Arctic Sea Ice

PIOMAS August 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:

2019 had a real opportunity during July to further move away from 2012, but failed to do so. Both years had a volume loss that was well below the 2007-2018 average of 6037 km3, which isn't that surprising given how low they both already are. 2017 had even less of a volume loss, and so 2019 is still lowest and the gap with number 2 has grown a little bit. All other years, except for 2014, managed to close the gap somewhat.

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

Wipneus' version of the PIOMAS graph shows how this year's volume loss slowed down during the second half of July, when it actually should have increased the gap to be able to compete with the big drop that was caused by the GAC during the first week of August 2012:

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:

Freezing season has started, or has it?

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:

Bering goes extreme

The melting season hasn't started in earnest yet, but it seems the Bering Sea hasn't received the memo. For almost the entire winter, sea ice has been reluctant to form there, and now that the Sun has returned, the ice edge has started to retreat to record high latitudes, past the Bering Strait all the way up into the Chukchi Sea. Here's how that looks on Wipneus' regional graph:

To emphasize how truly exceptional this is, here's a comparison with the situation in all other years from the 2006-2018 period (images retrieved from the University Bremen sea ice concentration maps page on the ASIG, click for a larger version):

Now, if this was it, other years would maybe catch up in the next few weeks, but this isn't it. The coupled HYCOM-CICE model from the Naval Research Laboratory forecasts the sea ice to continue to drift northwards, until the end of the month at least:

Talk about unprecedented

In the preceding post on Global sea ice minimum records getting broken for the third year in a row, I mentioned how the situation on the Pacific side of the Arctic was quite unprecedented, with the sea ice graph for the Bering Sea showing a sharp downturn (and even a small one for the Chukchi Sea). Well, there's an equally unprecedented event taking place on the Atlantic side of the Arctic as well. Yesterday, Prof. Dr. Lars Kaleschke from the University Hamburg tweeted out the following:

There is open water north of #Greenland where the thickest sea ice of the #Arctic used to be. It is not refreezing quickly because air temperatures are above zero confirmed by @dmidk's weather station #KapMorrisJesup. Wacky weather continues with scary strength and persistence. pic.twitter.com/YMnvCD8XvL

— Lars Kaleschke (@seaice_de) February 25, 2018

This probably has a lot to do with the splitting of the Polar Vortex due to a sudden stratospheric warming event a while back. I'm grateful for a bit of winter, finally, in my neck of the European woods, but not too happy about the consequences for the Arctic. The cause of all this heat and ice being pushed away from the northern coast of Greenland is an atmospheric set-up that during summer we'd be referring to as a Reverse Dipole (low pressure over the Canadian side of the Arctic, high pressure over the Siberian side). This animation of DMI SLP maps shows how the set-up got set up in the past 10 days, resulting in a pressure gradient as high as 75 hPa:

Such a pressure gradient means lots of winds. The animation in Kaleschke's tweet shows what happened to the ice between Fram Strait and the Lincoln Sea, but here are two images by ASIF commenters Uniquorn and A-Team showing the situation (from the 2017/2018 freezing season thread):

Global sea ice records broken (yet again)

This is starting to become an annual tradition, here on the Arctic Sea Ice Blog. Just like last year and the year before that, the record for lowest global sea ice minimum has been broken. The lowest global sea ice extent minimum on record (NSIDC and JAXA) was reached two weeks ago. I wanted to wait a bit and see whether the record for NSIDC global sea ice area would be broken too, but it wasn't, although the minimum came in at a solid second place, practically on a par with last year.

Here's the graph, as provided by Wipneus:

And here you see the anomaly of all those trend lines in chronological order, having hovered between 2 and 4 σ (standard deviations) since the 2016 crash:

Not enough Antarctic sea ice melted to clinch the lowest Antarctic sea ice minimum record (coming in second lowest 'only'), and so the decisive nudge was given by the sea ice in the Arctic, refusing to freeze along some of the edges, most notably in the Bering Sea. Here's how the graph for that region looks as of today, with some of the open water even spilling into the adjacent Chukchi Sea, which is highly unusual for this time of year:

PIOMAS January 2018

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:

Volume increases for December in the last 10 years aren't all that far apart, ranging from 3500 to 4000 km3 (rounded off). This year was on the lower side of that range, with 3547 km3. Only 2010 and 2014 were lower than that, just barely. This means that 2017 ends the year in third spot. The gap with 2012 has been reduced some more, from 733 to 497 km3, and the quickly widening gap with 2016 has stopped widening for now, going from 1482 to 1340 km3.

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

On Wipneus' version of the PIOMAS graph you can see how that difference with 2012 has become smaller again since September (red is 2017, purple is 2012):

PIOMAS May 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:

It's no surprise 2017 is still lowest on record, according to the PIOMAS model. If during the last week of April the Arctic wouldn't have cooled down (somewhat) like it did, the gap with previous years would've grown even bigger. But as it is, things haven't changed all that much since the end of March. The lead over number 2, 2011, has decreased from 1731 to 1642 km3. The difference with record low year 2012 (at the minimum) is practically unchanged.

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

The annual maximum was also reached in April and I will discuss it below, but first want to go through the usual graphs shown in this update. Starting with Wipneus' version of the PIOMAS sea ice volume graph showing more details:

Lowest maximum on record (again)

After a drop of almost 262 thousand km2 in just three days, it looks highly likely that the maximum for sea ice extent was reached two weeks ago, according to the data provided by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (via ADS-NiPR ; it used to be provided by IJIS).

It's a new lowest maximum record, and the third time in a row that extent stayed below the 14 million km2 mark. The previous lowest max on record was reached in 2015 (13.942 million km2), almost beaten last year (13.959 million km2), but this year SIE went lower still and peaked at 13.878 million km2.

This graph by commenter Deeenngee, posted on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum, visualizes maximums from the past and the trajectory to this year's max:

It looks highly likely that the max has been reached for NSIDC daily SIE as well (graph provided by Jim Hunt from the Great White Con blog), a third record low in a row if my eyes don't deceive me:

The drops are mostly driven by sea ice reductions in the Bering and Okhotsk Seas, but will soon be joined by drops on the Atlantic side of the Arctic as well, as the ice is pretty thin there, according to the Uni Bremen SMOS thin sea ice map.

Given the wind forecast, I also expect further sea ice retreat from the southern shores of Novaya Zemlya (similar to what happened in 2011 and 2012):

Global sea ice records broken (again)

Sabbatical or not, records must be reported (like I did last year, here and here, albeit a month later).

According to NSIDC data, the Global sea ice area record for lowest minimum has just been broken, as shown on this Wipneus graph (world famous now because of what happened after September last year; see the dark red line on the right side of the graph which should be fairly easily to spot):

The extent version is about to break the record as well:

For those who still think that man-made global warming poses no risk whatsoever, that it is a hoax, I'm just going to repeat what I wrote last year: