PIOMAS July 2019

Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center:

To quote Céline Dijon*: This is getting serious.

With a total drop of 7066 km3 for June 2019, this was only the second time - after 2012 - that the 7000 km3-mark had been breached. It was just enough to squeeze past 2017 and take the lead in the rankings, while leaving all other years - except for 2012 - in the dust. For instance, the difference with 2008 has grown to 5395 km3, which amounts to a decrease of 30% in just a little over 10 years. The difference with 2016 (member of the 'second lowest minimum' triumvirate, together with 2007 and 2011) went from 208 to 1384 km3. But 2012 is now hot on 2019's tail, only 248 km3 behind, while 2017 is still second with just 108 km3 more volume than 2019 (the difference was 2460 km3 in 2017's favour at the end of January).

Here's how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month:

Wipneus' version of the PIOMAS graph clearly shows how 2019 (red line) and 2012 (purple line) have started to move away from the other trend lines:

The anomaly trend line on the PIOMAS volume anomaly graph has continued to drop like a rock. It will be interesting to see if it can escape the grey bands of standard deviation:

There's also a continuation on the PIJAMAS front. Remember, PIJAMAS is an (imperfect) average thickness measure where we divide the PIOMAS volume numbers with JAXA sea ice extent numbers. As I noted last month, when extent drops steadily, but volume goes down faster, average thickness will decrease faster as well. 2019 continued to drop steadily during June and is now lowest on most charts even, but PIOMAS says volume dropped even faster, and so average thickness shows a massive decrease, even exceeding 2012: And this is corroborated by the Polar Science Centre average thickness graph:

If you want to know what this means or how it came about, I can highly recommend reading last week's blog post: June 2019, one hell of a month

The differences in thickness distribution with 2012 make everything doubly interesting. Those red zones are where the ice is thicker now than in 2012, according to PIOMAS, and they are bound to melt out. But the same can be said about the blue zones, where 2012 was thicker than it is now. Here's a visual representation of the differences with 2011 and 2012, that had the two lowest PIOMAS sea ice volume September minimums on record (hat-tip to Wippert):

I might be wrong, but I think that what we have seen at play during the second half of June, are the first signs of melting momentum making itself felt. I might be even more wrong, but I'm convinced that 2019 is assured of a top 3 spot when it hits the minimum in September, no matter what the weather does.

In fact, the only question on my mind right now, is: Can 2019 beat 2012? No, wait, I know it can. Allow me to rephrase. The only question on my mind right now, is: Will 2019 beat 2012?

Baby, this is serious.

-----

* I know it's Céline Dion, but I like to call her Dijon (as in mustard).

Comments

[Neven]

Please note, when you click that last link, the irony of a guy melting ice with a gas burner. ;-)

The more jokes I make, the more depressed I am.

[Tim]

And the first week of July has moved 2019 to the lowest (IJIS) extent ever for this date.

[EastTXAlarmist]

Keep this type of exposure up and Trump is going to censor your posts sir.

[Neven]

I'm not sure. I've heard Trump is a big Céline Dijon fan.

[Andy Lee Robinson]

Great analysis Neven, it certainly looks like a new record is possible this year.
I posted a tweet linking to this, please feel free to retweet to get some eyeballs here!

#Arctic Death Spiral - Jun 2019 average vol: 15,803 km³. Large drop in volume since previous month. Nearly half of what it was in 1979. June 30th shows new record low for date. "This is getting serious". Analysis: https://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2019/07/piomas-july-2019.html
https://twitter.com/ahaveland/status/1148594186851106817

[Rgatess]

As we compare 2012 and 2019 the conversation really ought to come down to the much beloved Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012. (I actually named this storm while it was still raging some of you may recall). While of course we all know the cyclone did not “cause” the record low that year, it did clearly push the already rotten and fractured ice to that record. I’m looking at the neck and neck foot race between to two years and seeing GAC 2012 as the difference maker right now. Early August will be the time to watch as we see essentially parallel declines until then.

[Glenn Doty]

But it isn't neck and neck.

I just looked at the daily data... If you compare the last 7 days of data available (as of this posting), you see the following:

2019, day 174, 13,890 km3
2019, day 181, 12,047 km3.
2019 7 day melt estimate: 1,843 km3

2012, day 174, 13,897 km3,
2012, day 181, 12,295 km3,
2012 7 day melt estimate: 1,602 km3.

2019 has seen a rate of ~34.4 km3/day faster melt-off than that seen in 2012 over the past week. That's not neck-and-neck... that's pacing 15% faster melt rate.

[AnotherJourneybyTrain]

The albedo graph(ic)s show it's not neck and neck either, with 2012 having a massive advantage in terms of rate-of-change-of-albedo: THAT IS SOMETHING THAT DEMANDS AN EXPLANATION if you/anyone of us want/s to entertain comparisons,... IMHO!

[AnotherJourneybyTrain]

Neven, on the forums SEPTEMBER CHALLENGES thread, is predicting an Artic Sea Ice Minimum of no less/(or less, lol) than second place for NSIDC... (I won't even venture to remind myself of what he, ..um.., ventured for JAXA!!!!!!!)

Why?

How much trouble is this world in and do we have the right to call it now?

[Tim]

Has someone hacked the Bremen ice sea ice site? I'm getting warnings that might indicate that has happened.

[Neven]

I'm not predicting, it's a gamble (albeit with a basis: melting momentum).

[wndchaser]

@ Rgatess...
Years ago I dubbed the phenomenon of the mechanical destruction of sea ice by storm winds as "The Belmont Lake Effect". Here's the post as a reminder to folks. Should we get another GAC this year, I suspect TBLE will come into play.

"The Origin of TBLE: It was a mid-spring day and the ice on Belmont Lake was rotten but still covering the entire lake save for plenty of room along the shoreline for a row boat. Dad wanted to go fishing in the worst way. Well, to make a long story short, the wind kicked up, started to push the ice around and within 20 minutes we witnessed 2 miles of 6" thick rotten ice get smashed to oblivion. It was literally all gone when it piled up on the far end of the lake. Obviously the Arctic is just a wee bit larger than a several hundred acre lake ... but the PROCESS has to be the same. Mechanical destruction & dispersal after a major weakening spells "doomed" in my estimation. Sure, the scale is different but both RC airplanes & jumbo jets fly because of the same principles. My 2¢ and I'm sticking to it."

It's getting serious for sure. Pass the mustard please. Thanks Neven for all you do. Back to lurking and learning.

[Sam]

Neven,

That looks like a pretty safe gamble. With the coming weather things may get exciting for ice watchers. NSIDC Sidads showing drops over the last few day, since July 5 of:

191k
159k
201k
247k

That is a stunning 798k in 4 days. The bottom is pretty much falling out of the ice numbers at the moment.

Sam

[Doc Snow]

JAXA gives 2019 a 'lead' of ~160k, as of 7/9. Wow!

[Robert S]

There's a part of me that is ready (and even hoping) for the kind of outcome that we may be seeing this year. It's looking pretty unequivocal, in terms of the impact of increased CO2 levels. But a ringside seat at the end of the world only gives you a better view...

[AnotherJourneybyTrain]

Sam, are you talking about a four day average of close to a double century drop?

[Sam]

Yes. Followed now by a century drop.

ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/N_seaice_extent_daily_v3.0.csv
‼️