The 2016 melting season

[Rob Dekker]

With these lows over the CAB, ice in the Arctic will disperse, as also the HYCOM projections suggest.

That typically means that "extent" will continue to stall, even though melting is vigorous at the ice edge, on all sides of the Arctic.

So short term it looks like 2016 will get in line with the next runners up (2012 and 2015), but also noting that ice volume is running at record low, and ice thickness in the CAB thinner than normal, the real trouble with 2016 may not become apparent until further into the melting season..

[Andreas T]

over in the canadian archipelago more surface melting shows where thicker floes are by keeping lower surface temperatures or possibly by having more snow cover because they are older and were around to receive autumn snow before the rest of the NWP froze up

edit; forgot the link (for coastlines and comparison to other wave bands)
http://go.nasa.gov/1tbTKb0

[bbr2314]

I believe an area crash is now imminent.

FRAM export has been maximized as the entire CAB has been shifted SE by a few hundred miles (and continues to move).

This has led to the beginnings of a split in the pack now evident on satellite beginning on the NRN end of the Beaufort Gyre and heading NE towards the rips on the Russian side, and then towards the rip through/NE of Kara.

Now we see the EURO showing the first decent cyclone of the season up north at 72 hours @979mb. This is now followed at the end of the run by an event in the low 970s that is also much warmer.

The cyclones cometh!

[Lord M Vader]

A very interesting week is ahead of us! Latest OP ECMWF 00z run has a "PAC-MAC" to swirl around the Arctic basin for about a week. The central pressure is scheduled to be around 985 hPa as lowest. Temps seems to be just slighly above normal for next 7 days in the Arctic proper. Large parts of the Arctic will see average temps above zero too. The only two areas that will have average temps below zero are Kara/Barentz Sea and Beaufort Sea which ironically is were the worst ice conditions are.. In Barentz Sea the maximum temp is foreseen to not go above zero for the next 5 days.

One thought that should be central for the future is: how close are we to have a situation when it doesn't matter if we are  having high pressures or low pressures in the Arctic as temps still will be above zero yielding melting momentum? As the planet warms, and Arctic being the area warming fastest, we will approach a situation when temps are above zero regardless of cyclones and anticyclones during summer. In that case, cyclones might be worse than high pressures as they bring rain and winds to the sea ice which is doing a huge damage to the ice and the snow pack.
 

[Laurent]

To compare 2015 and 2016 on the jdallen ESS image with 7-2-1 filter.
http://go.nasa.gov/1WFX4YD
My thinking is that In the recent past this type of weather could have slowed ice melting because the ice was restrained within the huge land based Arctic boundaries but now that the structure of the ice is weak and that there is huge swath of "hot" water, things are different. Would we beat 2012... I am not sure about that... let's see.

[Metamemesis]

What nullschool shows is a spot of 10^oC at 75.8N 30E , warmer than anywhere in the vicinity. It is good to know that a feature like this does not escape attention. But it is worth keeping in mind that if it looks odd it is best to look for independent corroboration.

For future reference, is there any particular website/national agency that is known/thought to have the most accurate SST/SSTA maps/models? There seems to be agreement that there is unusually consistent and warm water in the area, even if there isn't consensus on the precise SST/location.

Thanks for posting that image, Metamemesis! You made my day!

You're very welcome, though it was pure luck. I was scrambling around the web trying to compare various SST maps/models to see if I had unintentionally posted inaccurate info.

Thought it was time to stop lurking and start contributing!

[iceman]

    ....
I think what this means is that some of the mechanisms attacking the ice we've had are going to be superseded by new ones - conditions along the Barents/Atlantic margin is one of them.  Beaufort breakup and general mobilization of the pack is another - I assume that's not something true of 2012. 
    ....

If you're right, and if we have a June stall followed by an average July, that's a setup for big losses in August.  Which would be consistent with the cycle Chris R has investigated on Dosbat, mainly as an empirical observation (iirc) for the time being.
      http://dosbat.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-august-extent-loss-oscillation.html

[seaicesailor]

...
One thought that should be central for the future is: how close are we to have a situation when it doesn't matter if we are  having high pressures or low pressures in the Arctic as temps still will be above zero yielding melting momentum? As the planet warms, and Arctic being the area warming fastest, we will approach a situation when temps are above zero regardless of cyclones and anticyclones during summer. In that case, cyclones might be worse than high pressures as they bring rain and winds to the sea ice which is doing a huge damage to the ice and the snow pack.

Only that 2013 taught us that weather matters. What if record temperatures somehow have led to more cyclonic weather in June that blocks the sun in the Central Arctic.
Snow layer may be thickening in 2015F

http://imb.erdc.dren.mil/2015F.htm

Anyway these cyclones are indeed going to break things up, Beaufort especially which was not really open in 2013.

Note apart, Wipneus shows that surface melt has started days earlier than 2013-2015 in agreement with record temperatures, and extent is not stalling completely because of sea ice outside the Arctic ocean.

[pauldry600]

An awful lot of broken ice floating round on NASA worldview.

Unless someone fast forwards tomorrow to be July theres going to be a lot of ice gone....by July.

If theres lots of broken ice does this melt fast or just float around until it refreezes giving us fake extent and a Summer of Ice pools

[NeilT]

If you're right, and if we have a June stall followed by an average July, that's a setup for big losses in August.  Which would be consistent with the cycle Chris R has investigated on Dosbat, mainly as an empirical observation (iirc) for the time being.
      http://dosbat.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-august-extent-loss-oscillation.html

Hence my "I won't be surprised if it goes like 2006" because that is exactly what happened then. Record setting warmth and early melt followed by a stall, followed by a rush to finish in August followed by...... 2007.

[DoomInTheUK]

NeilT - And we had a lot bigger volume of ice back in 2006.
It's getting harder to draw comparisons with previous years. I think it's just sit-back-and-watch time.

[magnamentis]

Only that 2013 taught us that weather matters. What if record temperatures somehow have led to more cyclonic weather in June that blocks the sun in the Central Arctic.

no disagreement, weather does and will always matter, i think his thought was to which extent it will matter if temps are way above zero even in rainy conditons and if the wind could even replace the sun as a factor for increased melt, once the temps are and stay above 3-5C.

look at the picture below, no sun for many days but it's happening, even without waves :-)

[NeilT]

NeilT - And we had a lot bigger volume of ice back in 2006.
It's getting harder to draw comparisons with previous years. I think it's just sit-back-and-watch time.

We had a lot less volume at the end of 2012, but 2013 proved to us that weather plays a very significant role and ice can grow as well as shrink given the right conditions, regardless of the growing global heat.

I recognise that there is less ice than in 2006 and that exactly the same cycle will still produce more melt.  However I don't believe that 2016 will beat 2012 and I still believe that it is the same 06/07 cycle which means the ice is going to be totally massacred in 2017.  Potentially the blue ocean even we've all been anticipating.

That's my feel on this based on all the years I've been watching this.  2006 was "new" to me although watching the arctic was not.  2016 just feels like a re-run.

[Nightvid Cole]

DMI has finally gone above the freezing mark for the first time this year.

[werther]

Well yeah, Nightvid.
And it did on a decisively worse track record since 1st of January ever.

[werther]

Last minute MODIS-check:
The Kara Sea is letting go, as foreseen. And the Northern Waters polynia in Baffin Bay is no longer. And Hudson Bay ice is now an 'island'.
Soon, the CAB pack will be on its own...

[Tigertown]

Heatwaves of unprecedented duration are predicted all summer for the U.K. and other parts of Europe. The U.S. has one spreading across it now.Record areas of ocean water are now 86 F plus. Wildfires are on a pace to release astronomical amounts of energy this year, burning in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia,with smaller ones elsewhere. I don't know how fast whatever portion of this energy that will make its way there will get to the Arctic, but I  don't think this year is to be compared to any previous one. I think however low the extent gets by September, there will definitely be a record low maximum to follow early next year.

[BornFromTheVoid]

NSIDC extent slowdown continues. The loss so far in June is the 2nd smallest on record using the 5 day mean, and the smallest on record using the single day values.
With the single day data, the gap to the next lowest year is now at it's lowest point since May 9th, and the gap to 2012 has been reduced by 729k in 8 days.

This slow down certainly ain't normal, but then the low coverage ain't normal either!

Heatwaves of unprecedented duration are predicted all summer for the U.K. and other parts of Europe. The U.S. has one spreading across it now.Record areas of ocean water are now 86 F plus. Wildfires are on a pace to release astronomical amounts of energy this year, burning in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia,with smaller ones elsewhere. I don't know how fast whatever portion of this energy that will make its way there will get to the Arctic, but I  don't think this year is to be compared to any previous one. I think however low the extent gets by September, there will definitely be a record low maximum to follow early next year.

Long range foreasts are problematic, and the UK heatwave one will be bust this weekend. Next week should be essentially average across the UK. But all this global warmth will continue to eat away at the ice, while weather temporarily obscures the trend from time to time.
To me, the ice has been ready for a near complete melt out since 2013. It's now just a matter of when the weather works to allow it to happen. If this is to be the year, then we need to get the warmth and high pressure over the Arctic ocean soon

[NeilT]

Meanwhile over at the Barrow cam it's 31F and snowing, covering all that melt which has been popping up over the last two days.  Just going to show how susceptible those latitudes are to weather driven events.

I've also been wondering about the gyre and all that MYI.  It's being driven out to the warmer open waters.  Yes it's going to be decimated, but also it's going to do it's job. Which is to balance the temperature and it's going to cool it.

All it takes, later in the season, is cloud and cold and the sea could be right back to normal.

Yes, the ice will be seriously damaged and weakened.  But it will pull back the pace of the melt.

It's going to be an interesting watch anyway.

[pauldry600]

Funny how the ice never ceases to surprise.

A month ago i though why is everyone saying record year..sure it will correct itself

2 weeks ago i though record for sure

Now it looks just a low year in the top 5 low years ever.

However the top 5 low years ever keeps getting new entries every year so its a slow process.

We maybe got till 2030 to solve this thing and not 2020.

[Tigertown]

As several people more knowledgeable than myself have pointed out, you can not just look at the extent numbers. So much of the ice has been broken up and spread out by winds. It will take a few days or a couple weeks to get a true measure of the real damage that has been done and how it will influence the overall season.

[Michael Hauber]

Every year that I've been watching the ice since 2008 there have been claims that the ice is in really bad shape and that the extent figures hide the truth.  Or at least in every slow melting year.

Comparing current visual images shows that there is a greater area of broken up ice in the Beaufort region than even 2012.  But on the Russian front, despite some very high heat in recent week or so the ice is clearly in much better shape than 2012 or even 2014.  This does seem to support the PIOMAS data showing that the ice on this front was much thicker at the end of winter than other years, and that melt on this very wide front will struggle this summer.  Also by this date surface melt is visible across nearly the entire ice pack in 2012.  This year we would be lucky to have half the surface covered with melt, although clouds make it hard to be sure - the clouds being the reason why surface melt is currently delayed.

[Tigertown]

Back on the 6th Neven had a perfect explanation and visual demonstration as to why the extent was stalling. I don't know what the satellite is showing now, as to whether the ice is still being spread. Maybe someone a little more dexterous with satellite imaging than myself can update us. Also, has anyone heard any more about a cyclone that is supposed to develope ??

[Rob Dekker]

Comparing current visual images shows that there is a greater area of broken up ice in the Beaufort region than even 2012. 

Not just the Beaufort.
Also the Bering, the Chukchi, the CAB and the Greenland Sea.
Other seas are about even with 2012.

But on the Russian front, despite some very high heat in recent week or so the ice is clearly in much better shape than 2012 or even 2014. 

Which data did you use to come to that conclusion ?
For example, the ice along the ESS shore looks horrible, while in 2014 it was quite white and pristine.

[bbr2314]

Every year that I've been watching the ice since 2008 there have been claims that the ice is in really bad shape and that the extent figures hide the truth.  Or at least in every slow melting year.

Comparing current visual images shows that there is a greater area of broken up ice in the Beaufort region than even 2012.  But on the Russian front, despite some very high heat in recent week or so the ice is clearly in much better shape than 2012 or even 2014.  This does seem to support the PIOMAS data showing that the ice on this front was much thicker at the end of winter than other years, and that melt on this very wide front will struggle this summer.  Also by this date surface melt is visible across nearly the entire ice pack in 2012.  This year we would be lucky to have half the surface covered with melt, although clouds make it hard to be sure - the clouds being the reason why surface melt is currently delayed.

??

earliest ever to 0c

[jdallen]

I keep on hearing a line of argument... the ice isn't in as bad a shape as it was in 2012.

That needs to be corrected.   Actually, the condition of the ice is far *different* than it was in 2012.  It started with different mechanics. It will react differently (and has) to the weather. It is surrounded by much more heat in the environment.  The weather itself is attacking or preserving different regions.

In short, if we applied the same weather conditions we saw in 2012 to this ice, we'd see a very different result this year.   I don't think we can assume weather in the past which preserved ice would help it now.  I'm also not sure weather which would attack ice in the past, would have greater effect now (e.g. in some areas, melt ponding is limited by the dispersed and fractured nature of the pack).

We are in a completely new regime I think.  I'd suggest looking less at weather and more at heat exchange. For example again... With the pack as fractured and mobile as it is currently, how much more heat is ekman pumping delivering to the ice from depth?

[oren]

The Greenland Sea situation is shocking, see the new animation at the Home brew AMSR2 thread. It seems Fram export has stopped - gone to Svalbard instead - and the Atlantic has eaten away a huge chunk of the ice.

[anotheramethyst]

??

earliest ever to 0c

Sorry, that chart doesn't say that.  It's only comparing 2016 to 1980-2010, so a lot of years aren't on there (including 2012).  Also, there was at least one year that reached a slightly higher temperature just a bit earlier, you can tell if you zoom in to the chart, but there's no way to tell what year from that chart because it combined all the years and broke the data into percentages by date. 

I'm sure I'm butchering this explanation, I just don't know the right words.  Yes 2016 has been insanely hot so far.  Michael Hauber is also right, we currently have no metric for how "slushy" or "broken" the ice is (other than by age of the ice), and eyeballing it, people have said it looks bad every year since 2012 (maybe they also said it before, I have no idea, I wasn't following the ice then).  We really do have to wait and see if the weather turns.  If the weather gets bad, the extent could drop like a stone.  If the weather never really builds momentum, we will see another low year, but not a record breaker. 

I, personally, think the weather IS going to bring a lot of heat this summer, so, with the current state of the ice, I think we will see a new record, however, I know the ice is very difficult to predict and I'm not putting money on it

[Acts5v29]

Seeing the differing educated opinions - re: what conditions are, what September will bring - shows how the conditions have changed from their historic norms and we really do not know the proper dynamics  ( Surely, in consequence, a strong stroke against the deniers who declare the status is still quoing. ) 

Great for "discovery" science, if only it were not so critical.

[magnamentis]

We maybe got till 2030 to solve this thing and not 2020.

since we not only observe what happens but as well analyze the reasons, i think that exactly this kind of short-term "headline" thinking plays a big role in almost any problem we're facing nowadays, including GW.

This year has been persistently on the lowest ends of every kind of measurement an now, also due to the fact that there is not much "easy" ice left, we see a little stall and already the first guys jump to conclusions.

sorry but i can only shake my head. we're permanently loosing ice and acquiring energy (heat) in the system and even if the sun will hide for the rest of the years, temps tend to be above zero anyways.

further i read so much about the 2012 "whow" heat but when i look at DMI's graph and others, we have again been earlier and higher in temps yesterday than 2012, on has perhaps to zoom a bit to see that.

further we have never seen so fragmented ice almost all over the place (i said almost !! ) and thinner and and and. so be prepared for changing you outlook again within 10-14 days, but even better would be to focus on real and consistent parameters to get the picture.

BTW i predicted what is happening this season in october 2015 and there was no big echo, even though one does not have to be an expert to see the logics behind all this. it's pure physics of which everything else is just a
limited part.

[BenB]

We maybe got till 2030 to solve this thing and not 2020.

Further to what Magnamentis said, you shouldn't conflate the timing of an ice-free Arctic with how long we have to prevent it. I think it is very likely that we will have a substantially ice-free Arctic in summer well before 2030, but I may be wrong. However, even if the Arctic only becomes "ice-free" at some point in the period 2030-2050, it will be the consequence of human activity during the past 50 years, more than what we do over the coming 10-15 years. We certainly can't suddenly stop emitting CO2 in 2025 and expect the Arctic ice to quickly recover.

[Gray-Wolf]

When prof Barber watched that floe disintegrate over 20 mins he postulated that the resultant rubble, frozen in place by new FY ice was how we got 'rotten ice' ( How I understood him?).

Since the 2013 'Crakopalypse event it would appear that the whole basin is now playing this 'rotten ice' game with floes breaking , and mingling, to be frozen into place come re-freeze.

Surely this is not good for the ice on a whole?

In the past, if a floe broke up , it all melted at the same speed. Now , once the floes part, we have a mixture of different ages so differing melt out rates? This leads to the chance of open water between older floes ( allowing the ocean surface there to warm) and so attacking the older ice via bottom melt.

 In the past this 'melt dynamic' did not exist.

[F.Tnioli]

...
 In the past this 'melt dynamic' did not exist.

Excellent point. We understand that it did exist on a much smaller scale, of course, - not "did not exist" per se; doesn't make the point any less sound.

Same with many other things, really. Soot from extra forest fires. Core temperature of the ice being closer to zero at the start of a melt season. Unprecedented run-off from Greenland. Arctic rivers spitting out water warmer-than-ever on average. Heck, even under-ice plankton blooms never thought possible before - i suspect there is more to those than just thinner ice (permitting more light to go through) and melt ponds; extra phosphorus in water, water acidification and some other things have to be involved as well, if subtly.

Bottom line to it all? Uncertainty. More uncertainty, indeed. But only uncertainty in details. The general direction is clear, since energy equivalent to 4 nuclear bombs detonated every second - is something quite hard to beat. That CO2 was and is growing rather steadily as decades go by, and so i expect Arctic sea ice to reflect that quite nicely "beyond" (sometimes wild) perturbations of year-to-year time scale, keeping in mind volume-based melt rates, of course (linear relation can be made between volume of ice melt and amount of energy spent for it, but CAN'T be made between the latter and sea ice extent/area, since ice thickness is one extra factor there). And with 2013, 2014 and to some extent 2015 being better for Arctic sea ice than one would expect observing general decadal trends, 2016 is quite the time for things to bound "back to warmer-than-expected" part of the spectrum of possibilities.

This is one of several reasons i have to still expect that ASI will beat 2012 in terms of area and volume, setting new lowest-ever records. Extent probably too, but not as sure, especially seeing what happens last few weeks extent-wise.

P.S. That expectation is of course only the case as long as melt season is not much affected by artificial methods aimed to change sea ice melt speed and amount. Theoretically those are within reach for industrially developed countries of the world, some of them have large enough parts of Arctic ocean under their own jurisdiction to be able to hide some action of the sort from international community, especially if such methods involve only under-ice action(s).

[NeilT]

This year has been persistently on the lowest ends of every kind of measurement an now, also due to the fact that there is not much "easy" ice left, we see a little stall and already the first guys jump to conclusions.

I've been saying this for quite a while now, long before the stall.  Partially because I've been watching the weather events at Barrow and how they have unfolded with the melt ponding and re-freezing and partially because of the way it is melting.

I've been watching since before 2000 (which was a LOT harder than today with a lot less data) and I have absolutely seen this before.

In fact the years which have had the biggest impact started out with lower expectations and produced a huge surprise.

Years which started out with a bang have, more often than not, finished with ah whimper.

I've also been fairly consistent in saying that as the pack diminishes each near miss will have a bigger impact that the previous one.  The ice is significantly weakened and significantly less volume. The real step change was 2007.  There was another step change in 2012 and there will be more again.

Eventually there won't be any more near misses because the heat required to melt what remains of the ice will be more than up to the job.  A point I was highlighting on the blog.

I haven't changed my viewpoint in weeks now.  I've seen the records and I've seen the huge drops and the high temperatures.  I've seen them before.  I just don't believe this year has what it takes to hit the record books.  That, I firmly believe, is the job of 2017.

On a side note, I thought CO2ppm would drop below 400ppm one more time before leaving it behind for the next several generations in 2017.  However it's looking like we may have climbed nearly 7ppm in two years and will remain above 400ppm in 2016.  Which can't be helping the situation....

[Nick_Naylor]

I just don't believe this year has what it takes to hit the record books.  That, I firmly believe, is the job of 2017.

I've seen you make this assertion before, but I don't recall seeing line of reasoning. Why is 2017 going to be the real deal?

[NeilT]

Because they've come in pairs.

2006/2007 2011/2012.

If you note all the comments above this season was tracking both 2006 and 2011 this winter.  Both of which were extremely low winters.

I've said it a few times but I'm just saying it again.  I watched this winter tracking almost exactly 2006 or 2011 at times this winter and spring and then I've watched the slow down in extent now.  Remember I just posted the point about snowing at  Barrow yesterday. That's not just the fragmented pack blowing out to the coast.  That's a halt to melt ponding and local weather cooling off the melt.

Yes Barrow has been experiencing record temps during the day, some days. But more often than not it's been just below 0 and not melting because the clouds are obscuring the sun.

Add that cloudiness to other areas of the Arctic and you're already looking at 2006.  As has already been said, 2012 had melting over most of the pack by now, 2016 has melting over half if we're lucky.  2016 has cloudy weather which is blocking out the sun, stopping melt formation and pushing the majority of the melt onto bottom melt.

There's nothing scientific behind it, it's just a feeling.

[edit]

I also forgot to say that it's running on 5 year cycles too.

[Gray-Wolf]

2017 is also the earliest return for the 'Perfect Melt Storm' synoptic ( if you go off the spacing of the two prior to 2007?).

At the time ( late 2007) they saw a pattern of between 10 to 20 years for the recurrence of the phenomena but noted that 87' and 97' were the two prior to 07'

[magnamentis]

I just don't believe this year has what it takes to hit the record books.  That, I firmly believe, is the job of 2017.

if you mean a record low i fully agree ( i think we mean the very same ) but still, just to verify, this year already is a consecutive story of one record after another, i refer to your "for the records book" so i think this year already has it's huge place in the record books up to now and we both mean "record low" in that context ?

i also agree in full to 2017, i cannot say why like the pros in this forum can to at times but i got theat feel some time ago and it's getting stronger, strangely super cold whether in fall and winter excempt, i say that we shall see another huge step towards a blue artic in 2017.

[notjonathon]

I also forgot to say that it's running on 5 year cycles too.

The time frame is way too short to imagine 5-year cycles. What would be the underlying physics of such a cycle?

[oren]

I also forgot to say that it's running on 5 year cycles too.

The time frame is way too short to imagine 5-year cycles. What would be the underlying physics of such a cycle?

The beauty of numbers! 

[marcel_g]

I had a quick look at Climate Reanalyzer this morning, and it looks like there's going to be some heat and some sunshine cycling around the arctic, from ESS - Chukchi - Beaufort - to CAB north of Greenland, with a large cloudy low parked over the middle.

Looking at that, my guess is that the low will keep pushing ice out into those peripheral areas, and those peripheral areas will continue to melt ice rapidly, so the area numbers will keep dropping. However, if the cloudy weather persists, the CAB won't be set up for rapid later melting because that ice, even though it's being dispersed, isn't getting preconditioned by melt ponds and albedo changes, and if it stays on the cloudier side of things, then the leads between the floes in the CAB won't heat up enough to cause as significant bottom melting later on.

So my guess is that we might have increasingly rabid drops until the ice edge gets to CAB, and then it might start to stall. Unless of course the sun comes out widely enough in the next few weeks, and then I'd expect a lot of ice to go poof. But really, that's just a guess.

[seaicesailor]

Actually I guess this has been noticed here, this cyclone is going to really hurt the melting ESS ice tomorrow.
Aww.

[crandles]

I also forgot to say that it's running on 5 year cycles too.

The time frame is way too short to imagine 5-year cycles. What would be the underlying physics of such a cycle?

You are expecting cycles to be a lot longer than 5 years or a lot less than 5 years? or am I misunderstanding that?

2 or 3 year cycle might get some support from the literature (Schroder & Connolley 2007,  Tietsche et al. 2011:
Low year puts lots of heat in ocean so slow to start freezing up then does so quite rapidly resulting in less snow cover so the FYI grows thick.
Next year thicker ice hasn't melted out so it can support snow when it falls during earlier slower freeze up so more normal snow cover and thinner ice.

I struggle to see thick ice taking 3 or 4 years to get back to thin level that can cause a large melt out, the max FYI thickness being more dominated by winter temperatures. Perhaps it takes a few years before the right melt weather occurs for a big melt out. But that wouldn't suggest absolute regularity every 5 years.

Beaufort Gyre used to take 5 years or more to complete. Might this suggest a big melt out creates a weakness which is in the wrong place for a big melt out until it has circulated around the gyre and allows a big melt out with that sort of period? I very much doubt that is exactly the mechanism as there is too much crushing forces that mean the weak area does not stay weak. Watching ice age animations there do seem periods when the gyre moves a lot or a little but I assume if there was good correlation with big melt out years we would know about it.

One gap of 5 years, a single data point being taken as evidence of a cycle of exactly that length seems a big stretch.

[oren]

I had a quick look at Climate Reanalyzer this morning, and it looks like there's going to be some heat and some sunshine cycling around the arctic, from ESS - Chukchi - Beaufort - to CAB north of Greenland, with a large cloudy low parked over the middle.

Looking at that, my guess is that the low will keep pushing ice out into those peripheral areas, and those peripheral areas will continue to melt ice rapidly, so the area numbers will keep dropping. However, if the cloudy weather persists, the CAB won't be set up for rapid later melting because that ice, even though it's being dispersed, isn't getting preconditioned by melt ponds and albedo changes, and if it stays on the cloudier side of things, then the leads between the floes in the CAB won't heat up enough to cause as significant bottom melting later on.

So my guess is that we might have increasingly rabid drops until the ice edge gets to CAB, and then it might start to stall. Unless of course the sun comes out widely enough in the next few weeks, and then I'd expect a lot of ice to go poof. But really, that's just a guess.

With the ice much more mobile this year, perhaps a big central low will cause part of the CAB itself to disperse and melt in the peripheral seas.

[marcel_g]

With the ice much more mobile this year, perhaps a big central low will cause part of the CAB itself to disperse and melt in the peripheral seas.

Quite possibly, which would cause area and volume numbers to plummet, but I would guess that extent might stall at the CAB (area that's under this cloudy low pressure system) because the ice that remained there wouldn't be as preconditioned due to fewer melt ponds, higher albedo, and less energy in the water in the leads.

[NeilT]

One gap of 5 years, a single data point being taken as evidence of a cycle of exactly that length seems a big stretch.

It does doesn't it. But, you see, I remember reading, a few years back, that the cycles are being compressed and that the well known 10 year cycle was being shortened.

Anyway don't demand figures from me I don't have them.  I said, at the outset, this is a "feeling" kind of thing.

But, then again, I was stating that this felt like 2006 whilst the heat was exceptional and the melt was exceptional..

Not once it started to cool.

[bbr2314]

Because they've come in pairs.

2006/2007 2011/2012.

If you note all the comments above this season was tracking both 2006 and 2011 this winter.  Both of which were extremely low winters.

I've said it a few times but I'm just saying it again.  I watched this winter tracking almost exactly 2006 or 2011 at times this winter and spring and then I've watched the slow down in extent now.  Remember I just posted the point about snowing at  Barrow yesterday. That's not just the fragmented pack blowing out to the coast.  That's a halt to melt ponding and local weather cooling off the melt.

Yes Barrow has been experiencing record temps during the day, some days. But more often than not it's been just below 0 and not melting because the clouds are obscuring the sun.

Add that cloudiness to other areas of the Arctic and you're already looking at 2006.  As has already been said, 2012 had melting over most of the pack by now, 2016 has melting over half if we're lucky.  2016 has cloudy weather which is blocking out the sun, stopping melt formation and pushing the majority of the melt onto bottom melt.

There's nothing scientific behind it, it's just a feeling.

[edit]

I also forgot to say that it's running on 5 year cycles too.

Why are posts based on feelings allowed?

This thread keeps getting bombarded by people who are saying things are rosy when conditions are still significantly worse than 2012 and only continuing to degrade with the season's first GAC now revving up in the ESS and horrific melt ongoing in all peripheral areas, while the only cold air in the Arctic is hovering over the open Beaufort Sea and the FRAM (gee that must be preserving a lot of ice).

Wipneus' graphics clearly show conditions rapidly deteriorating and we are still doing much worse than 2012 (with area dropping nearly 300K or 3%+ of the total pack in last 2 days alone).

We aren't even halfway through June and we are already seeing evidence the entire Arctic Ocean pack is going to split in two as the mass of the CAB drifts towards oblivion in the Greenland Sea... this is pretty horrific.

[6roucho]

Why are posts based on feelings allowed?

A substantial amount of the science we refer to here wouldn't exist if someone hadn't had a 'feeling' about something and decided to test it.

[bbr2314]

Why are posts based on feelings allowed?

Because intuition plays an important role in scientific debate and the formation of ideas. A substantial amount of the science we refer to here wouldn't exist if someone hadn't had a 'feeling' about something and decided to test it.

OK, well when feelings contradict what we can see via satellite perhaps it is time they take a backseat to logic and actual observations (i.e. facts).

HYCOM is now showing the first concrete signs that the pack is about to split in two.

[bbr2314]

I think bottom melt getting underway in the next week is another major factor. It seems like it will begin across entire Russian periphery extending out several hundred KM.

HYCOM also shows the fissures opening in the imminent separation taking on some heat. Look where the relative warmth connects and you should get an idea of what's about to go down.