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Nick_Naylor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #750 on: May 01, 2016, 08:50:59 PM »
Interesting word use there, Friv! I was wondering what you were going to do when you ran out of superlatives.

Maybe Friv sometimes exaggerating things, but there are a lot of knowledge behind his writings. I love it.

Which word are you reacting to - Pollyanna? I assumed he was referring to the G.O.P.  :o

6roucho

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #751 on: May 01, 2016, 09:17:21 PM »
Friv would seem to be the opposite of the Polyanna principle (which is positivity bias).

lanevn

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #752 on: May 01, 2016, 09:25:22 PM »
Just wonder, is Pollyanna an english word? It mean "meltpond" in Russian and maybe in some other languages, but google translate show something strange for english.

lanevn

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #753 on: May 01, 2016, 09:28:59 PM »
Ah, it correctly "polynya"

A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #754 on: May 01, 2016, 09:39:09 PM »
Quote
there is a lot of knowledge behind Friv's writings.
I also find Friv's posts very helpful. I sometimes have my hands full with technicalities of getting a product out the door and appreciate Friv chasing down the big picture overview and including source documentation that's informing it.

The central Arctic ice has not (yet) shattered like a broken mirror but there have been some follow-on developments on yesterday's event.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2016, 11:01:20 PM by A-Team »

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #755 on: May 01, 2016, 09:44:21 PM »
“You  guys sound like a Farmer telling  us it always rains after a drought”…

Well, David, “we” seem to have had some experience during the last say 13 years. Things do progress fast, at least on a geological perspective. But on a year to year human lifetime basis, things don’t work out overnight.

Considering all this, it sure has been the geophysical trip of a lifetime that I am witnessing.  I am aware that some may consider me to be an alarmist, but I’m not going into hyperdrive. Expect no expressions of torching, kick ass or whatsoever. I like to hold a standard in the right spelling of physical phenomena, even when they’re of non-English heritage. And I have the same respect for good scientific observation.

This planet is in trouble, but won’t stop turning tomorrow…


werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #756 on: May 01, 2016, 10:05:26 PM »
“Is anyone currently doing research on modelling heat transfer to the Arctic by the jetstream meander?”
Ninebelowzero, I posted on that topic on 27 April. Look for:

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.
The jetstream is a sideshow in this Rossby-wave promoted heat-transfer.

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #757 on: May 01, 2016, 10:23:27 PM »
“Werther surely remembers 2014 persistent cold highs in June and July that brought fog over the melting/sublimating ice and actually protected it from sun.”

Seaicesailor, you refer to these sort of minicyclones in ’14:



Indeed, I remember very well how weather played a crucial role during several ‘rebound’-years. Nevertheless, the general trend was never broken by these variable years. In some ways, winter warming has been a growing force in this trend. Especially the last one.

magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #758 on: May 01, 2016, 11:32:12 PM »
Interesting word use there, Friv! I was wondering what you were going to do when you ran out of superlatives.

Maybe Friv sometimes exaggerating things, but there are a lot of knowledge behind his writings. I love it.

i as well can see and like underlaying knowledge but i wish sometimes that people were more aware that exageration of any kind comes at the cost of credibility and provides ammunition to interest driven deniers.

Andreas T

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #759 on: May 01, 2016, 11:56:09 PM »
Frivolousz: could you please say what the graph of insolation shows, is it daily average on clear days? is it top of atmosphere? can you quote a source?

"Which means OLR will go up a ton and of course general long wave radiation will also increase."
not sure what you mean there Outgoing Longwave Radiation is mainly a function of temperature because emissivity doesn't vary much between snow, ice and water. So OLR goes up when the surface warms from -30 to 0 degC but when looking at it as 243 to 273 K the increase isn't that huge even at T4. Dec to July averages at Barrow are in the range of 200 to 350 W/m2 which qualifies to the term "ton" if that means "hundredweight".
OLR is not interesting at all in the summer, what is interesting is whether incoming radiation is smaller or larger. You are right about albedo, these open waters in the Beaufort and those which will open when thinly refrozen leads melt will have a very different radiation balance from snow covered ice. But absorption of incoming short wave radiation (sun) is taking place through greater volume of ice or water, so it warms slowly. I think 2015 showed the effect of early open water when melt continued strongly in August when incoming shortwave is dropping off.
The other thing is that snow is a good absorber of Downwelling Longwave Radiation which comes from warm clouds. Warm moist air getting into the arctic kills snow more than any other weather feature unless it gets cold enough to precipitate as snow.
Obuoy14 seems to show fresh or newly drifted snow at about 76.7N 156W
 

crandles

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #760 on: May 02, 2016, 01:29:30 AM »
NSIDC have done something with extent data. 20 April miles out but others til then look more reasonable.

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #761 on: May 02, 2016, 05:41:50 AM »
NSDIC maybe, but JAXA has the melt still at ram course. Books almost a century drop. Bering, Okhotsk, Pechora; all periphery Seas are losing ice cover fast.

Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #762 on: May 02, 2016, 06:18:13 AM »



Another century drop.


Unreal








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epiphyte

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #763 on: May 02, 2016, 06:36:05 AM »
Friv would seem to be the opposite of the Polyanna principle (which is positivity bias).

You got it... Apologies for the unintentional culturally-loaded reference - Polyanna was the protagonist in a mid-20th century children's novel, who was indefatigably optimistic, in spite of being an orphan living with an aunt who didn't like her - even to the extent of looking on the bright side of being hit by a car and being rendered unable to walk.

...so the perceived irony was that Friv doesn't do that.
...Except that he did. In a manner of speaking, at least :)

jdallen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #764 on: May 02, 2016, 06:37:46 AM »



Another century drop.


Unreal


Expect more.  Judging from the forecast for the next week looking at cci-reanalyzer, I expect the Bering an Okhotsk to all but melt out completely, major melt to take place in the Barents and Baffin Bay, More open water in the Beaufort, and melt starting in the Chukchi and Kara.

I think we'll pass 12 million extent 10 days ahead of the previous earliest date, and have a very good chance of blowing past 10.5 million by May 31.
This space for Rent.

6roucho

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #765 on: May 02, 2016, 07:15:20 AM »
Friv would seem to be the opposite of the Polyanna principle (which is positivity bias).

You got it... Apologies for the unintentional culturally-loaded reference - Polyanna was the protagonist in a mid-20th century children's novel, who was indefatigably optimistic, in spite of being an orphan living with an aunt who didn't like her - even to the extent of looking on the bright side of being hit by a car and being rendered unable to walk.

...so the perceived irony was that Friv doesn't do that.
...Except that he did. In a manner of speaking, at least :)
Now I DO get it.  :)

Sourabh

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #766 on: May 02, 2016, 08:13:57 AM »
This is the first time in which temperature has been above average so far. If we look at past four DMI temperature graph, every year remained below average for almost entire May and June. So, this year with already less ice (in extent, area, and volume) and higher temperature, things might become really interesting in coming two or three weeks.



Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #767 on: May 02, 2016, 08:54:49 AM »
Folks, I just ran over this very interesting article from NOAA's ENSO-blog by Dr Amy Butler dubbed "El Niño and stratospheric polar vortex":

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/el-niño-and-stratospheric-polar-vortex

Interesting reading! :)

abbottisgone

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #768 on: May 02, 2016, 09:01:19 AM »
Interesting word use there, Friv! I was wondering what you were going to do when you ran out of superlatives.

Maybe Friv sometimes exaggerating things, but there are a lot of knowledge behind his writings. I love it.

i as well can see and like underlaying knowledge but i wish sometimes that people were more aware that exageration of any kind comes at the cost of credibility and provides ammunition to interest driven deniers.
You can't live your life scared of vested interests.

People in positions of Authority are hamstrung by the politics of process and the IPCC reports are necessarily conservative by nature as all contributing governments have to agree what goes into those reports.

Numbers speak volumes but they are only indicators in themselves! The process of measurement is itself conservative is what I'm trying to say I think.

..  :o ....yeh, yeh-I think that's it!!
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Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #769 on: May 02, 2016, 11:13:17 AM »
Folks, I just ran over this very interesting article from NOAA's ENSO-blog by Dr Amy Butler dubbed "El Niño and stratospheric polar vortex":

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/el-niño-and-stratospheric-polar-vortex

Interesting reading! :)

Definitely goes hand in hand with the weather we, have had This Spring
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and a dirty pistol that love to crew hop
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machine gun named Missy so loud
it go e-e-e-e-ow e-e-e-e-e-e-blaow

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #770 on: May 02, 2016, 01:10:32 PM »
The floe that ice mass balance buoy 2015F is sitting on has finally reached a thickness of 2 meters:

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

It's now warming up rapidly though. Here's the current overview:

Pos: 81.85 N, 149.52 W
Air Temp: -11.17 C
Air Pres: 1026.92 mb
Snow depth: 17 cm
Ice thickness: 200 cm

FDD: 4749
"The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening" - Rosa Luxemburg

DavidR

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #771 on: May 02, 2016, 02:33:23 PM »
Interesting word use there, Friv! I was wondering what you were going to do when you ran out of superlatives.

Maybe Friv sometimes exaggerating things, but there are a lot of knowledge behind his writings. I love it.

i as well can see and like underlaying knowledge but i wish sometimes that people were more aware that exageration of any kind comes at the cost of credibility and provides ammunition to interest driven deniers.
There is also the danger of not making reasonable predictions, which  justifies people claiming that they weren't warned.  Given the extraordinary temperatures of the last six months and the melting we have seen so far this year it  is not unreasonable to predict  the high likelihood of a record melt this year.

Deniers will prove to be wrong, but the people who  make decisions should be aware of what is happening based on reasonable predictions.  We were told years ago that  the ice would disappear about now and it is likely to happen. Would we be better off if the scientists came out and said "Surprise!, the Arctic ice has disappeared". 

Its better to have an alarm that goes off unnecessarily than have one that doesn't go off till it's too late.

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #772 on: May 02, 2016, 05:08:05 PM »
The floe that ice mass balance buoy 2015F is sitting on has finally reached a thickness of 2 meters:

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

It's now warming up rapidly though. Here's the current overview:

Pos: 81.85 N, 149.52 W
Air Temp: -11.17 C
Air Pres: 1026.92 mb
Snow depth: 17 cm
Ice thickness: 200 cm

FDD: 4749

This buoy is at the perfect location to tell us how far the melt front from the Pacific side will go. If by July 1 it doesn't show clear bottom AND surface melting, we can be almost certain 2012 record will not be broken (see 2012 uni bremen map of that date).

The buoy is within the best protected areas of the Pacific area according to PIOMAS thickness, TOPAZ snow depth model (about a 30 cm layer), temperatures during Winter  (bottom growth has been sustained and substantial), and set into 3rd year ice (it was set last year over 2nd year old ice).

Andreas T

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #773 on: May 02, 2016, 05:10:12 PM »
......
[i as well can see and like underlaying knowledge but i wish sometimes that people were more aware that exageration of any kind comes at the cost of credibility and provides ammunition to interest driven deniers.
There is also the danger of not making reasonable predictions, which  justifies people claiming that they weren't warned.  Given the extraordinary temperatures of the last six months and the melting we have seen so far this year it  is not unreasonable to predict  the high likelihood of a record melt this year.

Deniers will prove to be wrong, but the people who  make decisions should be aware of what is happening based on reasonable predictions.  We were told years ago that  the ice would disappear about now and it is likely to happen. Would we be better off if the scientists came out and said "Surprise!, the Arctic ice has disappeared". 

Its better to have an alarm that goes off unnecessarily than have one that doesn't go off till it's too late.

The problem is that the alarm which goes off prematurely can be taken as a sign that the alarm itself is unreliable, this is exploited of course by those which oppose action to reduce CO2 output.
I am hoping to be listened to because I choose what I say carefully  and can back it with science, but that can take me a long time.

I like friv's comments for the information they contain (and more so if I can learn something from them), I never cared much for excited sports commentary.

jdallen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #774 on: May 02, 2016, 05:16:37 PM »
The floe that ice mass balance buoy 2015F is sitting on has finally reached a thickness of 2 meters:

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

It's now warming up rapidly though. Here's the current overview:

Pos: 81.85 N, 149.52 W
Air Temp: -11.17 C
Air Pres: 1026.92 mb
Snow depth: 17 cm
Ice thickness: 200 cm

FDD: 4749

This buoy is at the perfect location to tell us how far the melt front from the Pacific side will go. If by July 1 it doesn't show clear bottom AND surface melting, we can be almost certain 2012 record will not be broken (see 2012 uni bremen map of that date).

The buoy is within the best protected areas of the Pacific area according to PIOMAS thickness, TOPAZ snow depth model (about a 30 cm layer), temperatures during Winter  (bottom growth has been sustained and substantial), and set into 3rd year ice (it was set last year over 2nd year old ice).
What date is your DMI image?  Here's today's.
This space for Rent.

Andreas T

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #775 on: May 02, 2016, 05:31:12 PM »
As posted by a-team in comment 740 nullschool shows wind direction in the beaufort to change. Weaker wind will blow towards Amundsen gulf instead of out of it. Will this reduce the open water or just stop its growth? We will see.
North of Svalbard ice will be transported towards the Fram and temperatures which are already making leads freeze very slowly there are set to rise. But this is exporting younger ice than the more northerly direction which has persisted for over a  month

dnem

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #776 on: May 02, 2016, 05:57:17 PM »
Longtime lurker.  Have to say the friv/pollyanna/polynya misunderstanding is one of the funniest language confusions I've come ever across.  Just priceless.  I once gave a talk at an international tuna management (ICCAT) meeting in the Azores that was simultaneously translated.  Every time I said "poisson distribution" they translated it into "fish distribution"!

Thanks everyone for the incredible level of discourse across these forums.  Following this melt season here promises to be incredibly fascinating.

theoldinsane

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #777 on: May 02, 2016, 06:40:19 PM »
Longtime lurker.  Have to say the friv/pollyanna/polynya misunderstanding is one of the funniest language confusions I've come ever across.  Just priceless.  I once gave a talk at an international tuna management (ICCAT) meeting in the Azores that was simultaneously translated.  Every time I said "poisson distribution" they translated it into "fish distribution"!

Thanks everyone for the incredible level of discourse across these forums.  Following this melt season here promises to be incredibly fascinating.

+1

Only love remains as Guy McPherson use to say. I want to add something: Only love and joy remains. It is our duty to relax and try to enjoy life as it is right now because we don´t know how long it will last.

Excuse me Neven. I know this is OT in this thread.

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #778 on: May 02, 2016, 07:02:12 PM »
Longtime lurker.  Have to say the friv/pollyanna/polynya misunderstanding is one of the funniest language confusions I've come ever across.  Just priceless.  I once gave a talk at an international tuna management (ICCAT) meeting in the Azores that was simultaneously translated.  Every time I said "poisson distribution" they translated it into "fish distribution"!

I concur, language is a funny thing.  Glad you took a moment to say, "hello".

Quote
Thanks everyone for the incredible level of discourse across these forums.  Following this melt season here promises to be incredibly fascinating.

if by "fascinating", you mean "terrifying", "tragic", "macabre", "upending" and "dissolving of global paradigms".
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cesium62

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #779 on: May 02, 2016, 07:03:21 PM »
Another century drop.

Expect more.  Judging from the forecast for the next week looking at cci-reanalyzer, I expect the Bering an Okhotsk to all but melt out completely, major melt to take place in the Barents and Baffin Bay, More open water in the Beaufort, and melt starting in the Chukchi and Kara.

I think we'll pass 12 million extent 10 days ahead of the previous earliest date, and have a very good chance of blowing past 10.5 million by May 31.

The Bering and Okhotsk nearly melting out the first week of May would be quite something.  Wipneus' extent graphs suggest the Bering might not "normally" nearly melt out until the 3rd week of May.  Okhotsk tends to melt out sooner, but it would be a precipitous drop from where we are now.

crandles

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #780 on: May 02, 2016, 07:17:12 PM »
FDD anomaly reached 1001

Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #781 on: May 02, 2016, 07:36:45 PM »
Time to update the scale or? :P

Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #782 on: May 02, 2016, 08:29:02 PM »
From DMI's thickness/volume chart it's now clear that we are slightly ahead 2012 in terms of volume. However, we are still behind 2011 which had the lowest volume at May 1.See: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php

Further, DMI hints that volume increase/loss was more or less zero for April.Should be interesting to see what PIOMAS yields!

//LMV

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #783 on: May 02, 2016, 08:31:42 PM »
Time to update the scale or? :P

I'd say.  We're 800 FDD's below anything even *resembling* average.  Now do also remember this is the anomaly not the total FDD count.
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magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #784 on: May 02, 2016, 09:49:07 PM »

This buoy is at the perfect location to tell us how far the melt front from the Pacific side will go. If by July 1 it doesn't show clear bottom AND surface melting, we can be almost certain 2012 record will not be broken (see 2012 uni bremen map of that date).

The buoy is within the best protected areas of the Pacific area according to PIOMAS thickness, TOPAZ snow depth model (about a 30 cm layer), temperatures during Winter  (bottom growth has been sustained and substantial), and set into 3rd year ice (it was set last year over 2nd year old ice).
What date is your DMI image?  Here's today's.

i think he mentioned July 1st 2012 and those are Uni Bremen images except i misunderstood something, standing to be corrected.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2016, 10:03:52 PM by magnamentis »

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #785 on: May 02, 2016, 09:57:10 PM »
The positive anomalies in temp still dominate the Arctic. The Beaufort Gyre produced 14 days of max. 8 dC. Temp anomalies in the Kara sea up to 9dC. And the Labrador/Baffin at +4-5 dC.

The Low intrusion into the Beaufort Sea doesn't look to produce the effect forecast 3-4 days ago.
Expect steady further losses in extent for the next fortnight. However, this year might regress a bit to normal extent numbers when usual Hudson Bay melt happens later and more spread out.


magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #786 on: May 02, 2016, 10:02:00 PM »
some may remember those little melt ponds that developed from slightly darker wet snow spots a few days ago. for me as laymen it's quite interesting to see that those areas are still growing every day, even though temps have been permanently below freezing and that's freshwater (snow and ice ) as far as i can tell.

to me that seems to be a good example as to what huge impact lower albedo has to melting, just slightly darker, light blue spots are seemingly sufficiently dark to grow, despite the below freezing temps, just with a bit of sunshine, not even 100% blue skies.

if there is another reason for this i'd gladly learn about it :-)

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #787 on: May 02, 2016, 10:24:30 PM »
Magnamentis, it's great you and others are following this so closely.
I've been looking at that webcam in former years and IIRC this first melt is very early. It coincides with strong positive temp anomalies over Labrador Sea/Baffin Bay through April.

Expect some more as Climate Reanalyzer forecasts a fresh gust of warm weather over the CAA within a few days.

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #788 on: May 02, 2016, 10:25:30 PM »
The floe that ice mass balance buoy 2015F is sitting on has finally reached a thickness of 2 meters:
[...]
Here's the current overview:

Pos: 81.85 N, 149.52 W
Air Temp: -11.17 C
Air Pres: 1026.92 mb
Snow depth: 17 cm
Ice thickness: 200 cm
FDD: 4749

This buoy is at the perfect location to tell us how far the melt front from the Pacific side will go. If by July 1 it doesn't show clear bottom AND surface melting, we can be almost certain 2012 record will not be broken (see 2012 uni bremen map of that date).

The buoy is within the best protected areas of the Pacific area according to PIOMAS thickness, TOPAZ snow depth model (about a 30 cm layer), temperatures during Winter  (bottom growth has been sustained and substantial), and set into 3rd year ice (it was set last year over 2nd year old ice).
What date is your DMI image?  Here's today's.

Maybe I did not express myself clearly. I repost the map of ice concentration of July 1, 2012 (from University of Bremen). Over it, I have placed now a square marker showing the approximate position of buoy 2015F. Observe that a reduction of concentration was already present at such high latitude by that date in 2012. If there was surface melting, it is reasonable to think that bottom freezing had already ceased and was picking up.
Browsing the maps one can observe that the concentration reduction was on and off during the following days until mid July when it started to steadily decrease and did not stop decreasing until September. That location ended being right at the ice edge of the 2012 September minimum.

If this year's melting is to go beyond 2012's this buoy will have shown some surface melting by July. No surface melting by then, or still has snow on top, it will tell me of very low probability of a record two months in advance.

Just to remark the fine location of that buoy this year. Keep an eye.

PS. By the way, this map is based on SSMIS 17 rather than AMSR2; hence the greater sensitivity of concentration on surface melting. Uni Bremen browser displays AMSR2-based maps from August 1 July 24, 2012 thereon.

PPS. Other years as 2015 have shown surface melting or broken ice at that latitude by that day. With the pedantry my English allows, this will be a sine qua non condition.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2016, 11:00:00 PM by seaicesailor »

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #789 on: May 02, 2016, 10:37:47 PM »
BTW, I checked the location of Kimmirut on today's MODIS tile.



In front of the fjord-coast there's still a broad swath of fast-ice. It does show some indications of wet stretches, but it will take some time before it clears and the Kimmirut fjord will really start melting/washing out.

A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #790 on: May 03, 2016, 01:22:50 AM »
Quote
The floe that ice mass balance buoy 2015F is sitting on has finally reached a thickness of 2 meters:
Pos: 81.85 N, 149.52 W
Air Temp: -11.17 C
Snow depth: 17 cm
Ice thickness: 200 cm
It would really be a lot better to plot the drift of these buoys on some other projection than Mercator, namely the common projection used by nullschool stereographic and and WorldView (Greenland-down polar). Then we could see what the past, present and predicted ambient conditions are by combining the various available features.

This buoy is [[NOT]] actually sitting on the outer edge of the active Beaufort Gyre. Here I maneuvered the upper right corner of the snapshot feature until the lat,lon coordinates matched up very closely to those provided.

[Edit: this is incorrect, WorldView has a nasty display bug, see next two posts].
« Last Edit: May 03, 2016, 04:06:02 AM by A-Team »

Tensor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #791 on: May 03, 2016, 01:43:28 AM »
Quote
The floe that ice mass balance buoy 2015F is sitting on has finally reached a thickness of 2 meters:
Pos: 81.85 N, 149.52 W
Air Temp: -11.17 C
Snow depth: 17 cm
Ice thickness: 200 cm
It would really be a lot better to plot the drift of these buoys on some other projection than Mercator, namely the common projection used by nullschool stereographic and and WorldView (Greenland-down polar). Then we could see what the past, present and predicted ambient conditions are by combining the various available features.

This buoy is actually sitting on the outer edge of the active Beaufort Gyre. Here I maneuvered the upper right corner of the snapshot feature until the lat,lon coordinates matched up very closely to those provided.

A-Team,
are those coordinates accurate on the image?  If they are, it appears your image has the buoy around 105 W, not 149 W.  Or am I missing something?
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A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #792 on: May 03, 2016, 04:03:12 AM »
Quote
are those coordinates accurate on the image?  If they are, it appears your image has the buoy around 105 W, not 149 W.  Or am I missing something?
You're right. What you see is what I got taking a screenshot of EOSDIS Worldview display coordinates, it looks like they have a grievous programming error in the mouse-over lat, lon coordinates as well as the snap box corners. The text is so small I could not read the longitude labels on the radial lines to see the conflict.

This is not a confusion of E and W but may be some problem with coordinates not keeping pace with zoom. Worldview does not allow entry/display of coordinates or strings of them (paths) in the manner of Google Earth kml. It offers two distinct lat,lon grids, one simply called 'polar view graticule' and the other EPSG3995 that draw the latitude circles in different places. There might be a slight effect if one used the WGS84 ellipsoid and the other didn't.

Meanwhile nullschool does offer a variety of projections but these seem very sketchily described and not referenced to the international nomenclature standards (WorldView uses EPSG3413). None of them seem to exactly match the plate carree (EPSG: 4326) system of Google Earth which itself has been the source of endless confusion.

Nullschool does not offer any mechanism for snapping to a standard view or returning to a previous one. The grid option provides of unlabelled latitude circles, no longitude lines, no scale, no orientation. I get the sense that the server is still going great but coding stopped a couple years ago.

It would be very convenient to put buoy paths into Google Earth but not so convenient to load WorldView satellite image or nullschool weather data on top, despite an option for doing so. On the other hand, there is no convenient export of vector data out of Google Earth into nullschool or Worldview that I know of. It does seem feasible to get WorldView and nullschool to overlay very well using the 'Stereographic' projection in the latter followed by a scale change and rotation (example a few posts back).

Overall we've run into similar incompatibilities many times before. NSIDC uses the best choice for polar view and a lot of our resources also use that. The Arctic and Antarctic are special situations and for some sites, just a sideline that they have not overly concerned themselves with. Landsat-8 and Sentinel 2A scenes are so tiny in extent compared to the whole Arctic Ocean that the little UTM zones make sense for them.

It is an unfortunate situation that we can't effortlessly marshall all the data in one sensible coord system. Every time something has to be re-projected, the data is degraded. Only a very few operations are harmless.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2016, 04:46:44 AM by A-Team »

DavidR

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #793 on: May 03, 2016, 04:13:10 AM »
ESRL-NOAA temperature data for April is available now at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl

Arctic 67N+ temperatures for Air and SST were fourth in the records

80N+ temperatures were 8th and 10th respectively.  These ratings are consistent with the DMI graphs. Although (edit April)  2016 has been consistently above the average it has not had any periods of exceptional warmth. Not sure whether that is good or bad for the ice.

Global Temperatures were 0.2 dC above the previous record for April which means the April report should indicate 12 successive record months.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2016, 11:06:28 PM by DavidR »
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Tensor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #794 on: May 03, 2016, 04:52:40 AM »
Quote
are those coordinates accurate on the image?  If they are, it appears your image has the buoy around 105 W, not 149 W.  Or am I missing something?
You're right. What you see is what I got taking a screenshot of EOSDIS Worldview display coordinates, it looks like they have a grievous programming error in the mouse-over lat, lon coordinates as well as the snap box corners.

snip...

It is an unfortunate situation that we can't effortlessly marshall all the data in one sensible coord system. Every time something has to be re-projected, the data is degraded. Only a very few operations are harmless.

OK, thanks for the explanation.  I'm excited in a way, as I am no where near you guys when it comes to manipulating data, images, and explaining these things.   So, for me to catch something, and be of some small bit of help is kinda cool for me.  That it came at the expense of your work, makes it a little less cool.
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S.Pansa

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #795 on: May 03, 2016, 07:42:38 AM »
This forecast is still a long way out so .... but GFS and Euro do agree quite well methinks.

If this comes true, the Beaufort Sea might soon be all blue.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #796 on: May 03, 2016, 08:29:40 AM »
I have contacted NASA via the feedback link on the "i" button in the top right corner on a different issue (band31 night was displaying antarctica instead of arctic) and in the reply Jeff Schmaltz said very apologetically "We made some major software, hardware, and network changes late last week and we're still picking up the pieces." Maybe the issues you had are related?
Looking at the lat/lon coordinates for the pointer, they now look reasonable to me but haven't checked them against known locations.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #797 on: May 03, 2016, 09:52:07 AM »
It would be very convenient to put buoy paths into Google Earth but not so convenient to load WorldView satellite image or nullschool weather data on top, despite an option for doing so. On the other hand, there is no convenient export of vector data out of Google Earth into nullschool or Worldview that I know of. It does seem feasible to get WorldView and nullschool to overlay very well using the 'Stereographic' projection in the latter followed by a scale change and rotation (example a few posts back).

Here's how things look in Google Earth. The background is Terra from April 27th, loaded via:

http://map1.vis.earthdata.nasa.gov/twms-geo/kmlgen.cgi?layers=MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor&time=2016-04-27

The foreground is available by scrolling to the very bottom of:

https://batchgeo.com/map/imb-2015f
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magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #798 on: May 03, 2016, 09:55:39 AM »
ESRL-NOAA temperature data for April is available now at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries1.pl

Arctic 67N+ temperatures for Air and SST were fourth in the records

80N+ temperatures were 8th and 10th respectively.  These ratings are consistent with the DMI graphs. Although 2016 has been consistently above the average it has not had any periods of exceptional warmth. Not sure whether that is good or bad for the ice.

Global Temperatures were 0.2 dC above the previous record for April which means the April report should indicate 12 successive record months.

what seems to be noteworthy in this context is that even though we can mostly find years with warmer temps for a specific date, that this year the values are consistently in the top ranks. what i'm trying to say is that in every given year of the past, for example in the years temps were higher on a given date then this year, one would easily find much lower temps before and after that date while this year, the only thing one would find is another top 10 or worse rank. in short, the graphs are quite relentless and stable on a very high temperature level while they usually would drop and peak and drop and peak intermittently.

if someone would like to pick this topic and find a better way to explain perhaps? just hope i was able to at least submit the basic thought as to what i mean. :-)

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #799 on: May 03, 2016, 10:10:19 AM »
The models all show a ridge building into a dipole. 




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