The 2016 melting season

[DavidR]

I know May melt ponds are associated with low September minima, but April melt ponds?

Even worse!
Very early Spring in almost everywhere of the NH in the warmest year on record, maybe the Arctic Ocean is headed to be no exception.

From Jan - Mar, Arctic sea temperatures have averaged more than 1 std deviation warmer than  the previous record, based on the NOAA data covering the last 68 years. The Arctic is already  a long  way into  uncharted waters as far as water temperature is concerned.

[Mike Fliss]

Yo Friv, As always, epic forecast or as you'd say:

"...so much heat it could cause global warmin' (it's getting' hot)
and you know I keep the room for something foreign
so when you hear shots just know it's not a warnin'"

Kind regards, Kelly Price

[Frivolousz21]

The 00z gfs is incredible. 

Almost through the entire run a Southerly flow hammers the Baugh BeAufort.

And its already in epic form.



All that Gray ice in the above image is razor thin.  These flows will be exposed so early in May with potential warming waters.

The gfs shows most of the snow in the BeAufort and Chuchki being severely melted by May 2bd.

That's wild. 

[jdallen]

The 00z gfs is incredible. 

Almost through the entire run a Southerly flow hammers the Baugh BeAufort.

And its already in epic form.

All that Gray ice in the above image is razor thin.  These flows will be exposed so early in May with potential warming waters.

The gfs shows most of the snow in the BeAufort and Chuchki being severely melted by May 2bd.

That's wild. 

It does look pretty dire - the snow melt in particular, both in N. America and western Asia and Russia.  That will translate into a sharp pulse of much warmer melt water getting injected into deltas all across the basin weeks to months earlier than it would arrive otherwise.  There are a lot of cascading events taking place, a lot earlier than they should be.

[Frivolousz21]

The 00z gfs is incredible. 

Almost through the entire run a Southerly flow hammers the Baugh BeAufort.

And its already in epic form.

All that Gray ice in the above image is razor thin.  These flows will be exposed so early in May with potential warming waters.

The gfs shows most of the snow in the BeAufort and Chuchki being severely melted by May 2bd.

That's wild. 

It does look pretty dire - the snow melt in particular, both in N. America and western Asia and Russia.  That will translate into a sharp pulse of much warmer melt water getting injected into deltas all across the basin weeks to months earlier than it would arrive otherwise.  There are a lot of cascading events taking place, a lot earlier than they should be.

Positive feedbacks.

The most important piece is the May sun.

If we add just one extra week is legit ice melt in May it will have major consequences.

[wili]

Thanks, jd and OLn.

That's pretty much what I was thinking.

I find this kind of attitude in the context of other climate and weather related events--that the most extreme event/storm, usually the most extreme local or regional event/storm--sets the limit for any expected storms in the future.

In a stable climate, that would be a relatively safe thing to do. But the bell curve of extreme events is shifting and widening to include extremes beyond anything we have seen (and possibly beyond what many can imaging) as we go forward into the horrific world we have created for ourselves and our progeny.

[Jim Hunt]

This is perhaps superflous given the clarity of the skies over the Beaufort Sea throughout April, but here's my latest passive microwave animation:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/arctic-regional-graphs/beaufort-sea-ice-graphs/



and here's the effect of the sustained high pressure on Beaufort Sea ice area:

[Nick_Naylor]

. . .  the bell curve of extreme events is shifting and widening to include extremes beyond anything we have seen . . .

Very true. When we look at any event in terms of how many standard deviations from the mean it represents, it's always a little tongue in cheek. We're comparing current events to a static random distribution that is out of date - and was never static in the first place. That's why we can see 100 year storms every year or two, and frequently exceed 2 or 3 sd's.

[Carex]

OldLeatherneck: "Among some most prominent variables, that are no longer in equilibrium, that can have an impact on Arctic  ice loss are GHG levels (elevated),SSTs (elevated globally and more so in the Arctic), Surface Temperatures (record high globally and well above normal in the Arctic), NH snow cover very low and that pesky Jet Stream that hasn't learned how to respond to Arctic  Amplification."

What worries me is that these levels are elevated, continue to elevate, and are elevating at an increasing rate.  And, have the GHG levels reached that point that natural (or secondary anthropogenic) GHG sources are becoming available at levels that can maintain or increase the GHG levels even if primary anthropogenic sources are curbed or eliminated. 

Lakes Baikal and Winnipeg are beginning to break up and there are open stretches on the Irtysh and Nelson Rivers.  The warm water cometh.

[Sigmetnow]

Oh, my.  Arctic anomaly today: +4.17°C.

[A-Team]

open stretches on the Irtysh and Nelson Rivers.  The warm water cometh.

Here is an update on the Beaufort Gyre, observed 24-25 Apr and Navy Hycom predicted out to 02 May 16. tl;dr: the Gyre continues its gyrations. The influx of warm fresh water from the Mackenzie River is always a highlight of the Beaufort spring; no surface signs of land melt as yet. This year we will have it in high resolution color on Sentinel 2A.

There is a trick to chopping one of these animations down from 30 days down to just the predictive tail because the 'combine' feature in a gif requires differencing from earlier frames: open in gimp, use the 'new from visible' command to capture the days wanted, then delete everything else, then crop, retaining dates if possible an rescale to 700 pixel forum width. http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/

[magnamentis]

i predict that that last image (prediction) will show to be quite "off", too many peripherals that are quite warm already and predicted to remain that way, show no loss at all, just shifting current ice around. let's see :-) 

[meddoc]

What worries me is that these levels are elevated, continue to elevate, and are elevating at an increasing rate.  And, have the GHG levels reached that point that natural (or secondary anthropogenic) GHG sources are becoming available at levels that can maintain or increase the GHG levels even if primary anthropogenic sources are curbed or eliminated. 

Lakes Baikal and Winnipeg are beginning to break up and there are open stretches on the Irtysh and Nelson Rivers.  The warm water cometh.


Adding more & more GHGs to an already unprecedented level, last seen 10s of millions of years before present is obviously kicking in other feedbacks- big time.

Besides albedo & latent heat loss; rivers are of huge impact, too. Not often talked about and seem to be delivering hammerous, puls- like blows to the Ice.
As May is coming, we shall see it, again.

My estimate- at best: slightly above 2 M km2 by end of September.

[magnamentis]

fully agree, in some very warm and windy spots the ice is lingering for days in bad state now and i predict that it will be gone overnight within short time now. if that happens we shall be around 2M indeed, in extremis could be below that even while that's a a daring forecast though 

[6roucho]

. . .  the bell curve of extreme events is shifting and widening to include extremes beyond anything we have seen . . .

Very true. When we look at any event in terms of how many standard deviations from the mean it represents, it's always a little tongue in cheek. We're comparing current events to a static random distribution that is out of date - and was never static in the first place. That's why we can see 100 year storms every year or two, and frequently exceed 2 or 3 sd's.

Regression to a moving mean - not straightforward in a complexly self-referential system like the Arctic melting season.

[A-Team]

Ice features are quite persistent in the Beaufort Gyre area, making it possible to determine the mean velocity between any pair of days and changes in velocity (acceleration) between any two pairs for the last couple of months. However the ice leads can open and close, absorbing or exaggerating position shifts of ice floes, so ice blocks do not quite move uniformly.

As shown below, floes in the region near 'big block' slowed down slightly (about 5%) between 23-24 and 24-25 Apr 2016. However the overall displacement in this region will approach 600 km for the month.

There is a not-completely-tight teleconnection between the Beaufort Gyre movements, compression and eastward movement of the main block of older CAA ice, the Transarctic Drift current, and export of ice out the Fram Strait. Velocity changes measured in the Gyre should have a muted and perhaps delayed correlation with those in the Fram which are also easily monitored out of WorldView (despite more April clouds).

Export out the Fram spares the Arctic sun/air/water a large amount of melt thermodynamics on thicker older ice as the melt requirements are off-loaded to the vast heat reservoirs of the North Atlantic. The impact there is mainly a buoyant layer of freshwater melt.

The Fram Strait animations are 'sideways' from WorldView presentation. Svalbard can be seen in the upper left corner, the flow goes along the east coast of Greenland with melt-out nearly complete about half way down.  The last five days of that fascinating area are shown in the 4th animation.

[seaicesailor]

open stretches on the Irtysh and Nelson Rivers.  The warm water cometh.

Here is an update on the Beaufort Gyre, observed 24-25 Apr and Navy Hycom predicted out to 02 May 16. tl;dr: the Gyre continues its gyrations. The influx of warm fresh water from the Mackenzie River is always a highlight of the Beaufort spring; no surface signs of land melt as yet. This year we will have it in high resolution color on Sentinel 2A.

There is a trick to chopping one of these animations down from 30 days down to just the predictive tail because the 'combine' feature in a gif requires differencing from earlier frames: open in gimp, use the 'new from visible' command to capture the days wanted, then delete everything else, then crop, retaining dates if possible an rescale to 700 pixel forum width.

Amazing images and predictions.

There is still some benefit for the huge blue band of MYI that has been stretched and displaced from Beaufort toward ESS. The amazing prediction of drift shows it will be now pushed Northwards away from coast. This will help protect this ice for longer time during the melting season.

Last year, the more abundant Beaufort MYI seemed it might survive, but a couple of weak cold cyclones caused the ice to drift toward the coast in June. That was not good.

Gets more and more interesting.

Somehow related, a lot of ice has been and is being compressed at ESS and CAB, due to the Feb - April drift (see how ice decelerates at that area, sometimes abruptly, while the streamlines remain parallel in most of the drift maps, especially in February and early April). The ice must be very much ridged up. 2015F bouy data show a steady ice growth too. Also, theoretically, this strong Gyre should cause retaining of cold fresh water in the center of the Gyre (Beaufort side of CAB?), while permitting upwelling of saltier water at coasts ... precisely now that they are opening up, with warm days coming and sun pretty high.

Altogether, a lot of resistance in CAB particularly toward ESS, where models estimate thicker ice and snow depth over ice and adjacent lands. But, really fast melting might happen at Beaufort and Chukchi coasts. Kara and Laptev as usual, gone.

i predict that that last image (prediction) will show to be quite "off", too many peripherals that are quite warm already and predicted to remain that way, show no loss at all, just shifting current ice around. let's see :-) 

It will take a "little" longer I think ; - )

[magnamentis]

It will take a "little" longer I think ; - )

ok, game on 

[Lord M Vader]

The polynya north of Prince Patrick Island seems to have refrozen almost completely. The question is how thin it will be when the temps are going above 0 there? As there is no snow on this ice it might grow quite fast. However, this area should more or less be bathing in sunlight now 24/7.

This year is surely very interesting with temperatures above the normal i the Arctic. However, our memory is not very long! Back in 2015 we had even bigger temperature anomalies at this time at year. While this year haven't seen any temps below normal in the high Arctic, 2015 only had 2 short occurrences with temperatures below normal. But the beginning of May was very cold and saved us last year from an even worse melting season.

Finally, I notice that according to DMI, the sea ice volume is now more or less "on pair" with 2012... I hereby claim the official start for volume melting season 2016!!

[bbr2314]

First splotches of blue showing up by end of DMI's forecast range, along the AK coast. With the Bering Strait already near melting-out, the Pacific melt front will soon stretch all the way from the CAA to Rangel Island.

The significance of this is enormous; in a normal year in the 20th century the Pacific barely got to the Strait, if at all, and the melt front was confined to the immediate coast (if that) and the tiny border in the vicinity of the Strait.

With so much more heat to transfer in general this is not that surprising, but I think it may result in a non-linear response to where we are possibly ice-free this yr. If models are correct, the Rangel-CAA front would be open in 10-14 days or so, and with bulk being pushed towards Fram on the other side....

[Lord M Vader]

12z ECMWF run is brutal!! 1040 hPa high pressure by the end of next week!!

[AbruptSLR]

First splotches of blue showing up by end of DMI's forecast range, along the AK coast. With the Bering Strait already near melting-out, the Pacific melt front will soon stretch all the way from the CAA to Rangel Island.

The significance of this is enormous; in a normal year in the 20th century the Pacific barely got to the Strait, if at all, and the melt front was confined to the immediate coast (if that) and the tiny border in the vicinity of the Strait.

The two attached Regional ASIE plots for April 25 2016, illustrate the points that you are making about the Bering Strait and Beaufort ASIE actual, and potential, ice loss.

[bbr2314]

The only "positive" is that Hudson Bay is still mostly frozen solid and at a decent thickness, too -- Baffin is in a similar boat. There is also an extraordinary amount of ice in Ungava Bay at the moment, much more than normal, and I think all of these things are attributable to ++freshwater melt from Greenland as well as expansion of the Hadley Cell, which relegates a permanent polar low to the Baffin Bay vicinity in lieu of any permanent Polar Cell.

Snowpack over Quebec also remains robust and while losses are likely in coming days I think the trends re: AMOC shutdown are actually resulting in more durable first-yr ice in the aforementioned regions.

In either case, I would imagine the above might be a reason for Hansen's storms of years past. A sustained summertime cold patch in Hudson Bay/Quebec as a result of other changes for the warmer elsewhere would result in an increasing gradient between remaining cold up N & the heat belching from the S. In other words, bad things are coming our way.

Despite some heat, it is still winter over much of Quebec, and this shows no signs of letting up anytime soon. In fact, you can notice the EURO is now pushing the polar low much further SE than it had previously in the long-run, back to its "resting" spot over Hudson Bay vicinity.

[Frivolousz21]

The only "positive" is that Hudson Bay is still mostly frozen solid and at a decent thickness, too -- Baffin is in a similar boat. There is also an extraordinary amount of ice in Ungava Bay at the moment, much more than normal, and I think all of these things are attributable to ++freshwater melt from Greenland as well as expansion of the Hadley Cell, which relegates a permanent polar low to the Baffin Bay vicinity in lieu of any permanent Polar Cell.

Snowpack over Quebec also remains robust and while losses are likely in coming days I think the trends re: AMOC shutdown are actually resulting in more durable first-yr ice in the aforementioned regions.

In either case, I would imagine the above might be a reason for Hansen's storms of years past. A sustained summertime cold patch in Hudson Bay/Quebec as a result of other changes for the warmer elsewhere would result in an increasing gradient between remaining cold up N & the heat belching from the S. In other words, bad things are coming our way.

Despite some heat, it is still winter over much of Quebec, and this shows no signs of letting up anytime soon. In fact, you can notice the EURO is now pushing the polar low much further SE than it had previously in the long-run, back to its "resting" spot over Hudson Bay vicinity.

Those regions will melt out anyways.

A PV anomaly over Eastern Canada means ridging W/NW of there.

So a direct warm flow into the arctic basin

[Frivolousz21]

The euro wants to get the party started about a month earlier than 2007.

A serious change is gonna have to happen without a fast track to unprecedented melt.

[bbr2314]

The EURO also wrecks the remaining Bering Sea ice under a ~980mb low, which also appears in a similar spot on the GFS. The Pacific side is going to be remnants by early May.

[Neven]

Polynyas no longer freezing over:

[Siffy]

Polynyas no longer freezing over:

Indeed, I've been watching this on the daily images taken by the EOSDIS World view. It's only within the last couple of days or so that the open water has stopped freezing over, looks like the melting season is underway for real now in the beaufort sea.

Also the lack of clouds over greenland are showing a large snow free patch in the south west, near Sisimiut something to keep an eye on maybe?

[magnamentis]

Also the lack of clouds over greenland are showing a large snow free patch in the south west, near Sisimiut something to keep an eye on maybe?

not only maybe and one doesn't have to go that far south to almost all the snow gone

Ilulissat, Greenland

[oren]

Also the lack of clouds over greenland are showing a large snow free patch in the south west, near Sisimiut something to keep an eye on maybe?

not only maybe and one doesn't have to go that far south to almost all the snow gone

Ilulissat, Greenland

Wow!

[jdallen]

Polynyas no longer freezing over:

Certainly fits the visual evidence on Worldview. 

Just think, all of those 10's of thousands of KM2 of low albedo open water, feeling the loving attention of rapidly increasing near 24hr sunlight under 1040hPa cloudless skies.

 

Could we write a nastier script for the start of the melt season?  I guess, but it would probably involve aliens.

[edit: A additional bad thought struck me.  With the snow cover, this is also near perfect conditions for ice-surface pooling of snow melt, caused by said insolation that doesn't get reflected.  Once inside the snowpack matrix, that energy is pretty well trapped, and the top cover of snow prevents it's exit.  Embryonic melt ponds just waiting for a little push in a few days.  I'm just so cheery today, aren't I?]

[magnamentis]

by now, 13 consecutive hours of temps above 5C and after ten hours, before that truck was back, behind it, there was nice naked brown spot. forecasts predict a few days around the range of  0-7C + wind + a bit of sun and those hills to the left share the fate of so many places nowadays.

last year that fiord melted out very very late in the season and now the channel at the entrance on clear conditions shows very dark spots which corresponds with some ice concentration maps.

if the weather patterns don't significantly change, we're in for a not so nice worse than expected surprise IMO

and Barrow will be next and that makes it large line form western greenland to chucki. only place that is somehow within the standards for now is ESS but that one will melt out anyways like hudson last year, was extremely late but was eventually doomed still.

ohh.... since i'm now a citicen when shall i get my passport? before or after the tax bill? haha.....

[Watching_from_Canberra]

Long time lurker here - just had to comment on the previous post.

Magnamentis's last post includes a webcam image of Kimmirut, Nunavut which seems to be suggesting the temperature at 2am is around 6degC.  Well, I'm in Canberra, Australia and we went down to 2.8degC last night (not unusual for here).  My latitude is about 35 degrees, not 62 degrees though.  What's going on up there??

[Jim Hunt]

Polynyas no longer freezing over:

Looks that way. A close up view:

[werther]

I’ve been looking at Wave Activity Flux once more to try to get a grip of what’s upon the Arctic at present. The circulation seems to rapidly accelerate from the known climatic mean into unknown patterns.
It led me to question how heat would be transferred to the Arctic. I tried to generalize the Rossby Wave patterns, FI like this in ’13:



It resembles mean 10-day positions of ridges and troughs during winter ’12-’13.

Right now the pattern seems stuck around these positions:



In the 3D mental visualization that I’ve learned to make (which is subject to my limited capacities, I’m aware…), the transfer of heat would concentrate on the tips of the ridges.
Following that visualization, I struck on this study:

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~sbf1/papers/Flournoy_etal_2016.pdf

It describes a mechanism that may very well have influenced the Arctic winter that just ended:

Tropically Excited Arctic Warming (TEAM)

Now that sunlight has arrived all over the Arctic, import of large volumes of humid air may have changed into the build-up of that persistent high over the Beaufort sector of the Central Arctic Basin.
And very persistent it is, like the ridging over Western North America, Greenland and the Ural region between Russia and Siberia. Not to speak of the nasty trough over Western Europe, that causes wet, cold weather seemingly without an end over here.

Anyway, let’s keep an eye on proceeding melt/disruption in the Beaufort Sea. But that’s not the only place where this melt season will produce surprises. The ridges over Greenland and the Ural have preconditioned the Labrador Sea/baffin Bay and the Kara Sea.

Expect some rapid extent losses over there next two weeks.

[werther]

Ah, I forgot to mention what looks interesting comparing the general wave positions during winter '12-'13 and the momentary positions right now.
The Western American ridge is right where ridging is expected. The Atlantic ridge however, is displaced. It doesn't centre on the British Isles, but on Greenland.

Let's hope it won't reside there into summer!

[Nick_Naylor]

Polynyas no longer freezing over:

Looking at Beaufort in Worldview, it looks like maybe 10% of Beaufort "ice" is frozen-over polynyas - translucent first-month ice. So even the low numbers we do have overstate the true state of the ice.

[A-Team]

The animation below looks at the squishy mechanical coupling between an expanding radius of rotation for the Beaufort Gyre (as driven by wind associated with the stationary high pressure) and enhanced export out the Fram Strait for five days ending 26 Apr 16.

The pairing shown has nominal zero offset, ie the two parts originate from what on WorldView is called the same day. Since the satellite is in near-polar orbit, there would actually be a delay between when the Fram is imaged and when Aqua gets over the Beaufort, likely proportional to the 130º degree difference in longitudes, or 24*(130/360) which is 8.7 hours. There may be time stamps on the individual tiles which may be in the Worldfile.zip.

At any rate, it is easy to add a nominal day or two to Fram's offset to allow for non-rigid coupling. What's needed though is an abrupt change in the Beaufort Gyre with a distinctive signature that generates a recognizable and unambiguous counterpart in the Fram.

Contrary to expectations, the new development over the last 2-3 days has been a tightening of the Beaufort Gyre, seemingly with the inner core seeking to slightly rotate faster than compatible with central Arctic ice strength. The resulting torque on the ice is causing it to fracture in the east which will facilitate independent inner rotation at the expense of coupled rotation above and beyond Prince Patrick.

However the Gyre is still pushing the central ice pack strongly poleward (upper right of animations) so I don't expect to see diminishment of export down the Fram as this new development unfolds. The still image from nullschool shows a favorable wind situation for spin-up, though it is slightly off-center relative to ice motion.

The 3rd animation shows a flux gate halfway down the coast of East Greenland. It;s a little choppy as I've deleted  cloudy days (though some could be lifted with advanced techniques_. In theory we could provide real-time monitoring of export area and volume (using various thickness products) using the WorldView or Hycom animation of the flux gate.

The Fram has been studied for decades, though as Neven notes, cryosphere publications lag with the latest often looking backward to 2012 and earlier. The Fram has a mooring transect in the north that measures current, temperature and thickness of ice passing overhead but data has to be periodically retrieved by ship. A lot is known about ocean currents in the area. Below is a selection of 2016 papers:

Fram Strait and Greenland Sea transports, water masses, and water mass transformations 1999–2010 (and beyond)
M Marnela

The Expedition PS93 of the Research Vessel POLARSTERN to the Greenland Sea and the Fram Strait in 2015
R Stein

Eddy‐driven recirculation of Atlantic Water in Fram Strait
T Hattermann

The inflow of Atlantic water at the Fram Strait and its interannual variability
T Kawasaki

Submarine Mass Wasting on Hovgaard Ridge, Fram Strait, European Arctic
M Forwick

[magnamentis]

24h or temps between 4 and 7C !

Truck is gone hence the naked earth is showing, no sun yet but we're in for a few sunshine hours in the coming days so watch out what happens to those hills.

since the image above updates to last image we cannot compare but those who saw yesterdays image perhaps remember that the snow was white while it's getting darker now. looking forward to some muddy rough roads upon first sunshine hour.

[seaicesailor]

Probably this is a bit BS, because it sounds very early for snow being removed and so, but I wonder if during this April a lot of snow over Beaufort has been swept away toward ESS. Just because I recently found this article that estimates a 40% of snow removal by sublimation and a 10% by wind blowing (and if some of that sublimation had happened during this dry sunny windy month, let alone the blowing :-| ),

http://goo.gl/u193G9

Where would the added humidity go? Slowly deposed with the blown snow as the air mass flows towards the ESS? I mean, it's been almost one month same pattern non-stop.

Anyway. A question blowing in the wind. I doubt snow models could capture such subtleties, if they happened.

[magnamentis]

@seasailor sorry for the noob question, what does BS stand for?

[DoomInTheUK]

Mag - Something like Bull ShootI suspect. 

[magnamentis]

that's beyond my english skills, thanks for your help, interesting choice of words 

[Neven]

@seasailor sorry for the noob question, what does BS stand for?

Bering Strait, of course! 

[magnamentis]

ok i believe you because i want to 

[Tor Bejnar]

Proof Neven is not a native English speaker!

@seasailor sorry for the noob question, what does BS stand for?

Bering Strait, of course! 

[Lord M Vader]

BULLSHIT Tor!

[seaicesailor]

@seasailor sorry for the noob question, what does BS stand for?

Bering Strait, of course! 

Yeah that too : - )

[seaicesailor]

BULLSHIT Tor!

That is BS, too

[seaicesailor]

@seasailor sorry for the noob question, what does BS stand for?

LOL ;-)