Arctic Sea Ice

Guest blog: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Ice ‘n’ Slide

Here's a second guest blog by Sam Hayes, a PhD student from Northumbria University and regular commenter on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum. For his studies Sam was part a research expedition in the Arctic Circle.

In his first guest blog Sam described his impressions so far, and in this second installment he goes into more detail on some of the sites that he has visited and the methods the research team has been using. Sam has just about returned home now and will share some more as soon as he has become used to his old, comfortable life again. No more digging! ;-)

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Rock ‘n’ Roll, Ice ‘n’ Slide
by Sam Hayes

Our first full day in action was August 11^th. In sunshine and mid teen temperatures, we loaded the truck with the day’s gear and headed to the floating dock where we met with our local Inuvialuit boat driver, Frank. He would be our primary means of access to local sites for the next 7 days, as well as assisting us with collecting moorings and other instruments. His wife, Nelly, would even provide us with freshly caught trout and whitefish, yum!

 

Our hired boat and from left to right, Dustin, Mike, Frank and Vlad

As well as Frank and his 150hp harbour craft, we also had a smaller zodiac with a 20hp motor, great for getting to those tighter, shallower spots — and a whole lot of fun! As with all places in the Arctic, polar and other bears are a risk. At all times, when in the field, you have to take certain items with you, such as bear spray and bear bangers. When you go further afield, an armed wildlife monitor is a legal requirement, and an option we availed of on two separate days. Other than spotting a grizzly while flying out to one site, we never saw anything of concern. Still, better safe than sorry!

Anywho, the first port of call was a site called Peninsula Point, located in Pingo National park, just west of Tuk (https://goo.gl/maps/kFFpc2etsCN2). We took off there in the 2 boats, and the water quickly turned choppy, which made the journey a fun one for those in the zodiac!

Guest blog: Tuk toy what?

Here's a guest blog that was sent to me by Sam Hayes, a PhD student from Northumbria University and regular commenter on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum. For his studies Sam is out on a research expedition in the Arctic Circle.

 

In this first guest blog Sam describes his impressions so far. If he finds the time (you're supposed to do science stuff day and night on these expeditions), he'll go into more detail on some of the sites that are are visited and the methods the research team is using.

 

Thanks for sharing, Sam!

 

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Tuk Toy what?
by Sam Hayes

 

For 7 days now I’ve been in Tuktoyaktuk, a small hamlet nestled along the Arctic coastline in the Northwest Territories, Canada (picture 1). In that time, I’ve been soaked by ocean water, covered in mud, sun burned, drenched in sweat, shivered with cold, ached, pained, bled and loved every moment of it!

 

Map view and aerial view of Tuktoyaktuk

 

The landscape often appears to be pulled straight from works of science fiction, with lakes, ice cliffs, pingos and all manner of thermokarst wherever you look (picture 2,3). The Inuvialuit people, who account for the majority of the 850 inhabitants, have a culture that is rich, fascinating and generous, with incredible local knowledge and wonderful stories, while the motley crew of researchers, academics, field assistants, pilots, drivers, etc., all with their own interests, stories and personalities make this a fantastic team to be a part of. Of course, lest we forget, there’s also a science element to all this!

 

Thaw slumping and thermokarst lakes near Tuktoyaktuk

If global warming continues unabated...

Here's a Discover magazine article I noticed a couple of days ago, containing a nice (but big) animation that shows how many days per year (parts of) the Arctic will be ice-free in the future if things keep going as they are:

If global warming continues unabated, humans are likely to completely remake the map of the Arctic in a few decades

Ice was in the news quite a lot last week. There was, for example, the news that Antarctica could be gaining, not losing, ice, at least for now.

Lest you were tempted to breathe a sigh of relief, critics pointed to contrary evidence. And there were also these unsettling findings about the gigantic West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

But far to the north, some equally important news unfortunately got less attention. For the long and short of it, see the animation above.

I created it to portray in visual form what a study published last week has revealed: Unless we start reining in greenhouse gas emissions, “our projected impact on the climate system will change the face of Arctic sea ice,” says Katy Barnhart, who led the study while she was at the University of Colorado’s Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research. (Full disclosure: I’m a professor at the University of Colorado.)

The animation shows computer model simulations of how Arctic sea ice is likely to respond to continued human-caused warming. More specifically, it models how the number of days of open water change each year from 1920 to 2100 under a “business-as-usual” scenario. By 2100, according to the study, much of the Arctic has greater than 150 additional days of open water as compared with the pre industrial period prior to 1850.

Read the rest of the article here. Of course, it's not about the open water per se, but about the consequences for ecosystems and climate, not just regionally, but for the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Arm's race (and a storm)

As I write this, a storm is battering the ice pack on the Pacific side of the Arctic. It's not as huge as the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012, but it's pretty decent as far as cyclones go, and it's doing its thing in that part of the Arctic where the ice pack looks weakest, but was strongest at the start of the melting season.The timing of this event is perfect for discussing one of the most important aspects of this melting season.

The image on the top right shows the ice age distribution at the start of the melting season, red being the oldest multi-year ice at that time. Due to a very intense high pressure area over the Beaufort Sea at the end of the freezing season, heavy winds drove the ice pack apart there (a so-called cracking event), causing this multi-year ice to become interspersed with very thin ice. That's the dark blue spots between all the red.

During the very first phase of the melting season the Beaufort Sea region witnessed a heat wave causing a lot of this thin ice to melt out. Because the ice pack wasn't pushed back together again, many of the multi-year ice floes were surrounded by warming waters, and ever larger holes within the ice pack on the Pacific side of the Arctic started to form. The animation below shows what happened between week 27 and week 32, or June 29th to August 9th:

Just towards the end of the animation the holes are showing up. Unfortunately these maps aren't updated until the minimum has hit, but we can still get an idea of what happened after August 9th by checking out the sea ice concentration maps provided by the University of Bremen. The following animation shows how the holes separate a so-called 'arm' of multi-year ice from the rest of the ice pack: