Meanwhile, on the other side

Neven

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« Beaufort quick update | Main | Cryosat-2 confirms: sea ice volume is low »

Meanwhile, on the other side

Lately the focus has been on the Beaufort Sea where a high-pressure area has caused the ice pack to crack on a massive scale, even earlier than in previous years, with ice being transported away from the North American coast (see here). But such a large and persistent high-pressure system is bound to have an impact elsewhere in the Arctic as well, so here's an overview of what's been happening on the Atlantic side of the Arctic (and a bit of Siberia as well).

As we saw in the recent 2015/2016 Winter analysis blog post, the Arctic experienced an incredibly warm/non-cold winter:

On top of that, a string of cyclones crossed the Atlantic and veered off to the Arctic, causing increased ocean heat flux on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, which explains why the Barentsz Sea and Greenland Sea have been anomalously low in sea ice extent all winter. They're still extremely low:

In fact, Svalbard could almost be circumnavigated several times, with at one point very close to ice-free conditions from Svalbard all the way to Franz Josef Land.This graph from the PolarView website shows how anomalously low sea ice levels have been in the Svalbard region:

Svalbard was entirely ice-free to the North, South and West all winter long, a quite exceptional situation. But as you can see, in the past couple of weeks the trend line finally bends towardsthe 1 Std. Dev. zone. As this animation of Uni Bremen sea ice concentration maps shows, the ice edge has finally reached Svalbard in the past 10 days:

As said, this is caused by the Beaufort Gyre which has very much sprung into action thanks to that strong and persistent high-pressure area over the Beaufort Sea. This wind-driven ocean current causes the ice pack to move in a clockwise direction, towards the Atlantic:

What's 'funny', is that it took quite a long time for the ice edge to reach Svalbard. Sure, there's some initial inertia to be overcome, but it has been almost two weeks since that 1030-1040 hPa high-pressure giant started pushing things about, and sea ice extent in the Greenland Sea still hasn't budged. This is evidence of warm waters having been pushed northwards into the Arctic by the warm West Spitsbergen Current, spurred on by those cyclones mentioned earlier.

Over on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum, commenter Andreas T looked into the details - using NASA Worldview - and noticed that ice floes actually disintegrate and melt out the further they travel towards the Atlantic (the land to the right is Svalbard):

So that explains that.

What can we expect for the coming week, you may wonder? Well, here's the GFS temperature anomaly forecast, as provided by Climate Reanalyzer (the ASIG Forecasts page offers a great overview):

Not only are Western Greenland and Baffin Bay going to experience another early 'heat wave' (see last week's blog post), but check out those 10-20 °C temperature anomalies over Siberia! This doesn't bode well for the snow cover there at all, which is already being hit hard and disappearing fast these past few days, as this animation of US NIC snow cover maps for Eurasia shows:

Rutgers Global Snow Lab shows the anomaly (red):

It's still early days in the Arctic, but there's already a lot going on, on all sides of the Arctic. The ice pack is cracking on a large scale and on the move, polynyas are forming off the North American coasts (barely freezing over), the Greenland Ice Sheet has already started to melt, ice floes moving through Fram Strait are getting wiped out, snow cover is melting really fast both in North America and Eurasia, sea ice volume was presumed second lowest on record at the end of March, sea ice extent and area have been lowest for weeks now and will stay so for a while to come.

This isn't boding well for the coming melting season at all. Let's hope things improve soon...

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Short announcements:

I'll be going to the EGU General Assembly 2016 tomorrow. Will report how it was next week.

The NSIDC reports that the problem with the SSMI/S sensor aboard the DMSP F17 satellite may have been resolved! Hurray!

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Edit April 22th: Alas, it seems I hurrayed prematurely. I talked to Julienne Stroeve at the EGU General Assembly yesterday, and she told me that the problem is caused by a solar panel that was moved to shade a nitrogen tank on the satellite. They moved it again, and this had seemed to have solved the problem. But unfortunately data glitches returned, so now they're not sure if it can be fixed. Switching to the SSMI/S sensor on F18 takes a lot of time and work.

The real question is: What happens next time a sensor stops reporting accurately? The passive microwave data set based on the SSMI/S sensor is long and continuous. It'd be a real shame if it stopped, if only because we need data diversity.

Posted by Neven on April 21, 2016 at 00:45 in Air temperature, Animation, Atmospheric pressure, Barentsz/Kara, Fram Strait, Greenland ice sheet, Greenland Sea, Ice extent and area, Ocean heat flux, Snow, Svalbard, Weather forecast | Permalink

Comments

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Also, according to Climate Reanalyzer, from Friday to Wednesday, there is going to be above 0 ºC Kara, Laptev and even Arctic Basin (not all at the same time but big areas). Seems to me that it is to early for having that heatat the ASI.

Posted by: Protege Cuajimalpa | April 21, 2016 at 01:41

Hi Neven,
this is off topic for the thread so feel free to delete it but I thought I would draw your attention to this article about a prediction by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)

Posted by: Philip | April 21, 2016 at 18:18

sorry I clicked post before I posted the link. silly me.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3551520/Arctic-sea-ice-reach-record-lows-summer-Blankets-cover-set-shrink-warmer-weather.html

Posted by: Philip | April 21, 2016 at 18:19

and now my original comment has disappeared.
the link is to an article about a prediction by the Alfred Wegener Institute saying that it is likely that we will have a new record low this year having studied the current state of the ice.
wanted to draw your attention to this Neven feel free to delete as it is off topic for the thread.

Posted by: Philip | April 21, 2016 at 18:25

Nice work by Andreas T!

I posted some enhanced animations of ice melting into the warm ocean current west of Svalbard along with various simultaneous resources from nullschool such as a sea surface temperature anomaly animation with sensitized palette.

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1504.msg74474.html#msg74474

Posted by: A-Team | April 21, 2016 at 20:15

Most of the heat trapped by AGW goes into the oceans. In the past, that heat was carried north in the North Atlantic drift, and the heat radiated off through the very dry Arctic Atmosphere. The momentum of the North Atlantic drift, acting on the sea ice in the Greenland Sea, helped keep the sea ice across the Arctic, compressed with pressure ridges for mechanical strength. Under compression, the ice was more likely to overlap to become thicker, and stronger than to thin, spread out, and become weaker. Loss of the Greenland Sea ice, meant there was nothing for the North Atlantic Drift to push against, and contributed to the thinning and mechanical weakening of sea ice across the Arctic.

And, with more water vapor in the atmosphere, heat from the North Atlantic Drift is more likely to go to warming existing ice, than be radiated into space.

The 2007 Greenland Sea melt event was a precondition for the the Beaufort Gyre cracks and holes. It was a "tipping point". That is the BG defects could not exist when there was pressure from the North Atlantic Drift compacting Arctic sea ice.

These days, the extra heat in the North Atlantic Drift and increased level of greenhouse gases in the Arctic result in the melting of sea ice, rather than the extending and compressing of sea ice.

While the Arctic has gone from year-round sea ice to ice free (or vice-versa) many times before, it has never before done it in a single human lifetime. In some ways, it is the difference between a mule and a jet plane.

It is neat to see grand geology unfold in a single lifetime.

Posted by: Aaron Lewis | April 21, 2016 at 21:36

and now my original comment has disappeared.

Thanks for letting me know. I've released your comment from the spam bucket.

And other comments as well. Not many comments end up in the spam bucket nowadays, but some occasionally do. I don't get notified of this, and it's a bit of a drag for me to check.

So, please let me know (through mail or here) that a comment is stuck, and I'll release it.

the link is to an article about a prediction by the Alfred Wegener Institute saying that it is likely that we will have a new record low this year having studied the current state of the ice. wanted to draw your attention to this Neven feel free to delete as it is off topic for the thread.

I was at that very same press conference today! I was astounded, as usually these press conferences are about what happened last year, but this was actually about the past winter and how things aren't looking good at the moment (at the same time not implying that a new record low minimum is a done deal).

I'll have more on this too in days to come. Lots of interesting info at EGU this year.

Posted by: Neven | April 21, 2016 at 22:12

New maps chart Greenland glaciers' melting risk

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; and other research institutions combined all observations their various groups had made during shipboard surveys of the seafloors in the Uummannaq and Vaigat fjords in west Greenland between 2007 and 2014 with related data from NASA's Operation Icebridge and the NASA/U.S. Geological Survey Landsat satellites. They used the combined data to generate comprehensive maps of the ocean floor around 14 Greenland glaciers. Their findings show that previous estimates of ocean depth in this area were as much as several thousand feet too shallow.

Why does this matter? Because glaciers that flow into the ocean melt not only from above, as they are warmed by sun and air, but from below, as they are warmed by water.