so much worse than anything I had ever imagined...
surprised at how much ice is being claimed
An 8.1% drop relative to the previous low in 2012 would be significant. If the rest of this winter is record warmth like 2015, the ice will be quite vulnerable in melt season regardless of cloud and melt pond conditions.
The thickest ice seems to be in an implausible position relative to Tschudi ice age in the 1990-2016 animation, notably the older ice is on the outside, rather than inside, of the very thickest Piomas ice. And the whole map is in near-total contradiction with many months of Hycom ice thickness, which is a conventional half-dome declining out from the CAA.
We've wondered before if the Piomas algorithm works all that well for thinner ice. Right now though, SMOS only kicks in for thicknesses below 0.5 m so the SMOS + Cryosat combination product is needed. However that does not seem available quite yet for the date of interest.
Analysis of the warmest Arctic winter, 2015–2016
RI Cullather, YK Lim, LN Boisvert, L Brucker, JN Lee, SMJ Nowicki
Geophysical Research Letters 43 (20) 2016
The Impact of the Extreme Winter 2015/16 Arctic Cyclone on the Barents–Kara Seas
LN Boisvert, AA Petty, JC Stroeve
Monthly Weather Review 144 (11), 4279-4287 2016
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 121 (19) 2 2016
Melt onset over Arctic sea ice controlled by atmospheric moisture transport
J Mortin, G Svensson, RG Graversen, ML Kapsch, JC Stroeve, ...
Geophysical Research Letters 2016
The Arctic is becoming warmer and wetter as revealed by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder
LN Boisvert, JC Stroeve
Geophysical Research Letters 42 (11), 4439-4446
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/noaas-2016-arctic-report-card-visual-highlights