Nares Strait ice on the move

The fast ice in Nares Strait is finally giving way, relatively late again compared to recent years, after staying open over winter for a relatively long time as well. In the period the ice arch finally formed, it even got pushed back and forth a bit, probably making it stronger. But now it's failing, enabling multi-year ice floes to be transported from the Central Arctic Basin to Baffin Bay.

Commenter oren posted the following animation of LANCE-MODIS satellite images on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum to show how the arch has been breaking up in the last couple of days, which is always impressive and fun to watch:

There's an added angle to the Nares Strait story this year, with professor in oceanography Andreas Muenchow and a bunch of other scientists going into Nares Strait and as far as Petermann Glacier to make all kinds of measurements. Will the strait clear enough and fast enough so that Swedish icebreaker Oden can take them there?

Andreas explains on his Icy Seas blog:

Oceanography of Nares Strait Ice Flushing

I need the ice out of Nares Strait, a 20 mile wide and 300 miles long pathway to the North Pole between northern Canada and Greenland. The ice blocks our way to Petermann Fjord where a large glacier pushes thick ice out so sea as a floating ice shelf. We plan to drill through the floating section of the glacier that is about as thick as the Empire State Building is high. The ship to get us there is the Swedish icebreaker Oden. She is passing the Faroe Islands to the north-west of Scotland and will arrive in 2 weeks at Thule Air Force Base where we will meet her.

Image of northern Greenland (top right) and Ellesmere Island (center) showing open water as black, land as gray, and sea ice as gray/white. The two red dots are Thule Air Force Base in the south and Petermann Glacier in the north. Note the bands of black water along the coast of Ellesmere Island that result from east to west blowing winds that move ice offshore and reduce the southward flow in Nares Strait.

The voyage from Thule to Petermann usually takes about 2-3 days, but if the sea ice does not flush out with the generally southward currents, then it may take a week or two wrecking havoc to our busy science schedule. So, why is the ice still lingering in Nares Strait this year?

Read the rest here.

Comments

[Colorado Bob]

More Rain Events Speed Melt on Greenland Ice Sheet
July 13, 2015
with Peter Sinclair

New paper in Nature Geoscience, Jason Box and Alun Hubbard are co-authors.
Above, I got a quick rundown from Dr. Box, a few days ago, via (sorry) herky-jerky skype from Northern Iceland.

While on the ice for Dark Snow 2014, we experienced a 30 hour precip event that featured high wind and horizontal driving rain. Afterward, ablation stakes on-site indicated that a very large amount of surface melting had taken place during the previous day and a half.
The new study finds that increased incidences of rain on the Greenland sheet may indeed be a contributing factor to more mass loss, by sending large volumes of warm water deep into the ice, now and even more so as the arctic continues to warm.

http://climatecrocks.com/2015/07/13/more-rain-events-speed-melt-on-greenland-ice-sheet/

[Colorado Bob]

What Box says about warm rain also applies to altitude as well -

The Hindu Kush Before and After the Great Pakistani Floods

I saw this image from the Swat Valley in August, and I was stunned . Not for what is in the foreground, I was in the Big Thompson Flood in 1976. I know what happens when it rains like hell in the mountains. What struck me are those mountains in the background. That is the Hindu Kush . These two pictures were shot in the last week of July (left), and from the same spot 3 weeks later. Look at all that missing snow.

Link

[Tanada1945]

Colorado I have long argued with certain people who insist it will take a Millennium for Greenland to melt if it ever does. All it would actually take is for a warm wet Atlantic hurricane to dump torrential rains on it every year or so. The speed with which even 5 C rain can erode ice is simply astonishing. Drop a meter of 5C rain on the GIS every summer around August 1 and the effects would stun anyone who has not spent much time thinking about it. It is not just surface melt either, the large volume of rain would create scores it not hundreds of fresh Moulins that would bore through the sheet raising the internal temperature softening the ice while at the same time the base pressure would lift the sheet allowing it to flow much faster for a week or two.