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Espen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2150 on: June 12, 2016, 05:19:43 PM »

>> To add to this the ice type is new to the Inuit, new to science they both call it "rotten ice",

That is incorrect. The term has been around for a long time.

Yes! It is an old word combination in Norwegian (rotten ice / rotten snow).
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Gray-Wolf

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2151 on: June 12, 2016, 05:20:05 PM »

>> To add to this the ice type is new to the Inuit, new to science they both call it "rotten ice",

That is incorrect. The term has been around for a long time.

Maybe 'New' to the basin in the amounts we are finding up there then?

Before the 07' crash I had concerns about changing ice in that floes can nearly melt out over a season but then 're-grow' from below and be capped with snow. At the time folk would still see robust , older ice whereas I was supposing it was a 'Wolf in Sheep's clothing' having near identical melt out potential to FY ice?

Since 07' we must have seen an expansion in this 'false age ice' as peripheral melt out allows floes to drift into high melt areas prior to refreeze? Even if the footprint remains the same the depth of ice must lessen weakening the floe and allowing us to see 'old ice' involved in 'Crackopalypse events?
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2152 on: June 12, 2016, 05:31:42 PM »
There is no question the qualities of the ice have changed. I use the term "qualities" intentionally.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090323/full/news.2009.183.html

Pancake ice is becoming much more common place.

Feeltheburn

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2153 on: June 12, 2016, 06:03:00 PM »
you are choosing to ignore the market fundamentals
[/quote]

haha.  good answer!
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NeilT

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2154 on: June 12, 2016, 06:46:43 PM »
If we consider SIE or SIA minimums for a given season as a single data point from a process that takes a year to run, it should not surprise us that 2016 is making a run towards lying within 2 standard deviations of the long term trend. Sure we have outliers like 2007 and 2012 but the trend towards an ice free Arctic continues. If the next major outlier were to carry us to Blue Ocean territory, we should expect a rebound towards the long term trend IMHO.

I would agree with you except for one thing.

If you've been watching this for a long time (mid 1990's for me), you realise that the baseline they use for the SD keeps changing.

If you were watching NSIDC and CT in the early 2000's, you would have seen a baseline of 1981 - 2000 on both.

After the "outlier year" of 2007, when we nearly crossed the 3m marker on the CT anomaly map, that baseline was moved to 2008, incorporating the outlier year of 2007 and shifting the SD markers.  If it were not for that, 2012 would have dropped off the bottom of the CT anomaly map in 2012.

If you look at the SD on NSIDC, their baseline average is 1981 to 2010.

It took me a long time to get to where Gavin Schmidt was back in the 90's.  If you look at a cycle on anything less than a decadal level, the noise of the weather is going to mess you up.  I've read a lot about the decadal cycles for weather and arctic impact, it's one of the reasons I'm likening 2016 to 2006.  Also they sit at almost the same place in the current solar cycle which is running on a 10/11 year cycle.  The bigger differences are threefold.

2006 was out of the back end of a much larger solar event
2016 is at the back end of a much, much, smaller solver event but has had a decade of CO2 increases which we've never seen before in terms of growth.
The ice state in 2016 is much weaker than in 2006

When everyone tells me that solar input to open water is much bigger than anything we see from the delta discharge heat, it's also useful to remember that very small changes in the solar flux has a marked impact on such large areas of water and ice.

Given the shifting nature of the SD graphs, I don't think we can use them, although, perversely, it seems to fit the statistical/linear models much better than the other models.






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abbottisgone

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2155 on: June 13, 2016, 04:31:41 AM »
If I was a momentum trader doing day trades, my bet would be that the 2016 extent will soon cross the 2012 extent and then remain within the grey area showing the 1981-2010 average.

you are choosing to ignore the market fundamentals
..those being?
..
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Rubikscube

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2156 on: June 13, 2016, 04:41:25 AM »
Attached below is the Uni-Bremen map for June 9 2016, a map showing average ice consentration for the same date 2002-2015 (based on the same amsr2 and amsre maps provided by uni) and a map showing the relation between 2016 and the average (red indicating lack of ice, and blue the opposite)

Evidently, Beufort is still way ahead, together with Barents, Kara and Greenland sea, Siberian fast ice is also melting early, though the ice consentration here and in CAA can be somewhat misleading at this point of the season. Crusual regions such Chukchi and Laptev aren't melting ahead of time though, and with the current weather and weather forecasts, 2016 just isn't going to beat 2012. The setup for a new record was perfect 3-4 weeks ago, but the chance has been blown, and a 2015esk turnaround in melting conditions will be needed to give 2012 a run for the money. Any talk about how low preasure and divergence should be bad for the ice is wishfull thinking, it has been demonstrated time and time again during the past few seasons. Also worth noticing that ice was continously being exported towards Svalbard and Frans Joseph during the 2014 summer, then coinciding with a spectacular lack of volume loss, I dont see why it should be very different this time, it only keeps ice out of the far more efficient ice killer that is Fram strait.

timallard

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2157 on: June 13, 2016, 04:57:43 AM »

>> To add to this the ice type is new to the Inuit, new to science they both call it "rotten ice",

That is incorrect. The term has been around for a long time.

Maybe 'New' to the basin in the amounts we are finding up there then?

Before the 07' crash I had concerns about changing ice in that floes can nearly melt out over a season but then 're-grow' from below and be capped with snow. At the time folk would still see robust , older ice whereas I was supposing it was a 'Wolf in Sheep's clothing' having near identical melt out potential to FY ice?

Since 07' we must have seen an expansion in this 'false age ice' as peripheral melt out allows floes to drift into high melt areas prior to refreeze? Even if the footprint remains the same the depth of ice must lessen weakening the floe and allowing us to see 'old ice' involved in 'Crackopalypse events?
>> Maybe I took what is said on these videos by a int'l team last fall in a biased way, I don't think so, if it was a known type why all this work?

"Characterization of the physical, biological, and chemical nature of rotting first-year ice continues"; part of this research; "Assessing the Habitability and Physical Structure of Rotting First-year Arctic Sea Ice"; Applied Physics Lab-Unv. of Washington; 6:38;

Related work discovering a warm layer 20m down and commenting on that it was all pancake ice during freeze-up in the Beaufort last fall: "ARCTIC SEA STATE; Sea State and Boundary Layer Physics of the Emerging Arctic Ocean"; APL-UW; 5:12;

Discussed in this up to date long talk by Dr. Barber; "Arctic Sea Ice: A Slippery Slope?"; 1:32:26;

The Inuit for sure know it's a new type, ask any of them, it's dangerous they can't hunt on it, recall they went from dogsleds to fishing boats in winter already so know the progression best and it killed them by the new situation, this a short video "Marine scientist Ken Dunton talks about what the disappearing ice means for humans and animals in the "new" Arctic."; 9:57;

It's the last vestige of sea-ice before a bluewater event my interpretation, when the leftovers of the multi-year ice within the rotten ice diminishes more it'll just all be gone in a day suddenly, the blobs of multi-year ice left are all that prevents that.

ymmv.
-tom

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2158 on: June 13, 2016, 05:36:36 AM »
JAXA revealed 60k sq. km drop in SIE today. Seems to be picking back up again.
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werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2159 on: June 13, 2016, 05:48:45 AM »
It takes a while. All easy ice was gone two weeks ago. A first sign on the blue hued CAA ice: crack in Prince of Wales Strait. Between Banks and Victoria island.

Juan C. García

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2160 on: June 13, 2016, 06:17:36 AM »
JAXA revealed 60k sq. km drop in SIE today. Seems to be picking back up again.

I believe that you make the difference between June 10 and June 12. Using yesterday's value:

10,154,944 - 10,130,495 = 24,449 km2.

Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2161 on: June 13, 2016, 06:39:39 AM »
Somehow had 10,190,someodd sqkm. Must have got numbers an extra day old
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Watching_from_Canberra

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2162 on: June 13, 2016, 07:42:57 AM »

Andreas T

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2163 on: June 13, 2016, 08:38:20 AM »
there is a discussion of this dark line on the "buoys" thread
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,327.msg80028.html#msg80028

Laurent

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2164 on: June 13, 2016, 01:15:29 PM »
Well, I must admit that next week the weather will help the ice.
Nearly no rain, very little Fram export.

Quantum

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2165 on: June 13, 2016, 01:22:55 PM »
I'm looking at the uni bremen maps from June 10th (right) and June 12th (left).

I tend to use the concentration as a rough guide to surface melt since the concentration in the ESS is pretty much 100%, and the satellite is confusing melt ponds with open water. Anyway its interesting that the proportion of greens/yellows seem to have gone down in the ESS over the last few days. Do you think any of the melt ponds have frozen over, or has some of the water drained away?

Gray-Wolf

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2166 on: June 13, 2016, 01:38:32 PM »
Well, I must admit that next week the weather will help the ice.
Nearly no rain, very little Fram export.

It does look , from that animation, as though the ice immediately above Fram may see some hectic hours as the centre of the LP passes over? We might no get increased export but I do think it will further precondition the pack there by breaking it into ever smaller and more mobile floes?

I do not know if I am just weary from long years worrying over tghe basin in that now I'm even questioning whether synoptics, traditionally positive for the ice, are turning into something more ominous?

We all saw Beaufort changer from an ice nursery into a destructive zone so why not weathers?
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Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2167 on: June 13, 2016, 04:16:46 PM »
Melt season cancelled!!  ;D It started early and very exciting but after an extremely boring first half of June everything changed! :P

Kidding aside, a continued positive AO with cyclones over the CAB I no longer see how 2016 possibly would beat out 2012, 2007 or even 2011/2015 given the forecasts.

If the weather pattern isn't changing until the end of June, I strongly belive we have a chance to end up above all the minimas during 2010-2015, maybe even since 2007. In fact, I put the odds to 25% that we will end up somewhere between 4,9-5,1 Mn km2 by the middle of September IF this cyclonic weather pattern continues for the rest of the summer.

The bottom line is: given that the current weather conditions will continue for at least another week or so I put the odds to 1% that we'll beat 2012. Two years in a row with such strong high pressure dominance doesn't seem likely.


//LMV

Quantum

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2168 on: June 13, 2016, 04:39:56 PM »
Melt season cancelled!!  ;D It started early and very exciting but after an extremely boring first half of June everything changed! :P

Kidding aside, a continued positive AO with cyclones over the CAB I no longer see how 2016 possibly would beat out 2012, 2007 or even 2011/2015 given the forecasts.

If the weather pattern isn't changing until the end of June, I strongly belive we have a chance to end up above all the minimas during 2010-2015, maybe even since 2007. In fact, I put the odds to 25% that we will end up somewhere between 4,9-5,1 Mn km2 by the middle of September IF this cyclonic weather pattern continues for the rest of the summer.

The bottom line is: given that the current weather conditions will continue for at least another week or so I put the odds to 1% that we'll beat 2012. Two years in a row with such strong high pressure dominance doesn't seem likely.


//LMV

I think if it stays cyclonic until after the first week of July then almost nothing will be able to get us below 2012. But the thing is, cyclonic conditions in my view would be more important a little after the solstice when there is significant solar radiation and no snow cover. But after early July solar radiation decreases rapidly; by August its not even really a factor anymore.

NeilT

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2169 on: June 13, 2016, 05:26:08 PM »
My guess is that this weather sorts itself out in July, is almost normal for July and then turns into good melting weather in August for a sprint finish close to 2012.

But that's just a guess as is anything to do with the future in the Arctic beyond the next 7 days and even that's part guess and part forecast.
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2170 on: June 13, 2016, 06:02:42 PM »
Well, I must admit that next week the weather will help the ice.
Nearly no rain, very little Fram export.

There is some Pacific heat import in the last frames of your animation. Lets see if that becomes something. Given the warm SSTs that could worsen things there before solstice.

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2171 on: June 13, 2016, 07:01:17 PM »
I had a first glance on the day 165 MODIS tiles. What effects will be visible and when, given the warmth advection over the ESS. And in general, months of above average temps. On several tiles, the first signs are revealed. The fast ice in Pevek Bay and along the Sib coast up to the New Sib Islands is cracking up. Although PIOMAS considers this ice to be thick this year, two weeks of relentless warming was enough to break it.
Then, the spread into the large open water swath N of Svalbard/Frantsa Yosefa seems to have an effect on the lead and floe pattern right up to the North Pole. In a wide zone, the pattern is being torn open. This suggests the pack around the Pole is vulnerable...

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2172 on: June 13, 2016, 08:35:26 PM »
Wondering about what changes in ESS and Beaufort will appear on Wednesday, given the completely different state of the melting ice in these two regions.
Maps correspond to ACFNS ice drift predictions June 13 and 14.

Edit:
My excuses, I left the color scales out of the cropping. Darkest red is more than 30 cm/s = more than 25 km/day if sustained. Below the link to the archives with the drift predictions.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arc_list_arcticicespddrf.html
« Last Edit: June 13, 2016, 08:44:44 PM by seaicesailor »

ChrisReynolds

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2173 on: June 13, 2016, 10:18:44 PM »
Melt season cancelled!!  ;D It started early and very exciting but after an extremely boring first half of June everything changed! :P

Kidding aside, a continued positive AO with cyclones over the CAB I no longer see how 2016 possibly would beat out 2012, 2007 or even 2011/2015 given the forecasts.

If the weather pattern isn't changing until the end of June, I strongly belive we have a chance to end up above all the minimas during 2010-2015, maybe even since 2007. In fact, I put the odds to 25% that we will end up somewhere between 4,9-5,1 Mn km2 by the middle of September IF this cyclonic weather pattern continues for the rest of the summer.

The bottom line is: given that the current weather conditions will continue for at least another week or so I put the odds to 1% that we'll beat 2012. Two years in a row with such strong high pressure dominance doesn't seem likely.


//LMV

I've put beating 2012 as a low probability since the winter. But I'd not write off second place as yet.

Neven

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2174 on: June 13, 2016, 11:55:38 PM »
I wanted to open an NSIDC September monthly average poll at the start of the month, but totally forgot about it. Of course, given the fact that there have been polls during the three previous melting seasons, it'd be cool to stay consistent and do this one again (I'm not going to do CT SIA though). Sorry for opening it so late, but better late than next month.

Here's the link, poll will be open for 1 week, so please vote, everyone! NSIDC September/average SIE is the one that is used for the SIPN Sea Ice Outlook.
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2175 on: June 14, 2016, 04:52:22 AM »
Question for those out there who are more knowledgeable:

I assume that sea ice thickness graphs are the results of models.  Still, I'm also familiar with the saying that all models are wrong, but some are useful.  Having said that, how much should one read into the following maps that show up to a 1 meter drop in thickness in and north of the Beaufort Sea between last week and next week?  Thanks!

June 6th:


June 13th:


June 20th:

werther

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2176 on: June 14, 2016, 05:43:39 AM »
This is a 80 x 80 km2 part of the four MODIS tiles around the Pole, yesterday:



Good, sunny weather (or, bad depending on your thoughts about AGW), right into Greenland.
Looks a lot like 2013, same period, though. The outcome will depend on the preconditioning, available warmth and weather. Chances still look favourable for an open water Pole.

Meirion

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2177 on: June 14, 2016, 07:50:19 AM »
Comparing 2016 to 2012 Kara and Laptev behind, Beaufort and Greenland ahead, Cab and Chukchi have “false” increases in last fortnight of about 125,000 in total. False in the sense that we know increases at this time of year tend to be thin ice which can melt out very quickly (or drift). Current 7-day forecast http://cci-reanalyzer.org/forecasts/#ARC-LEA suggests we will lose that “false” ice. I'm predicting (guessing?) based on that, that June 20 fig will be sub 9.9 and still below 2012.

icy voyeur

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2178 on: June 14, 2016, 08:41:47 AM »
Comparing 2016 to 2012 Kara and Laptev behind, Beaufort and Greenland ahead, Cab and Chukchi have “false” increases in last fortnight of about 125,000 in total. False in the sense that we know increases at this time of year tend to be thin ice which can melt out very quickly (or drift). Current 7-day forecast http://cci-reanalyzer.org/forecasts/#ARC-LEA suggests we will lose that “false” ice. I'm predicting (guessing?) based on that, that June 20 fig will be sub 9.9 and still below 2012.

No idea if you're right but the same sort of thoughts have been assaulting my brain. There had been a sort of 'perfect storm' abuse of the arctic to maintain/establish record lows this year according to standard metrics, and then this antithesis to disperse ice back into open areas. I'd say things are still precarious. And yet June has been mild in its own right as well as being dispersive to work against benchmarks.
Ultimately, 2016 was looking worse than it probable was, even though it was still bad. June has been both mild melt-wise and working against the trends that inflated some metrics.
Perhaps we could note that there's an apparent cross-over with 2012 right now, with opportunities to get worse quickly or hang tough, dependent upon weather. I'll hope for anomalously poor melting conditions ahead while admitting that the voyeur in me perversely seeks out a train wreck.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2179 on: June 14, 2016, 08:49:21 AM »
...we know increases at this time of year tend to be thin ice which can melt out very quickly (or drift).....
who is the "we" in that statement? I am not aware of any increase caused by freezing sea surface if that is what you have in mind. The "false increases" follow "false drops" in the sense that they are changes in the ice surface not disappering and new ice, there is plenty of evidence for that.
What goes on with processes which will eventually melt thick ice which is drifting around the arctic is the interesting question.

NW Passenger, this is a feature of the model which has made me suspicious of it. But it is not as unreasonable as it seems at first: The thickness shown is average thickness (as in all of the thickness charts) in fairly large grid cells. The thickness of sea ice varies not just between older floes and thinner ice formed in cracks between floes, but also with thick ridges where floes are pushed together. Moving floes apart will reduce average thickness quickly and pushing floes together can increase it quickly too.


Rob Dekker

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2180 on: June 14, 2016, 08:51:17 AM »
Consistent with the recent slow down, Slater's model is now projecting 6.41 M km^2 on August 1.

That is almost exactly at par with 2012's 6.42 at that date.

Interesting is the projected ice extent on August 1 :

which still seems rather optimistic to me.
Remember that Slater's model is mostly based on ice concentration (as a measure of melting potential) and does not know AFAIK anything about ice thickness, land snow cover, or early albedo feedback.
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2181 on: June 14, 2016, 09:27:20 AM »
A couple of observations which make me wonder about the concentration numbers...

1. It seems to me that the only ice which hasn't been moving at 30km/day or more for the last week is between the pole and NW Greenland.
2. Eveballing nullschool, surface temperatures almost everywhere in the arctic are just above freezing,, which is not conducive to increasing area.
3.Reported extent numbers have not been falling, so if concentration is really increasing, there should be freezing - but that just doesn't seem likely given 2.
4. A large amount of cloud/fog has recently appeared, obscuring much of the surface.
5.If you look closely at the open water in laptev+ess on worldview you can glimpse large floes tracking rapidly from W->E for the past few days, some losing area as they do so, yet the concentration numbers show an increase.

...all of which makes me wonder if a combination of rapid melt causing fog (thereby obscuring any ingress or expansion of open water) and high mobility shifting the sparser-than-usual ice cover from place to place, (possibly causing "new" ice to appear under gaps in the cloud which previously had no fog because they were already over open water, might be causing the numbers to get messed up. If so, there might be a surprise hiding under all that cloud.





Rob Dekker

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2182 on: June 14, 2016, 09:38:15 AM »
Despite the recent slowdown, melting is not taking a break.
Here is a shot at the Beaufort :



Note the streaks of white melting residue around the (MYI) floes in the open water, similar to what is happening in the Greenland sea.
So even though "extent" has slowed down, and the CAB is re-supplying the peripheral seas with ice, melting is ongoing around the Arctic, and it weakens the CAB, spells trouble for when the melting really starts taking off in July.
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2183 on: June 14, 2016, 09:40:16 AM »
I still hold concerns that we are in the midst of changes to the melt season that make predictions, based on behaviours seen since 07', beginning to become redundant?

If we have Pacific and Atlantic fringes under open water conditions since May then the heat they can accrue , above and beyond any year previous, can turn bottom melt end of the season into a very destructive period especially under strong drift forcings?

We know that the pack is already well fragmented and so we can assume that this increases its mobility. As such we should expect any ice area abutting warmed waters to see losses as ice is forced into active melt zones. The 15% or more ruling on plotting extent could mask such events as ice is fed into the regions keeping it over the 15% threshold but thinning out concentration.

As we are becoming increasingly aware low concentration ice can allow swells to develop so any losses in concentration may bring about conditions that allow the type of mixing from below recorded in Beaufort last year putting ice ,once safe within the main pack, in danger from aggressive bottom melt from waters churned up from below?
« Last Edit: June 14, 2016, 09:48:15 AM by Gray-Wolf »
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bbr2314

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2184 on: June 14, 2016, 09:47:47 AM »
I still hold concerns that we are in the midst of changes to the melt season that make predictions, based on behaviours seen since 07', beginning to become redundant?

If we have Pacific and Atlantic fringes under open water conditions since May then the heat they can accrue , above and beyond any year previous, can turn bottom melt end of the season into a very destructive period especially under strong drift forcings?

We know that the pack is already well fragmented and so we can assume that this increases its mobility. As such we should expect any ice area abutting warmed waters to see losses as ice is forced into active melt zones. The 15% or more ruling on plotting extent could mask such events as ice is fed into the regions keeping it over the 15% threshold but thinning out concentration.

As we are becoming increasingly aware low concentration ice can allow swells to develop so any losses in concentration may bring about conditions that allow they type of mixing from below recorded in Beaufort last year putting ice ,once safe within the main pack, in danger from aggressive bottom melt from waters churned up from below?

Good post. The naysayers forget we are still below 2012 as well. Things are looking very bad.

Rob Dekker

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2185 on: June 14, 2016, 10:27:18 AM »
A couple of observations which make me wonder about the concentration numbers...

epiphyte, you are right to wonder about the concentration numbers.
We really do not have a good measure of what is going on right now.
Remember that the ice drifting models (like HYCOM) suggest that the lows over the CAB cause the ice to disperse. That means that the peripheral seas are supplied with ice, while the CAB itself is breaking up.

That breaking up of the CAB is not captured on "extent" numbers, since the leads that are formed do not cause a drop below 15% concentration on the grid of the satellites.
These leads should show up in "area" drops, and Wipneus' 130 k km^2 area drop from yesterday may be a testament to that.

But these "area" numbers are also heavily controlled by swirls of warm air over the ice pack, which cause temporary top-melt, only to freeze over again the next day.

So unless melting temperatures gain a more solid hold over the ice pack (which typically means by July), the ice concentration numbers will be up and down, only providing temporary evidence of the real extent of melting and lead formation in the Arctic central basin.

That said, the average ice concentration over June is a good predictor of what is to come over the remainder of the melting season.
Unfortunately, with the NSIDC not providing "area" numbers, that indicator is not currently calibrated.
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JayW

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2186 on: June 14, 2016, 11:32:25 AM »
Attached is a 4 day loop of the Beaufort.  I used to think the Beaufort gyre was largely wind driven, but watching many loops, I'm convinced it's not. Earlier in the season when high pressure was dominating the Beaufort, the gyre really got into motion.  As it moves clockwise, Coriolis pulls the ice towards the center.  Lately, much more cyclonic flow has dominated the Beaufort, but this hasn't stopped the gyre, just slowed it down enough to allow the pack expand a bit.

The most interesting aspect to me, is how easily the fringe ice is"whipped around" by the wind.  You can see the swirls that were set in motion by storms moving over it.

Made with VIIRS imagery from the university of Alaska at fairbanks

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/search?commit=Search&page=2&search%5Bend%5D=&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B1%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B10%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B11%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B12%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B13%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B14%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B15%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B16%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B17%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B18%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B3%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B5%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B6%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B8%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B9%5D=1&search%5Bsensors%5D%5B3%5D=1&search%5Bsensors%5D%5B4%5D=1&search%5Bstart%5D=&utf8=
« Last Edit: June 14, 2016, 01:03:38 PM by JayW »
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seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2187 on: June 14, 2016, 12:53:44 PM »

The most interesting appear to me, is how easily the fringe ice is"whipped around" by the wind.  You can see the swirls that were set in motion by storms moving over it.


Apart from the Gyre (ocean current) inertia maintaining an average clockwise drift, this is indeed a very intriguing physical effect. I am not sure if this is wind-driven because this is a sustained drift that pulls floes out of the main pack at great speed in a coherent way, and for many days. I saw this at least one week ago or more.

Could this be an eddy or many eddies created by two ocean currents flowing in opposite sense? (one along the Alaskan coast towards Canada, which can be seen pulling fast ice away; and the other being the Gyre).

We'll see in a couple of days, some extra dispersal of floes can be expected.

Jim Pettit

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2188 on: June 14, 2016, 12:57:16 PM »
Good post. The naysayers forget we are still below 2012 as well. Things are looking very bad.

This "naysayer" should let you know that SIA--as calculated by Wipneus--is 167k below 2012's same day numbers, and that gap will almost certainly widen to half a million square kilometers by week's end. And in IJIS extent, 2012 has been gaining on 2016 by roughly 100k per day over the past week; a few more slow days, and 2012 will retake the lead there as well. It's true that 2012's daily decreases dropped back to normal after the middle of the month, just as it's true that the recent stall doesn't eliminate the possibility of a 2016 record. But the lack of melting momentum brought on by a June "cliff" certainly makes it a lot less likely.

JayW

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2189 on: June 14, 2016, 01:00:57 PM »
Hey, seaicesailor

Perhaps not all the eddies are wind driven, but I'm fairly confident that many are.  I don't have time now (work), but I'll try to make an animation of a storm moving over an area, then you see the ice respond with a corresponding swirl that lingers even after the storm has passed.  So long as I can relocate those images and time frames.   :)
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2190 on: June 14, 2016, 01:01:39 PM »
That VIIRS is pretty cool!  8)
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Gray-Wolf

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2191 on: June 14, 2016, 01:13:22 PM »
I am still reserving my opinions on 'The June Cliff'. It may just be that it is expressing itself differently this year but that the end result , come September, will be the same? I think this year ,since re-freeze ,has been so unlike other years that I will have to be patient and just see what occurs over the rest of June/July to see if this 'slow down' was really masking something else at play that is removing ice viability over the longer term?.

In past years we have seen the large floes fend off the bottom melt in Aug/Sept but just how many 'large floes' will we still have come Aug 1st?

I know for a fact that ice dust melts out faster than the same weight of ice cubes and it is this 'threshold' that has me piqued this year? Has the warm winter and continuous fracturing events made large swathes of the pack into areas where bottom melt will make a huge impact? Will the open water between floes lead to even more heat being ingested by the ocean so amplifying the impacts of ever smaller individual floe size?

Sadly ,until we see it play out we will not know if the warmth in winter and constant resizing of floe will impact and this will not be until the very end of the season.

Will we end up seeing isolated floes just getting ever smaller until , poof!, they are gone?

Anyhoo's , interesting ice watching times for sure!!!
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Laurent

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2192 on: June 14, 2016, 01:25:30 PM »
NW passenger, you mean that very thick ice near the pole 82° N 150° W ?
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/beaufortictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif

http://go.nasa.gov/1XUcMA9
We will have a better idea when the clouds will uncover, if we can see some forecast patterns on worldview.

Apparently the model used by Hycom consider that the clouds are good for melting...

Gray-Wolf

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2193 on: June 14, 2016, 01:31:37 PM »


Apparently the model used by Hycom consider that the clouds are good for melting...

Hi Laurent!

Oddly I was just re-reading this;

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069330/abstract

Which appears to say 'opaque' is worse for the ice than 'crystal clear'?
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magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2194 on: June 14, 2016, 02:16:20 PM »
A couple of observations which make me wonder about the concentration numbers...
If so, there might be a surprise hiding under all that cloud.

we share a lot in ways of thinking and as i posted 3 days ago, i expect a significant correction because number, conditions and comparison of various models, graphs and images hint to a higher than normal error quota.
your argument as to fog could be an important one IMO, it would explain a lot for two main reasons, one can hardly see through and due to the fact that we had and have more and warmer open waters for the time of the year as compared to earlier years, i as well go the impressino that there is more moist, hence fog and haze around. barrows webcam for one gave me the impression. fog was always there but it's somehow very stubborn (persistent) this time.

pauldry600

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2195 on: June 14, 2016, 02:28:17 PM »
Overall the ice is still in a terrible state. Theres cracks and ponds everywhere. One storm and 200k could easily go in a day. All quite for the rest of June with slow melt continuing.

July could be an interesting month for melt. Id think it will be one of the worst for the ice on record.

Relative calm and more robust ice is just slowing down the inevitable.

Adam Ash

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2196 on: June 14, 2016, 02:31:24 PM »
Its good to see all these confident claims of 'how it will be by the minimum' announced by the incumbent superior classes!  :) 

It must be getting harder for y'all tho, as pre-2012 we could all get our heads around the simple mental models of what was going on, with the principal drivers such as wind, currents insolation and temperatures.

But today its sooo much harder. 

I am reminded of the French Polisher's Motto (as told to me by my grandfather): "You look after the edges, the middle will look after itself."

Every image and chart shows a set up for a massive erosion of the edge over the coming weeks, and the ice movement charts show 25 km/day drift from the CAA which in 30 days will shove that mush across the the Pole, and then out to the Atlantic.  The middle - 'Looking after itself'.

There are factors at play which are on the far fringe of the comprehension of the 'experts', and black boxes to us mere mortals.  The list of vaguely known unknows is widening the uncertainty bars, while the trend is clearly down.  And of course the whispering rush of the black swan's wings is lurking just beyond our perception.

So a confident bet for the minimum today must be hedged with a hugely greater uncertainty than it was in 2010.  Its like we are waking a plank which in 2010 was wide enough for both feet, while today its barely wide enough for one foot to shuffle forwards behind the other.  A lurch to left or right today has a very much higher potential for massive ice loss than it did back then.

Worrying times...

Laurent

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2197 on: June 14, 2016, 03:28:52 PM »
Gray-Wolf : Unfortunately sci-hub.bz  doesn't work anymore, Onlinelibrary have found a way to counter... that is what Wayne is saying on Neven's blog for a long time.


marcel_g

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2198 on: June 14, 2016, 03:52:15 PM »
Gray Wolf, Adam Ash,

I think you're right that this year the peripheral vs. central pack dynamic is very interesting. It looks like the peripheral seas are continuing to get a fair amount of melting pressure, but they're getting 'restocked' by dispersion. So how much of the ice from the central pack will those areas be able to melt, once they're done melting themselves?

Looking at climate reanalyzer ( http://cci-reanalyzer.org/Forecasts/#NH-SAT ) at the temperature and the precipitation and clouds options, it looks like a mixed bag for ESS with some warmth and some sun, but not consistent. It also looks like Beaufort is going to get mostly sun for the next week, which would cause all that open water to continue to accumulate energy, regardless of whether the air temps are warm or not. Chukchi looks like a lot of warmth but partially sunny.

What I find really interesting is the large area between Svalbard and the pole and Greenland across to Russia: it looks like it's going to get mostly warm temps and mostly sunshine, so while most of the central pack might be dispersing, and not being pre-conditioned for later melt, there is this large area of it that is going to be getting pre-conditioned. And that pre-conditioning is going to be happening at the same time as that ice is getting pushed out into the warm waters north of Svalbard. It'll be really interesting how fast that ice melts out later on in the season.

Dundee

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #2199 on: June 14, 2016, 05:06:03 PM »
The last 4-6 weeks have been exciting. First, at a time of year when SIE is normally very consistent (narrow 2SD envelope on most charts), SIE has been unseasonably low. Next, in only a week the gap (with record years at least) has largely vanished.

At the risk of damping the enthusiasm, I have a couple of points about this. First, remember no current satellite can actually measure ice area or extent. We infer those based on relative brightness across a selected set of bandwidths/polarizations (which depend on particular orbiting instrument packages and models). The brightness is measured over a moving earth footprint whose size is a function of orbital parameters and antenna geometry.

The graphs we see are a result of a model, whose design (including significant compromises) has been tuned and validated over time to the extent possible against what is known about ice conditions.

To simplify things, assume within the antenna footprint are one year ice, old ice, very thin lead ice, melt pond, and open ocean. Each of these is present in the antenna earth footprint in some proportion, and with some average patch size (relative to the antenna footprint size). I have no personal knowledge but would be astounded if any existing model is calibrated against factors for even these five surfaces. There are, of course infinite variations - thickness, roughness, wetness, and dirtiness of the ice and depth and roughness of surface pooled water are all continuous variables that may be very finely or very coarsely textured across the antenna footprint.  Rather, the models depend on them to be balanced against each other in a consistent way (at least for the given time of year).

I offer that what we have likely been seeing is, to a degree, an unseasonable combination of these radiative surface proportions/patch sizes that has, over the last week or ten days, become more seasonable. A likely suspect is a combination of early ice cracking (creating very thin lead ice and eventually, open water in places and extents not typical for the season) and windblown movement. Given the weather, this seems more likely than physical changes in extent (with associated large exchanges between sensible and latent heat - even for flash freeze/ephemeral ice).

A second point to ponder is averages and standard deviations. We know (no matter what "some people" say) that there is a long term trend going on. Except in the middle year of the averaging period, this means that the expected value is NOT the average - for SIE, it will always be less than a past average. This also means that residuals will not be normally distributed, so the calculated "standard deviation" does not mean what we think it does. These combined means that the line we see on many graphs, in relation to plotted averages and SD envelopes, generate emotions that are often not warranted (based on more detailed statistics). 2015 had a minimum that was in the lowest recorded handful, but which was not markedly less than the long term trend.

While SIE has a decreasing trend every day of the year, the daily rate of change is more complicated (it is decreasing over the years on days from mid-May to mid-July, the decrease peaking near the solstice). While SIE is comparatively well behaved this time of year (low computed SD), the daily change rate is very unsettled (high SD).

I noted in another thread I had a lot of work to do before I could say anything about the dynamic behavior of SIE other than it is interesting. I will offer up one early result in closing. Without belaboring details (which I have been tweaking), I've computed residuals against the daily long term trend in SIE. Below is a plot of the fraction of the residuals (variation from expected value) for the September SIE minimum that is (statistically) explained by the residuals on preceding days of the year. NSIDC (actually, Wipneus) SIE today is still about two times the RMS residual value lower than the long term trend for the day. That said, the predictive value of today's (or that three weeks ago) SIE on the annual minimum is, historically, low.

It may or may not be that factors other than deviation from expected value do have predictive value this early in the year - albedo is one that is being examined. In the mean time, all I can say is that the minimum will become clear in weeks and months to come (but not this week or next). For the moment at least it is still safe for Vegas to run a line on the annual minimum, the specific value is still a crapshoot.