredible melting going on on the surface of the edge of the ice sheet.

The most recent cyclonic storm appears to have yanked it off this time round.

[Chris Alemany]

Never, I just wanted to give you a quick thank you for the link to the MODIS imagery which is exactly what I was searching for.

http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/imagery/realtime.cgi
Cheers
Chris

[Neven]

Neven, pardon. Was it over at Eli Rabbit's?

Could be, Lodger. I forget what I write within 48 hours. ;-)

What I said at Eli's was last week, so that doesn't really count as a prediction.

[Rob Dekker]

Paul, Peter,
When there is a significant difference between two data sets, both resulting from different systems, trying to find the cause is often worse than figuring finding out why your laptop locks up every two days, while your desktop does not.

But since you guys are still going at is, can I make a suggestion ?

Paul, I don't envy you. Even if there is a system problem with that date fed to the Masie algorithm, what you are essentially trying to do is reverse-engineer a defect in a complex system. That's very hard to do. Even if you got the main problem correct, the system response to the data that follows could behave slightly different depending on the different sensor inputs and system resolution.

But if your hypothesis is correct, and the difference in data sets is (mostly) as simple as a delay in Masie data set versus Bremen, then why don't you collect the Masie and Bremen data, and put them both in the same SIE graph and present it, and check which delay shows the best correlation, and how high that correlation really is. At least that would put some mathematical muscle to the 'delayed data input' assertion.

Peter, it's nice of you to propose an alternative hypothesis : different sensors picking up different ice melt stages, which may explain the 5-12 day difference. However, it is not so nice to shrug off Paul's hypothesis and skeptical analysis with unsubstantiated assertions like "scientists are too stupid to count to 30" and "rather than tunnel-visioning your pet theory" and other unscientific remarks.

All that Paul is trying to do is explain the difference between Masie and other data sets. And that we are (should) all be interested in.

[Neven]

Bellemisc, that sounds interesting. If you ever gather all that data and make a summary out of it, let me know. A post on insolation (which is a complex subject) would be interesting and useful next year.

Chris, you're welcome.

[Rob Dekker]

Sorry Neven. Pevious post is mis-placed (should go to dominoes-1 thread).
What I wanted to post here is this :

I don't know about you guys, but I for one am a bit blown away.

What the heck is going on in the Arctic ?

We had that nice record cold winter in the West Arctic, which made headlines in MSM and skeptic blogs alike.
Even basic physics suggested that the ice in the West was significantly thicker than at any time during the past 3 decades.
We had this incredible reduction in the East, with ice-free ocean up to 82.5 deg North of Svalbard all through winter.
This to me suggested (back in May) that maybe the North Pole would become ice free this summer, but because the West Arctic had a really cold winter, we would probably not see a 'record' ice extent reduction.

Now all of that turned out to be incorrect.

We DO see record ice extent reduction, especially driven from the West, and we will NOT see an ice free North Pole this melting season.
In fact, ice seems to be almost perfectly centered around the Pole, and extent did not reduce much North of Svalbard since the dead of winter.

Why ?

[Seke Rob]

If you picture the Arctic ocean as a whirlpool, you'll have a pretty good idea where anything floating on top will 'gravitate' to. Wonder if one makes or has a GRACE analysis of the Arctic surface elevation, what the ocean profile will look like. Higher or lower at the earth's axis point?

http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/04/13/giant-ocean-whirlpools-puzzle-scientists/

[anthropocene]

Hi Rob,

Also struck me this morning how the ice is centred on the NP stretching out to on average of 80 degrees south. One explanation is that the way in which the ice melts has changed: Instead of a solid ice-pack which melts in-situ it is now a slush puppy which gets moved about by wind and water. Melting IS happening North of Svalbard it's just that the ice is being constantly replenished. If you like north of svalbard is the new Fram Strait.
Next year it may be cold over svalbard and warm over the other side. Likely that in late summer the ice will again be centred over the NP.

What's wrong with the above is if the ice was a slush puppy I would expect the buoys to move more than they have.It looks like buoys 4 and 6 are hardly moving...

[Espen Olsen]

IJIS: 4481719

[Sheridanmayo]

Looks like DMI extent (30%) has passed its previous minimum at least from eyeballing the graph - I don't know where the underlying data can be found to check though.

[Seke Rob]

For one, there's little doubt in my mind there a substantial temperature gradient profile [the insolation angle], but looking at the drift map [update 8.15.2012] http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/DriftTrackMap.html things have moved in 4 months almost straight line by 6 degrees for Barneo to that big funnel point between Svalbard and Greenland. Can't think of that being a trade wind of sorts pushing. There's the DWF in part to add drawing. Buoy 98984 is too far off, so give it time and it's likely doing a full Arctic tour (20 years was proposed for the ACBC), but that one is well below surface I'd think. Buoy 98985 has moved almost in place of the Barneo origin, which creates a total picture of the whole mass moving substantially in unison over the 90N. EUMETNET is the most interesting of the lot. The vertical [too KISS it] will be the prior to April period, and then it joined the melt season profile, if it is the melt season profile.

[Seke Rob]

Re Sheridanmayo | August 21, 2012 at 11:20

Not publicly available, but our Mr. Hamilton has access and makes charts off them which show in the ASI Daily Graph pages.

[Werther]

What complicates extent/area assessment this year against FI ’07 is the spread/fragmentation.
On MODIS, it is clear that there still is ice even in Beaufort (W of Banks), Chukchi and ESAS Seas. The outer limit of spread is still over 5 Mkm2. Almost 1 Mkm2 has a very low concentration, illustrated by Healy.
I know that ship is cruising the same area just 150 km WNW of Barrow. But it gives a good idea of what the state of the UB ice free area is.

I agree with some entries that a rapid refreeze/ stalling may be possible soon. After all, the area with less than -1,5 dC is still large. All that rotten ice can serve as a sort of catalyst through the refreeze.

Against stalling stands the fragmentation/mobility.
And what I see as micro-mesoscale upwelling of warmer/more saline water. Make that Ekman-pumping when there are cyclones at work; it’s comparable.

Why the large melt in the W Arctic? I have been suggesting influx of warmer Atlantic waters since september last year. Lodger presented a map on a ‘new’ Arctic sea current yesterday. That ilustrates nicely the lagging spread of that warm influx through the Arctic Ocean.
It initiated around Greenland fall 2010, appeared around the Kara region a year later. All through last winter and spring it has made it’s way even up to the Beaufort Sea. On the way, it inhibited the ice to grow at it’s base.
The process was illustrated by measurements in the Laptev last may, where lots of ice was not even 50 cm thick.

I’m aware that insolation over larger open seas is another important factor. As loss of albedo on the remaining floes.

On the Atlantic side: I agree with the vision that melt is happening there, extensively. But it is constantly replenished because the ice is so mobile. Even so, the ice boundary is where the high concentration ice was last year.

Through all confusing methods and weather events one thing is clear: volume is terribly low. I wonder what PIOMAS will produce soon.
The Pole may be hard to reach by warmth. But look at the period that DMI temp over 80 dN is at/over freezing: it’s almost three months now. The upper sea layer is holding the temps near zero. But deeper down and higher up warmth is at work.

[Espen Olsen]

CT at 2.844 and anomaly at -2.268

[Artful Dodger]

CT SI data 2012.6329 is out: (08/19/12)
SIA: 2.844 M km^2
Anomaly: -2.268 M km^2
CAP2E (18-19 Aug) = 61.11%
Insolation @ 78N: 50.81% of Jun 20 value
Solargain: 77.72% of Jun 20.

[k eotw]

Quick number comparison.

227K: The amount of decline needed for JAXA to reach a new record low.

200K: The amount of decline in JAXA in the last 2 days.

[Neven]

DMI domino has fallen. Will report on it tomorrow.

[L. Hamilton]

With a drop of -85k for Aug 20, DMI 30% reached a new minimum (3.03m km^2) for that series.

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

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_DMI_this_date2.png

[Seke Rob]

Must be the scaling that makes it appear tied on the web graph ;o), still, between 2011 and 2012, but -85K is -85K.

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/MASIE_JAXA_DMI.png

Neven's Law: Eventually we'll run out of dominoes!

[Apocalypse4Real]

BBC is pickng up the Arctic Ice minimum story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19330307

[Seke Rob]

NSIDC is very close to topple:

2007 needs -174,191
2011 needs -32,821

Hope you can see it: http://bit.ly/NSARMn (this time Ctrl-F5 worked... maybe it was just a hitch at the image host mirror servers, or failure of storage "in the cloud")

[crandles]

>"NSIDC is very close to topple:

2007 needs -174,191
2011 needs -32,821"

Why am I calculating different numbers
145k and 287K? Difference is the same so have you got a later update than 4.447 for 19th Aug?

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

New MODIS composite image out!

[Seke Rob]

Re crandles | August 21, 2012 at 17:01

The posted chart says the standing is now 4.33M ;>). Yes, the noted Ctr-F5 also applies to the data files if opened in the browser [if not done, getting here yesterdays, unless I've exited the browser for the night, which clears cookie/page/image cache]

2012-08-19 2012 8 19 4447380 0 232
2012-08-20 2012 8 20 4334890 0 233

[dingojoe]

Tenney,

Thanks for he reply but the area I'm talking about is still there and quite fast. There is a triangular island with 79N running along the north side of the island. Zachariae runs along the SW side. Yesterday's Modis

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c03.2012233.terra.250m

clearly shows that the calving edge of Zachariae goes all the way to the southern tip of the island. The area I'm interested in is on the SE part of the island. Was that once part of Zachariae and now just orphaned or was that feature something completely different?

[Klon Jay]

Ice is looking weaker pretty close to the pole today on 2 sides.
http://www.arctic.io/observations/8/2012-08-21/7-N89.994303-E122.197549

[Seke Rob]

MASIE Updated with another neck-breaking century, which puts the week at nearly a million km square decline:

dd-mmm-yy km^2now change
14-Aug-2012 5984255 21031
15-Aug-2012 5786062 -198193
16-Aug-2012 5769007 -17055
17-Aug-2012 5749069 -19938
18-Aug-2012 5413683 -335386
19-Aug-2012 5161003 -252680
20-Aug-2012 5017962 -143041

7 Day Change -945262,71
7 Day Avg -135037,53

Same day last year compared they're now 514,660 km^2 below 2011.

http://bit.ly/MASIEA

[Twemoran]

dingojoe

If you look back to 2010 you can see the connection. By the end of the season in 2011 the two were just touching, and this year the separation is obvious.

Terry

[Chris Reynolds]

A4R,

Thanks, it' also on BBC TV red button under 'Science and Environment'.

The BBC has a 'flagship' science programme called Horizon - when are the editors there going to pick up on this?

It'll be interesting to see how widely this story spreads - but I think we'll have to be patient until the previous records are broken.

[Espen Olsen]

Terry,

When is the next spring tide in the area? It it will probably of the last of the fast ice remains!

[Espen Olsen]

Petermann,

P II 2012, will be hammering into Hans Ø in a couple of days!

[Twemoran]

Espen

Spring tide is now.

It seems as though fast ice starts breaking from the shore within a day or so of a spring tide, although it may take another few days before the results are evident.

We've had the ice off Princess Margareth go, and I'll be watching to see if the grounded ice on Belgica Bank makes a break for freedom.

The remnants of the Hunt-Ward ice shelf could also decide to set sail.

We may have a few more spring tides this year as they occur about every 14 days.

Terry

[Espen Olsen]

Terry,

I speak with some guys who have actually been in the area, one of them even on Tobias Ø, and they told me a lot of details of the area, first of all the area is very shallow at some points even a distance from the shore, and a few ridges are hidden just below sea level, the reason why the "Belgian Ice Island" is stuck there!

[TenneyNaumer]

@ dingojoe

This particular glacier has a sort of stopper placed in front of it each winter in the form of the land fast ice shelf that grows there. During the winter, the piece attached to the triangular island is connected to the floating tongue. As the shelf breaks up in the summer, it becomes disconnected.

The shelf has been breaking up a lot earlier in recent years.

You can see the effect on the velocity graph here (Houghton, 2010):

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Figure7.png

[Twemoran]

Espen

You're fortunate in deed!

I've seen the BIE rotating clockwise within the last week - thanks to arctic.io's new zoom feature - Very small movements, but moving something I'd considered locked (frozen:) in place.

I do pay more attention to spring tide periods - probably why I missed PII2012 - and the late melt period is when things are most likely to meander off.

This stuff seems to move at a glacial pace, which makes it that much more interesting when something does happen.

Terry

[Neven]

CT SIA Arctic Basin has also hit a record low.

[dabize]

Hi Neven,

Just e-mailed you this week's EC movie.

[David Einstein]

@anthropocene I'm not sure where you are looking at Buoys 4 and 6, but buoys 100004 and 100006 stopped updating on the http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily.html page sometime around the end of June (June 26 IIRC) I think that these are the only buoyus on that page where the data stopped.

Buoy 100006 is in a cluster of buoys and the other buoys in that cluster are still moving (slowly, but detectably.) This leads me to believe that there is a glitch in the data connection. I also believe that these are identical buoys to OBuoys #4 and #6 http://obuoy.datatransport.org/monitor#overview/gpstracks . I further conjecture that the data stopped changing on the iabp page where the breaks in the tracks of the buoys occurred (this is difficult to verify directly, as the raw data does not seem to be accessible on the Obuoy page.

[idunno]

Sorry all, the following animation is off-topic and from several months ago...

http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/video/2011/old-ice-becoming-rare-in-arctic

[skywatcher]

Hi Neven, Just want to compliment you on the brilliant job you've done with this site. I've visited for ages but never set up a Typepad account to comment. Have done so now, so can comment from time to time! The comments here are of a remarkably high standard, and a gloriously low quantity of trolls too.

[LRC]

Slightly OT. UPI has done a short bit on record ice extent (any news from them seems to be very brief in any case). My thinking on this is that most news agencies want to ignore it because there are still a very high percentage of street people how have bought the story that this GW is just a nature occurrence and 10 yrs from now we will all be talking about how cold it is. Remember all those smokers who bought the story the smoking was a benign activity?

[LRC]

BTW my laugh of the day goes to.....http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/this-is-what-global-warming-looks-like-4/
Does this mean the new ice age is around the corner? "howls".
I a may just recover from laughing long enough to sleep. But on a more serious note. I actually do wish he was right then I would note worry as much about how much our children/grand children are going to be paying to fix the catastrophe we are handing to them.

[FrankD]

I found it interesting to compare dingojoe's link to the same image from 2009.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c03.2012233.terra.250m

Although the two parts are joined, you can see a seam between them, running down and a bit left (say 285 degrees on the image) from the second most southerly headland. Zachariae's calving front is still attached to that point, but has receded somewhat in the middle part. The other part - fast ice or orphan, I'm not sure - is also receding from the rear (the side nearest Zachariae).

2010 (as an internediate) is cloudy on day 233, but clear on day 230.

[FrankD]

Bah, fat fingers - that link should be http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c03.2009227.terra.250m

A few days earlier, but as near as I counld find.

[dingojoe]

I did find this on Zachariae from 2008, showing it's retreat in the Modis era (since 2002)

http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/?p=32

[Espen Olsen]

Dinjojoe,

I believe the separation happened sometime this season and within the last 30 days!

[Espen Olsen]

Dinjojoe,

To be more precise around August 14 2012.

[Kris]

Can't be classefied as a record but nevertheless breaking news:

- Severnaya Zemlya (Noordland) now has been completely detached from the ice shelf.
And look at the bow formed around it's North-Eastern shore, the Bolshevik and October Revolution islands. This must be due to a mix of bottom melting and a warmer water current.

- The Kara sea completely free of ice now.

[Espen Olsen]

Kris,

No it is not according to others, in those waters you can always find pot holes with some ice stucked: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c05.2012235.aquahttp://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c05.2012235.aqua">http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c05.2012235.aqua">http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c05.2012235.aquahttp://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c05.2012235.aqua

[Neven]

Holy crap, CT does a century break: 2.742 million square km now.

[idunno]

Hi all,

Does it help to flip it on its head?

Here are some vague approximations of how much ice should be in each of the basins which are adjacent to the Central Arctic, at maximum.

Second column shows how much ice now remains.
Full Now
Greenland 550 120
Barentz 700 20
Kara 850 30
Laptev 700 30
East Siberian 900 30
Chuckchi 600 30
Beaufort 500 0
CA 600 130
Baffin 1100 0
Central 4200 2250

Total 10600 2640

(If the figures don't quite match the official ones, its 'cos I can't see straight.)

Anyway, very approximately, we now have 8,000 km squared of seawater in or around the Central Arctic.

This is anomalously high - as of today, there is 2,359 (CT anomaly) MORE seawater than usual. 8,000 - 2,359 = 5,641. There should only be 5,641 km squared of seawater, but there are about 8,000 km squared.

So, going back to approximations, that's about 50% more seawater.

I suspect that this might be quite a relevant figure. As the influence of the sun declines, the next few weeks are going to be story of the thermodynamic interaction of sea ice and seawater.

The dynamic partner in this dance of death is not the sea ice, but the seawater.

I find myself perilously close to delivering a minilecture on thermodynamics, a subject on which my ignorance is near total.

So, I have some serious work to further revise "the fat arse conjecture" with my new "big pimple hypothesis", which I'd better get on with.

To sum up - it's not just a case of 50% sea ice. It's 50% ice interacting with 150% seawater.

I don't know if anybody here can develop this further. I know I can't.

"I always pass on good advice. It's never of the slightest use to oneself." Oscar.

[idunno]

Yikes! Typepad has retabulated the columns in the post above.

Line one should read:

Greenland 500 {lots of space} 120

etc.

[Artful Dodger]

CT SIA Area continues to tumble:

2012.6438  -2.4064679   2.6525486   5.0590162

2.65 M km^2 SIA now, anomaly is -2.41
Drop over previous day was -98 K km^2

CAP2E is now 62.28%
Solargain @ 78N is now 66.76% of Jun 20 value

[Artful Dodger]

Eyeballing the CT Region 1 graph, Central Arctic Basin SIA is now below 2.30 M km^2.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.jpg

Ka-rumphf.

[Jim Williams]

Given the current CT SIA some people may wish to change their votes for min area. (I won't have to, unless a new range is added.)

I don't think the total area's going below 2M, but I bet there'll be a lot more bottom melt this year than most expect. I think the min will be quite late, possibly even record late.

[crandles]

Central Arctic Basin SIA looks like about 2.125 to me.

[Seke Rob]

My numbers now work towards 2.36M km square bottom out for CT-SIA [another .29 to go] but history is FTM it seems no reference anymore.

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/CT_SIA_Annual_MinimaProj.png

AR5 will be rewritten substantially before it goes to print, else they really will look to be standing with their pants down... Don't You Ever Learn? [Todd Rundgren] will bellow from the speakers :(]

[Artful Dodger]

crandles wrote: "Central Arctic Basin SIA looks like about 2.125 to me."

So it is! Thanks, Chris.

[idunno]

Eyeballing the CT Region 1 graph, from Dodger's post at 13.45, it looks like there is some danger that we shortly won't be able to read the anomaly figure, as it will disappear off the bottom of the page.

Finally, this might give WUWT something to talk about. It's a clear attempt to "hide the decline".

[Timothy Chase]

No doubt its just tentative, but for day 235 of this year we have 2.65255 million km^2 and for day 251 of 1980 we have a minima 5.50771. So if today were the minima for the year, at this point it would be only 48.16% of the minima in 1980.

Please see:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html

You can get all the numbers by "view source."

[Artful Dodger]

CT SIA up by 75k today:

2012.6438 -2.4064679 2.6525486 5.0590162
2012.6466 -2.3111002 2.7270751 5.0381756

CAP1E now sits at 63.90%
Solargain @ 78N is now 62.33%
(normalized to 100% @ Summer Solstice).

[Account Deleted]

your cover letter must be simple and clean designing's.

Designing Job Cover Letters:http://coverlettersamples.net/category/designing-job-cover-letters

[Bob Wallace]

Area up - center of the pack starting to skim over?