Arctic Sea Ice

2014/2015 Winter analysis

If you want to know where you're going, it helps to know where you're coming from. This also goes for Arctic sea ice. Even though the long-term trend is down, it's difficult to tell what will happen in any given melting season. Two things can help us get an idea: initial sea ice state and subsequent weather conditions. This post is about how the sea ice has fared throughout the freezing season and what shape it was in last month when sea ice growth slowly came to a grinding halt and winter started to make way for spring.

For that I'm going to compare the 2014/2015 freezing season with those of the preceding three winters, just like I did last year. That way we can see how the past winter compares to the winters preceding the 2012 record smashing melt and the two rebound years following it. If you want to compare some of the images below with other freezing seasons, you can dig through the 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 winter analyses. And click on the images if you want to have a closer look.

Ice age

We kick off with the AARI ice age maps for the end of April that show the amount of multi-year ice (MYI) in the Arctic (brown colour):

Last year's genetically modified rat has been replaced by a woolly mammoth (I'm sorry, I can't help but seeing animals in these maps), but the amount looks about the same. What is interesting this year is that the MYI looks a lot more fragmented on the Pacific side of the Arctic, with some young ice (pink) and even open water in the Chukchi Sea.

This has everything to do with a cracking event that took place a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't as spectacular as the cracking event of February/March 2013, but it was still quite big, and more interestingly, it took place at the very end of the freezing season. We have to wait and see if there's any consequence for the melting in this region. On the one hand there's a lot of first-year ice (FYI) between the MYI floes which could melt out early. On the other hand heat might be released to the atmosphere, cooling the water below the ice, making it more resistant to melting.

Either way, it's visible on different maps, such as the ASCAT radar images. Here's a comparison for day 109 (April 19th):

ASI 2013 update 6: major slowdown

During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Central to these updates are the daily Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) and IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2012 period (NSIDC has a good explanation of sea ice extent and area in their FAQ). 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 4th 2013

"As the weather is switching again, things will probably slow down." That's what I wrote two weeks ago for the conclusion of ASI 2013 update 5, and never has a greater understatement been made. At least not on this blog.

The weather did switch from an ideal set-up for ice decrease (causing one of the most rapid decreases on record) to a situation that is next best for ice decrease, with a fierce, but short storm at its heart, finally followed by the neither-fish-nor-flesh set-up where weather is fickle in the Arctic and never really settles on a stable pattern that can deepen to one of the other two states.

This almost always slows down ice decrease, and I say 'almost' because last year it didn't. Frankly, I was expecting it wouldn't have as much of an impact as it did in the past two weeks, because we started the year out with a record amount of first-year ice. And despite (or because of) the slow start to the melting season the melting potential is huge.

But huge or no huge, the impact of the weather has been huge as well. In fact, it's so big that I'm starting to doubt my eyes.

Sea ice area (SIA)

I don't know what is going on over at Cryosphere Today, but the melting has come to a complete standstill. In the past 10 days the ice pack has not lost, but gained 20K km2! That's so crazy for this phase of the melting season that I barely have words for it. It's unique as far as the record goes.

Here are the graphs for this month and the previous one:

A Passage or Two

They did it. For the first time in human history both the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage have been sailed in one single season. This is an exceptional and heroic feat, successfully undertaken by Norwegians Thorleif Thorleifsson and Børge Ousland in their trimaran, and the Russian crew of Peter I.

From Børge Ousland's blog:

Today, on the 21st of September, we enter Lancaster Sound and reach the 74th parallel, considered by most as the exit (or entrance) to the Northwest Passage. We are proud of being the first sailing vessel, together with “Peter 1st”, that ever has sailed through both the Northeast and Northwest Passage in one short Arctic summer.

(...)

It is, unfortunately, the dramatic changes in Arctic sea ice conditions in recent years that have made this trip possible. On the time of Roald Amundsen it took five to six years to complete the same distance, due to the extremely difficult and demanding ice conditions. Now we have proven that it is possible to make the voyage in a 31-foot fibreglass sailing boat, equipped with a 10 horsepower outboard motor for emergencies. This shows how dramatic and how fast these changes are happening. The changes that we are witnessing will influence climate on a global scale, in addition to the whole range of animal life in the Arctic – especially seals and polar bears, whose lives are dependent on the sea ice.

Continue reading here and congratulate...

Where is the Petermann Baby?

As we all know the ice tongue that broke off of Petermann Glacier some time ago, has broken up in two pieces. The big mothership is still stuck against Joe Island, but where did the baby ice island run off to? Mind you, this baby is still about 80 km2 and several tens of meters high.

I didn't keep an eye on it and thus couldn't find it any more. Luckily, Phil. was so kind as to post a link to an image in the comment section of the last SIE update. I figured I'd share:

And then I got a crazy idea. What if the baby ice island drifts into Baffin Bay before the circumnavigating Norwegians and Russians do? They could then sail up to it and make pictures of it! I hereby declare the right to post these pictures first.

UPDATE: Lord Soth informed us that "the Canadian Ice Service has successfully dropped a transponder on the smaller Peterman B ice island, which has just entered Baffin Bay." You can follow Petermann-B at Sailwx.

Race to Fram Strait 2

Artful Dodger is still sending me nicely cropped IJIS images from the ice transport towards Fram Strait, so I thought a follow-up instead of an update might be in order. Here's the animation of the period August 10-24 (the last frame freezes for a second and a half and then the animation repeats):

 

Quote Lodger: "Looks like ice continues to move South, and the fringe of the pack has now contacted the North Shore of Svalbard. I hope we get some MODIS images to show whether we now get compaction or sheer, like is now occurring in NE Greenland."

Quote Neven: "If you look to the left you see the ice being transported southwards past the islands of the Canadian Archipelago. On the right you see the Northern Sea Route opening up."

Sailing through the ice

Two Norwegians, one Russian and a bunch of ice floes in the Laptev sea:

Check out the other videos on the Northern Passage 2010 blog.