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):

Greenland under early pressure too

When I posted that weather forecast for the Arctic in the Beaufort under early pressure blog post a few days ago and said very large anomalies are forecast for Greenland and Baffin Bay, it didn't really occur to me just how exceptional that temperature anomaly was going to be for Greenland and its ice sheet*. Now I know.

A bell started to ring softly today while reading this blog post by Robertscribbler, in which he describes the temperatures and wind speeds that hit Greenland yesterday. But things really hit home when I read this news article on Polar Portal, written by Dr. Ruth Mottram from the Danish Meteorological Institute:

Unusually Early Greenland Melt

An early melt event over the Greenland ice sheet occurred this week, smashing by a month the previous records of more than 10% of the ice sheet melting.**

Left: Maps showing areas where melting has taken place within the last two days. Right: The percentage of the total area of the ice where the melting occurred from January 1 until 11th May (in blue). The dark grey curve represents the 1990-2013 average. The grey shaded area represents the year to year variation for each day.

Based on observation-initialized weather model runs by DMI, almost 12% of the Greenland ice sheet had more than 1mm of melt on Monday 11th April, following an early start to melting the previous day. Scientists at DMI were at first incredulous due to the early date. “We had to check that our models were still working properly” said Peter Langen, a climate scientist at DMI. “Fortunately we could see from the PROMICE.dk stations on the ice sheet that it had been well above melting, even above 10 °C. This helped to explain the results”. The former top 3 earliest dates for a melt area larger than 10% were previously all in May (5th May 2010, 8th May 1990, 8th May 2006).

“Even weather stations quite high up on the ice sheet observed very high temperatures on Monday”, said Robert Fausto, a scientist at GEUS who maintains PROMICE.dk melt data. “At KAN_U for example, a site at 1840 m above sea level, we observed a maximum temperature of 3.1°C. This would be a warm day in July, never mind April”. Other PROMICE stations in the network at lower levels had daily average temperatures between 5 and 10 °C.

PIOMAS April 2014

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:

Last month's tentative conclusion has definitely been confirmed for now:

It seems that last year's rebound has been fully negated after a couple of relatively warm months (the flipside of cold outbreaks in the US) and 2014 will start out at approximately the same level as previous years.

After the last minimum ended up being 1700 km3 above that of record year 2012, the current modeled volume for March 31st is 241 km3 below last year's. The difference with 2011 was +401 km3 at the end of February, and has even increased to +480 km3. Other than that volume is now lower than all the other years in the record. Who would've thought this back in September? Well, the Arctic does as the Arctic will.

The graph produced by Wipneus shows a bit more clearly how 2014 is just below the other trend lines, with 2011 some further below:

Decreasing Arctic albedo boosts global warming

A new paper in PNAS, called Observational determination of albedo caused by vanishing sea ice, reminds me of scientific work Peter Wadhams published a year and a half ago wherein he showed Arctic ice melt is 'like adding 20 years of CO2 emissions'. He based this assertion on calculations, as can be read in this BBC article from around that time.

This new paper by Pistone et al., however, is based on observations (as it says in the title) and similarly concludes that the "decrease in albedo is equivalent to roughly 25 percent of the average global warming currently occurring due to increased carbon dioxide levels"

I've taken this last quote from a livescience article. Here's more:

Warming from Arctic Sea Ice Melting
More Dramatic than Thought

Credit: Stefan Hendricks, Alfred Wegener Institute

Since as early as the 1960s, scientists have hypothesized that melting sea ice amplifies global warming by decreasing Arctic albedo. Researchers have since devised climate models to demonstrate this phenomenon but, until now, nobody had relied entirely on satellite data to confirm this effect through time. [See Stunning Photos of Earth's Vanishing Ice]

Now, scientists based at the University of California, San Diego have analyzed Arctic satellite data from 1979 to 2011, and have found that average Arctic albedo levels have decreased from 52 percent to 48 percent since 1979 — twice as much as previous studies based on models have suggested, the team reports today (Feb. 17) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The amount of heat generated by this decrease in albedo is equivalent to roughly 25 percent of the average global warming currently occurring due to increased carbon dioxide levels, the team reports.

"Although more work is needed, a possible implication of this is that the amplifying feedback of Arctic sea ice retreat on global warming is larger than has been previously expected," study co-author Ian Eisenman told Live Science.

Previous models of Arctic albedo have suggested the reflectiveness of white cloud cover could potentially mitigate a portion of albedo loss due to melting ice; but these new observations show that cloud cover has had a negligible effect on overall Arctic reflectivity, the team says.

While Arctic sea ice will not likely return to 1979 values in the near future, the ice does change from year to year and might still experience some comeback this century, though the extent to which this might happen remains unclear, Eisenman said.

Read the rest here.

Here's another quote from the September 2012 BBC article mentioned above:

Looking for winter weirdness 2014

There has been some stuff in the past 2 months that could be linked to erratic jet stream behaviour - which in turn could be influenced by Arctic sea ice loss - like a series of storms battering Europe's Northwest, such as the St. Jude storm at the end of October, followed in December by Xaver, Dirk and Erich. Or a huge part of Siberia being so anomalously not-cold that it helped November being the warmest on record globally.

Now we have this:

This funny image (though what it depicts isn't funny for people who live in the US) from Greg Laden's blog shows how a portion of the polar vortex has broken off and moved over to the US, bringing ultra-low temperatures and snow to the Midwest and Northeast. Just two weeks ago there was a winter heat wave on the US East Coast, now it's extremely cold, and who knows what' swings will follow in weeks to come.

Like Andrew Freedman wrote over at Climate Central a couple of days ago:

The cause of the Arctic outbreak can be traced to northeastern Canada and Greenland, where an area of high pressure and relatively mild temperatures is set to block the eastward progression of weather systems, like an offensive lineman protecting the quarterback from the other team.

Here's an animation of that high pressure area (that incidentally also causes something of a cracking event in the Beaufort Sea, but more on that later):

Arctic warming -> extreme weather debate

Andrew Freedman outdid himself on Climate Central with an excellent overview of the scientific debate on the link between Arctic sea ice loss and a wavy jet stream causing weird and extreme weather. Coincidentally (?) there's an "extreme kink" in it right now that just caused the warmest December temperature ever measured at any site on the Alaskan Arctic Ocean shoreline region.

Freedman wrote the piece following the publication in Nature of a new paper - with Jennifer Francis as co-author - that claims that rapid Arctic warming has an influence on extreme summer weather events. The last couple of years a lot of pioneering research is being done in this area, which in my view is one of the most exciting and important scientific corners currently around. Which explains why more and more experts are keeping an eye on developments.

Study Adds to Arctic Warming, Extreme Weather Debate

A new study for the first time found links between the rapid loss of snow and sea ice cover in the Arctic and a recent spate of exceptional extreme heat events in North America, Europe, and Asia. The study adds to the evidence showing that the free-fall in summer sea ice extent and even sharper decline in spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is reverberating throughout the atmosphere, making extreme events more likely to occur.

A giant panda was playing with ice cubes in Chengdu, China to cool off from the summer heat in August 2011. Credit: Zhongjun Liu

The study, published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to find correlations between rapid Arctic warming and extreme summer weather events, since previous research had focused on the links between Arctic warming and fall and winter weather patterns.

While the study adds to the body of evidence pointing to the outsized role the Arctic is playing in shaping weather patterns, it won't end the debate within the scientific community over whether and how what is happening in the Far North could be having such far-reaching impacts.

There is virtually no controversy among climate scientists and meteorologists that massive changes have occurred in the Arctic environment during the past three decades, and that those changes are largely due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

Since the 1980s, Arctic sea ice extent has dropped at a rate of about 8 percent per decade during September, which is when the sea ice cover reaches its annual minimum. A record minimum was set in 2012. For a size comparison, consider that the area of summer sea ice lost since the 1980s would cover about 40 percent of the continental U.S., the study said.

Spring snow cover extent loss during June has dropped even more precipitously than sea ice cover, the study found, at a rate of about 18 percent per decade since 1979.

Climate, Ice and Weather Whiplash

Here's yet another new and great video by Peter Sinclair from the ClimateCrocks blog for the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media:

It bears repeating...

This video should get at least 50 million views. I think it will one day.

Everything you want to know about the jet stream

...but are afraid to ask.

Skeptical Science contributor John Mason has outdone himself this time - which says a lot after his great pieces on Arctic methane and other subjects - by writing a comprehensive article about the jet stream, what it is, what it does and why that is important. Here's the introduction and table of contents, but I'd advise everyone to go read the whole thing over at Skeptical Science:

A Rough Guide to the Jet Stream:
what it is, how it works and how it is responding to enhanced Arctic warming

Posted on 22 May 2013 by John Mason

Barely a week goes by these days in the Northern Hemisphere without the jet stream being mentioned in the news, but rarely do such news items explain in detail what it is and why it is important. As a severe weather photographer this past 10+ years, an activity which requires successful DIY forecasting, I've had to develop an appreciation into what makes it tick. This post, then, is a start-from-scratch primer based on that knowledge plus some valuable assistance from academia into where the current research is heading. Because of its length and breadth of coverage, I've broken it up into bookmarked sections for easy reference: to come back here click on 'back to contents' in each instance.

Contents:

Earth's Troposphere - an introduction

Weather systems aloft - the Polar Front and the jet stream

Waves on the jet stream - upper ridges and troughs

Positive vorticity - a driver of severe weather - and the jet stream

Wind-shear - a driver of severe weather - and the jet stream

Jetstreak development along the jet stream - a driver of severe weather

Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation patterns: the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations

Climate change and the future: how will the jet steam and pressure-patterns respond?

Conclusion

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.

Met Office looks into Arctic link to weird weather

Commenter Steve Bloom always links to interesting stuff (if the new spam filter system lets him). This time it's about an article on the ITV website (and in the sensationalist Daily Mail) that links Arctic warming and sea ice loss to the late outburst of weird winter weather in the UK and the rest of Europe. This comes after a Chinese scientist linking extreme cold and snow to Arctic sea ice loss, and fake skeptics casually remarking that all the extra snow on the Northern Hemisphere (resulting in hundreds of victims) was due to "a record low amount of Arctic sea ice". And then there was Sandy's weird 90° curve to the left.

All in all it has been an decent harvest of winter weirdness events, and if the coming melting season is anything like the last one, it will be interesting to see if it's followed by more of the same extremeness. Because enquiring minds want to know. Society wants to know, or should want to know, if there's a link with Arctic sea ice loss.

Met Office investigating Arctic link
to record low temperatures in UK

A cyclist braves the snow near Reeth in the Yorkshire Dales in March 2013 Photo: John Giles/PA Wire

After some of the coldest temperatures in almost 100 years, the Met Office says it is "urgent" that we address the causes of our changing weather and the possibility that recent record melts in the Arctic are to blame.

The forecaster's top scientist, Dr Julia Slingo, has told ITV News that she will convene a meeting of top experts from around the world to look into this.

New figures out today show the temperature dropped to -11.2C in Aberdeenshire on April 2 - the lowest April temperature recorded nationally for almost a century. It follows the coldest March since 1962.

Some scientists believe that rapid warming in the Arctic, which saw sea ice shrink to its lowest ever level last September, could be influencing our weather in the UK.

ITV News' Science Editor Lawrence McGinty reports:

Go read the rest of the article and watch some interesting videos here. Also watch the short interview with Jennifer Francis here.

I think it bears repeating that I'm not saying that all of these weird weather events - you know, the really weird, extreme stuff, not every freezing temperature or random snowfall - are 100% certain to be caused by Arctic sea ice loss. But this is something we want to know, right? Or shouldn't this be looked into? If you want to deny the possibility that the extreme loss of Arctic sea ice could have a negative influence on Northern Hemisphere weather patterns, you will have to answer the question: How could it not? Good luck with that.

Again, not saying it's 100% certain, but definitely not ruling it out either.
We want to know.