The 2016/2017 freezing season

[Tigertown]

Of late, there have been storms one behind another in the N. Pacific, producing waves of their own. I doubt any ice exported through the Strait will last long, as these storms keep  waves stirred up, which bring just enough heat to keep ice melted. Look what these have done in the Okhotsk.
IMO, you can't always just look at current SST's when waves are involved, as these tend to move heat around. If the heat goes toward melt, you may never know it was even there at all by watching temps...

P.S. It is looking more and more like this event is coming with sequels.

[Shared Humanity]

winds don't agree between nullschool and windytv

Nice. It seems we can't take wind depictions at face value.

The oddity here is that the kitesurfer behind windtv is not going all-in on his main interest, wind. Note that ECMWF is provided (unlike at nullschool) as well as GF, enabling a three-way comparison.

Windytv was a mighty fine effort on the coding side, taking apart and repurpose nullschool open source. This may encourage others to do the same, for example flow line sprites for sea ice movement.

Meanwhile, data vs models, what can be done by way of reality check? In terms of a storm template, GWK Moore chases down the situation for meteorological Arctic Ocean (IABP) buoys for the huge event in late December 2015 in the open source article below. This was published independently of the research-grade L Boisvert analysis of the same storm; N-ICE2015 treats six other winter and spring storms during their drift.

In a nutshell, the weather station at Ny-Ålesund (near Longyearben, Svalbard) has the long term weather records and daily radiosondes. It is the closest such station to the north pole. Nord, Greenland also has online weather and wind (~66 kph currently) as does Kap Morris Jesup and various land sites along the CAA and coastal Alaska.

However, it is only with in situ buoys that ocean wind can measured; here it seems few (or none) of these are currently operational. Without tie points in this vast region, nothing great (or rather nothing verifiable) can be expected from either GFS or ECMWF, even in reanalysis.

Only the wind at the surface moves the ice; upper winds might advect warmth and moisture but don't affect export.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5157030/ Moore 2016
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/greenland/station-nord
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-16-0234.1 Boisvert 2016

We can, of course, watch the ice real time. It is so fractured and mobile that it will certainly give us a sense of what is happening.

[Shared Humanity]

Storm analysis should marginally benchmark export through the Nares Strait. The focus usually is on the Fram and Svalbard-FJI front; for this storm, remarkable export out the Bering Strait is also anticipated by Hycom. (That will require clear weather on puffin-feeder imagery or low-res microwave as Sentinel-1AB rarely covers the Chukchi.)

A short note should also be dedicated to the transport of ice into the Arctic proper from Kara sea (whatever survives the waves etc), which has been going on already for more than a week and it will keep very strong due to these storms.
(sim from Jan 07 to Jan 22)

Christ! Look what's happening in the Laptev!

[Ice Shieldz]

Over the next 4 days, look at the persistent winds delivering an all out assault on the ice to the north of CAA and Greenland.  One would expect the ice in these areas to be more fastened to the land by this time of year, but now it seems like the term "fast ice" is taking on a whole new meaning.   

[Tigertown]

Where to look? It's everywhere. Kara, laptev, big leads in the ESS. Ice that exited the Bering Strait is melting already. Barely any ice left in Okhotsk. Hudson Bay, the Labrador Sea, and Baffin Bay where the Nares Strait empties are all showing lower concentration. This all started to go down long before the current developments in the weather. How long will the ice around FJL last now?

[Jim Hunt]

According to Environment Canada the latest "Fram Strait Cyclone" is now down to 957 hPa:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2017/01/global-sea-ice-extent-reaches-lowest-ever-level/#Cyclone

[jdallen]

ECMWF and GPS diverge pretty sharply past about a week out, but up through D+100, they are in pretty clear agreement about the storms.  We're looking at 4 days of near hurricane force winds over most of the Atlantic side of the pack, entraining a huge plume of heat and moisture.  Stir those icecubes!   

[A-Team]

looking at 4 days of near hurricane force winds

This is not a drill?

The first two animations below look at the ice 'halfway between NE Greenland and FJI at very high resolution, courtesy of PolarView jpg. It is challenging to process images with 200,000,000 pixels per scene so ice movement is examined just between Jan 14th and Jan 16th at full resolution and at the more manageable 25% rescale.

The ice is surprisingly moving somewhat poleward (ie diametrically away from the Fram) along the Greenwich meridian between 86º-87º N. Features can change quite a bit just between two days (actually 49.36 hours according to timestamps).

The velocity can be measured more accurately here than on DTU 1 km mosaics; however there may be little point to two-day mean velocities because the ice changes direction rapidly now with a strong wind. Lots of buoys with GPS can get at these sub-daily changes (though only at select points that themselves change with drift).

The bottom animation is just a storm template for 2 m temperature lifted from @ZLabe and Climate Reanalyzer. It runs over Jan 16-21 at six hour intervals.

S1A_EW_GRDM_1SDH_20170116T123837_98CB_N_1.final.jpg
S1A_EW_GRDM_1SSH_20170114T111657_66BC_N_1.final.jpg

[Shared Humanity]

Looking at that animation, on the last day 1/21/2017, there is a line of low pressure systems still heading for the Arctic.

[Gray-Wolf]

I think until we know what the outcome of the current Stratospheric ruminations play out we will never be able to look forward to 'weather' over the basin?

Should we be looking at the recently formed PV collapsing into a 'final warming' then the basin is in for a very disturbed run into spring and sun up.

If this were to be the way of it then the ice will be in a right royal mess by that time with warmer waters washed back up to surface and mechanical weathering smashing the ice back to 'pancake sized' floes ( LOL). At least as small floes as we entered last melt season with.

Way back in the noughties we thought we were onto something with melt pond percentage as a guide to final ice amounts....... well that did not last long! With floes so small as to not facilitate 'expansive, lowered albedo , melt pond formation' where do we look now? Broken ice 'leads' bringing low albedo 'sinks' for early solar? Setting up the whole of the Arctic Ocean for 'warming' as ice drifts over , and off, patches of dark water allowing for warming at rates higher than past 'ice covered' times?

[Tigertown]

Hudson Bay, where the ice never really got to thicken much before being assaulted.

[bairgon]

looking at 4 days of near hurricane force winds

The ice is surprisingly moving somewhat poleward (ie diametrically away from the Fram)

That is not unexpected. The winds on the 15th were slowly building from the south. At 9pm on the 15th they were 43km/h at that point.

See https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/01/15/2100Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-44.26,80.86,1981/loc=-2.679,80.632

The Fram export seems to start in earnest at midnight tonight UTC.

[Jim Williams]

Where to look? It's everywhere. Kara, laptev, big leads in the ESS. Ice that exited the Bering Strait is melting already. Barely any ice left in Okhotsk. Hudson Bay, the Labrador Sea, and Baffin Bay where the Nares Strait empties are all showing lower concentration. This all started to go down long before the current developments in the weather. How long will the ice around FJL last now?

Time for me to go over to the extent prediction and guess whatever the max was a week or so ago?

[Metamemesis]

The irony: Climate Change causes early mass-migration of climate change scientists.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38643420

[Tigertown]

There is wave action going on at the moment where the Nares Strait meets Baffin Bay. Also, on a smaller scale in the passages. That would have to mean that the motion is  already propagating right through the ice covered areas.(I know; DUH!)

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/primary/waves/overlay=significant_wave_height/orthographic=-92.05,77.55,2200/loc=-72.093,76.714

[Geoff]

If you're looking at wind on nullschool I changed the height setting to 10 hPa

Arctic


Comped to the Antarctic:


It doesn't look great but who knows what 10hPa means?

[southseas]

who knows what 10hPa means?

A long way up

http://docs.engineeringtoolbox.com/documents/462/elevation_altitude_air_pressure.png

As a measurement of height air pressure gets less accurate as you get very high

[Watching_from_Canberra]

That distinction between the two hemispheres might be seasonal.  Try going back in time on Nullschool to a point where it is summer in the north and winter in the south.  I suspect the pattern might be reversed.

[Tigertown]

I am pretty sure the one over the Arctic is supposed to be just one.

Unless, SSW occurs.

[Geoff]

True, it does look mostly seasonal - In July the Arctic looks like the Antarctic does now, where the Antarctic looks like:



Going back previous years there have been a few smaller double and even triple cyclonic groupings in the Arctic, but they don't really look as intense as this one.

Edit: In the original nullschool arctic picture i posted, at that altitude the wind speed gets faster than 400km/h (around the equator, 80km/h, in the arctic, 5km/h)

[Csnavywx]

I am pretty sure the one over the Arctic is supposed to be just one.

Unless, SSW occurs.

There's only one in that snapshot. The flanking circulations are anticyclonic. Sometimes those will eventually result in an erosion and/or split of the main vortex.

[A-Team]

Did you know we have 1529 other forums where off-topic discussions might be on-topic?

In monitoring the 2016/2017 Arctic freezing season (this forum), it is a high priority to monitor growth in ice thickness during the winter and its loss and rearrangement during storms such the current epic event.

We're not currently sure which product, if any, provides an accurate source of thickness data. The animations below look at daily ADS-Jaxa retrievals which seem to integrate peripheral SMOS ice thinness with another microwave or modeled product.

The first animation shows thickness from the start of the year to Jan 16th. The next three look at differences between successive days by |A-B|, A-B and B-A where A is one day later than B. The resultant colors, notably the magenta, indicate regions of change whereas black or very dark indicate minimally changing thickness (plus land). It is feasible to change palette so that changes in each thickness bin can be quantitated.

Technical note; Since the initial palette was quite muddy and its thickness precision doubtful, the original daily maps were tiled up and binned (contoured) by passing to indexed color set at 24 distinct ones. This is applied simultaneously to the color key (not shown). Back in RGB mode, arithmetic operations can be conducted using a second layer displaced by a day. After monotonic brightening of mid-tones, the tile is then sliced back to individual days for purposes of making the animations.

[A-Team]

Snowfall (or even rain) during this storm is a major concern. Dry snow on ice acts as an insulating blanket in winter (because of all the trapped low conductivity air), inhibiting the bottom freeze needed to get the ice thickened before melt season arrives. Rain is not plausible centrally given current temperatures but could conceivably fall on the periphery, melting whatever snow is on the ice now and bringing in a lot of heat with it.

The time series below shows nullschool's "3-hour Precipitation Accumulation" from today 2017-01-16 21:00 to Jan 22 06:00 UTC. These range from nothing to a few millimeters (in a three hour interfal) for the date range shown. The amounts are presumably liquid water equivalents so snow depth would need a multiplier of ~ten, neglecting drifts.

While plumes of moisture from the south can be seen coming down, notably on the Barents, the amounts do not seem extreme. Weather stations that might validate the forecast are sparse. The one in Svalbard indicates a few inches of snow over the next two days and 25.1 mm (an inch) over the last 30, with less to the east on FJI.

https://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Svalbard/Longyearbyen/statistics.html

[Pmt111500]

Polar night jet high in the stratosphere. 10hPa. It's the sun and most of everything below is weather.

[be cause]

I and thousands of others come to this thread to be informed @ the freezing season . Thank you yet again A-team for your observations and graphics . I am glad you have noticed there is more to talk about than the stratosphere ATM

[Gray-Wolf]

The Polar vortex is just as important as the storms coming in (IMHO) We know that the strat 'drives' weather via various mechanisms and so keeping tabs on it , and trop forecasts, so we can better gauge impacts on the ice.

Should we see a warming down to ground level then we could see a period of HP dominance over the ice and isn't knowing such might be on the horizon important?

Then there is WACCy and the PV disruption. Without the poorly formed , errant PV through early winter would we have seen the Polar Jet flinging storms into the basin?

I know we have separate threads but when it is a pertinent observation of atmospheric forcing then it belongs here as much as any other chart ( again IMHO).

[Tigertown]

The Polar vortex is just as important as the storms coming in (IMHO) We know that the strat 'drives' weather via various mechanisms and so keeping tabs on it , and trop forecasts, so we can better gauge impacts on the ice.

Should we see a warming down to ground level then we could see a period of HP dominance over the ice and isn't knowing such might be on the horizon important?

Then there is WACCy and the PV disruption. Without the poorly formed , errant PV through early winter would we have seen the Polar Jet flinging storms into the basin?

I know we have separate threads but when it is a pertinent observation of atmospheric forcing then it belongs here as much as any other chart ( again IMHO).

Agree. If the vortex and jet stream are weak, cold Arctic air will continue to escape and let warm air (warmer) take it's place, bringing moisture with it. This leads to slower freezing and seems to at least play a part in opening the door for these storms.

[bairgon]

DMI for Station Nord at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/nord.uk.php now has an image for 17th Jan (direct link http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Nord/20170117s01a.ASAR.jpg). Compare with the image for 16th Jan at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Nord/20170116s01b.ASAR.jpg. (EDIT: URL fixed)

This shows the effect of the wind - water visible in the lee of the headland and movement of the ice. It's difficult to pick out features, but there is a lead near the fast ice which I estimate moved about 18 minutes south and a little west. Assuming these were taken 24 hours apart (as A-Team points out, these images do not have times on them; it's more likely to be 12 hours) then this equates to a motion of at least 40cm/s.

The forecast at https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicespddrf/nowcast/icespddrf2017011518_2017011700_046_arcticicespddrf.001.gif shows something in the 30cm/s range as a maximum, so actual velocity appears to be off the charts.

Apologies for lack of animated gifs. I'm sure A-Team will be along soon with one of his excellent postings. Good luck on finding floes to track though!

[Tigertown]

@bairgon     If I am not mistaken, you posted the link to the same image twice. If you can fix, would really like to see the comparison and would greatly appreciate.

P.S. There is a site called http://gifmaker.me that is easy to work with and a thread on the forum at http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1259.msg89520.html#msg89520.
You may not be able to make as high a quality GIF as A-Team, but it's not hard to make a simple one.

[magnamentis]

@bairgon     If I am not mistaken, you posted the link to the same image twice. If you can fix, would really like to see the comparison and would greatly appreciate.

simply replace the 17 with a 16 in the URL and you get that comparison for now till it's modified in the post :-) that would make it:

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Nord/20170116s01a.ASAR.jpg

[Tigertown]

Thanks magnamentis. Yes, you can see a marked difference for one day. I do't know how much damage has been done yet, but just having the ice spread out and loosened up like that is going to make it much more vulnerable.

[A-Team]

Several people have observed that projected winds may blow ice north out of the Kara Sea. The animation of SMOS ice thinness for 03 Dec to 16 Jan supports this; Hycom takes matters forward to Jan 24th.

Pale magenta on the SMOS indicates ice greater than a half meter; that never covered more than half the Kara this year and now a reverse garlic press is developing at 78ºN between Severnaya Zemlya and the Taymyr peninsula.

Between the Chukchi, Beaufort, Kara and Barents -- if this keeps up (storms on top of season-long anomalous warmth) we can expect a lot of early open water to significantly precondition the melt season. 

The Beaufort seems asleep but SMOS sees large areas of thin ice there consistently: the bottom animation shows daily variability opposite a 46-day running average. Note the warm spot east of the Mackenzie River.

[Cate]

A clip of Jennifer Francis explaining the new feedback causing "crazy" warmth in the Arctic this fall and winter 2016-2017. ClimateCrock interview from AGU 2016.

https://climatecrocks.com/2017/01/16/jennifer-francis-a-new-arctic-feedback/

[Archimid]

For the southern most part of the Kara at latitude 70 sun up is on the 21st of January. On that day it will receive  1 hour of sunlight.

 For latitude 72 a little further north sun up is on January 29 receiving 1.1 hours of sunlight.

[magnamentis]

For the southern most part of the Kara at latitude 70 sun up is on the 21st of January. On that day it will receive  1 hour of sunlight.

 For latitude 72 a little further north sun up is on January 29 receiving 1.1 hours of sunlight.

that's a fact while it won't have any significant impact at that angle, in february much lower latitudes can freeze over while they see 5-7 hours of sunshine at that time at a much higher angle.
this in case you refer to insolation > lack of albedo = significant energy input which will not be the case for another few weeks.

that said of course any sunbeam does provide energy but most of those would be reflected from the water surface and also i used the term "no significant impact" simply because it's not zero.

here we go again :-( add wind and wave action and dislike the show 

[Archimid]

Magnamentis, while I agree with everything you said, I would like to point out that extra heat falling on ocean that should be ice doesn't just dissipate. It accumulates. As you well point out, at this point is not nearly enough to gather any melt momentum, but the momentum it's starting to accumulate earlier.

[magnamentis]

Magnamentis, while I agree with everything you said, I would like to point out that extra heat falling on ocean that should be ice doesn't just dissipate. It accumulates. As you well point out, at this point is not nearly enough to gather any melt momentum, but the momentum it's starting to accumulate earlier.

absolutely, we're in full agreement here. after all, 50 days >0 will have an impact and later momentum certainly will be higher and/or reached earlier depending on the base, exactly like a
race car that turns high in idle to perform a perfect start if i may use this a bit out of context example :-)

[jdallen]

Magnamentis, while I agree with everything you said, I would like to point out that extra heat falling on ocean that should be ice doesn't just dissipate. It accumulates. As you well point out, at this point is not nearly enough to gather any melt momentum, but the momentum it's starting to accumulate earlier.

absolutely, we're in full agreement here. after all, 50 days >0 will have an impact and later momentum certainly will be higher and/or reached earlier depending on the base, exactly like a
race car that turns high in idle to perform a perfect start if i may use this a bit out of context example :-)

Per the earlier discussion - any heat picked up prior to the equinox due to decreased albedo will not prevent freezing, but instead will displace loss from existing heat in the water.  Even then, it will be a rather small amount, compared to the 80W/M2/second or so normally radiating out of the sea surface at winter temperature differentials.

[Edit:  The daily maximum potential insolation doesn't reach parity with that surface loss until early March.  If you factor in albedo, that parity really isn't reached until just before the equinox.  If you have ice, it won't be reached until mid-April. ]

[seaicesailor]

Magnamentis, while I agree with everything you said, I would like to point out that extra heat falling on ocean that should be ice doesn't just dissipate. It accumulates. As you well point out, at this point is not nearly enough to gather any melt momentum, but the momentum it's starting to accumulate earlier.

absolutely, we're in full agreement here. after all, 50 days >0 will have an impact and later momentum certainly will be higher and/or reached earlier depending on the base, exactly like a
race car that turns high in idle to perform a perfect start if i may use this a bit out of context example :-)

Per the earlier discussion - any heat picked up prior to the equinox due to decreased albedo will not prevent freezing, but instead will displace loss from existing heat in the water.  Even then, it will be a rather small amount, compared to the 80W/M2/second or so normally radiating out of the sea surface at winter temperature differentials.

[Edit:  The daily maximum potential insolation doesn't reach parity with that surface loss until early March.  If you factor in albedo, that parity really isn't reached until just before the equinox.  If you have ice, it won't be reached until mid-April. ]

Completely true, in my case I know just by watching past melting seasons. Searching and (re)reading AndreasT posts about radiative balance might be interesting as a preliminars of the coming season.
On topic now, what will it hapoen with that bulge of MYI supposedly reaching Svalbard Spitsbergen island tomorrow (per Hycom)? Well, will the ice reach Spitsbergen from the North or not survive the 'crossing' of the current of same name? 

[jdallen]

On topic now, what will it hapoen with that bulge of MYI supposedly reaching Svalbard Spitsbergen island tomorrow (per Hycom)? Well, will the ice reach Spitsbergen from the North or not survive the 'crossing' of the current of same name?

That ice as no chance of survival, at all.

Current SST map attached.  Temps where its going are the best part of 1C above freezing.  That difference will tear 4CM/day off of the bottom of it, or more, the closer it gets to the Svalbard "hot spot".

If the floes break up small enough (under 100M diameter), the attack on the sides will add considerably to how fast they dissappear.

[jai mitchell]

 

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/01/18/0000Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-28.27,89.29,1874/loc=56.157,77.930

[Shared Humanity]

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/01/18/0000Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-28.27,89.29,1874/loc=56.157,77.930

Could there possibly be a worse pattern to wreak havoc on the already devastated Atlantic side of the Arctic?

It will be interesting to watch the Lincoln Sea.

[jdallen]

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/01/18/0000Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-28.27,89.29,1874/loc=56.157,77.930

Could there possibly be a worse pattern to wreak havoc on the already devastated Atlantic side of the Arctic?

I got nuthin'

It will be interesting to watch the Lincoln Sea.

Hard to say there; while there's wind up the Nares, there's strong non-weather related flow out of the Arctic through the strait.

I expect the most likely effect will be to damage/weaken what vaguely passes right now for an arch slowing flow into the "funnel".

If I recall, that wind is due to continue for some time, for a general "exit, stage right" for the MYI.  However, even if flow rates reach as much as half a meter a second, that is only about 40KM of lateral movement.  It will take several days of lasting wind to have a major impact... which we may get.

The gap around Svalbard may well close, as the rate of flow overwhelms the surface water's ability to digest the ice.  The bad news is, I doubt the ice will survive more than a week if it gets there, and even if it does, it's out the Fram almost inevitably.

The greatest problem I think is going to be in how much more mechanically the pack is going to get torn up, with the remaining intact stretches of solid MYI shattered and weak FYI formed in the gaps.  That ice won't have time to thicken much past a Meter between now and the equinox, if that, if the weather trends continue.  There will also be more heat brought up from depth, which will also slow thickening.

When it comes, the first big "knock" by any sort of storm after the equinox will break open the pack like a dropping copy of the IPCC report would shatter a wine glass.  It goes further downhill from there.

Yah, pretty much, SH, I got nuthin'....

[Tigertown]

Three meter waves currently in the Kara.

More storms as far ahead as the forecast can go. The details matter little as far as which does what and how closely each matches the forecast; the bigger picture is that there will be more storms. Anything that follows in the near future that is strong enough to stir water up at all will cause additional damage.And for later, just imagine even just a percentage more of area and time of open water this coming season compared to the last one. I just keep wondering how much will this affect the world this summer or will 2018 be when the chickens really come home to roost.

I can't make much of this view, but maybe someone else can. I know it doesn't look good.
https://weather.gc.ca/data/satellite/hrpt_dfo_ir_100.jpg

[jai mitchell]

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/01/18/0000Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-28.27,89.29,1874/loc=56.157,77.930

Could there possibly be a worse pattern to wreak havoc on the already devastated Atlantic side of the Arctic?

It will be interesting to watch the Lincoln Sea.

this is basically the ice compaction equivalent of an 8.5 richter scale earthquake with an epicenter directly under a city, built on old river mud.

The wave action will push deeper warmth into the pack from below and break up the outer edges.
The wind will push the record low thickness ice in away from the warm water edges and deep into the center of the pack
The wind will also push warmer North Atlantic ocean water deeper into the pack
The open seas will allow more heat to escape to the region, allowing for more increased likelihood of further expansions of tropical water vapor into the arctic cell, leading to further regional warming.
The anomalously warm air will continue to inhibit ice thickness growth, in fact I expect we will see significant reductions in both extent and total volume over the next 3-5 days.

If we thought we knew this year was tragically bad.  This is going to show we didn't even have a clue in November what tragic was.  This is a new definition.

this is a new regime.

[Tigertown]

Waves up to 4 meters in the Kara Sea at the moment.
Also, 70 km/hr winds across the North side of Greenland.

Samples of heat loss in Barents, due to mixing and re-distribution.
The timing leaves little doubt.

[Lord M Vader]

Both GFS and ECMWF are hinting about a new possible bombcyclone by D10 to the area about Svalbard. The bombcyclone at D10 is right now scheduled to have a sea level pressure around 945-950 hpa in its center. The size seems to be small at the moment. The next couple of forecast runs should be monitored closely as we haven't seen the damage from the current bombcyclone yet.

[JayW]

The I05 VIIRS band picks up the sea ice better than I thought it might. 

Edit: there an interesting dark feature in the upper left quadrant that doesn't move with the weather, I believe darker generally means colder, but I don't want to infer much else.

Beaufort and Chukchi 12-17, 2017

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/snpp-gina-alaska-i05-images?page=3&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B14%5D=1&search%5Bsensors%5D%5B3%5D=1

[aslan]

The Polar vortex is just as important as the storms coming in (IMHO) We know that the strat 'drives' weather via various mechanisms and so keeping tabs on it , and trop forecasts, so we can better gauge impacts on the ice.

Should we see a warming down to ground level then we could see a period of HP dominance over the ice and isn't knowing such might be on the horizon important?

Then there is WACCy and the PV disruption. Without the poorly formed , errant PV through early winter would we have seen the Polar Jet flinging storms into the basin?

I know we have separate threads but when it is a pertinent observation of atmospheric forcing then it belongs here as much as any other chart ( again IMHO).

It really does not look like a major warming is underway. The polar vortex is severely weakened but westerlies are not ready to surrender. And if the stratopheric polar night jet remains in place, wave guide and waves propagation and so on are not going to be modified :

https://twitter.com/splillo/status/821488732796755968

The displacement will probably bring some blocking patterns in February, but I really doubt the AO will go down to basement or that strong high pressure areas will be back over Arctic. It really does not looks like a major event underway. The PV is severly disrupted but the wave flux is too much "eaquator-oriented" int the stratosphere, probably as a result of unending westerly QBO and strong Brewer Dobson circulation. And so the PV, even displaced, is not looking like it will break up and be torn apart.

http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/777795GFSOPNH0036041.png

Il plie, mais ne rompt pas.

In my opinion, about the early disruption in the season of the PV, in the Automn, wich was quite exceptionnal. Of course, all weather phenomenon are related, and probably the early disruption of the PV was a factor during the winter. But the troposphere was, until now at least, only weakly coupled to stratosphere. The two jets this winter are seperated (subtropical and polar or thermal and eddy jet, as you want). The strong, well established subtropical jet is typical of La Niña. Associated to this, the polar jet was displaced far to the North probably due to some combinaisons of tropical forcings (strong convective activity in Indonesia and in Venezuela - Northern Amazonia associated with a weak La Niña probably sent energy to the polar jet), heavily disrupted baroclinic zone (early and strong siberian cooling and extensive snow cover associated with extremely low arctic sea ice) and yes perhaps the early disruption of the PV, but I really doubt it was a major factor. In itself, the tropospherics forcings are quite enough to explain the strongs and well seperated jets.

And for the early SFW, I also really doubt it will be the case. If the PV is not able to explode now, it don't see why it will be more likely to explode in March. Perhaps the QBO is going to help, but for now the QBO is lost.

[Tigertown]

Earth NS SSTA's give you a pretty good idea of where warm water is getting moved around and mixed in, but also to some extent, where melting is taking place, perhaps from ice getting pushed into warmer water.

Note: They have a delay on these.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/primary/waves/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-48.76,86.85,550/loc=-87.305,60.452