Arctic Sea Ice

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):

Sudden Stratospheric Warming: Causes & Effects

Introduction & Disclosure

My name is Randall Gates Simpson. There is no PhD after my name and I am not a PhD climate scientist. I don't consider myself a traditional "expert" on the subject of SSW's because of my lack of official credentials. I do however think I probably know quite a bit more on the subject than the average person might. I work as a television producer by day, and as a hobby, study climate
and weather on my nights and weekends and have for over 30 years.

In addition to the subject of anthropogenic climate change, I first became interested in SSW's a few years back when it became increasingly apparent to me the extreme effects that SSW's can have on Northern Hemisphere winter weather. It wasn't just their extreme effects that interested me, but rather, the fact that their specific causes were still a bit of a mystery-- and I've always loved a good mystery.  Isn't that what is (or should be) at the heart and soul of any good scientist?

In this post I reveal what I think is an original synthesis that gives the full picture of some of the main causes and effects of Northern Hemisphere Sudden Stratospheric Warming events based on my readings of many other papers along with hours of my own original research. For research material I relied heavily on the use of the amazing amount of satellite derived reanalysis data as well as ground based observations. I am heavily indebted to organizations such as NASA, NCAR and NOAA for the data they have made available at my fingertips through the web.

My research took me "virtually" to the other side of the world from where I live in Colorado, to discover some of the causes of SSW events. My research has also relied on men and women scientists who have physically travelled to extremely remote and desolate locations to gather data that I have relied on to create this synthesis. I hope perhaps one day to travel myself to these remote places to see first hand what I feel are the true birthplaces of Sudden Stratospheric Warming events.