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bbr2314

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4450 on: August 30, 2016, 01:51:49 PM »
The failure of the Halocline over certain regions.

Which regions?
The area NE of Svalbard stretching to the Siberian side, it begins fading out dramatically in the above animation by A-Team over the past week but started breaking up over a month before that, just not significantly (as you can see if you watch the animation closely).

DMI's maps show relatively high salinities here and it seems that the continued barrage of storms has intermingled large amounts of salty warm Atlantic water which is now wreaking havoc on everything up to the North Pole and even beyond.

What makes me nervous is that we will need *sustained* temps at -11C for the melt in this region to really begin stopping (due to the amount of open water) and that is very unlikely for at least another month just looking at the background... considering last winter had melting events ongoing into December (per a new paper... link somewhere on this forum I believe!) any regions undergoing significant bottom melt but not having yet melted out seem more likely to do so this year than in yrs previous.

I should also note that the *percentage* of remaining ice in such a state is also seemingly much proportionally larger than any previous year. There is simply much less structurally sound ice of sufficient thickness to survive the melt season remaining.

Now that the ice has retreated almost completely from over half the Arctic Ocean I would think we see blocking begin to grow more and more impressive as the heat imbalance is exacerbated to record levels come sunset on the North Pole, which for the first time ever looks like it could enter the fall with no ice.

The EURO at D10 shows warm temperatures covering all the ice that isn't protected N of the CAA/Greenland. This is in the face of a relaxation of our current dipole but relative overall continuation of the same look in terms of where HP/LP are situated (tho Atlantic LP emphasis looks to shift W from Kara into Greenland Sea). That means we are going to see continued movement of the newly-brash ice making up the "flashing out" areas and it is many many miles away from the small but safe-ish zone N of CAA.

I'd advise anyone to check MODIS and toggle between the most recent days, as the distance the ice in the aforementioned regions is covering is very large, which means ice of all thicknesses is potentially vulnerable.


Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4451 on: August 30, 2016, 02:26:12 PM »
The area NE of Svalbard stretching to the Siberian side.

DMI's maps show relatively high salinities here and it seems that the continued barrage of storms has intermingled large amounts of salty warm Atlantic water which is now wreaking havoc on everything up to the North Pole and even beyond.

"Seems" being the operative word? Compare the havoc wreaked in 2013 with 2016:
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A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4452 on: August 30, 2016, 02:30:50 PM »
Here is a simulated melt scenario -- not a prediction, just a scenario -- of what it would take in coming weeks to reduce the residual ice cover to 2.4 million km2.

Animation frames show areas of low sea ice concentration successively 'melted' (recolored ocean blue) in blocks of 10 palette units, starting from the 29 Aug 16 AMSR2 3.1k UHH large format.

Variations on this scenario could include areas of high sea ice concentration 'refreezing' (recolored ice white). These would offset 'melt', leading to a considerably higher minimum.

Neither approach anticipates or accommodates motion, most notably the march to obliteration along the Barents front. Recall that front is strongly tied to bathymetry, ie the plunge of warm  Atlantic waters to density-appropriate depth down off the continental shelf.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2016, 02:39:56 PM by A-Team »

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4453 on: August 30, 2016, 03:31:21 PM »
Funny thing. Every time I see a concentration map lately, I see just that scenario playing out in my mind, and I think about just how quick the numbers could drop if the more vulnerable areas melted out that way. If...
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Bruce Steele

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4454 on: August 30, 2016, 04:38:13 PM »
The failure of the Halocline over certain regions.

Which regions?

bbr2314, It is the custom of this site to show evidence when making claims like "the failure of the halocline"  . If you can't find published papers then the bar is set even higher with pulling together evidence from data , making a valid argument as to it's relevance ,and pressing your case. Ie
"Defend your thesis"
 I have followed the ITP WHOI data for the entire duration of my time here on the forum. This year that hasn't been difficult because there has been very few working buoys but the ITP WHOI has available completed missions documenting years of data from dozens of buoys and I don't think any of them so clear evidence that either the Pacific Warm Water , or the even deeper Atlantic  Waters ,have ever up welled to the surface. Chris Reynolds might wish to argue with me about a couple buoy's during the 2012 GAC but that would be an argument about interpretation of data. Someday yes there will be enough open water and enough wind, Ekman pumping , or divergent currents strong enough to cause upwelling that pulls warm saline water to the surface but the only warm water that I have seen was caused by insolation. That is it is plenty warm to cause bottom melt but still fresh . River inflow also can be warm enough to do damage to the ice but it too is fresh.
 Hopefully we will get buoys to watch next year that show the temperature and salinity of the water column and if ever I am watching and can say here is evidence I will be more than eager to do so but for now it is still watch and wait.

Shared Humanity

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4455 on: August 30, 2016, 04:51:52 PM »
Looking at that animation, there is no way that much melt and compaction is going to occur during the remainder of the melt season. IMHO.

Bruce Steele

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4456 on: August 30, 2016, 05:06:19 PM »
Re. The intrusion of saline water on the Atlantic side isn't warm enough that it would be causing bottom melt at least at the one working buoy we have to watch. ITP93. It isn't highly unusual either if you go back through the data. At ITP93 you can see warmer more saline water -1.2C as opposed to surface -1.8C  and salinity higher than the current surface  33.6ppb  down around 75 meters but it hasn't breached the surface and the pack ice is thick enough to prevent waves from doing much more surface mixing this season. Yes there is some upwelling or shoaling of  deeper, warmer waters but they just haven't breached the surface and for this year at this location anyhow I don't think it will.

DoomInTheUK

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4457 on: August 30, 2016, 05:10:16 PM »
Here is a simulated melt scenario -- not a prediction, just a scenario -- of what it would take in coming weeks to reduce the residual ice cover to 2.4 million km2.


Ouch. That's one scenario that would put the cat amongst the pigeons. Even a large percentage of it will still be an eye opener.
This really has turned into a fascinating melt season.

Neven

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4458 on: August 30, 2016, 05:47:04 PM »
Funny thing. Every time I see a concentration map lately, I see just that scenario playing out in my mind, and I think about just how quick the numbers could drop if the more vulnerable areas melted out that way. If...

I think that every year, but at some point there just isn't enough time. And the weather forecast doesn't make it plausible either. This could change, of course, in the next few days. But even then I don't see that bulk of ice towards the Laptev Sea flash out of existence.
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4459 on: August 30, 2016, 06:29:12 PM »
I don't see either that the whole bulk of ice in the Laptev Sea would disappear when we are so close to the minimum. However, the ice there should take some damage as the forecast from CCI Reanalyzer hints of rain on the wet ice during the next week.

What I do believe is that we might see a decent polynya north of Frans Josefz land. Right now it seems to be an island with open water close to 88oN(!)

The interesting thing with this season is that we might see a reversed dipole by a couple of days from now. High pressure over Siberia will push warm air into the Laptev Sea which might put some ice loss. Normally, if I've understood correct from what Neven have been written earlier years, highs over Siberia normally means an earlier start of the refreezing season while the opposite goes true for highs over North America. This month, as was July but to a lesser degree, has been ridiculously warm in the area around Ural mountains and thre should be potential for some late warm surge over the western part of Laptev.

I also notice that from Brian Brettschneiders tweets, Alaska has seen record warm temperatures to be this late in summer. For example, Barrow hit 64F by saturday 27.

What we can state is that with considerable better melting conditions during late May, June and July the 2012 minimum would have been smashed with a huge margin! And the question is not if but when the next repeat of 2007 melting season will appear. By then we will be in really, really big trouble!!

dnem

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4460 on: August 30, 2016, 07:09:30 PM »
Just a quick question about the term "flash melting."  Sometimes it seems to mean the situation where ice remains in the maps because the sensors can't see what's there, and then it "flashes" out of existence when the sensor can see that it's actually gone.  Other times folks seem to use it just to mean rapid melt.  Is "flash melt" a term of art?  And should should it be reserved for the sensor thing?  Sorry to be OT but it comes up a lot here.

magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4461 on: August 30, 2016, 07:51:46 PM »
Just a quick question about the term "flash melting."  Sometimes it seems to mean the situation where ice remains in the maps because the sensors can't see what's there, and then it "flashes" out of existence when the sensor can see that it's actually gone.  Other times folks seem to use it just to mean rapid melt.  Is "flash melt" a term of art?  And should should it be reserved for the sensor thing?  Sorry to be OT but it comes up a lot here.

IMO it means rapidly vanishing ice ( over night for example ) no matter of the reason, which is why we se flash and re-flash. as we recently got an idea cloud cover can play a role. since the remaining ice in earlier years was either more compact or the skies in summer were often more clear than this year, the significance of the impact for clouds on the area maps was somehow more omitted to the less experienced users ( or even most users )

at least this is the impression i got recently while following the discussions, ready to read additional contributions on the matter to further clear the picture :-)

RoxTheGeologist

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4462 on: August 30, 2016, 08:07:57 PM »

I would think that 'Flash' and 'Re-Flash' with regard to melting and refreezing is extremely unlikely to happen, simply because of the very high specific heat of fusion of water and the shifts in salinity caused by freezing and melting.

With regard to extent I'd expect if there is an area of ice hovering around 15% there is enough noise in the data processing for the extent to vary above and below the 15%. If a large area suddenly drops below 15% you see a big drop, but in reality the ice might be measured at, say, 14.99% and 'flash' out of existence. The next day it might be measured at 15.01%, and suddenly 'reappear'.

Of course, there are experts on this forum who are vastly more informed than I and I am sure I will be corrected :)

TerryM

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4463 on: August 30, 2016, 09:00:06 PM »
Rox
Your explanation is very close to what I would have given. I think the term was first used in the forum to describe a huge melt out that occurred after an October storm in 2011?, which flashed back into existence a few days later. I think it was generally held that rain had fooled the sensors, then when things dried out our 15.1% "Flashed" back into existence. there was a lengthy discussion about the impossibility of the "Flash" being real because of latent heat problem.
Rain melts lots of ice, but it can also fool lots of sensors.
Terry

Juan C. García

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4464 on: August 30, 2016, 09:44:50 PM »
Neven ASIB:
"I introduced the term 'flash melting' in a recent SIE update..."

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/flash-melting.html
Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

NeilT

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4465 on: August 30, 2016, 10:23:34 PM »
My bid was end of surface melt around the end of the first week of Sept and the end of bottom melt around some time in Week 3 Sept with, potentially, some polynya activity within the ice field due to the heat and the broken ice.

What I've been mulling over this last week is the impact of the storms in a different way.

Late melt in a non stormy system tends to leave significant bodies of freshened water either around the melting ice or where the ice completely melted out.  If the onset of freezing starts quickly enough, this ice is locked in place and tends to have a composition much closer to 2y ice than fyi.

What I see the storms doing is mixing the water around the existing melting ice floes and making it significantly more saline, both exacerbating bottom melt and also slowing the onset of re-freezing.

Leading to the ice pack being significantly more FYI in structure and susceptible to extreme rapid melting at the end of the next years melt season.

If nothing else the ice dynamics are setting up for a very interesting 12 months.
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anthropocene

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4466 on: August 30, 2016, 10:36:25 PM »
Here is a simulated melt scenario -- not a prediction, just a scenario -- of what it would take in coming weeks to reduce the residual ice cover to 2.4 million km2.


2 or 3 weeks ago I was going to ask what would be the area of ice if it was contained within longitude of 0 deg and approx 130 degW and the north of Greenland and CAA. Why? Because from the organisation of the ice (back then) that would seem to be a lower bound of what was possible this melt season. You appear to have answered that question. Thank you.

TerryM

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4467 on: August 30, 2016, 11:01:52 PM »
Neven ASIB:
"I introduced the term 'flash melting' in a recent SIE update..."

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/flash-melting.html


Much as I hate to correct our fearless leader ;>) the following was from a blog post from November 18, 2011. It seems that I was off by a year and a month.
Terry

Neven wrote"There is no way that all of that ice melted due to the warmth from below."</blockquote>
I tend to agree with you, Neven. The waters are too cold for sudden melt, and besides, there is a much easier explanation for the reduction in area and extent : a storm flushes water over ice very easily, which 'fools' the satelite instruments in interpreting (thin) ice as water as long as the waves dominate the area.
Similar to what we saw happen during the "Flash Melt" late summer, (I don't have the link to your post on that ready), I think in a few days, when the water starts to calm down, and precipitation freezes over the ice, it will indeed be as if 'nothing happened'.
As for ridging and rafting, I tend to agree with Lodger : the ice in the margin is too thin now for serious ridging, and even if ridging occured, thermal insulation of ice should eliminate any differences with now open water in a month or two.
Finally, a storm typically stirs up the waters in the upper 10 meters or so, but that effect is quickly eliminated once you get under ice. For example, ITP41 (tethered profiler) is located only a few 100 km from the turbulent waters in the margin, and it shows no noticable effect on deep water heat profile around the time of the storm :
http://www.whoi.edu/itp/images/itp41dat3.jpg
It's clear that there is heat trapped under the Arctic sea ice, but it's apparent that this storm did not disturb the 'stratification' much, at least not under ice...
Here are more profilers :
[/color]http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=23097[/color]Posted by: Rob Dekker | November 18, 2011 at 09:40[/b][/size][/font][/size][/color][/size][/color]

Juan C. García

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4468 on: August 31, 2016, 03:30:52 AM »
Neven ASIB:
"I introduced the term 'flash melting' in a recent SIE update..."

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/flash-melting.html


Much as I hate to correct our fearless leader ;>) the following was from a blog post from November 18, 2011. It seems that I was off by a year and a month.
Terry


Neven's post is from August 23, 2011. Almost 3 months before, if I understand the dates correctly.
Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4469 on: August 31, 2016, 09:10:16 AM »
Todays SIE map from Bremen is very fascinating and show some local spots of open water at 89oN(!!!) I don't think we ever have seen polynyas or open water that close to the pole, or am I mistaking? See attached picture for your own judgement. Courtesy: University of Bremen.

As so little remains of this season it would be exciting - and scary - if a good polynya would develop this far north and so close to the North Pole!!


Adam Ash

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4470 on: August 31, 2016, 09:51:04 AM »
The Bremen visual map shows the open ocean near the pole perhaps better.

These are 6.25 km grids, so if it says its blue, then there is a LOT of blue!

Sunlight penetrating ocean depths which have not seen the sun for millennia. 

effbeh

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4471 on: August 31, 2016, 10:09:19 AM »
Although I'm mediocre at best in image processing, here is my attempt to join ASMR2 with Nullschool MSLP imagery to see which parts of the ice might be most affected by wind:

Adam Ash

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4472 on: August 31, 2016, 10:39:49 AM »
Gosh!  By the look of that there is a lot of ice on a bus leaving town via Fram Straight!

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4473 on: August 31, 2016, 11:00:12 AM »
So much for 2015! At this time the last storm there was done, seems there's way more to happen here.
The way it goes is scary, there is room for 500k of additional extent drop if it does not stop, 250k for sure.
Edit: there is a whole Great Britain extent equivalent fading out in the Wrangel arm, that is 250k alone.

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4474 on: August 31, 2016, 12:31:36 PM »
I don't think we ever have seen polynyas or open water that close to the pole, or am I mistaking?

Apart from 2010 and 2013?

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Sigmetnow

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4475 on: August 31, 2016, 01:11:45 PM »
Quote
Alaska with more days in the above normal tercile in 2016 than either 2014 or 2015 – the 2 warmest years on record.
https://twitter.com/climatologist49/status/770791788650991616

Quote
... not only, that, there has been exactly 1 day with the temp below normal at all. Feb 19th was barly below normal.
https://twitter.com/climatologist49/status/770794340583026697

Quote
... each of 25 stations is compared against their daily normal and the values are standardized.
https://twitter.com/climatologist49/status/770796604135657472
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slow wing

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4476 on: August 31, 2016, 01:36:14 PM »
As appended, the Suomi satellite didn't quite get a clear view of the North Pole. However, on peering through the thin clouds though, polynyas can be seen from about 20 km above the Pole - i.e. on the Russian side - and filling a progressively larger fraction on travelling further from the Pole in that direction.

  As also appended, moderately strong winds are currently blowing from the general direction of the polynya (although shifting within a day to a direction more from the Atlantic side) so maybe one or more polynya will sweep over the North Pole within a day or so?

  Beyond that, we may end up with rubble over the North Pole within the coming week or two, as Jim Hunt illustrated above has already happened back in 2013.

  As a speculative potential difference to 2013 though, we may still possibly get rubble this year extending all the way from the North Pole to the open ocean - if it happened this year then that would be indicative of the dire straits the Arctic is in already. (Or it could get even worse, the way the ice is deteriorating this year, with a 'rubble passage' going right through the central Arctic Basin, and including the North Pole. We already aren't far off that, with just a little bit more ice to lose near the ends before the current rubble region could be said to extend from the Atlantic side all the way through to the Siberian Sea Bite.)


« Last Edit: August 31, 2016, 01:55:22 PM by slow wing »

slow wing

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4477 on: August 31, 2016, 04:00:16 PM »
Here is a simulated melt scenario -- not a prediction, just a scenario -- of what it would take in coming weeks to reduce the residual ice cover to 2.4 million km2.

Thanks for this, above at #4452, and other very interesting animations.

It would be shocking if the ice reached that scenario this year - it looks well below the 2012 minimum. Just wanted to check that the remaining area (or is it extent??) in that scenario is as much as 2.4 million km2.

Surprisingly to me, that is above the actual Cryosphere Today minimum Arctic sea ice area for any day in 2012, which was 2.234 million km2, even though that scenario looks like less ice to me. (Is this an issue of extent vs. area?)

As another comparison though, the area inside 10 degrees from the Pole is about 4 million km2
~ pi * (10,000/9) km2 within the approximations that 90 degrees ~10,000 km & approximating as a 2-dimensional disk.

What remains looks by eye to be less than half of that area as it appears the ice wouldn't fill half the region above.

So is it the approximation or else just my eyes fooling me?
« Last Edit: August 31, 2016, 04:21:39 PM by slow wing »

Pi26

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4478 on: August 31, 2016, 04:25:24 PM »
Yes, Slow wing. 2.4 M km2 would fill 2/3 of the entire sea area inside 10 degrees from the pole.
For me This animation seems to show remaining ice from 1.2-1.5 M km2.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2016, 04:45:38 PM by Pi26 »

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4479 on: August 31, 2016, 04:32:35 PM »
 bbr pointed out on the Homebrew thread about the thick ice being pushed into the CAA. He noticed it on DMI and I see it on a couple other places, also. I would think all the storms and wind pushed it, and it makes sense, but being a relative newbie it kind of surprised me to see it pushed into the passages like that. I have seen the videos on the weather channel of the Great Lakes when the wind piled ice up on shore and pushed all the way into homes, breaking down doors and  even walls. I do not know how this will effect the overall melt season or not, but it is interesting to see how far south down the passages it will push.
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bosbas

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4480 on: August 31, 2016, 04:54:35 PM »
I can't find the remnants of Big Block anymore on today's NSIDC picture. It was fun to watch ... While it lasted.

TerryM

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4481 on: August 31, 2016, 06:13:18 PM »
Neven ASIB:
"I introduced the term 'flash melting' in a recent SIE update..."

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/flash-melting.html


Much as I hate to correct our fearless leader ;>) the following was from a blog post from November 18, 2011. It seems that I was off by a year and a month.
Terry


Neven's post is from August 23, 2011. Almost 3 months before, if I understand the dates correctly.


Ouch !
I somehow missed the dateline on Neven's post.


I do however recall well the discussions relating to the ice hurricane with 100 MPH winds and 40 ft seas. What is really different this year though is the astonishing dearth of buoys to record this year's tribulations.


Terry

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4482 on: August 31, 2016, 06:20:40 PM »
Jim Hunt: thanks for correcting my poor memory! :) Feels a little strange that three whole years already have passed since we sat here and discussed the slushy ice close to the North Pole! :)

A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4483 on: August 31, 2016, 07:46:38 PM »
The last six days have seen some appearance of new ice-free areas around the pole but mostly existing such areas just moving 'downward' towards the CAA. The animation shows the progression of lumped 0-10% sea ice concentration according to UHH AMSR2 3.1k.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4484 on: August 31, 2016, 08:45:39 PM »
The last six days have seen some appearance of new ice-free areas around the pole but mostly existing such areas just moving 'downward' towards the CAA. The animation shows the progression of lumped 0-10% sea ice concentration according to UHH AMSR2 3.1k.

Along with a surprisingly calm and content polar bear...

A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4485 on: August 31, 2016, 09:37:02 PM »
Quote
can't find the remnants of Big Block anymore on today's NSIDC picture
Low resolution issue.

Has Big Block fully broken up -- what is holding the pieces together the last 45 days, swaths of negative freeboard? The 2nd animation looks into this pixel by pixel for 30 Aug 16. The data is not actually this good but consistency over multiple days would rule out most atmospheric and melt  artifacts.

The scientific interest in BB just went through the roof with the publication of the paper below because, as mapped in an earlier post, one of the aircraft flights went directly over Big Block in late spring. That provides a thickness transect that serves to calibrate other days and other methods giving daily top and bottom melt over the season.

Comparison of Arctic Sea Ice Thickness from Satellites, Aircraft, and PIOMAS Data
X Wang, J Key, R Kwok and J Zhang
Remote Sens. 2016, 8(9), 713; doi: 10.3390/rs8090713 Published 30 Aug 2016
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/8/9/713/htm free full

In this study, six Arctic sea ice thickness products are compared: the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder, ICESat, CryoSat-2, SMOS, NASA IceBridge aircraft flights, and PIOMAS. The satellite products are based on three different retrieval methods: an energy budget approach, measurements of ice freeboard, and the relationship between passive microwave brightness temperatures and thin ice thickness. Inter-comparisons are done for the periods of overlap from 2003 to 2013.

Results show that ICESat sea ice is thicker than APP-x and PIOMAS overall, particularly along the north coast of Greenland and Canadian Archipelago. The relative differences of APP-x and PIOMAS with ICESat are −0.48 m and −0.31 m, respectively. APP-x underestimates thickness relative to CryoSat-2, with a mean difference of −0.19 m. The biases for APP-x, PIOMAS, and CryoSat-2 relative to IceBridge thicknesses are 0.18 m, 0.18 m, and 0.29 m. The mean difference between SMOS and CryoSat-2 for 0~1 m thick ice is 0.13 m in March and −0.24 m in October.

All satellite-retrieved ice thickness products and PIOMAS overestimate the thickness of thin ice (1 m or less) compared to IceBridge for which SMOS has the smallest bias (0.26 m). The spatial correlation between the datasets indicates that APP-x and PIOMAS are the most similar, followed by APP-x and CryoSat-2.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2016, 10:24:50 PM by A-Team »

budmantis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4486 on: August 31, 2016, 11:02:50 PM »
The last six days have seen some appearance of new ice-free areas around the pole but mostly existing such areas just moving 'downward' towards the CAA. The animation shows the progression of lumped 0-10% sea ice concentration according to UHH AMSR2 3.1k.

Along with a surprisingly calm and content polar bear...

A winking calm and content polar bear.

jdallen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4487 on: September 01, 2016, 01:06:56 AM »
Nice clear Worldview shot of the area containing the "Wrangle Arm".   Area in the images is ~400000KM2. This along with an area just north of Nova Severnya are what make up the difference between 2016 and 2007/2012.

Not exactly the quality of ice that leaves one feeling particularly confident I'm afraid.

(1KM scale, click to enlarge)
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4488 on: September 01, 2016, 01:12:57 AM »
Detail of the area closest to Wrangel at 500M scale.  Area of the image is 25-30,000KM2

Strikingly beautiful patterns of ice in the water, if disturbing.

Click to enlarge.

(edit:  added the wispy area in the first image at 250M detail, about 4000KM2.  This area fascinates me.)
« Last Edit: September 01, 2016, 01:19:06 AM by jdallen »
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Richard Rathbone

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4489 on: September 01, 2016, 01:39:39 AM »

Edit: there is a whole Great Britain extent equivalent fading out in the Wrangel arm, that is 250k alone.

Wrexit.

Kate

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4490 on: September 01, 2016, 02:05:37 AM »

Edit: there is a whole Great Britain extent equivalent fading out in the Wrangel arm, that is 250k alone.

Wrexit.


oren

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4491 on: September 01, 2016, 02:09:26 AM »
Detail of the area closest to Wrangel at 500M scale.  Area of the image is 25-30,000KM2

Strikingly beautiful patterns of ice in the water, if disturbing.

Click to enlarge.

(edit:  added the wispy area in the first image at 250M detail, about 4000KM2.  This area fascinates me.)

Amazing images. The ice looks totally dead, but still might make it to the minimum. We'll soon see.

tzupancic

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4492 on: September 01, 2016, 04:41:28 AM »
Regarding the remnants of the ‘big block’ I have to think that they speak to us. But what do they say?

Cast adrift in a great sea, they persist (clinging by a thread? or defiantly challenging our perceptions?)

Hard to say. Time will tell. Earth and the great weather... they will decide... (as the Innuit know).

« Last Edit: September 01, 2016, 04:57:40 AM by tzupancic »

greatdying2

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4493 on: September 01, 2016, 07:15:51 AM »
Strikingly beautiful patterns of ice in the water, if disturbing.

Very beautiful!

These slush swirls, are they correctly recognized as equivalent to open water, or do they register as increased extent, area, and even volume in many products/models?
The Permian–Triassic extinction event, a.k.a. the Great Dying, occurred about 250 million years ago and is the most severe known extinction event. Up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct; it is also the only known mass extinction of insects.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4494 on: September 01, 2016, 08:23:49 AM »
worldview has a AMSR2 ice concentration layer and with opacity set to 50% you can get a good comparison of visible and passive microwave when clouds let you see the ice.
http://go.nasa.gov/2cekwsm
Not sure this works equally with all browsers, I am using firefox.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2016, 08:29:26 AM by Andreas T »

Neven

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4495 on: September 01, 2016, 08:38:58 AM »
Indeed, everything moves towards the CAA, and so, given the current weather forecast, I'm not sure how much further the open water can get towards the pole. At the same time, there is less and less un-flashing in the Wrangel Arm, it seems:
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Rob Dekker

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4496 on: September 01, 2016, 08:39:23 AM »

Edit: there is a whole Great Britain extent equivalent fading out in the Wrangel arm, that is 250k alone.

Wrexit.
Good one ! :D
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4497 on: September 01, 2016, 08:44:21 AM »
At the same time, there is less and less un-flashing in the Wrangel Arm, it seems:

Agreed. With at least a couple of weeks of melting ahead, that Wrangel Arm is going to go.
I'm more concerned about the Laptev Arm, which may be torn apart before serious freezing starts.
The low concentration through the "heart" (all through the pole and towards the Atlantic) will likely be saved by the onset of freezing. (and "mend the broken heart"  ;) )
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greatdying2

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4498 on: September 01, 2016, 10:42:42 AM »
worldview has a AMSR2 ice concentration layer and with opacity set to 50% you can get a good comparison of visible and passive microwave when clouds let you see the ice.
http://go.nasa.gov/2cekwsm
Not sure this works equally with all browsers, I am using firefox.
Neat! Thanks Andreas.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2016, 10:52:08 AM by greatdying2 »
The Permian–Triassic extinction event, a.k.a. the Great Dying, occurred about 250 million years ago and is the most severe known extinction event. Up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct; it is also the only known mass extinction of insects.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #4499 on: September 01, 2016, 10:46:17 AM »
Strikingly beautiful patterns of ice in the water, if disturbing.
Fractals.