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:
As you can see, 2019 has moved into second place on the PIOMAS volume graph. The drop of 3234 km3 for May was third highest on record (after 2010 and 2012 which dropped 3523 and 3508 km3 respectively) and well above the average May decrease of 2621 km3. Last month, 2019 was on a par with 2011, 2016 and 2018 for second place, but now there is no question who is second. And 2017's lead has been reduced further from 1665 to 1015 km3.
Here's how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month:
Wipneus' version of the PIOMAS graph also shows the minuscule lead over all the other years, except 2017, which is about to end its extraordinary excursion:
We tend to focus on the end of the melting season, also known as the minimum, because that's when the ice covers the least amount of water. That's all fine and dandy, but of course, it's just an arbitrary measuring point. For instance, this year's minimum for the JAXA sea ice extent data set was 6th lowest on record, but flash forward to the first week of October and this year's trend line is third lowest on record and could soon be second lowest on record:
This, as always, had to do with the weather, which has been pretty crazy the past two weeks. First, fierce winds pushed back against the ice edge in most of the Arctic Ocean, delaying the ice pack's expansion, while at the same time continuing to melt that last, stubborn sliver of ice extending towards the East Siberian Sea. The result has been a continuing decline of sea ice extent in the Arctic Basin, and to a lesser extent in the East Siberian Sea, where, normally, the trend line should have been going up already (image courtesy of Wipneus, ASIG Regional graphs):
Another factor that has come into play these past few days, is heat. It's mostly coming from the Pacific, where sea surface temperatures are running quite hot again, as can be seen on these DMI sea surface temperature anomaly maps, comparing this year's start of October with those of 2016 and 2017:
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:
During February Arctic sea ice volume increased by 2075 km3, according to the PIOMAS model, which is well below the 2007-2017 average of 2437 km3. Only 2014 and 2016 managed to score lower, at 1930 and 2047 km3 respectively. This means that 2018 has consolidated its second place in the ranking, creeping somewhat closer to 2017. Especially the gap with 2013 has widened spectacularly from 166 to 1261 km3. Closest follower is now 2011 at 817 km3.
Here's how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month:
Wipneus' version of the PIOMAS graph clearly shows how the 2018 trend line strongly deviates from all the other trend lines during February:
Today is the winter solstice. If you live on the Northern Hemisphere of our planet Earth, today is the shortest day of the year. In a sense it's the start of the countdown towards a new melting season, with the Sun slowly creeping northward a bit every day, although the sea ice still has a couple of months to expand and thicken some more, of course.
Most of you who are interested in the Arctic, probably know that during the 2015 AGU Fall Meeting NOAA put out its annual Arctic Report Card. The report contains a lot of details on everything concerning the Arctic in 2015, and that mostly means melting. Melting sea ice, melting glaciers, snow cover loss, etc., and the consequences thereof.
There's a very good article by Yereth Rosen on the ADN Arctic Newswire website, and Robertscribbler also put a blog post up today, but if you want a quick, visual summary, there's this video that NOAA put out last week:
Some other news concerning the Arctic that received traction in the media lately, is this new paper by Yeager et al. that was published in Geophysical Research Letters two weeks ago. Its title Predicted slowdown in the rate of Atlantic sea ice loss lacks the nuance that what is actually meant is winter sea ice loss, but it's explained in the rest of the text. Strangely enough, a paper by the same authors also appeared on the Nature website last week in which the nuance is omitted entirely, in both title (Possible pause in Arctic sea-ice loss) and text. Then again, the rest of the text is behind a pay-wall (edit: never mind, I have been informed that it's just a reference to the GRL paper, not a paper in itself).
Either way, the theory is that a weakened Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will prevent warm Atlantic waters from going deep into the Arctic, and thus in winter sea ice will expand. See this informative Science Codex article for further details and quotes from the paper's researchers, such as this one:
Here's a quick update on everything related to our good friend Max.
In the past couple of days organisations like the NSIDC, NASA and NOAA have announced the annual event of the Arctic sea ice pack reaching its largest size at the end of the freezing season. This has been picked up widely by the (online) media, probably more so because it's the lowest maximum on several records, and possibly the earliest, by a large margin.
NASA has put up a very nice, concise video explaining the whole thing:
Arctic sea ice extent appeared to have reached its annual maximum extent, marking the beginning of the sea ice melt season. This year’s maximum extent not only occurred early; it is also the lowest in the satellite record. However, a late season surge in ice growth is still possible.
I referred to this possibility 5 days ago in the Early record, late record blog post. Since then JAXA SIE has continued to drop, increasing the difference with the preliminary maximum. However, the last two days JAXA reported a total increase of 99 thousand km2, reducing the difference to 137 thousand km2. Here's a quick overview, using the Wipneus home brew AMSR2 regional SIE graphs (see this map for orientation), to see what happened where.
As expected, the Bering and Barents show an uptick in recent days (black and purple trend lines):
There were fewer snow and ice extremes than in 2012. Many regions and components of the Arctic environment were closer to their long-term averages, but the effects of a persistent warming trend that began over 30 years ago remain clearly evident.
The impacts of the warming climate on the physical environment during those 30 years are influencing Arctic ecosystems on the land and in the sea.
Here's a video accompanying the report:
And a longer video showing the press conference announcing the report at the 2013 AGU Fall Meeting, last Thursday:
Climate Central's Andrew Freedman, who was present at the press conference to ask questions, has another excellent summary of the report here.
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