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6roucho

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #800 on: May 03, 2016, 01:56:51 PM »
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.
Can someone explain this to me? We've had what seemed like record winter temperatures. Why are 57N+ and 80N+ air and SSTs so far from being the highest on record?

A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #801 on: May 03, 2016, 01:57:42 PM »
Quote
excited to catch something
That's the great strength of these forums, one person thrashes around and the next person improves it. Within hours as someone is awake somewhere. JimH has made a great addition hooking us into this new Nasa GIBS service https://wiki.earthdata.nasa.gov/display/GIBS/GIBS+API+for+Developers

Quote
I contacted NASA via the feedback link and got the reply "We made some major changes and we're still picking up the pieces." the lat/lon coordinates for the pointer ok reasonable to me but haven't checked them against known locations.
Good initiative! That could explain a lot. The north pole and a few of their lat,lon intersections should be checkable.

Quote
http://map1.vis.earthdata.nasa.gov/twms-geo/kmlgen.cgi?layers=MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor&time=2016-04-27
I tried to open that "link" in Firefox + Safari + Chrome and discovered Safari + Chrome download a file called kmlgen.kml (variously kmlgen.cgi and kmlgen.cgi.kml) to desktop that opens in Google Earth in Temporary Places as  the expected Terra photo, along with numerous artifacts. It's easy to change the link to Aqua and a different date. Temporary Places has an option for adding a new network link such as these.

http://map1.vis.earthdata.nasa.gov/twms-geo/kmlgen.cgi?layers=MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor&time=2016-05-01

Quote
The foreground is available by scrolling to the very bottom of:
https://batchgeo.com/map/imb-2015f
Meaning, "copy the lat,lon text numbers from the last known position on that page into "Add Placemark" in Google Earth" or stub them all into a kml path template file as viewed in a text editor. 81.8471, -149.516 are the proper coordinates needed for a proper zoom in. Jim provides a very clean database of all the buoy measurements; these can also be brought into Google Earth for click-to-display or coloring the icons.

<Placemark>
      <name>Buoy Path example</name>
      <styleUrl>#m_ylw-pushpin</styleUrl>
      <LineString>
         <tessellate>1</tessellate>
         <coordinates>
            -149.5319636411747,81.84547621225951,0 -149.5196637261326,81.84457795393938,0 -149.5073927463677,81.84531375087926,0 -149.5047402439652,81.8468932657495,0
         </coordinates>
      </LineString>
   </Placemark>

Quote
Every time something has to be re-projected, the data is degraded. Only a very few operations are harmless.
This re-projection of Terra looks fairly awful in Google Earth.

Next up: how to fold in all the Nullschool resources into Google Earth?
« Last Edit: May 03, 2016, 02:46:44 PM by A-Team »

Tealight

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #802 on: May 03, 2016, 02:15:41 PM »
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 :-)

Kimmirut is located at 63N outside the arctic circle and the sun already reaches 42.8 degrees above the horizon at noon. At 80-90 degrees north, the lower albedo wouldn't be quite as significant.


magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #803 on: May 03, 2016, 02:27:59 PM »
if that were the reason the entire surface would give in to insolation while the white survace reflects most of the sunlight, no matter how high, at least at below freezing temps, only the dark spots that originated from the melting when temps were above freezing got bigger. in this case i think that the sun angle on bright white surfaces and below freezing temps has a minor impact.

plinius

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #804 on: May 03, 2016, 02:45:17 PM »
if that were the reason the entire surface would give in to insolation while the white survace reflects most of the sunlight, no matter how high, at least at below freezing temps, only the dark spots that originated from the melting when temps were above freezing got bigger. in this case i think that the sun angle on bright white surfaces and below freezing temps has a minor impact.

Careful with that. Sun angle has a very large impact on the ocean, because of the rising reflectance at low angle that is equally or more important than the mere geometric term. In addition - larger fetch increases waves, which can absorb a bit more sunlight at low sun elevation. So, while you are right on land, it makes quite a difference at sea, which is amongst the reasons why a dense ice/snow cover is so enormously important for the central arctic in May/June.

Tealight

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #805 on: May 03, 2016, 02:48:53 PM »
the amount of energy absorbed doesn't just depend on surface reflectance. Especially with light cloud cover the amount of energy absorbed and reflected by the atmosphere varies greatly with the angle of incidence.

I can recommend the following page for details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_mass_(solar_energy)#Accuracy_near_the_horizon

In the webcam picture the temperature was shown to be just 1.9C below 0C. Lets assume this equates to energy losses of 190W/m2. If light clouds let 50% of the sunlight through (500W/m2) and the dark spots have an albedo of 0.4 then the spots absorb 300W/m2. So the total energy gain is 110W/m2 at 1.9C below freezing.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2016, 03:15:27 PM by Tealight »

crandles

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #806 on: May 03, 2016, 03:45:00 PM »
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.
Can someone explain this to me? We've had what seemed like record winter temperatures. Why are 57N+ and 80N+ air and SSTs so far from being the highest on record?

This is looking at April only which has been fairly normal:



 If you look at Jan-Mar period, then it has been really warm: 80-90N Air temp was record warmest in each of Jan, Feb and Mar and by quite large margins.

80-90N is a small part of global so there will be much more variability than in the global average.

Year__Jan_____Feb____Mar_____Apr       
2016  -19.938  -21.219  -21.939  -17.633
Previous
warmest: -21.042 -23.760 -23.702 -14.724

Jan - April 2016 -20.182
next warmest
Jan - April  2014 -23.049

6roucho

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #807 on: May 03, 2016, 04:34:57 PM »
Thank you crandles. D'oh, as Homer's fond of saying.

magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #808 on: May 03, 2016, 04:52:40 PM »

Careful with that. Sun angle has a very large impact on the ocean, because of the rising reflectance at low angle that is equally or more important than the mere geometric term. In addition - larger fetch increases waves, which can absorb a bit more sunlight at low sun elevation. So, while you are right on land, it makes quite a difference at sea, which is amongst the reasons why a dense ice/snow cover is so enormously important for the central arctic in May/June.[/quote]

it's ok, everything has an impact of course just in THIS case i said because there are no waves and ice covered ocean cannot be compared with open waters and/or otherwise not fully covered. this is not such a big topic, it was clearly visible (one can compare the images i posted earlier with the later ones) that the growth of those dark spots originated from the smaller dark spots, while the white blanket, where was no melting before, remained white.

as someone who grew up in snow covered areas including summer snow, i remember very clearly that as long as temps were below zero, the snow first started to get wet in places where it was dirty (darker) while the rest remained quite intact even at higher sun angles and on slopes with a southern orientation.

that only changed when temps got a above freezing, hence the snow got wet and darker, which was when wider spread melt got a hold.

another scenario was when there was no fresh snow for an extended period of time so that the old snow got dirty from polution and eventually pollen and whatever else was in the air, dust, sand etc. i think we can agree that there are a variation of factors impacting melting behaviour, my point was the below zero part and the clearly visible impact of darker surfaces, nothing that new or surprising really.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2016, 06:31:55 PM by magnamentis »

plinius

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #809 on: May 03, 2016, 06:06:48 PM »
well, I'd point out then that measuring albedo differences with a usually self-adjusting camera is a bit difficult, and that pollution will be worse near a settlement. But I suppose we anyway agree on the core of the issue.

magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #810 on: May 03, 2016, 06:27:55 PM »
exactly, i'm sure we mean the same, thank you to put it into a short and concise form haha... LOL

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #811 on: May 03, 2016, 06:51:39 PM »

This is looking at April only which has been fairly normal:





I have often wondered if the regular decline in arctic DMI temperatures that occurs between April 15 and May 15th each of the past 4 years (and right around that time) through 2009!  is in some way all or partially attributable to the shift in U.S. gasoline refineries production of summer blend gasoline that occurs in late march.

just a thought, another would be a shift in polar cell behavior as the mid-latitudes warms up and the increased solar melt-transpiration of snow leading to increased water vapor content in early spring. . .
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jdallen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #812 on: May 03, 2016, 10:04:18 PM »
Young lead ice disintegrating in the Western Kara Sea.  4/27, 4/30, 5/1 and 5/3, in order.
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opensheart

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #813 on: May 03, 2016, 10:05:45 PM »
I've seen the same 'stall' in temps north of 80 for the past few years.
To me it seems that in both spring and fall, the temps bounce around somewhere close to the -11 C mark.  Which is the 'observational' reported required air temp to get open, wave action, sea water to freeze solid.

Thus I've thought of that -11C temp as a boundary temp between freezing and melting states.  and thus there is some hesitency, or back and forth behavior, before the state changes.   Thus it seems to me to happen in spring as the state changes from freezing to melting and in late fall when the state changes from melting to freezing.

I consider the stall at this range to be Negative feedback,  (Negative is the one that moderates and pulls back to normal, right. Can never keep those straight).

If/when we loose this behavior,  meaning we no longer see a stall at this range. (like the spring temps stay above normal all the way up to 0C. )  I would take that as a bad sign that we have forced our way passed a tipping point of sorts and have lost/overpowered a Negative feedback.

DavidR

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #814 on: May 03, 2016, 11:03:20 PM »
Thank you crandles. D'oh, as Homer's fond of saying.

67N+ has also  been at record levels through Jan - Mar.  Both 67N and 80N were 1 Std deviation above the previous record for the period for both  Air and SST measurements.
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Quantum

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #815 on: May 03, 2016, 11:06:41 PM »
The high resolution model is predicting some colder air over the beaufort in the next 48 hours. I'd hope that we can get a covering of new ice (again I'd appreciate some insight as to the likelyhood of it happening at this time of year) to increase the albedo. The effect of the open water prevents the temperatures from lowering over the ice, with a quite impressive gradient visible.

Neven

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #816 on: May 03, 2016, 11:14:20 PM »
tomorrow a great workshop starts with a huge amount of interesting presentations: Polar Prediction Workshop.

The presentations are going to be streamed and the stream will be available here.

Things start tomorrow at 9:00am EDT, which is 15:00 o'clock CET, I believe.

I hope to catch some of those presentations. Nice follow-up to the stuff I saw at EGU.
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Laurent

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #817 on: May 03, 2016, 11:15:49 PM »
Believe it or not hycom predict that the Arctic Ice will start unstick from the land next week...
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortstrength_nowcast_anim30d.gif

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #818 on: May 03, 2016, 11:36:12 PM »
Believe it or not hycom predict that the Arctic Ice will start unstick from the land next week...
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortstrength_nowcast_anim30d.gif

If it does then the entire CAB may become rotational.  I don't believe this model, if it is true, this early and this severe, well. . .

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer. . .
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RoxTheGeologist

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #819 on: May 04, 2016, 01:02:11 AM »
Okay.. from a quick look at EOSDIS. I warn you I am an amateur on ice and satellite images.

I was looking at the images of the Beaufort and noticed that there are big curved cracks extending towards Wrangle Island from the Anzhu islands that propagated roughly 1000km across the East Siberian sea towards Alaska from around the 29th April to today. The direction of separation is along the coast of Russian. Basically East to West (examining the cracks in detail give a good indication of the movement). It implies that these were opened by clockwise rotation.  There are chunks of ice in the cracks that are being rotated. There is one below, that was rotated through 10-15km by the motion on 2nd may, and moved about 15km in the last 24 hours, or around 17cm/s.

I'm a new observer.. Is my interpretation reasonable and would this support detachment seen above?


« Last Edit: May 04, 2016, 01:08:56 AM by RoxTheGeologist »

Nick_Naylor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #820 on: May 04, 2016, 02:09:50 AM »
Believe it or not hycom predict that the Arctic Ice will start unstick from the land next week...
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortstrength_nowcast_anim30d.gif

If it does then the entire CAB may become rotational.  I don't believe this model, if it is true, this early and this severe, well. . .

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer. . .

That would be extraordinary. However, HYCOM has predicted some spectacular events the last couple years that failed to materialize. Still, the model that called "wolf" can still be right now and then.

magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #821 on: May 04, 2016, 02:13:59 AM »
Okay.. from a quick look at EOSDIS. I warn you I am an amateur on ice and satellite images.

I was looking at the images of the Beaufort and noticed that there are big curved cracks extending towards Wrangle Island from the Anzhu islands that propagated roughly 1000km across the East Siberian sea towards Alaska from around the 29th April to today. The direction of separation is along the coast of Russian. Basically East to West (examining the cracks in detail give a good indication of the movement). It implies that these were opened by clockwise rotation.  There are chunks of ice in the cracks that are being rotated. There is one below, that was rotated through 10-15km by the motion on 2nd may, and moved about 15km in the last 24 hours, or around 17cm/s.

I'm a new observer.. Is my interpretation reasonable and would this support detachment seen above?

if i'm not mistaken what you're talking about is the beaufort gyre which is one of the often discussed and mentioned topic in this thread, especially over the last 10-20 days. if you didn't do that already, reading back a bit will give you a quite complete picture as to what we're dealing with here.

RoxTheGeologist

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #822 on: May 04, 2016, 03:01:31 AM »
Okay.. from a quick look at EOSDIS. I warn you I am an amateur on ice and satellite images.

I was looking at the images of the Beaufort and noticed that there are big curved cracks extending towards Wrangle Island from the Anzhu islands that propagated roughly 1000km across the East Siberian sea towards Alaska from around the 29th April to today. The direction of separation is along the coast of Russian. Basically East to West (examining the cracks in detail give a good indication of the movement). It implies that these were opened by clockwise rotation.  There are chunks of ice in the cracks that are being rotated. There is one below, that was rotated through 10-15km by the motion on 2nd may, and moved about 15km in the last 24 hours, or around 17cm/s.

I'm a new observer.. Is my interpretation reasonable and would this support detachment seen above?

if i'm not mistaken what you're talking about is the beaufort gyre which is one of the often discussed and mentioned topic in this thread, especially over the last 10-20 days. if you didn't do that already, reading back a bit will give you a quite complete picture as to what we're dealing with here.

I was looking at the area between Wrangle Island and the Anzhu Islands in the East Siberian Sea. It seems that the whole sea is moving clockwise North of the cracking. The movement is in the same direction as the Beaufort, but from what I have read is a much larger extent than would be expected from the Gyre.

Yay! Figured out how to link it.. If you cycle backwards and forwards on days you can see the break up pretty clearly.

http://go.nasa.gov/1W7O12D



« Last Edit: May 04, 2016, 04:00:09 AM by RoxTheGeologist »

bbr2314

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #823 on: May 04, 2016, 03:14:11 AM »
DMI's model agrees with HYCOM which would seem to indicate something unprecedented is going to happen in the next few days. Should also be noted that all models have the first legitimate blowtorch of the season over the entire Pacific icepack from D5+.


6roucho

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #824 on: May 04, 2016, 04:54:22 AM »
Believe it or not hycom predict that the Arctic Ice will start unstick from the land next week...
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortstrength_nowcast_anim30d.gif

If it does then the entire CAB may become rotational.  I don't believe this model, if it is true, this early and this severe, well. . .

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer. . .
That a very fine literary quote in this context, jai mitchell.

Csnavywx

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #825 on: May 04, 2016, 05:25:41 AM »
GFS 18Z and EC 12Z runs commence widespread surface melting over the Pacific side (Beaufort and Chukchi Seas) in about a week.

epiphyte

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #826 on: May 04, 2016, 06:28:48 AM »
Believe it or not hycom predict that the Arctic Ice will start unstick from the land next week...
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortstrength_nowcast_anim30d.gif

If it does then the entire CAB may become rotational.  I don't believe this model, if it is true, this early and this severe, well. . .

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer. . .

 ...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,


That is so apposite that it occurred to me as well to post it this morning - but I thought it would go unappreciated. I guess I was wrong about that!

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #827 on: May 04, 2016, 09:07:16 AM »
Okay.. from a quick look at EOSDIS. I warn you I am an amateur on ice and satellite images.

I was looking at the images of the Beaufort and noticed that there are big curved cracks extending towards Wrangle Island from the Anzhu islands that propagated roughly 1000km across the East Siberian sea towards Alaska from around the 29th April to today. The direction of separation is along the coast of Russian. Basically East to West (examining the cracks in detail give a good indication of the movement). It implies that these were opened by clockwise rotation.  There are chunks of ice in the cracks that are being rotated. There is one below, that was rotated through 10-15km by the motion on 2nd may, and moved about 15km in the last 24 hours, or around 17cm/s.

I'm a new observer.. Is my interpretation reasonable and would this support detachment seen above?

Yes that is a crack that appeared in mid April and relieved the ice in that huge area in its tendency to rotate following the Gyre (although the displacement speed was much slower than that at Beaufort, as apparent from the drift maps too).

It was very clear from IR images, I will see if I can find any, on the mobile now. Bust rest assured there is no such a thing as "ice detachment" in the way implied in some comments here. Even if the whole Arctic rotates unison. It is not like a giant let loose from its chains. At any location, ice inertia is balanced by ocean dragging at the bottom, wind pulling at the top, pressure and shear forces at sides , and other forces. Gravity balanced too. It is not going to "fly away". ;-)

abbottisgone

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #828 on: May 04, 2016, 10:26:16 AM »
Believe it or not hycom predict that the Arctic Ice will start unstick from the land next week...
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortstrength_nowcast_anim30d.gif

If it does then the entire CAB may become rotational.  I don't believe this model, if it is true, this early and this severe, well. . .

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer. . .

 ...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,


That is so apposite that it occurred to me as well to post it this morning - but I thought it would go unappreciated. I guess I was wrong about that!
Where are those words from or did you make them up?
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meddoc

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #829 on: May 04, 2016, 10:38:29 AM »

"Yes that is a crack that appeared in mid April and relieved the ice in that huge area in its tendency to rotate following the Gyre (although the displacement speed was much slower than that at Beaufort, as apparent from the drift maps too).

It was very clear from IR images, I will see if I can find any, on the mobile now. Bust rest assured there is no such a thing as "ice detachment" in the way implied in some comments here. Even if the whole Arctic rotates unison. It is not like a giant let loose from its chains. At any location, ice inertia is balanced by ocean dragging at the bottom, wind pulling at the top, pressure and shear forces at sides , and other forces. Gravity balanced too. It is not going to "fly away". ;-)
"

And what about the possibility of winds, cyclones, storms sweeping the ice out of place into the warm waters of the Atlantic?

6roucho

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #830 on: May 04, 2016, 11:46:55 AM »
Believe it or not hycom predict that the Arctic Ice will start unstick from the land next week...
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortstrength_nowcast_anim30d.gif

If it does then the entire CAB may become rotational.  I don't believe this model, if it is true, this early and this severe, well. . .

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer. . .

 ...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,


That is so apposite that it occurred to me as well to post it this morning - but I thought it would go unappreciated. I guess I was wrong about that!
Where are those words from or did you make them up?
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
     The best lack all conviction, while the worst
     Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
     Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
     The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
     When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
     Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
     A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
     A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
     Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
     Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
     That twenty centuries of stony sleep
     Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
     And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
     Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

WB Yeats, the Second Coming

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #831 on: May 04, 2016, 12:05:37 PM »
...
I have often wondered if the regular decline in arctic DMI temperatures that occurs between April 15 and May 15th each of the past 4 years (and right around that time) through 2009!  is in some way all or partially attributable to the shift in U.S. gasoline refineries production of summer blend gasoline that occurs in late march.

just a thought, another would be a shift in polar cell behavior as the mid-latitudes warms up and the increased solar melt-transpiration of snow leading to increased water vapor content in early spring. . .
May be both.

I'd also suspect "summer blend" of jet fuel, especially if they add extra "anti-corrosive" and other alluminium-containing additives to it. That and may be more passenger flights over the Arctic can add significant Al2O3 nano-scale particulate, akin to Welsbach seeding, thus slowing down the "normal" temperature increase.

Those and other negative feedbacks and alike are seemingly not enough to halt the death spiral, but are enoguh to slow it down somewhat, so far - whatever it is, post-2012, i mean.
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F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #832 on: May 04, 2016, 01:13:14 PM »
Okay.. from a quick look at EOSDIS. I warn you I am an amateur on ice and satellite images.

I was looking at the images of the Beaufort and noticed that there are big curved cracks extending towards Wrangle Island from the Anzhu islands that propagated roughly 1000km across the East Siberian sea towards Alaska from around the 29th April to today. The direction of separation is along the coast of Russian. Basically East to West (examining the cracks in detail give a good indication of the movement). It implies that these were opened by clockwise rotation.  There are chunks of ice in the cracks that are being rotated. There is one below, that was rotated through 10-15km by the motion on 2nd may, and moved about 15km in the last 24 hours, or around 17cm/s.

I'm a new observer.. Is my interpretation reasonable and would this support detachment seen above?

if i'm not mistaken what you're talking about is the beaufort gyre which is one of the often discussed and mentioned topic in this thread, especially over the last 10-20 days. if you didn't do that already, reading back a bit will give you a quite complete picture as to what we're dealing with here.

I was looking at the area between Wrangle Island and the Anzhu Islands in the East Siberian Sea. It seems that the whole sea is moving clockwise North of the cracking. The movement is in the same direction as the Beaufort, but from what I have read is a much larger extent than would be expected from the Gyre.

Yay! Figured out how to link it.. If you cycle backwards and forwards on days you can see the break up pretty clearly.

http://go.nasa.gov/1W7O12D
Yep, i can see that too. Tried to estimate the speed of the movement, appears to be a bit higher than previsouly estimated, if my pixel hunting can mean anything, that is:

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crandles

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #833 on: May 04, 2016, 01:45:30 PM »
...
I have often wondered if the regular decline in arctic DMI temperatures that occurs between April 15 and May 15th each of the past 4 years (and right around that time) through 2009!  is in some way all or partially attributable to the shift in U.S. gasoline refineries production of summer blend gasoline that occurs in late march.

just a thought, another would be a shift in polar cell behavior as the mid-latitudes warms up and the increased solar melt-transpiration of snow leading to increased water vapor content in early spring. . .
May be both.

I'd also suspect "summer blend" of jet fuel, especially if they add extra "anti-corrosive" and other alluminium-containing additives to it. That and may be more passenger flights over the Arctic can add significant Al2O3 nano-scale particulate, akin to Welsbach seeding, thus slowing down the "normal" temperature increase.

Those and other negative feedbacks and alike are seemingly not enough to halt the death spiral, but are enoguh to slow it down somewhat, so far - whatever it is, post-2012, i mean.

My reaction to US gasoline was that was extremely unlikely to be a factor. Maybe if Canada and Russia were doing the same....

These ideas seem rather optimistic for geo-engineering.

Polar cell changes, quite possible given what little I know.

I would have thought a more likely explanation might derive from snow cover changing albedo. We now have more snow because of warmer temperatures and therefore atmosphere holding more water. 2007 and 2010 had low snow cover. 2010 didn't snow that negative anomaly but 2007 did. Still maybe some part of an explanation coming from this?

A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #834 on: May 04, 2016, 02:18:07 PM »
Major development on 03 May along the lines of what Hycom was saying, the Beaufort Gyre clutch gaining some traction on the CAA ice. The first close-up shows crack initiation just above Prince Patrick island, the other close-up is in the 'upper right' corner of the Gyre. This is a rather abrupt departure from the trend of the last few days.

We've seen similar events before, with detachment all the way past Ellesmere Island. The significance, if any, depends on what happens with the wind in coming weeks.

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #835 on: May 04, 2016, 02:26:12 PM »
My reaction to US gasoline was that was extremely unlikely to be a factor. Maybe if Canada and Russia were doing the same....

These ideas seem rather optimistic for geo-engineering.

Polar cell changes, quite possible given what little I know.

I would have thought a more likely explanation might derive from snow cover changing albedo. We now have more snow because of warmer temperatures and therefore atmosphere holding more water. 2007 and 2010 had low snow cover. 2010 didn't snow that negative anomaly but 2007 did. Still maybe some part of an explanation coming from this?
"Optimistic" is an understatement, short-term, as Lowell Wood (at least) once have put it about Al2O3 seeding, "it will sure work", but "it's like riding on necks of our grand-kids" - mitigating current problems this way "for a while" creates massive danger for some ~40...50 years later and forwards. Still, it's my understanding that at least some significant efforts to apply additional particulate cooling into the athmosphere (jet cruising altitudes) are likely being done for a while now, and it's good to keep it in mind as one of probable factors affecting present-day melt seasons in the Arctic and related events.

As for "we now have more snow" - in the air, sure. On the ground? I don't think so. Moe of snow falls down, yes, but the increase of snow melting speed more than compensates for it. The https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global-snow/201505 tells us decade trend for May is -0,86*10^6 km2, for April is -0.48*10^6 km2 lately. I can't call this "we have more snow" if we talk albedo. So quite the opposite, i think the albedo is in favor for higher temperatures during spring months, in general, - not lower. Other factors exist which produce relatively low temperatures _despite_ this trend of decreasing snow cover, and factors powerful enough to overcome this substantial albedo drop in Spring because of snow cover reduction.

Perhaps clouds. Yeah, when not sure, blame clouds. Can't go wrong with this one, hehe. :D
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crandles

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #836 on: May 04, 2016, 02:57:39 PM »
Yes, you are right even trend for March snow cover is downward. Snow depth near the Arctic ocean looks like it may be upward but even if it is through April I can't see that having enough effect by albedo. Doubt there are significant further effects even if melting more snow does have an effect of cooling air temps. Sorry about that, got the timing completely wrong on that one.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #837 on: May 04, 2016, 02:59:49 PM »
Here is a couple of views of the cracks mentioned above in the Wrangel - Anzhu island area for 27 April to 04 May 2016. The latter date has a 600ms pause.

Looking at two recognizable and persistent features at 125 m resolution, 3rd animation, it can be seen the ice continues to crack under torsional stress but showing very little net motion (especially after adjustment for widening leads). In particular it is not co-rotating with the Beaufort Gyre which circles almost a degree per day over this time frame.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2016, 03:46:42 PM by A-Team »

plinius

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #838 on: May 04, 2016, 03:22:13 PM »
Yes, you are right even trend for March snow cover is downward. Snow depth near the Arctic ocean looks like it may be upward but even if it is through April I can't see that having enough effect by albedo. Doubt there are significant further effects even if melting more snow does have an effect of cooling air temps. Sorry about that, got the timing completely wrong on that one.

I once figured that the albedo effect of retreating snow cover on heat flow is magnitudes larger than the melt enthalpy of the bits of additional snow. Just use the fact that just 100 Watts melt about 1kg of ice per hour, or put on the square meter, about 2.6 cm water equivalent per day (or something like 15cm of snow cover).

pccp82

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #839 on: May 04, 2016, 03:32:21 PM »
It's way OT for this thread and perhaps more in line with consequences....but I would like to call to attention the wildfire that has forced the evacuation of 60,000 people out of Fort McMurray in Alberta Canada.


plinius

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #840 on: May 04, 2016, 03:45:05 PM »
It's way OT for this thread and perhaps more in line with consequences....but I would like to call to attention the wildfire that has forced the evacuation of 60,000 people out of Fort McMurray in Alberta Canada.

By the way - as we are on peripherals. It's quite interesting to watch the Siberian rivers. The upper parts of the Lena valley have thawed, though the stream seems to still have an intact ice cover. However, the Ob has the spring flood marching towards the Kara a good week earlier than the already early last year.
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor%28hidden%29,MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor%28hidden%29,MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels%28hidden%29,Reference_Features%28hidden%29,Coastlines&t=2016-05-04&v=1936628.6454543862,769325.78307069,3284212.6454543862,1461549.78307069

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #841 on: May 04, 2016, 04:15:30 PM »
...
I have often wondered if the regular decline in arctic DMI temperatures that occurs between April 15 and May 15th each of the past 4 years (and right around that time) through 2009!  is in some way all or partially attributable to the shift in U.S. gasoline refineries production of summer blend gasoline that occurs in late march.

just a thought, another would be a shift in polar cell behavior as the mid-latitudes warms up and the increased solar melt-transpiration of snow leading to increased water vapor content in early spring. . .
May be both.

I'd also suspect "summer blend" of jet fuel, especially if they add extra "anti-corrosive" and other alluminium-containing additives to it. That and may be more passenger flights over the Arctic can add significant Al2O3 nano-scale particulate, akin to Welsbach seeding, thus slowing down the "normal" temperature increase.

Those and other negative feedbacks and alike are seemingly not enough to halt the death spiral, but are enoguh to slow it down somewhat, so far - whatever it is, post-2012, i mean.

My reaction to US gasoline was that was extremely unlikely to be a factor. Maybe if Canada and Russia were doing the same....

These ideas seem rather optimistic for geo-engineering.

Polar cell changes, quite possible given what little I know.

I would have thought a more likely explanation might derive from snow cover changing albedo. We now have more snow because of warmer temperatures and therefore atmosphere holding more water. 2007 and 2010 had low snow cover. 2010 didn't snow that negative anomaly but 2007 did. Still maybe some part of an explanation coming from this?

It isn't just California or the U.S. it is the entire northern hemisphere, it is a function of lowering the evaporation rate of gasoline under moderately warmer (summer) temperatures

http://www.platts.com/news-feature/2014/oil/europe-oil-q1/gasoline

Quote
On March 13, the discount of Eurobob gasoline barges to the front-month swap was assessed by Platts at a 12-month high on the back of ample supply of winter-specification material.

The widening of the contango in the physical market was the result of the transition to the more-expensive low-RVP summer-specification gasoline at a time of remaining ample stocks of high-RVP winter-specification material ahead of the formal transition to summer gasoline on April 1.

interestingly, it really involves using more (or less) butane

http://www.arabnews.com/high-butane-refiners-celebrate-winter%E2%80%99s-arrival

Quote
The swing is equivalent to almost 500,000 barrels of butane per day between Jun/July/Aug and Nov/Dec/Jan, roughly 3-4 percent of total inputs to US refineries.
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AmbiValent

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #842 on: May 04, 2016, 04:27:06 PM »
What are you aiming at? Do you think that effect is caused by carbon dioxide, by soot or by something completely different?
Bright ice, how can you crack and fail? How can the ice that seemed so mighty suddenly seem so frail?

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #843 on: May 04, 2016, 04:30:12 PM »
it was just a thought. sorry for bringing it up.
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Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #844 on: May 04, 2016, 05:23:00 PM »
Here is bad news from NSIDC:



Courtesy: National Snow and Ice Data Center, courtesy M. Tschudi, C. Fowler, J. Maslanik, R. Stewart/University of Colorado Boulder; W. Meier/NASA Cryospheric Sciences

A comparison for 2011 to 2015, courtesy NSIDC:



Age category, new measurements show a bigger number of FYI, courtesy National Snow and Ice Data Center, courtesy W. Meier/NASA Cryospheric Sciences :


crandles

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #845 on: May 04, 2016, 05:44:48 PM »

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #846 on: May 04, 2016, 05:51:49 PM »
tomorrow a great workshop starts with a huge amount of interesting presentations: Polar Prediction Workshop.

The presentations are going to be streamed and the stream will be available here.

Things start tomorrow at 9:00am EDT, which is 15:00 o'clock CET, I believe.

I hope to catch some of those presentations. Nice follow-up to the stuff I saw at EGU.

This is supposed to start streaming in 20 minutes a presentation at the link above, though it is not currently feeding on my computer.  I hope to see this presentation:

Impact of Aerosols on Arctic Sea Ice Extent Prediction

Quote
Marie-Éve Gagné, Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment Canada , Marie-Eve.Gagne@canada.ca

This study considers the influence of both stratospheric and tropospheric aerosol changes on Arctic sea ice extent on interannual to decadal timescales. While it is well-known that accounting for volcanic aerosol increases the skill of interannual to decadal predictions of surface temperature, its impact on sea ice prediction has not been widely considered. Here we analyze the impact of historical volcanoes on Arctic sea ice extent using a large ensemble of 20th-century climate simulations, and demonstrate that an increase in Arctic sea ice extent following these eruptions persists for up to a decade. Even though we do not find a detectable response in observations, these results suggest that inclusion of the effect in seasonal to interannual predictions of sea ice extent should improve skill on these timescales. Secondly, while the influence of future greenhouse gas changes on sea ice extent is known to be important for predictions on decadal timescales, the influence of projected tropospheric aerosol changes has received less attention. We examine the simulated response of Arctic sea ice to projected aerosol and aerosol precursor emissions changes under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios, and show that projected aerosol emissions decreases drive approximately 20-30% of the projected decrease in annual mean Arctic sea ice extent on decadal timescales.
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crandles

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #847 on: May 04, 2016, 05:57:43 PM »

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #848 on: May 04, 2016, 06:42:25 PM »

"Yes that is a crack that appeared in mid April and relieved the ice in that huge area in its tendency to rotate following the Gyre (although the displacement speed was much slower than that at Beaufort, as apparent from the drift maps too).

It was very clear from IR images, I will see if I can find any, on the mobile now. Bust rest assured there is no such a thing as "ice detachment" in the way implied in some comments here. Even if the whole Arctic rotates unison. It is not like a giant let loose from its chains. At any location, ice inertia is balanced by ocean dragging at the bottom, wind pulling at the top, pressure and shear forces at sides , and other forces. Gravity balanced too. It is not going to "fly away". ;-)
"

And what about the possibility of winds, cyclones, storms sweeping the ice out of place into the warm waters of the Atlantic?

Talking about possibilities, an off-topic factoid but at least evident within the modern understanding of physics: Did you know that there are more than 99% chances that any breath you take contains at least one atom expelled by Julius Caesar's "you too Brutus" last breath?

More on topic, for what is worth, I attach a gif showing Worldview IR images, 16 to 20 of April, of an ESS subtle crack that was created when the rotational motion started in April. Not sure if it is the same revealed now. The crack is not so apparent, but it is a huge arc dividing the static ice from that in motion
« Last Edit: May 04, 2016, 06:47:29 PM by seaicesailor »

Andreas T

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #849 on: May 04, 2016, 07:14:01 PM »
seaicesailor, you should not call these images "IR" they are thermal radiation but in the microwave part of the spectrum. Intensities are lower which reduces the resolution of these images below those of IR images and the emissivity of water and ice is different at these wavelengths, which makes them used for determining the AMSR-2 ice concentration maps. The structure and surface conditions of the ice also affects emitted intensity so interpretation is tricky but they show movement of the ice even when obscured in visible frequency images.

Nullschool http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-43.85,79.94,512
shows a forcast of a very changed wind pattern by the 8th May. Attached are 1000hPa winds because they show force driving the ice more clearly (I think).
This could open a lead along the north coast of Ellesmere island and narrow the openings at the New Siberian islands.

I agree that opening cracks at this time doesn't make ice disappear but moves it elsewhere or pushes up (and down) ridges within the ice.
The interesting question is what this does to later melting, I expect increased absorption of incoming solar radiation into open water. But it could also reduce the formation of meltponds.
The paper you linked some time ago ( I am still pondering the issue of snow sublimation) mentioned snow drifting into leads. When snow drifts across uninterrupted ice cover what is removed in one place is deposited elsewhere and can be shifted again. If snow drifts into an open lead it may aid the formation of new ice but it will not add to snow cover elsewhere. How much is that a factor in  the effect of cracks on conditioning of the ice?