The 2015/2016 freezing season

[Tor Bejnar]

...    ...

But quoting is so much fun!

[magnamentis]

@neven

in your blog you ask how they will counter the latest development on global sea-ice :-)

i can tell and show you how, they are posting charts with narrow cut outs that show a treand that better fits their
bias and then if number are bad for them they simply cease posting until they fit better :-)

one example here:

https://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/category/antarctic-sea-ice/

one has to scroll down a bit to find what i'm hinting and then i posted a few comments over time because that
guy makes me smile, he's probably even a nice guy, probably hanging out with the wrong  guys or something like that LOL

i follow that one because it's not too offending but still clearly denying 

EDIT: i mean charts like this one for example, it's on the page a linked above just thought to search it for you guys :-)

[Jim Hunt]

one example here:

Thus far Caleb has refused to publish a single one of my helpful comments on his supposedly Arctic themed blog.

[magnamentis]

not sure whether the following explains well what i mean but let me put it like that:

Noah built an arch and did not try to stop the rain LOL

i know it's a bit abstract but i love that one really :-) sorry if it appears to be far fetched to others 

[Buddy]

Noah built an arch and did not try to stop the rain LOL

He actually didn't build an arch.  That was his cousin Sammy, who was the architect. Noah actually built an arc.

[Jim Hunt]

Wasn't Noah actually an Arkitecht? Where is he when you need him?

http://econnexus.org/storm-imogen-brings-winds-and-swells-to-sw-england/#comment-493840

Here's a surreal artist's impression of a local arch:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2014/09/david-roses-apocalyptic-vision-of-al-gores-nobel-lecture/

Note all the trolls in hiding!

[magnamentis]

hehe... using the opportunity to mention that a thanks or upvote button would be nice :-)

great pic, love it

[Buddy]

Wasn't Noah actually an Arkitecht? Where is he when you need him?

Only for the arcs built in Europe.  For the US....he was an architect....

Rumor has it, that he has been kidnapped by the GOP in the United States.  They won't release him until after Donald Trump has won the election in the US, and announced Sara Palin as his energy czar.

[NeilT]

Whilst touring my usual links I noticed that the Barrow Sea Ice thickness and Sea level monitors are out again since the end of Jan.

The most striking thing for me is the ice thickness.  I haven’t delved into the record, but off the top of my head that should be about 1m thick around now.  To date it’s just over 0.5.

I’ll be watching it over the season but if it does not pick up significantly, then it’s going to break out really early next year.  If I recall, 2015 break out was in the top 3 years for earliest breakout.

One to watch and good solid data on what is going on right now.

[jdallen]

The recent IJIS numbers have been disappointing.   There's been some hopeful discussion over on that thread that weather conditions may be turning around to permit the ice to expand, particularly in the region around Svalbard.

I don't see it.  GFS starting about 140 hours out has another massive intrusion of 20C+ warmer air driving into the CAB.  Up until then, most of the basin is running 5C+ above normal.

Additionally, SST's across the Greenland Sea/Barents Sea approaches to the CAB are still amazingly warm - +8C anomalously warm in some places.  Add the rough weather due to the storms dragging the heat north, and I don't see a log of hope for serious ice expansion there.  Extent might catch up via the Pacific side, but really won't help come the melt season.

More worrisome to me is the lack of volume increase.  That I think reflects the impact of the persistent heat across the basin.  The sun line is now well north of Svalbard, and daily insolation there is ramping up quickly.  This means that sunlight instead of bouncing off of snow and ice is landing on open ocean in the Barents, even up to the edge of the basin, and getting captured *months* before it should be.  No way I can rationalize this to be good.

[NeilT]

Checking the Bremen AMSR2 maps it seems to show a lareg area of open coastal water stretching round to Barrow.

Checking the seems to show a large polynia running left to right which would match with what Bremen is showing.

Temp is -5F.  I wonder how long that will stay like that with all that open water?

[Jim Hunt]

Checking the Bremen AMSR2 maps it seems to show a lareg area of open coastal water stretching round to Barrow.

How about this slightly hazy "visual" from Suomi?

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/arctic-sea-ice-images/winter-2015-16-images/#Chukchi

[Neven]

The recent IJIS numbers have been disappointing.   There's been some hopeful discussion over on that thread that weather conditions may be turning around to permit the ice to expand, particularly in the region around Svalbard.

I don't see it.  GFS starting about 140 hours out has another massive intrusion of 20C+ warmer air driving into the CAB.  Up until then, most of the basin is running 5C+ above normal.

Additionally, SST's across the Greenland Sea/Barents Sea approaches to the CAB are still amazingly warm - +8C anomalously warm in some places.  Add the rough weather due to the storms dragging the heat north, and I don't see a log of hope for serious ice expansion there.  Extent might catch up via the Pacific side, but really won't help come the melt season.

More worrisome to me is the lack of volume increase.  That I think reflects the impact of the persistent heat across the basin.  The sun line is now well north of Svalbard, and daily insolation there is ramping up quickly.  This means that sunlight instead of bouncing off of snow and ice is landing on open ocean in the Barents, even up to the edge of the basin, and getting captured *months* before it should be.  No way I can rationalize this to be good.

Count me in when it comes to talking about a possibly crazy early and low max. We've now had 10 days of (highly) negative AO because of a high-pressure area dominating the Arctic. One would expect anomalously low temperatures and expansion towards the North Atalantic.

Well, it seems the cold fled to Central and Eastern Siberia (and parts of Canada), and although this has caused rapid sea ice growth in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering, Barentsz and Greenland Seas are simply not playing:



And now the forecast is changing again to anomalously 'high' temperatures across the Arctic Ocean. This is an amazing freezing season...

[jdallen]

Yup, things are cracked to hell and gone.

On the IJIS front, We've dropped 171K the last 3 days, putting us at 13481905KM2, lowest ever for date by a wide margin.  Lets put it in context.

The average growth of extent from this date to max over the previous 12 years (2003-2015) is 485744 KM2.   The standard deviation of extent growth over that time is 245333KM2.

Here's what I got for break points:
STDEV    Projected Max
    +2   14554751
    +1   14212982
Avg     13967649
     -1   13722316
     -2   13476983 (namely, we could have already maxed... highly unlikely!)

The best 98% outcome would still put us at the 8th lowest max ever, and 154K lower than 2012.

"Average" places us in a statistical dead heat (heh) with 2015.

We have a much better than even shot of equaling or ending up below last year's "MinMax".

[jdallen]

The recent IJIS numbers have been disappointing...   <snippage>

Count me in when it comes to talking about a possibly crazy early and low max. We've now had 10 days of (highly) negative AO because of a high-pressure area dominating the Arctic. One would expect anomalously low temperatures and expansion towards the North Atalantic.

Well, it seems the cold fled to Central and Eastern Siberia (and parts of Canada), and although this has caused rapid sea ice growth in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering, Barentsz and Greenland Seas are simply not playing:
<more snippage>

And now the forecast is changing again to anomalously 'high' temperatures across the Arctic Ocean. This is an amazing freezing season...

The Bering doesn't look to be particularly cooperative either.

Now, here's my spring nightmare for you.  Given the repetitive intrusions of heat into the Arctic and the "cyclone conveyor" along the western Atlantic edge feeding them, we get a large subtropical low/early hurricane hurtling up it in May or early June with a load of moisture. Moisture which as the low disintegrates, drops on the pack as... rain in volume.

[Neven]

Checking the Bremen AMSR2 maps it seems to show a lareg area of open coastal water stretching round to Barrow.

How about this slightly hazy "visual" from Suomi?

The LANCE-MODIS edge has also passed this latitude:

[Buddy]

But yes, with a 141K drop in the past 2 days IJIS SIE might have peaked. Let me emphasize the word might, because it would be mindblowing if it happened.

I think we need to be ready to have our "minds blown".  Psychologically....we are ill equipped to see what will be happening in the coming ten years......because man has never seen it happen.

I think the more amazing things to witness will be the changes in Greenland.....and the rise in the oceans that will occur over the coming years and decades.

Right now....the oceans are rising at about 1/5th of an inch per year or more.  With the growing loss of the Arctic ice sheet.....that rise in sea level will quicken its pace because of the accelerated loss of ice in Greenland.

Within a decade....we will likely be seeing 1 inch of sea level rise per year.  And within two decades that could be 2 inches or more per year......

The expanding summertime temps that will be hitting the Arctic ice sheet are going to speed up the melting of Greenland BIG TIME.

Now.....these are NOT the "complex calculations" of a physicist....but the observations of a "numbers guy" who was trained TO OBSERVE things.

The changes we will continue to see will be mind blowing.  Buckle up....

[Gray-Wolf]

I'm also wondering if it is a simple as the storm tracks edging north as the sun reaches, and passes, the equator? If so then the forecast hosing of the west coast of Greenland will just tend to transfer north taking its warmth/wet with it?

I am trying to gauge if Arctic weather has altered enough to put off the return of the 'perfect melt storm' synoptic for a time ( earliest possible return on its old cycle would have been 2017?).

[plinius]

Buddy, sorry for that, but we are _not_ likely to see an inch per year of sea level rise. Maybe half an inch per year in twenty years' time. I think one should stay always grounded on facts and proper modelling. Half an inch per year is sufficiently devastating to coastal communities. One doesn't need to spin baseless doomsday scenarios to be concerned...

But yes, with a 141K drop in the past 2 days IJIS SIE might have peaked. Let me emphasize the word might, because it would be mindblowing if it happened.

I think we need to be ready to have our "minds blown".  Psychologically....we are ill equipped to see what will be happening in the coming ten years......because man has never seen it happen.

I think the more amazing things to witness will be the changes in Greenland.....and the rise in the oceans that will occur over the coming years and decades.

Right now....the oceans are rising at about 1/5th of an inch per year or more.  With the growing loss of the Arctic ice sheet.....that rise in sea level will quicken its pace because of the accelerated loss of ice in Greenland.

Within a decade....we will likely be seeing 1 inch of sea level rise per year.  And within two decades that could be 2 inches or more per year......

The expanding summertime temps that will be hitting the Arctic ice sheet are going to speed up the melting of Greenland BIG TIME.

Now.....these are NOT the "complex calculations" of a physicist....but the observations of a "numbers guy" who was trained TO OBSERVE things.

The changes we will continue to see will be mind blowing.  Buckle up....

[Laurent]

That will depend of the doubling time ! For the moment we aren't so sure of it !
We are in for a doubling every 10 years (may be a bit less) so :

in 2020 we will be around 5mm/year
in 2030                                  10mm/year
in 2040                                  20 mm/year not far from an inch.

That's not completely unrealistic.

[wili]

Speaking of facts, it is a fact that rates of sea level rise have far exceeded one inch per year in the not so distant (geologically speaking) past:

"the rate of sea level rise varied from a low of about 6.0 - 9.9  mm/yr to as high as 30 - 60  mm/yr during brief periods of accelerated sea level rise"

That higher end ~= 2.4 - 3.5 inches per year.

Good points about doubling time, Laurent. Hasn't Hansen talked about the possibility of a doubling time of five years? As your chart shows, that puts us at a meter by about 2050 and five meters by about 2060. We can only hope and pray that we don't end up with that rate, but we should also be making some contingency plans for it too, even if it represents only a 1% chance of occurring. After all, most of us put on our safety belts every time we get in the car, even though we assume there is a much smaller than 1% chance of getting into a serious accident in that drive.

The top people in the field tend to emphasize how rapidly glaciers tend to collapse once they start to go.

But it is true that getting to an inch of rise a year within a decade seems rather unlikely.

[Neven]

Guys, this is the 2015/2016 thread. There are plenty of other places to discuss SLR.

If there is an even earlier and lower max, this would be fascinating and mindblowing. But 1), it doesn't guarantee a similar melting season (see last year), and 2) we're not there yet, just 10 days of cold weather and rapid ice growth at the edges, is enough to make things look 'normal' (as in the new normal).

[oren]

I recommend watching the new animation at the Home Brew AMSR2 thread. Besides the rotation of the whole arctic, which explains quite a few areas of open water within the pack where the ice is constantly rotated away, it also shows an area of what seems like actual melting (ice that is there one day and shrinks the next) in the area around Svalbard and Franz Josef Land in the last day of the animation. Maybe it's not real melting but I still find it interesting.
It seems the Barents is the area where AGW presents itself most significantly this year.

[Jim Hunt]

There isn't a whole lot of useful data available from ice mass balance buoys this freezing season, but here's one that is in the central Arctic and still seems (mostly) to be working:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/ice-mass-balance-buoys/winter-2015-16-imbs/#2015F-Temp

Current summary info:

Pos: 82.00 N, 159.62 W

Air Temp: -31.97 C
Air Pres: 1044.46 mb

Snow depth : 17 cm
Ice thickness : 163 cm

Current thermistor profiles:

[LRC1962]

Now, here's my spring nightmare for you.  Given the repetitive intrusions of heat into the Arctic and the "cyclone conveyor" along the western Atlantic edge feeding them, we get a large subtropical low/early hurricane hurtling up it in May or early June with a load of moisture. Moisture which as the low disintegrates, drops on the pack as... rain in volume.

For the Atlantic I do not think it will necessarily be one big one. What we are seeing now is bad enough. A whole series of storms generated a lot because of the temp differences between the southern portion of the Gulf Stream which is very hot and the very cold fresh water off of Greenland. This results in creating storms which hit with a spin and a spot that is resulting in much more export then we have seen in a few years.
In the Pacific you have El Nino which is generating its expected storms except for the fact it is getting deflected northward because of a RRR  which is far stronger then it supposed to be over the US west coast.
IMO neither of those 2 situations are going to change much in the next few weeks as those are systems that have been showing what they can do for the last 2 years especially.

[DavidR]

GISS and NOAA have both released their temperature measurements for January and for the fourth month in a row temperatures have been almost 0.2 degrees hotter than any equivalent  month both globally and in the Northern Hemisphere.

This can't be good for the Arctic.
 
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl

[Neven]

Another drop of 20K reported for JAXA SIE. That means it's now 150K below the first peak reached 4 days ago. The current forecast doesn't look promising for things to pick up soon. Some cold, strong winds need to come from somewhere soon and blow along the ice pack's edges, or we're having a crazy maximum this year, even crazier than last year's.

[jplotinus]

If the St Lawerence Seaway is to help reverse the downward slide in SIE, it will need to do so in the next day or so, as per iphone data. Does anyone have a link for st lawerence water temp?

[jdallen]

Another drop of 20K reported for JAXA SIE. That means it's now 150K below the first peak reached 4 days ago. The current forecast doesn't look promising for things to pick up soon. Some cold, strong winds need to come from somewhere soon and blow along the ice pack's edges, or we're having a crazy maximum this year, even crazier than last year's.

I spent quite a while last night just staring at the GFS model, watching it play itself out over the next week using Climate Reanalyzer. (currently, not an exercise for the faint-hearted)

I sat there, not just thinking about numbers, but about what I was feeling.  I finally sorted it out. Crazy nothing; this year is terrifying.

The saddest thing is, most people outside of this blog wouldn't have a clue why I feel that way.

[LRC1962]

If the St Lawerence Seaway is to help reverse the downward slide in SIE, it will need to do so in the next day or so, as per iphone data. Does anyone have a link for st lawerence water temp?

Based on weather statements found here http://www.wunderground.com/MAR/canam.html , St. Lawrence and extenting around NL is not going to help with ice.
On the otherhand you can look a this http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/primary/waves/overlay=sea_surface_temp/orthographic=-50.35,53.39,2573/loc=-62.231,47.735 and depending upon how accurate you think it is, no matter where you click where the waves are, the temps are on the wrong side of freezing.

[LRC1962]

I sat there, not just thinking about numbers, but about what I was feeling.  I finally sorted it out. Crazy nothing; this year is terrifying.

The saddest thing is, most people outside of this blog wouldn't have a clue why I feel that way.

What makes me sad is to think that in the not too distant future, talking about the days of great ice will be the same as listening to you grandfather or great-grandfather telling war stories. everyone will wonder what was true and what is fiction.

[johnm33]

I'm assuming that rapid evaporative cooling is taking place wherever cracks are opening, and that cracks are opening wherever the red anomalies show. With sunlight now reaching 72+deg north there has to be an extensive twilight north of that, so how much heat will that vapour soak up? and how long before the rain starts?
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-52.05,94.11,948/loc=29.886,75.758

[Jim Hunt]

Compare and contrast 2015 DMI ice temperature:



with 2016:



Anyone care to play "Spot the difference"?

[JayW]

If the St Lawerence Seaway is to help reverse the downward slide in SIE, it will need to do so in the next day or so, as per iphone data. Does anyone have a link for st lawerence water temp?

Perhaps this will do?

Buoy data is available here, unfortunately there's no current data. (First attachment)
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov

But one can check reports from ships nearby. (Second attachment)
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/radial_search.php?lat1=49.538N&lon1=65.710W&uom=M&dist=450&ot=A&time=-23

[Neven]

Another thing I'm keeping an eye on, although it worries me too, is NH snow cover:



At least it's going up again...

[Neven]

2016 vs 2015 in the Amundsen Gulf and eastern Beaufort Sea:

[jplotinus]

If the St Lawerence Seaway is to help reverse the downward slide in SIE, it will need to do so in the next day or so, as per iphone data. Does anyone have a link for st lawerence water temp?

Perhaps this will do?

Buoy data is available here, unfortunately there's no current data. (First attachment)
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov

But one can check reports from ships nearby. (Second attachment)
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/radial_search.php?lat1=49.538N&lon1=65.710W&uom=M&dist=450&ot=A&time=-23

That about nails it down. 
Thank you and thank LRC

[LRC1962]

Another thing I'm keeping an eye on, although it worries me too, is NH snow cover:
At least it's going up again...

The important thing about snow is staying power. If whatever it is covering is too warn then it melts very fast. The difference from past years is that  the frost would be deep into the ground before the snow got too thick. As a result even if the temps got high, the snow would stick around for quite a while.

[NeilT]

In a quick interesting roundup of my base charts I check, solar flux is approximately equivalent to 2005 levels, in the decade since 2005 we have introduced an additional 21.18ppm CO2 into the global atmosphere (as opposed to local levels) and the last global raise figure, finally benchmarked now 2015 is over, was 3.01ppm for 2015.

Nothing we are seeing now should really be a surprise, to my mind.  The only possible surprise for me could be a solid 5 year ice recovery with falling global temperatures; given the indicators.

Not that we're going to see that any time this side of 12,100 if the projections are correct.

[jdallen]

I'm looking for words to describe this.  This is GFS out 1 week.  Over half the CAB is 20C+ above normal.

The intervening time between now and then isn't much better.

[Pmt111500]

I'm looking for words to describe this.  This is GFS out 1 week.  Over half the CAB is 20C+ above normal.

[sarc]Why don't you just do the normal thing and don't say anything of the warmer than normal places? See, f.e. Amur basin is pretty cold? And Labrador. No need to seed more thoughts of CAGW to the listening public! [/sarc]

[Pmt111500]

Compare and contrast 2015

with 2016:

Anyone care to play "Spot the difference"?

[sarc] Well the Kara Sea is way cooler than last year. It's obvious that the alarmist sites will dismiss this hugely important fact in their reports of the arctic. We instead know that there is winter in the north so colder than normal temperatures are not a surprise, but a fact. [/sarc]

[Neven]

Well, JAXA SIE went up by 85K, so that's good. 

[seaicesailor]

2016 vs 2015 in the Amundsen Gulf and eastern Beaufort Sea:

This year all speculations about the effect of refrozen cracks on the melting season will be put to the test if the season brings sun and warmth

[jdallen]

2016 vs 2015 in the Amundsen Gulf and eastern Beaufort Sea:

This year all speculations about the effect of refrozen cracks on the melting season will be put to the test if the season brings sun and warmth

IN that vein, I think what is happening currently in the Beaufort qualifies as a major event.

[Edit:] Not all that "dark" area is open water, to be clear, but it does appear to be areas which are considerably weakened, and are cracking dramatically.

[jdallen]

Snatch from EOSDIS worldview of that portion of the Beaufort currently under daylight.

[jdallen]

What's happening in the Beaufort might be a side effect of the strong anti-cyclone sitting in the eastern Arctic Basin.  You'd expect it to produce much cooler temperatures, but all it appears to be doing is swirling the "warm" air around and disrupting the ice.  It makes for an interesting "donut"

[Neven]

It's an amazing sight, but February is still early days. I'm going to try and compare this in days to come, and maybe I'll put a blog post up on the ASIB. Sorry for being so conservative!

[jdallen]

It's an amazing sight, but February is still early days. I'm going to try and compare this in days to come, and maybe I'll put a blog post up on the ASIB. Sorry for being so conservative!

<insert amused laughter here>  I quite understand; you *have* to be conservative, Neven, I don't.

I'd be calmer and be hopeful for later in the month were it not for the fact that as the week goes on, the GFS has the weather getting worse rather than better for freezing.  I'm rather pessimistic.

[Neven]

I'd be calmer and be hopeful for later in the month were it not for the fact that as the week goes on, the GFS has the weather getting worse rather than better for freezing.  I'm rather pessimistic.

Yes, if I didn't know it was winter, I'd think that the Atlantic side of the Arctic is on fire.