Latest PIOMAS Volume update

[Wipneus]

Wipneus, the graphs in the first post do not appear to have the October data. Perhaps there's a cache problem somewhere.

Thanks for the message. Should be fixed now, something with the uploading went wrong.

[Wipneus]

Gridded thickness data has been updated. Volume data not yet. From the thickness data I estimate volume on day 335 is 9.515 [1000 km³], about 700 km³ below 2012, lowest for the day.

Graphics updates to follow.

[Wipneus]

Here is the animated thickness of November 2016. Click to start.

[Wipneus]

Thickness maps of the (monthly average) thickness in November, composit of prvious years and the differences with 2016.

[Neven]

From the thickness data I estimate volume on day 335 is 9.515 [1000 km³], about 700 km³ below 2012, lowest for the day.

Holy... !

Thanks, Wip.

[Shared Humanity]

And it looks as if almost all of the thickest ice is set to exit the Fram. If this ice were to exit the Fram through the winter and early Spring, the 2017 melt season could be epic.

[meddoc]

2500 km3 of ice missing compared to last Year alone.
If this gap keeps widening by the 500 every month, than we are in for a set- up of 18.000 km3 max; which would alone by the numbers indicate an ice- free Arctic. And not even touched on the issue of structure/ integrity...

[crandles]

With http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php and http://cires1.colorado.edu/~aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/
 much closer to recent norms, perhaps it is more sensible to wonder if 700km^3 lead can be maintained rather than speculating on lead below previous record stretching to something like 4000 km^3?

[seaicesailor]

And it looks as if almost all of the thickest ice is set to exit the Fram. If this ice were to exit the Fram through the winter and early Spring, the 2017 melt season could be epic.

Cannot agree more. Sun and warmth in June for a change, not like since 2013, and 2017 will beat 2012 record

[Sterks]

And it looks as if almost all of the thickest ice is set to exit the Fram. If this ice were to exit the Fram through the winter and early Spring, the 2017 melt season could be epic.

With regard to exports through Fram, and in line with previous predictions brought to this forum by others, the ECMWF shows the consolidation of a powerful high pressure system in Beaufort coupled with cyclones in Eurasia and the Atlantic Ocean. This pattern persists for the whole prediction time span.
Sorry, the animation needs a click to work.

[S.Pansa]

With http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php and http://cires1.colorado.edu/~aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/
 much closer to recent norms, perhaps it is more sensible to wonder if 700km^3 lead can be maintained rather than speculating on lead below previous record stretching to something like 4000 km^3?

Maybe, mabe not. Below is the GFS nowcast and the forecast for friday 9th (and no relief in sight further out). Furthermore there seems to be quite a difference between surface temps & temps at 925hPa (AO temps from Slater) recently. See BFTVs post on the freezing thread. Looks to me like another FDD hecatomb (that's to say the freecing degree-days anomaly could grow even larger).

[A-Team]

Hycom showing the ice 'sagging' from Severnaya Zemlya down towards east Greenland but also easterly along the CAA, squeezing precious thicker ice out the Fram. Garlic press? Toothpaste? Hot air balloon?

[magnamentis]

Thickness maps of the (monthly average) thickness in November, composit of prvious years and the differences with 2016.

finally the official numbers seem to correspond with what every alert observe knows anyways, thanks a lot for this and all others before, extremely useful.

[FishOutofWater]

This is pretty close to catastrophic because not only is the thickest ice set to go out the Fram but there's very little thick ice to recirculate and build up multi-year ice in the Beaufort. Moreover, warm water is still pouring into the Barents sea from the Atlantic and the Bering strait is still open while the Beaufort gets hit by another blast of hot air from the temperate Pacific.

It's really hard to exaggerate how fucked up this is. Even the stratospheric polar votrex is displaced towards Siberia and warm air is spinning clockwise over America causing a huge blocking high to develop over the Pacific side of the Arctic ocean.

[Sarat]

There is the graph, they have not updated the reanalysis details yet.

[Neven]

To quote one of my favourite comedians, Bill Burr: Oh Jesus...

[crandles]

9.515 spot on

[jdallen]

To quote one of my favourite comedians, Bill Burr: Oh Jesus...

We need to decide on a new mean; we obviously aren't in the same territory any more.

[Lord M Vader]

And here is the sea ice thickness graph from Polar Science Center:

Oh, it just struck me that "Sith" is the same as "Sea Ice THickness Wrt Star Wars and the evil Sith Lord....

[Wipneus]

So the official volume data is now in as well.

I updated my graphics, see the top post

Attaching the anomaly (difference actual volume from the 1979-2009 mean). The second year minimum that has developed was very late and low.

[Jim Pettit]

Updated my interactive 3D PIOMAS volume graphs, as well. Click any of the below for the interactive version:

[jai mitchell]

This is pretty close to catastrophic because not only is the thickest ice set to go out the Fram but there's very little thick ice to recirculate and build up multi-year ice in the Beaufort. Moreover, warm water is still pouring into the Barents sea from the Atlantic and the Bering strait is still open while the Beaufort gets hit by another blast of hot air from the temperate Pacific.

It's really hard to exaggerate how fucked up this is. Even the stratospheric polar votrex is displaced towards Siberia and warm air is spinning clockwise over America causing a huge blocking high to develop over the Pacific side of the Arctic ocean.

The annual mean ice area export since 2010 is 1100 × 10^3 km2

http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/9/4205/2015/tcd-9-4205-2015-print.pdf

Seasonal breakouts and monthly average floe speeds.  With grid plots, we can get a good estimate of expected sea ice volume export anomaly for this year.  I haven't looked at it directly but since post 2011 non-fast ice is much thinner, the anomaly should be checked against the average of 2011-2015 winter/spring export.

Probably of more importance than the thicker ice looking to export is the indication of higher surface windspeeds moving toward the fram this season.

[schnitm]

First post: please feel free to delete or move if this is not appropriate here.

Brief introduction:  I'm a medical outcomes scientist.  Have been doing big data research in end-stage organ diseases for 20+ years. 

Jim

I love you "circle the drain" plot.  I'm wondering if you might be able to improve the visual by giving a clear reference for the center of the bulls-eye.  Simplest might be to place an "X" in the center, would help most if looking down, centered over the top.  Most interested though in the possibility of moving the vertical axis to come out of the bulls-eye center.

Updated my interactive 3D PIOMAS volume graphs, as well. Click any of the below for the interactive version:


[/url]

[FishOutofWater]

Wind convergence is apparently creating the thick line of ice flowing towards the Fram. Wind driven thin ice can pile up into high piles where it converges. Of course, that makes the export mass larger if the winds are converging on the Fram strait itself, as it appears to be doing now.

[jai mitchell]

Just had a thought, It seems the more appropriate value is not absolute volume export but rather volume export as a percentage of previous year's September minimum volume?  In this I would guess 2011/2012 winter/spring would be the highest value on record, leading to the 2012 record minimum.  just a thought. 

[Geoff]

And here is the sea ice thickness graph from Polar Science Center:

Oh, it just struck me that "Sith" is the same as "Sea Ice THickness Wrt Star Wars and the evil Sith Lord....

I want to say that to me, sea ice thickness measure on it's own seems to be the most useless measure - as winter comes and the new ice forms it spreads out quickly and there's a lot of new 0.5-1m thick ice, dropping the average of the remaining ice down. In the middle of summer if there's only one iceberg left in the arctic that's 3m thick it's still going to register as 3m.

Not that it's probably important and not to disparage you from posting it, just a random thought I had about it a while ago.

[Tigertown]

Maybe true in the right setting, but right now thickness is very important. The ice failing to be able to thicken up this freezing season is going to leave it very susceptible to melting easily come Spring and Summer.

[Geoff]

Or it could mean there is record breaking new ice forming. It needs context, and since context means looking the area and volume charts, you don't really need to look at thickness any more. Area is a good measure because it visually shows how much surface area is left, volume tells how much raw ice there is left to melt, but thickness just seems to be some aberration that relies on other more meaningful datasets to explain anything, but you can basically get that from the volume measurements anyway.

[jdallen]

Or it could mean there is record breaking new ice forming.<snippage>

Not sure what you're getting at Geoff, but "record breaking new ice forming" is not going to happen, simply because of the huge surplus in the current Arctic heat budget.

[budmantis]

With the latest Piomas report, all indices; volume, area and extent are at record lows. I think that provides plenty of context.

[Tigertown]

It's not just the new ice that has formed, as there has not been enough freezing days to thicken up what formed a couple months back. There is a thread on the forum about the importance of waves in the Arctic. One of the topics discussed concerned how the thicker ice dampens waves. Without this effect, it is more likely the waves will cause warmer waters to up well from the deep. Also, thin ice will not hold up to other damaging forces as well.

P.S. Most models for calculating volume depend on knowing thickness first.

[Tigertown]

Or it could mean there is record breaking new ice forming. It needs context, and since context means looking the area and volume charts, you don't really need to look at thickness any more. Area is a good measure because it visually shows how much surface area is left, volume tells how much raw ice there is left to melt, but thickness just seems to be some aberration that relies on other more meaningful datasets to explain anything, but you can basically get that from the volume measurements anyway.

One more thought. It is a little bit confusing the way you are wording it. It is one thing to say that you disagree with a chart that shows average thickness, but then you kind of go back and forth with thickness in other sentences. Actual thickness and average thickness are two different things, which I am sure you know, but you may be getting the objections mostly because of your wording.

[DavidR]

I want to say that to me, sea ice thickness measure on it's own seems to be the most useless measure - as winter comes and the new ice forms it spreads out quickly and there's a lot of new 0.5-1m thick ice, dropping the average of the remaining ice down. In the middle of summer if there's only one iceberg left in the arctic that's 3m thick it's still going to register as 3m.

Not that it's probably important and not to disparage you from posting it, just a random thought I had about it a while ago.

First its about the ability to compare with previous years. We can see that this year was comparatively thicker in the early part of the year even when it was at record low extent, but  now it  is at near record lows in thickness but also record lows in extent.

This graph suggests we are much less prepared for next year than 2011 where extent was 9% greater and thickness was 10% greater.  Right now these figures are suggesting we have about 15% less ice than before 2012. Although these figures will change over the next six months we know we are in a much worse situation than 2006 where thickness was 30% greater than at present.

So it  is certainly one of several  useful measurements.

[jai mitchell]

the average thickness graph does convey some valuable information during refreeze season, just not what it appears at first glance to show.  for instance, a rapid cold freeze event in September would have expanded a thin layer of ice cover, maybe 10cm thick and average thickness would have dropped like a rock to new record lows.  So rapid freezing and very cold temperatures makes the graph look like the ice is worse off than what it is right now (during a warm year) 

[Richard Rathbone]

P.S. Most models for calculating volume depend on knowing thickness first.

Its circular but mainly the other way round. Volume is divided up among different thickness bands rather than calculated by summing them. The thickness distribution is then used in the calculation of  melt/freeze/drift rates, which are in turn used to update the volume.

[Tor Bejnar]

Just had a thought, It seems the more appropriate value is not absolute volume export but rather volume export as a percentage of previous year's September minimum volume?  In this I would guess 2011/2012 winter/spring would be the highest value on record, leading to the 2012 record minimum.  just a thought. 

From Fram Strait spring ice export and September Arctic sea ice, M. H. Halvorsen, et.al. write :

3.4 Recent annual export
The annual mean ice area export since 2010 is 1100×103 km2 (Fig. 3). This high ex5
port means an overall increase in how much of the Arctic Basin ice cover is “lost” each
year. The Arctic Basin covers an area of  7.8 millionkm2, and has been fully ice covered
from November through May since 1979 until today. The annual ice export during
the 1980’s ( 800×103 km2) was 10% of this winter ice covered area. However, during
the last three years the annual ice export has increased to 14% of this area, meaning
10 a 40% increase in the relative sea ice area export, or the large-scale divergence of the
Arctic Basin sea ice cover. Further, an estimate of the new annual mean ice covered
area inside the Arctic Basin is 7.0 million km2. This is based on reduced monthly mean
ice extent between June and October.
Using this updated annual mean Arctic Basin ice cover of 7.0 million km2, the Fram
15 Strait ice export has been 16% of the area since 2010. This is a 60% increase in
relative sea ice area export since the 1980’s, and is clearly connected with the overall
Arctic sea ice decline. During winter the open water anomalies created within the basin
are quickly refrozen, and one major effect of the increased ice export since 1979 has
therefore been to contribute towards the overall observed thinning since the 1990’s
20 (Kwok and Rothrock, 2009).

You seem to share an idea with these scientists.

[Tor Bejnar]

Or it could mean there is record breaking new ice forming.<snippage>

Not sure what you're getting at Geoff, but "record breaking new ice forming" is not going to happen, simply because of the huge surplus in the current Arctic heat budget.

From BornFromTheVoid's Re: 2016 sea ice area and extent data post (Reply #1068 on: December 04, 2016), "The extent change in November was the 2nd largest on record, while the average extent was the lowest on record."

So not quite "record breaking" ice growth in November, with regards to extent growth, but close.  Volume growth is a different calculus.

[Jim Pettit]

Jim

I love you "circle the drain" plot.  I'm wondering if you might be able to improve the visual by giving a clear reference for the center of the bulls-eye.  Simplest might be to place an "X" in the center, would help most if looking down, centered over the top.  Most interested though in the possibility of moving the vertical axis to come out of the bulls-eye center.

Thanks for the compliment--and for the bump.. I had planned to eventually move the z-Axis to the center; your comment prompted me to do so now.

[jdallen]

Or it could mean there is record breaking new ice forming.<snippage>

Not sure what you're getting at Geoff, but "record breaking new ice forming" is not going to happen, simply because of the huge surplus in the current Arctic heat budget.

<snippage>
So not quite "record breaking" ice growth in November, with regards to extent growth, but close.  Volume growth is a different calculus.

Exactly, and that was the primary point of my comment and request for clarification.

[jai mitchell]

You seem to share an idea with these scientists.

Yes, except the issue is no longer extent, extent is a worthless parameter for year on year comparisons now.  We need to look at VOLUME export now.  especially now.  but yeah, it is a great paper!

[Geoff]

In my initial post I was referring to the quoted graph, which was the average thickness graph, I thought that would have been implied. I probably shouldn't have dropped average from the post - knowing the thickness of the is an important measure, knowing the average thickness less so.

[FishOutofWater]

You seem to share an idea with these scientists.

Yes, except the issue is no longer extent, extent is a worthless parameter for year on year comparisons now.  We need to look at VOLUME export now.  especially now.  but yeah, it is a great paper!

Even volume export has become a measure that underestimates volume loss because so much ice is lost to warm Atlantic water entering the Arctic seas and central Arctic basin. The ice killing zone has pushed north of Svalbard and continues along the shelf margin towards Siberia.

It has reached the point where more and better salinity measurements would be very helpful for tracking ice loss and water mass changes.

[jai mitchell]

I have some concern that the SST anomalies that you are referring to are actually based on wind/heat driven sea ice extent cover anomalies, that these temperatures would be very normal beneath an ice-caped thermocline.

[FishOutofWater]

Some of the SST anomaly figures appear to be affected by problems with processing strong radiation gradients on the boundaries between ice and water. I think that some of the apparent large SST anomalies in some of the figures we see for the Arctic seas are not real. I look at model produced data of the thermal profiles through the water column to make sense of what's happening.

The rapid melting of apparently thick sea ice when it comes in contact with the incoming Atlantic water is a clue that there's a lot of ocean heat entering the Arctic near Svalbard. But there is not an anomaly of 8.1 C near Svalbard, as today's "Earth" web map shows. That's an artifact of something that's non-physical.

[Tigertown]

I vaguely remember something about a geothermal fissure on the ocean floor in that general area.

[FishOutofWater]

The ocean is too deep in the Fram strait for geothermal activity to affect SSTs. Water has a huge heat capacity. Deep sea eruptions happen regularly with no effects on SSTs. We know this from marine seismology and exploration by submersibles.

[jdallen]

But there is not an anomaly of 8.1 C near Svalbard, as today's "Earth" web map shows. That's an artifact of something that's non-physical.

Actually, I disagree.  That "anomaly" has been around since before I started following these forums.  It ties back physically to where warm Atlantic currents hit a rise in slope at the shelf around Svalbard.  It varies somewhat in size over the season, but is persistent year over year, and generally runs 8-10C warmer than surrounding waters.

[FishOutofWater]

Well, that's interesting re: the Fram thermal anomaly. I'll look a little deeper into it.

[Tigertown]

Well, that just makes me all the worse for curiosity. First, it's kind of big for an artifact. Second, it shows up for both SST's and SST anomalies, though that probably don't mean much.
It is right in the spot where the current turns, if that makes a difference.
I may be crazy, but I think somebody pointed it out in the past, which means it has been there before. When did it show up?

Edit; Sorry, I typed while jdallen was posting. Thanks.

[jdallen]

Well, that's interesting re: the Fram thermal anomaly. I'll look a little deeper into it.

Figure 6 in this paper shows how the flow stacks up against the islands, and shows how flow changed and temperatures increased between 2003 and 2006.  I'm confident the trend has continued, as I think is born out by what we've seen there over the last few years.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230463198_Influence_of_the_West_Spitsbergen_Current_on_the_local_climate