The Arctic year started with the warmest January and February on record:
The mild winter led to one of the lowest maximums on record, lowest even on some graphs.
And then in April, just before the melting season started, things got exciting very early in the Beaufort Sea (animation shows March 30th to May 4th):
This caused a big, early lead on sea ice extent graphs such as JAXA's:
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of issues with data based on the SSMIS sensor aboard DMSP satellites, I mainly focus on higher-resolution AMSR2 data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as reported on the Arctic Data archive System website. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything of particular interest.
The animation on the right consists of NSIDC
sea ice concentration maps, one for each ASI update.
Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website (ASIG)
for daily updated graphs, maps, live webcam images, and
the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF) for detailed discussions.
September 10th 2016
It's that time of year when the melting season is drawing to a close and the Arctic sea ice pack is reaching its lowest size of the year, also known as the minimum.
This melting season was a strange one. After the mildest winter on record, a spectacular opening up of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas made trend lines on graphs go extremely low even before the melting season had properly started. But then clouds moved in during the period when the Sun is at its peak, and solar radiation causes melt ponds to form on the ice pack, building up so-called melting momentum.
June and July were really cloudy, as cloudy as in rebound years 2013 and 2014, but this time around atmospheric conditions weren't accompanied by low temperatures on the ground and in the water. The warm winter, early opening up of the ice pack and the rapid melting of land snow cover, caused another kind of momentum, one of heat, that kept the melting going throughout.
And then in August, a massive storm that kept on re-intensifying (or maybe they were two separate storms), followed by a Dipole with a massive pressure gradient, battered the ice pack. Again, as in 2012, we've witnessed the detachment of one large piece of ice from the main pack. And now the 2016 melting season has reached 2nd place on almost all extent and area graphs out there.
You read it right, a melting season that saw mostly cloudy conditions during the sunniest period of the year (June-July-August) has beaten the 2007 melting season which went astonishingly low after weeks of ceaseless sunshine and a massive Beaufort Gyre, continuously compacting the ice pack, well into September.
But it looks rather unlikely that the 2016 melting season will end that late. The past few weeks have promoted massive ice dispersal, with large zones of low concentration near the Pole, and so there's a lot of compaction potential. But for compaction to happen, winds need to blow towards Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, or else freezing temperatures start to dominate and all that open water within the ice pack and on its fringes starts to fill up with ice. The reverse is the case.
We can see that happen on this animation of Uni Bremen sea ice concentration maps of the past week:
The remnants of the now fully detached Wrangel Arm are still melting, compensating the ice growth elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure the minimum has been reached.
I will have a blog post with more images characterizing this melting season up later this week.
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of issues with data based on the SSMIS sensor aboard DMSP satellites, I mainly focus on higher-resolution AMSR2 data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as reported on the Arctic Data archive System website. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything of particular interest.
The animation on the right consists of NSIDC
sea ice concentration maps, one for each ASI update.
Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website (ASIG)
for daily updated graphs, maps, live webcam images, and
the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF) for detailed discussions.
August 26th 2016
A spectacular start to the melting season is being matched by a spectacular ending. And that's probably putting it mildly.
In the past 10 days we've witnessed a storm that comes close to equalling the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012 (see the three updates I've written: 1, 2 and 3) and even though cyclonic activity has now lessened, it is still there. Worse still, it is going to be joined by massive high pressure on the American side of the Arctic.
That means - you've guessed it - that the final stage of the melting season will be dominated by a so-called Dipole set-up, where the pressure gradient between the high over the Beaufort Sea and the low over the Siberian Seas is going to have a major impact on the final shape of the ice pack. Just when you thought you had seen it all, the Arctic throws another curve ball.
Although temperatures are now going down and the sun is too low to provide enough energy to melt the ice from the top, massive winds will keep moving the ice around and promote bottom melt. But more importantly, these atmospheric conditions are going to heavily compact the highly dispersed ice pack, and cause some extra transport of ice towards the North Atlantic that is running hotter than ever. It's like putting a plate of biscuits in front of the Cookie Monster (om nom nom).
Here's an animation of Uni Bremen sea ice concentration maps from the past week to show you the current state of Arctic sea ice:
Two questions pop up immediately: How much of the Wrangel Arm is going to survive this final onslaught? And how far will that wedge of open water, or 'bite' as we've called it during previous melting seasons, be pushed towards the pole? Further than the 86N we saw in 2014?
The rest of the update will be about what's in store and what this will probably mean for the minimum.
Continue reading "ASI 2016 update 6: hell and high pressure" »
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of issues with data based on the SSMIS sensor aboard DMSP satellites, I mainly focus on higher-resolution AMSR2 data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as reported on the Arctic Data archive System website. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything of particular interest.
The animation on the right consists of NSIDC
sea ice concentration maps, one for each ASI update.
Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website (ASIG)
for daily updated graphs, maps, live webcam images, and
the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF) for detailed discussions.
August 13th 2016
In the previous update I wrote with regards to the 2016 trend line on the JAXA sea ice extent graph:
If it now somehow manages to end the month between 2011 and 2015, there's still room for August weather to keep the race exciting.
The 2016 trend line managed to end July right between 2011 and 2015, it is still in 3rd position as we speak, and now August weather is going to keep the race exciting. Another big cyclone is on its way and will hit the ice pack the day after tomorrow (no pun intended). This storm will not be as intense as the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012, but it will be almost as big, and linger for a few days. I think it's the second biggest storm I have seen since starting this blog, back in 2010.
It's difficult to tell whether this storm will have as much of an effect as GAC-2012 had. The ice pack was much weaker back then due to plenty of periods that were conducive to melting, in other words melting momentum. There hasn't been much melting momentum to speak of this year, as there has been little preconditioning of the ice pack during May and June, and cloudy conditions kept dominating the Arctic up till last week.
There has been a second kind of momentum, though, caused by the preceding mild winter and the spectacular retreat at the very start of the melting season. Snow cover melted out really fast and sea surface temperatures have been as high as they've ever been. A handful of cyclones so far have helped disperse the ice pack, with quite a large zone of ice, jutting out from the Central Arctic towards the East Siberian Sea, about to bear the brunt of the big storm (source: Uni Bremen):
When the Great Arctic Cyclone hit in 2012 all of the weak ice in this zone detached from the main pack and was annihilated. We'll have to wait and see if something similar can happen this time around.
Sea ice extent (SIE)
As said, the 2016 trend line on the JAXA SIE graph keeps moving downwards steadily:
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of issues with data based on the SSMIS sensor aboard DMSP satellites, I mainly focus on higher-resolution AMSR2 data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as reported on the Arctic Data archive System website. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything of particular interest.
The animation on the right consists of NSIDC
sea ice concentration maps, one for each ASI update.
Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website (ASIG)
for daily updated graphs, maps, live webcam images, and
the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF) for detailed discussions.
July 20th 2016
Three weeks have passed since the previous ASI update, but I must say that I haven't become much wiser since then. I was expecting this year to start falling behind on the extent and area graphs, as weather conditions that aren't really conducive to melting, have continued to dominate the Arctic.
More than one month and a half of cloudy weather, not exceptional warm, little compaction, hardly any Fram Strait export, but this year somehow still manages to stay among the lowest on record. Such circumstances would have inevitably led to a major stalling on the graphs in previous years, but not this year. It would seem the lack of melting momentum is being compensated by another kind of momentum, brought on by the mild winter, early melt onset/opening up, extreme low snow cover and anomalously high sea surface temperatures.
The question still is whether this year has the oomph to end up in the top 3 September minimums, but whereas three weeks ago I thought it probably wouldn't, I'm not so sure anymore.
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of issues with data based on the SSMIS sensor aboard DMSP satellites, I mainly focus on higher-resolution AMSR2 data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as reported on the Arctic Data archive System website. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything of particular interest.
The animation on the right consists of NSIDC
sea ice concentration maps, one for each ASI update.
Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website (ASIG)
for daily updated graphs, maps, live webcam images, and
the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF) for detailed discussions.
June 29th 2016
The run-up to this melting season was really special, with an unprecedentedly warm winter season and early opening of the Beaufort Sea. Sea ice extent and area numbers went extremely low for the time of year, and sea ice volume reached the depths it was at before the 2013-2015 post-record rebound. But events in the Arctic don't behave like a straight arrow. Not in the short term, at least.
Weather conditions switched around the start of this month (see previous update) and prevented a large-scale soaking up of solar radiation through leads and melt ponds that would've increased the chances of a new record low September minimum even more. The lack of melting momentum has in fact decreased the chances to the point that I'd bet against it. If you want more details, read these two posts, or this blog post by Chris Reynolds that is hot off the press.
Mind you, this is not a melting season like 2013 or 2014 where persistent cloudiness and low temperatures caused relatively high September minimums (compared to top 3 years like 2007, 2011 and 2012, of course; they were well below the long-term average). 2016 still has many aspects going for it, like all that open water in the Beaufort Sea, low volume and snow cover that vanished at record speed. But it will take more to beat 2012, or 2007 and 2011 for that matter.
So, that's the question I will focus on in weeks to come: Can 2016 still make the top 3?
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of issues with data based on the SSMIS sensor aboard DMSP satellites, I mainly focus on higher-resolution AMSR2 data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as reported on the Arctic Data archive System website. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything of particular interest.
The animation on the right consists of NSIDC
sea ice concentration maps, one for each ASI update.
Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website (ASIG)
for daily updated graphs, maps, live webcam images, and
the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF) for detailed discussions.
June 11th 2016
This update could have easily borne the same title as update 1: Both sides. Two weeks ago the ice pack was shrinking on both sides of the Arctic, causing sea ice extent to drop to unprecedented daily lows. In the meantime, weather patterns have switched and the ice pack is now expanding on both sides!
Of course, a dispersing ice pack will cause extent loss to slow down, or even stall completely for a while. Especially if extent was extremely low to begin with. And so that enormous gap between this year and 2012 is getting smaller every day, fast. 2012 had perfect weather for melting during the first two weeks of June, and there was a large amount of thin ice that kept extent artificially high.
More importantly, these weather conditions set the tone for the rest of the 2012 melting season, as a large amount of melt ponds preconditioned the ice for big melts during July and August. This is where 2016 is falling behind now, even though it has been and still is lowest in many respects (extent, volume, snow cover).
2012 is punching hard in this round. Will it be enough to knock 2016 out?
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of issues with data based on the SSMIS sensor aboard DMSP satellites, I mainly focus on higher-resolution AMSR2 data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as reported on the Arctic Data archive System website. I also look at other things like regional sea ice area, compactness, temperature and weather forecasts, anything of particular interest.
The animation on the right consists of NSIDC
sea ice concentration maps, one for each ASI update.
Check out the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs website (ASIG)
for daily updated graphs, maps, live webcam images, and
the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF) for detailed discussions.
May 27th 2016
After an unprecedented warm winter and an unprecedented early opening of the Beaufort Sea, the 2016 melting season isn't showing any signs of shrugging off the 'unprecedented' label. What has struck me most so far, is that unprecedented things have been happening on both the Pacific and Atlantic side of the Arctic.
I've been closely observing events in the Arctic for almost a decade now, and have been writing about them since 2010, and during that time I have gotten used to this sort of see-saw, where fast melting on one side of the Arctic would be compensated by events unfolding slowly on the other side of the Arctic. But this year is different. This year the ice pack is under attack on both sides of the Arctic.
I have written separate blog posts to describe these events (see here and here), and in weeks to come these ASI updates will provide a comprehensive overview on what is happening to the sea ice in the Arctic, and how this melting season is unfolding.
Sea ice extent (SIE)
Let's jump right into it. Here's the latest JAXA SIE graph:That gap is pretty intense. I wasn't kidding when I said 'unprecedented'. Last year - orange line - was already quite spectacular, but this year is crazy.
As commenter Jim Pettit wrote on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum earlier today:
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