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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3350 on: July 15, 2016, 05:27:50 AM »
Another 146,000 km2 gone.
SST's on the rise,SIE on the downward slope.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3351 on: July 15, 2016, 06:15:17 AM »
Dramamine anyone?
Don't forget :click it or ticket.


While HYCOM's ice models leave a bit to be desired as far as accuracy is concerned, their wind and drift models seem to be a bit better. 

Yah, the ice is in for an interesting ride.
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seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3352 on: July 15, 2016, 09:28:15 AM »
The drift calculations (roughly) have never let me down. Why they lead to so exaggerate low effective thickness at the center? Maybe it doesn't calculate well the "singularity" at the center of the stotms and overpredict opening. Anyway this one is going to hurt, again.

Speaking of which, the weather seems a continuation but, at 4 days it seems the low will most affect Beaufort (which is really bad there in July 20 !!!) and leave the rest to high pressures. Seems also to pull air from continents.


Rob Dekker

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3353 on: July 15, 2016, 09:46:52 AM »
The drift calculations (roughly) have never let me down. Why they lead to so exaggerate low effective thickness at the center? Maybe it doesn't calculate well the "singularity" at the center of the stotms and overpredict opening. Anyway this one is going to hurt, again.

Speaking of which, the weather seems a continuation but, at 4 days it seems the low will most affect Beaufort (which is really bad there in July 20 !!!) and leave the rest to high pressures. Seems also to pull air from continents.

If you think this (low) is bad, just imagine if it were a "high" over the Beaufort.
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BenB

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3354 on: July 15, 2016, 10:10:04 AM »
In a few days time, the Siberian side is forecast to see high(ish) temperatures:



and high(ish) pressure:



This should promote melting in the ESS and Laptev. The pattern also means that there won't be much Fram export.

Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3355 on: July 15, 2016, 10:34:47 AM »
MODIS to me looks like very fast melting near the edge of the eastern siberian sea happening now.
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BenB

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3356 on: July 15, 2016, 10:41:31 AM »
MODIS to me looks like very fast melting near the edge of the eastern siberian sea happening now.

That's true - the part nearest Chukchi is already seeing high temperatures and high pressure. But in a few days the (relative) warmth and high pressure reaches the area between the Chukchi and ESS that has seen persistent negative temperature anomalies over the past month:


seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3357 on: July 15, 2016, 12:15:18 PM »
The drift calculations (roughly) have never let me down. Why they lead to so exaggerate low effective thickness at the center? Maybe it doesn't calculate well the "singularity" at the center of the stotms and overpredict opening. Anyway this one is going to hurt, again.

Speaking of which, the weather seems a continuation but, at 4 days it seems the low will most affect Beaufort (which is really bad there in July 20 !!!) and leave the rest to high pressures. Seems also to pull air from continents.

If you think this (low) is bad, just imagine if it were a "high" over the Beaufort.
Yeah but last year the warmth in July was followed by weak lows that anyhow dispersed the ice toward North Alaska coast  where melt continued, plus the big storm end of August.
This storm brings waves (see Jim Hunt map, enough distance to get a bit of power), and dispersion damage, floes toward the coast, lateral and vertical mixing ... sun is waning.
The morse thing... we'll see. There will be some sunny days anyway.

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3358 on: July 15, 2016, 01:45:10 PM »
In a few days time, the Siberian side is forecast to see high(ish) temperatures:

This should promote melting in the ESS and Laptev. The pattern also means that there won't be much Fram export.

Following these maps and all-week from the ASIG, it seems there will be a slow down in CAA. Also, current 925 hpa average temperature by Dr. Slater is close to 2015 levels +2 sigma, will stay lower 1 sigma but above average until the 20th and then go closer to average. I would say from the CCR maps that July temperature will turn out to be in the top ten, but nowhere near last year. It will be interesting what difference that it makes in August. Edit: just noted the shades in these graphs are not based on standard deviations!

http://cires1.colorado.edu/~aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/

2015:

http://cires1.colorado.edu/~aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/IMG/bw_area_wgt_925mb_nAO_2015.gif

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3359 on: July 15, 2016, 03:27:05 PM »
HYCOM's ice models leave a bit to be desired as far as accuracy is concerned.

ACNFS leaves an awful lot to be desired at the moment!

Quote
The ice is in for an interesting ride.

As seaicesailor suggests, yesterday's Beaufort Sea surf forecast is still looking good:



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epiphyte

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3360 on: July 15, 2016, 05:59:05 PM »
Huge melting going on http://go.nasa.gov/29Lbrcr some do need to buy googles or more surely remove that filter.
At some point all this rubble will vanish... poof ! (Still plenty of time)

Rubble is not the same as melting.  There is a difference in colour, which is much easier to see with the red filter on, but once you know what to look for is discernable in true colour as well.

Very true. But the flip side is that it is more vunerable when it does start to melt.

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3361 on: July 15, 2016, 06:26:07 PM »
The absurd nowcast of ACNFS showing instantaneous clearing of Laptev may have some substance after all. During the last ten days this band of open water has kept growing behind the clouds. Ice getting sparser, thin as it is after all.
If Laptev sea ice melts out this year it will be out of sheer exhaustion
« Last Edit: July 15, 2016, 06:31:25 PM by seaicesailor »

Quantum

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3362 on: July 15, 2016, 07:07:19 PM »
GFS at +180. Clearly still waiting for the ECMWF.


To me this seems extremely poor conditions for high melt; slack areas of low pressure and the whole arctic cooler than average. However I suspect things are different in a post '16 regime; and I know everyone has been talking about post '7 or post '12 but really 2009 and 2013 proved that the weather still mattered enormously. This year conditions have been very poor to melt from June onwards yet despite this we are still hugging 2012.

FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3363 on: July 15, 2016, 07:13:15 PM »
Laptev had strong offshore and sideshore winds that sped up melting. Waves are becoming a big factor in this year's melt rate, IMO. If the Arctic had buoys the storm the ECMWF is forecasting might show (about) 20 ft (6meters) in the open ocean if the model verified except for the damping effects of the sea ice. Twenty foot waves could cause a lot of mixing and melt a lot of ice if there is just a little heat stored in the upper 30 meters of ocean. The WWW3 model forecast shows a much smaller wave height because it uses a different weather model and because it doesn't develop a wave fetch over the ice.


jdallen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3364 on: July 15, 2016, 09:38:08 PM »

Quote
The ice is in for an interesting ride.

As seaicesailor suggests, yesterday's Beaufort Sea surf forecast is still looking good:
[/b]
Very Not Good.  Lots of "hot" open water, and shortly, ice being shoved around and shaken in it.  Bets on whether this storm shatters the Big Block?  Estimates on swell height?
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magnamentis

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3365 on: July 15, 2016, 09:52:38 PM »

Quote
The ice is in for an interesting ride.

As seaicesailor suggests, yesterday's Beaufort Sea surf forecast is still looking good:
[/b]
Very Not Good.  Lots of "hot" open water, and shortly, ice being shoved around and shaken in it.  Bets on whether this storm shatters the Big Block?  Estimates on swell height?

20 feet or 6m i've been reeding, can't say how reliable the source is, just sharing what i've come across

Neven

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3366 on: July 15, 2016, 10:46:11 PM »
ECMWF keeps, pointing to high pressure over the Siberian Seas, but can't make up its mind about what happens after that. Will the high pressure take over the CAB or not? I have 2-3 days left for the next ASI update, and hope to have more information by then.
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RoxTheGeologist

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3367 on: July 15, 2016, 11:14:48 PM »

It looks like the area between Victoria and the Prince of Wales islands has broken up, well ahead of the last 3 years. The ice looks like it is in pretty bad shape after the elevated temperatures in the CAA over the last week or so.

http://go.nasa.gov/29NNW2o


Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3368 on: July 15, 2016, 11:24:01 PM »
Estimates on swell height?

WWIII is currently suggesting around 2.5 m @ 7 secs in the vicinity of Big Block, but personally I wouldn't bet my shirt on that proving to be accurate.
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JayW

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3369 on: July 15, 2016, 11:45:35 PM »
Edit: sorry, had to tidy up that gif

July 12-15.  I included Alaska so that people could see the fires in the last few frames.  My uneducated visual analysis is that there also a strong front approaching the big block, pulling an (what I would call impressive) plume of moisture out ahead of it.  In other words, it might be raining on big block.

Suomi/VIIRS imagery comes courtesy of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/search?utf8=âś“&search%5Bsensors%5D%5B4%5D=1&search%5Bsensors%5D%5B3%5D=1&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B5%5D=1&search%5Bstart%5D=&search%5Bend%5D=&commit=Search
« Last Edit: July 15, 2016, 11:51:57 PM by JayW »
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Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3370 on: July 16, 2016, 12:12:22 AM »
Looking at this view of big block suggests a piece just fell out near the bottom side on the photo.  It also looks a lot like what some have described as rubble in the central Arctic, so perhaps sometimes what looks like lots of cracks is actually one solid sheet made of floes jammed together.

One thing that has intrigued me in the Beaufort is the lack of very small floes that usually appear with melting ice - the stuff that tends to be too small to pick up as individual floes even on the closest zooms for MODIS.  I think much of the first year ice formed very thin, stopped freezing quite early, and melted out relatively quickly.  But conditions haven't been all that warm for the most part so I think the multi-year ice has not only started off much thicker, but has also experienced much less melt than the first year ice.  For instance if the temp is 1 degree above 0 that is 1 degree of melting power for multi-year ice made of fresh water at 0, and 3 degrees of melting power for first year ice made of salty water at -2 degrees.  If you look on the far right and far top of the image you can see small floes in the process of melting out, and my guess is that this is what is left of the first year ice that was mixed in with the multi-year.  There are a few floes that look to be in the process of breaking up, but scanning through some images in the region this has been the cast for the last few weeks, and some other larger floes that have split into several pieces have not split up further.  I suspect these floes might still be quite far away from a significant melt out, but we'll just have to wait and see, unless someone has some good evidence beyond a gut feel.
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Andreas T

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3371 on: July 16, 2016, 12:28:00 AM »
Healy has been visiting some of those floes which have stayed compact in increasingly ice free surroundings and giving close up views from its onboard camera http://icefloe.net/Aloftcon_Photos/index.php?album=2016&image=20160715-1901.jpeg
There is a thread to follow developments http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,436.msg83378.html#msg83378
On the 12th it took several runs at some thick ice which provide interesting snapshots of an identifiable floe
« Last Edit: July 16, 2016, 12:33:25 AM by Andreas T »

Quantum

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3372 on: July 16, 2016, 01:31:31 AM »
Temperatures are projected to drop rapidly over N Alaska to the extent that amazingly we may go from record heat to potentially record cold within a couple of days. The later is according to the GFS so I'm treating it with some degree of skeptism, in reality that's probably not going to happen. Nevertheless we are talking about a 20-25C temperature drop. Really is quite amazing, we are also likely to see snowfall on Alaska's northern coast; may not be great for the ice though as its pushed into those hot waters.

« Last Edit: July 16, 2016, 01:50:51 AM by Quantum »

FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3373 on: July 16, 2016, 03:02:54 AM »
None of the weather models have been accurate over the Arctic ocean for more than 3 or 4 days this spring and summer. The GFS has performed very poorly and the ECMWF has been better but not great. Obviously, wave forecasting models are completely untested in these conditions with partial and broken ice cover. I've been looking at weather maps and buoys together for so long that I can make a good ballpark estimate of wave heights by watching a weather map sequence but the Arctic ocean is out of my range of experience.

I body surfed in Hawaii for 10 years in solid waves so I have field tested my skills but I have no plans to body surf point Barrow. I'll let the walruses do that.

Sorry to you Alaskans. You are going to see shoreline erosion and wild temperature swings. The weather is getting weirder as the sea ice fails.

jdallen

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3374 on: July 16, 2016, 04:32:35 AM »
... and on the other side, the ESS is not looking very happy at all.
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3375 on: July 16, 2016, 05:23:16 AM »
Well, we have reached another stall. Only 97,000 km2 drop of SIE today.
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3376 on: July 16, 2016, 07:21:42 AM »
   I'm goin back someday,come what may,to blue bayou...........
(well in the original the water looked more blue,not so much now)
Now I can't get the song out of my head.
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epiphyte

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3377 on: July 16, 2016, 07:23:53 AM »
Healy has been visiting some of those floes which have stayed compact in increasingly ice free surroundings and giving close up views from its onboard camera http://icefloe.net/Aloftcon_Photos/index.php?album=2016&image=20160715-1901.jpeg
There is a thread to follow developments http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,436.msg83378.html#msg83378
On the 12th it took several runs at some thick ice which provide interesting snapshots of an identifiable floe

Wow - That first one looks to have a meter of freeboard. What is that? >5M thick? No wonder it's not melting - it's an iceberg!

Rob Dekker

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3378 on: July 16, 2016, 08:48:57 AM »
Estimates on swell height?

WWIII is currently suggesting around 2.5 m @ 7 secs in the vicinity of Big Block, but personally I wouldn't bet my shirt on that proving to be accurate.

Jim, looking at the pictures from the Healy (about 100 km away from Big Block) the waves are not that bad even in open water:



and there seem to be no waves at all on the lay-side of a large floe :



Maybe this storm is not that bad after all.

[edit] Incidentally, that last picture show very nicely a chuck of MYI next to a piece of FYI.
The difference is astounding.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2016, 08:56:06 AM by Rob Dekker »
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JayW

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3379 on: July 16, 2016, 09:19:17 AM »
Sad day, I believe big block has broken.  R.I.P.

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu
« Last Edit: July 16, 2016, 09:25:22 AM by JayW »
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Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3380 on: July 16, 2016, 09:34:21 AM »
Oviously the Healy bumped into it a little too hard.
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BenB

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3381 on: July 16, 2016, 10:23:27 AM »
The area of high pressure is now forecast to be slightly more intense, as well as covering a larger area of the Arctic and lasting longer:

 

JayW

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3382 on: July 16, 2016, 10:35:26 AM »


Jim, looking at the pictures from the Healy (about 100 km away from Big Block) the waves are not that bad even in open water:


and there seem to be no waves at all on the lay-side of a large floe

Maybe this storm is not that bad after all.

[edit] Incidentally, that last picture show very nicely a chuck of MYI next to a piece of FYI.
The difference is astounding.

Hey Rob,

I think the more intense cyclone has only recently formed in the Chukchi and now approaching the Beaufort. 

8 hour loop ending at 440z.

Alaska is in the lower left corner

http://weather.gc.ca/satellite/satellite_anim_e.html?sat=hrpt&area=dfo&type=nir


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Neven

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3383 on: July 16, 2016, 11:03:08 AM »
SST anomaly, July 15th, 2012 vs 2016. The latter is warmer on the Atlantic and Pacific side, the former shows more internal warm waters on the American and Siberian side (next to the ice, not in the Kara and Barentsz in general).

Edit: woops, posted the wrong comparison, fixed now.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2016, 12:18:06 PM by Neven »
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Adam Ash

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3384 on: July 16, 2016, 11:40:42 AM »
Re the apparent lack of waves; I would imagine that big block and lesser friends would be impacted initially by bending due to long wavelength swells. Waves per se would have little effect. Similar to the effects on large ships. But once the pack is reduced to rubble, then wind-generated waves become more destructive to any remaining ice integrity.

It would be waves rather than swells which would turn over surface layers. A U-boat in WWII was plucked to the surface from 100 metres deep in a North Atlantic storm, so such mixing can be quite intense.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3385 on: July 16, 2016, 11:51:50 AM »
SST anomaly, July 15th, 2012 vs 2016. The latter is warmer on the Atlantic and Pacific side, the former shows more internal warm waters on the American and Siberian side (next to the ice, not in the Kara and Barentsz in general).
I'm not sure I agree with the former showing unambiguously more internal warm waters.  White shows "no data", or "no comparison", not "zero anomaly".  There needs to be data both from the period of record, as well as current data to calculate the anomaly reading.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3386 on: July 16, 2016, 12:02:15 PM »
SST anomaly, July 15th, 2012 vs 2016.
Aren't those for June?

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3387 on: July 16, 2016, 12:17:41 PM »
Jim, looking at the pictures from the Healy (about 100 km away from Big Block) the waves are not that bad even in open water:

Some swell is now visible from the Healy:



The WaveWatch forecast for tomorrow has dropped back to ~ 2 m @ 7 secs:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2016/07/the-mid-july-surf-forecast-for-the-beaufort-sea/#Jul-16

At times like this I wish someone would persuade CryoSat 2 and/or Sentinel 3 to measure Arctic ocean wave heights!
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Neven

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3388 on: July 16, 2016, 12:18:55 PM »
SST anomaly, July 15th, 2012 vs 2016.
Aren't those for June?
Yes, sorry. Fixed now.
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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3389 on: July 16, 2016, 12:21:29 PM »
Sad day, I believe big block has broken.  R.I.P.

Intriguing! BB still looks OK on today's Worldview VIIRS & Terra?

http://go.nasa.gov/29OJMXI
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slow wing

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3390 on: July 16, 2016, 12:27:41 PM »
Doesn't someone do a vector map of the distances each bit of ice has moved over a timescale of (from memory) 1 month, rather than daily?

 I seem to remember one being posted a while back. I think it would be very interesting. Even better would be to also be able to do a year-to-year comparison.

  I have the impression that the ice has moved around more this melt season so far than in previous years. However, it would be nice to verify and quantify that.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3391 on: July 16, 2016, 01:26:43 PM »
Sad day, I believe big block has broken.  R.I.P.

Intriguing! BB still looks OK on today's Worldview VIIRS & Terra?

http://go.nasa.gov/29OJMXI

No VIIRS imagery from university of Alaska for today as of yet.

But here's the last 4 MODIS images ending at 827z, so about 3 hours ago.  Resolution isn't awesome, but looks like at least the eastern 1/4 sheared off.  The images at the puffin feeder site are much sharper.  :)


http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu
« Last Edit: July 16, 2016, 01:33:32 PM by JayW »
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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3392 on: July 16, 2016, 02:06:36 PM »
Doesn't someone do a vector map of the distances each bit of ice has moved over a timescale of (from memory) 1 month, rather than daily?

Is this the sort of thing you're after?

https://nsidc.org/data/docs/daac/nsidc0116_icemotion.gd.html

Quote
This data set provides daily sea ice motion vectors derived from a wide variety of sensors in both gridded and non-gridded (raw) files. For the gridded data, weekly and monthly mean fields are also provided for the entire time series—from November 1978 through May 2015. Browse images of these mean fields are also available.



It's not Near Real Time though.
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Ajpope85

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3393 on: July 16, 2016, 02:19:42 PM »
SST anomaly, July 15th, 2012 vs 2016. The latter is warmer on the Atlantic and Pacific side, the former shows more internal warm waters on the American and Siberian side (next to the ice, not in the Kara and Barentsz in general).

Edit: woops, posted the wrong comparison, fixed now.

I've never seen someone so red faced when joining gryffindor.

Andreas T

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3394 on: July 16, 2016, 03:07:38 PM »
I tried to track big block back visually. It is easily identifiable until February, then it becomes less obvious. In the months of darkness I am using Band 31 IR images http://go.nasa.gov/29XNr3V but there are cracks opening and closing which make it very difficult to find any recognizeable spot between cloudy periods. I haven't tried ASAR but I don't think there are many images of that area available.
My markings may look like wild guesses but are based on tracking warmer and colder patches in the vicinity.
What comes out of this is that big block has not remained a solid lump during the winter, there is no piece of that size which remains without cracks. Looking further back to the autumn the same applies, no solid piece of that size which could end up in the position of big block in February. I circled a piece which could provide material for big block but mainly it is accretion of smaller thick stuff which formed big block.

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3395 on: July 16, 2016, 04:52:04 PM »
There's now no doubt about it. A fine view of the current storm plus a broken Big Block:

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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3396 on: July 16, 2016, 04:54:01 PM »
Plus a few whitecaps in the vicinity:

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seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3397 on: July 16, 2016, 05:37:53 PM »
The new bite, this time in Laptev, is now clear enough in uni hamburg image and will soon show as open water in the usual extent maps. High pressures and warmth predicted first time in ... the season?
This is all FYI relatively thin, nothing like it is being shown in situ in Beaufort sea.

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3398 on: July 16, 2016, 10:54:04 PM »
R.I.P. Big Block, 2016-02-24 to 2016-07-16. You will be mist. :'(

A-Team

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Re: The 2016 melting season
« Reply #3399 on: July 17, 2016, 12:50:11 AM »
That wasn't Big Block. Here it is on the July 16th Terra, solid as ever. Even the dodgy patch on the 'northeast' side has been there since at least June 30th (inset). Too bad the Healey can't get over there and get some measurements of water temperature, freeboard etc. to follow up on the earlier overflight data

http://go.nasa.gov/29YMTuF
« Last Edit: July 17, 2016, 05:26:43 AM by A-Team »