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jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1450 on: December 17, 2016, 10:48:08 PM »
Given the very slow freeze, particularly in the Barents, Kara and Bering, the new stormy regime in the Arctic, the resulting thin ice at the end of this freeze and the impact that these storms will have, I predict a record early end to and record low max for this freeze season.
I'm not as sure, but absolutely agree the records are in play.

I'm more confident about volume; If we could get a robust enough measure of it, I'm pretty sure we'd smash the record low value for it at max.
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1451 on: December 17, 2016, 11:08:05 PM »
I was just looking over the ice with Polarview, and am surprised at how much is not solid. The Atlantic facing front all the way up looks terrible, like end of melt season rubble. So does everything near the CAA and Greenland. Some of it looks this way within a few km's of the Pole. The most solid appears to be between the Pole and The Bering Strait.
Sample
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1452 on: December 18, 2016, 01:47:37 AM »
Accumulated Freezing Degree Days N80 thru Dec 16, 2016:
  Climatology:1787.3
  2016:            944.3
  Anomaly:       -843

Implied new ice thickness to date:
  Per Lebedev:
  Climo: 1.269 m
  2016:   0.871 m


Per Billelo
  Climo:  1.024 m
  2016:    0.707 m

CMEMS has a function that allows you to click on coordinates and get the value for thickness anywhere in the Arctic. I like it because I have trouble distinguishing all the color shades on these charts, some of which give more of a range than exact. Anyway, the majority of the sea ice comes up at 66 cm for the heart of the Arctic with obviously lower thickness on the fronts and the thicker near the CAA.
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ktonine

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1453 on: December 18, 2016, 02:24:59 AM »
... the majority of the sea ice comes up at 66 cm for the heart of the Arctic with obviously lower thickness on the fronts and the thicker near the CAA.

Yes, most estimates I see are close to that which can be calculated from DMI temps using Bilello's formula.  The graph would become too 'busy' with both Lebedev's and Bilello's estimates on it and that's why I chose to add the 1m, 1.5m, and 2m indications per Bilello.

Neither formula is new; Lebedev dates to the 1930's and Bilello to data collected in the 50s and 60s -- though he published the formula in 1971.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1454 on: December 18, 2016, 03:44:53 AM »
When the calculated numbers are that close to the satellite numbers, it gives you more confidence in both of them.  Appreciate the chart updates.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1455 on: December 18, 2016, 09:47:45 AM »
... the majority of the sea ice comes up at 66 cm for the heart of the Arctic with obviously lower thickness on the fronts and the thicker near the CAA.

Yes, most estimates I see are close to that which can be calculated from DMI temps using Bilello's formula.  The graph would become too 'busy' with both Lebedev's and Bilello's estimates on it and that's why I chose to add the 1m, 1.5m, and 2m indications per Bilello.

Neither formula is new; Lebedev dates to the 1930's and Bilello to data collected in the 50s and 60s -- though he published the formula in 1971.

A question: If a mobile pack leads to more mixing of warmer water from below thru Ekman pumping, how much effect does this have on ice thickening?

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1456 on: December 18, 2016, 10:37:24 AM »
News worthy of a cross post!

Wipneus gets a (well hidden) mention in the Guardian:

The 12 key science moments of 2016

Scroll down to number 11. Pause at number 9 on the way.

Here's the current state of play:

« Last Edit: December 18, 2016, 10:43:31 AM by Jim Hunt »
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1457 on: December 18, 2016, 04:44:36 PM »
Wipneus gets a (well hidden) mention in the Guardian

Wipneus and Neven get rather more publicity in my first ever guest post for the Arctic Sea Ice Blog (#ASIB for short):

The 11th Key Science Moment of 2016

So does "Snow White"!
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1458 on: December 18, 2016, 06:18:07 PM »
Today's drift.
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romett1

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1459 on: December 18, 2016, 09:53:46 PM »
Here is animation - ice thickness (Hycom). First pic is 15 Dec and second is estimate 25 Dec. Look how much ice is retreating from Franz Josef Land and also north of Svalbard.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1460 on: December 18, 2016, 10:27:29 PM »
The forecast still predicts a train of lows coming up from the Atlantic over the next few days. Wondering what kind of moist heat these will transfer to the Arctic, and what ever other mischief they will bring.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1461 on: December 19, 2016, 03:24:57 AM »
The forecast still predicts a train of lows coming up from the Atlantic over the next few days. Wondering what kind of moist heat these will transfer to the Arctic, and what ever other mischief they will bring.

Projections are that total precipitable water 5 days hence will be higher in the CAB than in most parts of lower 48 states at 8.7 kg/m^2

This precipitable water column will continue to maintain very high temperature anomalies in the arctic. 

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/12/23/0000Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-116.47,82.47,568/loc=41.133,83.105
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1462 on: December 19, 2016, 03:38:40 AM »
Not to mention lifting back-radiation levels significantly.

Adam Ash

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1463 on: December 19, 2016, 04:58:34 AM »
Not to mention lifting back-radiation levels significantly.

Won't the increased water vapor reduce outgoing long wavelength, trapping more of the low level warm air.  There is not much incoming radiation, so its air-carried heat which would be doing the damage in the arctic night, and near-foggy conditions will ensure that a lot of that heat (or lack of cold, if below 0C) can only escape into ice and water.  Right?

jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1464 on: December 19, 2016, 05:12:10 AM »
Not to mention lifting back-radiation levels significantly.

Won't the increased water vapor reduce outgoing long wavelength, trapping more of the low level warm air.  There is not much incoming radiation, so its air-carried heat which would be doing the damage in the arctic night, and near-foggy conditions will ensure that a lot of that heat (or lack of cold, if below 0C) can only escape into ice and water.  Right?
You generally have the right of it, Adam.  Imported atmospheric heat (both sensible and latent) is replacing/displacing ocean heat as the source for out-bound radiation.  That which the imported heat can't cover, and is still leaving the ocean, is slowed by the increased moisture in the atmosphere.

So to summarize, less heat is leaving the ocean; that heat which is leaving, is not able to exit the atmosphere as rapidly as it would with dry clear conditions.
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Adam Ash

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1465 on: December 19, 2016, 05:48:28 AM »
Thanks jd!

...and that heat which is not able to leave as rapidly ... will enable a still higher load of water vapour in the air column, which will....   sigh...  Didn't a guy called Hansen do some work like that re Venus???
« Last Edit: December 19, 2016, 06:34:01 AM by Adam Ash »

jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1466 on: December 19, 2016, 07:04:30 AM »
Thanks jd!

...and that heat which is not able to leave as rapidly ... will enable a still higher load of water vapour in the air column, which will....   sigh...  Didn't a guy called Hansen do some work like that re Venus???
You are welcome, and indeed, I think he did.

Fortunately, we haven't got the carbon load nor the insolation necessary to drive a venusian run-away hot house.  Cold comfort that is, when you consider just how nasty things *could* get if we don't curb our emissions.
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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1467 on: December 19, 2016, 09:53:35 AM »
Won't the increased water vapor reduce outgoing long wavelength, trapping more of the low level warm air.  There is not much incoming radiation, so its air-carried heat which would be doing the damage in the arctic night, and near-foggy conditions will ensure that a lot of that heat (or lack of cold, if below 0C) can only escape into ice and water.  Right?

You may of course have perused this already, but for the latest research on that very topic see:

Arctic Sea Ice News from AGU

Quote
One winter storm raised the air temperature from -40 F to +32 F in less than 48 hours, while the moisture in the air increased 10 times. All of these factors significantly warm the surface of the snow, even in mid-winter, and slow the growth of ice.
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LRC1962

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1468 on: December 19, 2016, 02:31:58 PM »
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/foehn-winds-melt-ice-shelves-antarctic-peninsula-larsen-c/
Based on this thesis was one of the major reasons for collapse of Larsen. A similar occurrence in the Arctic could have very profound influence on the MYI and maybe even Greenland that we are not taking into enough account of. Problem with rare occurrences is that it is hard to figure out how what happened, happened.
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Gray-Wolf

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1469 on: December 19, 2016, 03:20:48 PM »
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/foehn-winds-melt-ice-shelves-antarctic-peninsula-larsen-c/
Based on this thesis was one of the major reasons for collapse of Larsen. A similar occurrence in the Arctic could have very profound influence on the MYI and maybe even Greenland that we are not taking into enough account of. Problem with rare occurrences is that it is hard to figure out how what happened, happened.

The East Coast of Greenland is impacted by Fohn winds descending from the top of the sheet but maybe that plays a role in melting out the ice from Fram faster?
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romett1

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1470 on: December 19, 2016, 06:18:47 PM »
I started to follow biggest solid block north of Greenland. Here is movement in 4 days and next days should support this movement. As Tigertown said there seems to be lot of rubble north to this block.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1471 on: December 19, 2016, 10:15:17 PM »
Zack Labe:  Warm-Arctic, cold-continent type pattern continues over the next week as storms transport anomalous moisture/heat poleward
https://mobile.twitter.com/afreedma/status/810940300533399552
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jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1472 on: December 19, 2016, 10:24:44 PM »
Zack Labe:  Warm-Arctic, cold-continent type pattern continues over the next week as storms transport anomalous moisture/heat poleward
https://mobile.twitter.com/afreedma/status/810940300533399552
All that heat being shoved into the Arctic.  All that cold being shoved out.
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jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1473 on: December 19, 2016, 11:44:14 PM »
Zack Labe:  Warm-Arctic, cold-continent type pattern continues over the next week as storms transport anomalous moisture/heat poleward
https://mobile.twitter.com/afreedma/status/810940300533399552

I guess we will find out in a couple of weeks what all this extra latent heat and precipitable water does in the winter to sea ice volume.  With the current rates of export through the Fram (and some through the Nares!) it will likely be a new record low of historic proportions (even as extent begins to catch up to the record low).

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Feeltheburn

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1474 on: December 20, 2016, 02:48:43 AM »
I was just looking over the ice with Polarview, and am surprised at how much is not solid. The Atlantic facing front all the way up looks terrible, like end of melt season rubble. So does everything near the CAA and Greenland. Some of it looks this way within a few km's of the Pole. The most solid appears to be between the Pole and The Bering Strait.
Sample


Is there a way to compare how solid the ice is in 2016 with earlier years, such as 1980-90? It would be nice to see just how bad it is compared to how it was previously to give us a frame of reference.
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Feeltheburn

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1475 on: December 20, 2016, 02:57:14 AM »
Thanks jd!

...and that heat which is not able to leave as rapidly ... will enable a still higher load of water vapour in the air column, which will....   sigh...  Didn't a guy called Hansen do some work like that re Venus???
You are welcome, and indeed, I think he did.

Fortunately, we haven't got the carbon load nor the insolation necessary to drive a venusian run-away hot house.  Cold comfort that is, when you consider just how nasty things *could* get if we don't curb our emissions.

Fortunately we are much further from the sun than Venus , which means the solar flux is only half that received by Venus. Mars receives less than half of what we receive, which explains why it is so much colder. In addition, there is no life or other process on Venus capable of using the CO2. Thus, it is the predominant gas. There is no O2, no water. Plants on earth will still photosynthesize sugar from CO2, water and light for the indefinite future. In other words, what happens on Venus is likely to stay on Venus. :)
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1476 on: December 20, 2016, 03:12:21 AM »
Is there a way to compare how solid the ice is in 2016 with earlier years, such as 1980-90? It would be nice to see just how bad it is compared to how it was previously to give us a frame of reference.
Off the top of my head, the only way I know is to visually inspect the satellite images, preferably at different time intervals. Easier to tell things when the sun is out.
 A good link a couple people have been referring to lately.
www.seaice.dk/latest/todays-sentinel1-n-3daymos.jpg

not sure how to reach the archives
« Last Edit: December 20, 2016, 06:07:08 AM by Tigertown »
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jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1477 on: December 20, 2016, 05:42:07 AM »
Is there a way to compare how solid the ice is in 2016 with earlier years, such as 1980-90? It would be nice to see just how bad it is compared to how it was previously to give us a frame of reference.
Off the top of my head, the only way I know is to visually inspect the satellite images, preferably at different time intervals. Easier to tell things when the sun is out.
 A good link a couple people have been referring to lately.(down at the moment)
www.seaice.dk/latest/todays-sentinel1-n-3daymos.jpg

not sure how to reach the archives
Best I can find in the way of an archive that will let us look at a few locations...

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/nord.uk.php

The NE cape of Greenland, 12/20/2009 and today below.
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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1478 on: December 20, 2016, 05:46:29 AM »
In addition, there is no life or other process on Venus capable of using the CO2. Thus, it is the predominant gas. There is no O2, no water. Plants on earth will still photosynth

Maybe there was once though?

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-climate-modeling-suggests-venus-may-have-been-habitable/

If you fancy doing your own climate modelling to test out NASA's theory see:

http://econnexus.org/the-raspberry-pi-planet-simulator-cluster/

The Raspberry Pi 3 has 4 cores!  Turn the CO2 up to 11 and wait to see what happens.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1479 on: December 20, 2016, 05:49:45 AM »
For another "qualitative" comparison of the ice, here's Morris Jessup, about this time in 2009, and today-ish.
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1480 on: December 20, 2016, 06:10:02 AM »
Most definitely a discernible difference.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1481 on: December 20, 2016, 07:56:57 AM »
It's very quiet at work, so to occupy myself I looked at JAXA's extent graph of each year since 1978 and noted which year had the lowest extent for each day of the year.  As at 19 December, the results are:

2016 = 191 days at record low extent
2012 = 83
2015 = 24
2011 = 23
2010 = 18
2006 = 12
2005 = 11
2007 = 4

All that can happen over the next 12 days is 2016 will take days away from 2010.  Ie. if 2016 stays below 2010 for the rest of the year, it will be 2016= 203 and 2010 = 6.

Jan
2016: 1-7, 9, 15, 28-31 = 13 days at lowest recorded extent
2011: 8, 10-14 = 6 days
2006: 16-27 = 12 days

Feb
2016: 1-5, 7-24 = 23 days
2015: 27-29 = 3 days
2005: 6, 25, 26 = 3 days

Mar
2016: 30-31 = 2 days
2015: 1-21 = 21 days
2005: 22-29 = 8 days

April
2016: 1-30 = 30 days

May
2016: 1-31 = 31 days

June
2016: 1-27 = 27 days
2010: 28-30 = 3 days

July
2016: 4-7 = 4 days
2012: 25-31 = 7 days
2011: 8-24 = 17 days
2010: 1-3 = 3 days

August
2012: 1-31 = 31 days

September
2012: 1-30 = 30 days

October
2016: 20-31 = 12 days
2012: 1-15 = 15 days
2007: 16-19 = 4 days

November
2016: 1-30 = 30 days

December
2016: 1-19 = 19 days
2010: 20-31 = 12 days

Adam Ash

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1482 on: December 20, 2016, 11:44:11 AM »
...
Fortunately we are much further from the sun than Venus... In other words, what happens on Venus is likely to stay on Venus. :)

Thanks FTB et al.  Its reassuring to know that we are not going there, yet. 

But I am reminded, as I see my aircraft's wings flexing up and taking the load on takeoff, the 'laws of nature' do not need a peer reviewed paper to allow then to kick into action do they.

So in this prevailing situation where things are clearly out of balance, with unusual atmospheric heat entering the Arctic close to the surface combined with a drastically high water content in the air column which is doing its absorption thing (including about half of the radiation from the air column being scattered back downwards), then the positive reinforcement processes of more heat in wet air enables higher-still water content in the air which leads back to more more heat close to the surface and around we go - is in play as we speak isn't it.   There is no threshold above//below which these processes kick in - they are working now.

Ditto of course regarding kilometre scale methane plume eruptions due to warming oceans and the high short term GHG impact of methane, and no doubt there are several other similar feedback loops.

So in individual cells at micro and macro scale the Arctic climate is being driven by a number of forcings and as a consequence the climate is - within some pretty distant bounds - potentially in a run-away mode until it hits some limit.  Not a comfortable situation.


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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1483 on: December 20, 2016, 02:04:58 PM »
Robert Scribbler:

Regions Near North Pole to Hit Above Freezing Three Days Before Christmas
Quote
This year, GFS model runs again show the potential for extreme above average temperatures in the region of the North Pole three days before Christmas. A storm in the Greenland Sea is predicted to strengthen to 940 mb intensity on the 20th and 21st. This system is expected to dredge warm air from the tropical North Atlantic and then fling it all the way to the Pole.

(Temperatures may rise to as high as 55 F [31 C] above average on December 22nd over sections of the Arctic near the North Pole. Note that this dynamic will tend to drive colder air out over the Continents — especially, in this case, toward Siberia. Also note that global temperatures remain well above average even when compared to the warmer than normal 1979 to 2000 time-frame. ...
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/12/19/regions-near-north-pole-to-hit-above-freezing-three-days-before-christmas/
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Jim Williams

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1484 on: December 20, 2016, 02:21:45 PM »
Robert Scribbler:

Regions Near North Pole to Hit Above Freezing Three Days Before Christmas
Quote
This year, GFS model runs again show the potential for extreme above average temperatures in the region of the North Pole three days before Christmas. A storm in the Greenland Sea is predicted to strengthen to 940 mb intensity on the 20th and 21st. This system is expected to dredge warm air from the tropical North Atlantic and then fling it all the way to the Pole.

(Temperatures may rise to as high as 55 F [31 C] above average on December 22nd over sections of the Arctic near the North Pole. Note that this dynamic will tend to drive colder air out over the Continents — especially, in this case, toward Siberia. Also note that global temperatures remain well above average even when compared to the warmer than normal 1979 to 2000 time-frame. ...
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/12/19/regions-near-north-pole-to-hit-above-freezing-three-days-before-christmas/

Well...I'd disagree with him in one small detail.  It is the complete lack of extremely cold air at the pole for a year now which ought be our primary concern.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1485 on: December 20, 2016, 04:03:11 PM »


Day zero through 100 never dropped below day 100 temps over the start of this year. That looks about 7K? Where did the energy , normally used to raise temps the temps to day 100 values, go to ? What was it spent on?

How low will 2017's day zero to 100 go this time? It looks likely to be a full 10k above the 'average line' so will this be the base over that period???
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Sterks

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1486 on: December 20, 2016, 04:32:57 PM »
Impressive. Lots of activity in the area of Fram and a revival of the subpolar current for the next nine days. Not expected to be a quiet start of the winter for ice pack.
Note: please, if anyone can explain to me how I attach animations that not need be clicked later to work, infinite thanks. In the meantime, the animation needs a click.

A-Team

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1487 on: December 20, 2016, 04:56:32 PM »
For people tracking export of CAA ice out the Fram, it suffices to track a feature set moving east of the Morris Jesup frame provided by DMI as the amazingly fluid Nasa ice age animation from 1990 to late Nov 2016 shows ice movement may stall or even backtrack slightly but invariably exits down the east coast of Greenland in the end.

Here it works best to use Sentinel 1AB rather than Band 31 Modis thermal (which however gives more dramatic visualizations upon palette squeeze when not cloudy) or DKU whole Arctic mosaics (which are a melange of different dates). The DMI come accurately co-registered accurately which is not necessarily the case with other image sequences.

For area determination, pick 4-5 features at different latitudes, determine trajectories, and then draw dual isochrons. If some of the features have lineations (faint red in schematic below), then rotations can also be measured. Google Earth provides areas of lat/lon one degree squares for area calibration purposes. The ice being exported is surprisingly not particularly old but is nonetheless among the thickest per Cryosat, Hycom etc.

The effect of winds from the latest winter storm has rather been like squeezing a tube of toothpaste in the middle. Viscoplastic deformation of ice above Greenland, pressured by ice from above, is squeezing quite a bit out the Fram. It's actually possible to invert the biggest daily ice displacements to accurately infer when the main winter storms occurred. That can also be done by looking at formation of lee side polynyas north of Franz Josef, a real-world measure of wind traction on ice pack.

While export happens every year, both the volume of ice exported now and a disproportionate loss of relic older ice set the stage, in conjunction with season-long poor bottom freeze, for a potentially disastrous melt season.

Some of the Sentinel 1B imagery shows bright jagged lineations poleward of Morris Jesup, probably representing rougher ice resulting from ridging. However the affected area is minuscule; thin weak ice seems mostly able to accommodate compression via displacement and consolidation.

The lower images look at the much higher resolution Sentinel active radar with a view to determining what is really going on with thinner SMOS ice and low concentration AMSR2 sea ice.
Surprisingly, both hold up quite well despite the immense difference in resolution. Drawing the ice boundary depends on which Wadhams' incipient ice classes are included.

The animation shows the Chukchi and Barents from 01 Nov to 19 Dec. The Chukchi has resisted freezing over for many weeks; if and when it does, tracking SMOS will delineate where nothing thicker than sub-0.5m ice has formed this season, a rather large region can be expected after so so much of the freezing season wasted. The Barents ice front has hardly budged this season and may never refreeze as the water temperature remains anomalously high and the coupled air column both too warm and too moist from advected mid-latitude weather.

works well full screen
http://www.seaice.dk for DTU mosaics (not to be confused with DMI coastal Greenland)
http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu puffin feeder for Bering Strait, Chukchi, coastal Alaska
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/essay_wadhams.html stages in Arctic ice formation

« Last Edit: December 20, 2016, 05:30:44 PM by A-Team »

solartim27

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1488 on: December 20, 2016, 05:15:52 PM »
Note: please, if anyone can explain to me how I attach animations that not need be clicked later to work
See here, key is max 700 x 700 pixels, I think there is a max for memory size as well
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1259.0.html
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1489 on: December 20, 2016, 05:54:20 PM »
Quote
key is max 700 x 700 pixels
Right. A lot of people are not cropping to the relevant area. Cropping is the most basic of all image processing commands. Even the box drawn taking screenshots (provided by operating system, no software needed) will display the width in pixels.

After mastering crop, add rotation (to Greenland down, NSIDC standard polar stereographic) because a common orientation facilitates comparison.

Some resources like hycom, which arrives at 740 pixel width in indexed color, show so little Arctic Ocean take-home that they can be profitably enlarged to 2x width after rotation and cropping to relevancy. If you move out of gif 8-bit color to RGB and enlarge with bicubic splines, you will be tossing the connection to the color key.

Note the growing northside polynyas on FJI, the push-down CCW rotation on the ice pack towards Greenland, and the induced export. The curious red circle of thick ice has now reached the Lincoln Sea after about a month of movement east along the CAA. That feature might barely fit in a 700 pixel Sentinel-1B at full resolution.

Hycom, always a mixed bag, has been showing gibberish on the Chukchi for quite some time. Alternatively, the algorithm is merely more aggressive than others, counting a churning soup of floating ice crystals as ice when it is too weak for even a puffin to sit on. There are observational issues with adding zero freeboard zones to ice cover. However we definitely could use a more nuanced ice classification scheme that what is being used now.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2016, 06:07:28 PM by A-Team »

Iceismylife

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1490 on: December 20, 2016, 06:04:13 PM »
<snip>


So in individual cells at micro and macro scale the Arctic climate is being driven by a number of forcings and as a consequence the climate is - within some pretty distant bounds - potentially in a run-away mode until it hits some limit.  Not a comfortable situation.
The limit it would hit is melting Greenland's ice.  Do enough of that fast enough and you get cooling.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1491 on: December 20, 2016, 06:07:12 PM »
Great stuff as usual, A-Team;

You (or anyone else?) have a source for a "friendlier" image archive for ASAR and Sentinel?  I've been wandering around places like seaice.dk and European Space Agency sites without luck.  Sorting through satellite tracks over time is time consuming.  I'd like to make some additional "qualitative" comparisons of mid-winter ice quality.  It may be there's no way around it, but I at least thought I'd ask.
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jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1492 on: December 20, 2016, 06:25:30 PM »
h/t @Zlabe  north pole to reach near 0'C temps and 12 kg/m^2 precipitable water in 2 days
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1493 on: December 20, 2016, 06:41:55 PM »
You (or anyone else?) have a source for a "friendlier" image archive for ASAR and Sentinel?

PolarView?

http://www.polarview.aq/arctic
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1494 on: December 20, 2016, 06:49:15 PM »
However we definitely could use a more nuanced ice classification scheme that what is being used now.

Hi A-Team. I'm afraid I've been taking your name in vain in an article on the ASIB that has just been referenced in an editorial in The Guardian newspaper:

The 11th Key Science Moment of 2016


Would you mind taking a look? Could you be persuaded to express your artistic side once again?
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A-Team

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1495 on: December 20, 2016, 07:07:38 PM »
Quote
JimH: time for artistic communication?
Time is very limited at the moment. Everything is in public domain, unrestricted. Loved that ASIB picture of that crack cricket team going to bat for us on climate change.
Quote
a "friendlier" image archive for ASAR and Sentinel?
Not really. Twenty years into the internet, many thousands of image servers, yet ours remain "works in progress", in software terms barely in beta. There are two issues, developing the archive feed and serving it. The former has pipeline dependability, resizing and reprojecting, storage, and file size issues that are not trivial. This, along with crucial product algorithm versioning, drains all their energy.

It's better to work backwards from the front end. I could fix the server side on any of these in a new york minute but hardly any of the portals have a mechanism for user input, ie they don't want it. Months go by with no response to a polite email suggesting a trivial but significant fix. And the fix never happens.

Ultimately it's all about serving the user community; some of them know a whole more about easy interfaces than programmers. And that's the problem in a nutshell: the programmers wants to do it THEIR way even though it's wrong and they're working for the public on the public's dime.

Nasa Worldview is a case in point. They are fairly close to one-stop shopping and importantly just added an animation tool (lower left corner) Great. It doesn't bomb but doesn't work right either: some of the channels, like band 31, are all but useless without palette compression but those settings STILL get dropped in making an animation.

A bonehead programming move early on, now set in stone. It happens, but it can be fixed. Meanwhile parameter & channel tracking has all been done a zillion times before via relational databases eg MySQL and even better lots of people can and will explain just how to do it.

ESA? The absolute worst for content-free babble, the user goes around and around trying to get past launch pad videos, silly registrations, copyright threats and superficial link-free prose trying to find the frigging imagery (ultimately furnished in an obscure abandoned format not allowing extraction by corner specification). The prose is is a matter of inadequately supervised non-science writers not told who the target audience is and not empowered to do anything if somehow they were allowed user feedback.

Case in point: the new integration of SMOS and CryoSat. Great: thick, medium, thin ice and open water better any one alone. So they serve ONE date but no link to an archive! I don't even look any more -- there won't be a link as this would never occur to a non-user writer, a contact email will go to a dead letter box of someone not in a position to fix anything.

Do we still have the luxury of playing in little sandboxed siloes as events unfold a lot more rapidly than envisioned? We are poorly prepared for efficient evaluation of rapidly unravelling climate. Too much time has been spent on scenario ensembles that we now know to be irrelevant and too little on the unpleasant ones that need to be immediately explored in depth.

It is far better to spend a lot for one good programmer's time than waste daily ten thousand scientists' time at poorly laid-out data portals.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2016, 11:40:06 AM by A-Team »

seaice.de

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1496 on: December 20, 2016, 08:03:52 PM »
Please be patient! Here is a link to the CS2SMOS archive:

http://data.meereisportal.de/data/cs2smos/version3.0/n/

The SMOS data are available here:

http://icdc.cen.uni-hamburg.de/1/daten/cryosphere/l3c-smos-sit.html

Please note the CS2SMOS product will not be available in near real time due to the optimal interpolation.


NeilT

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1497 on: December 20, 2016, 09:23:39 PM »
ESA? The absolute worst for content-free babble, the user goes around and around trying to get past launch pad videos, silly registrations, copyright threats and superficial link-free prose trying to find the frigging imagery. This latter is is a matter of inadequately supervised non-science writers not told who the target audience is and not empowered to do anything if somehow they were allowed user feedback.

You have, then, I take it, not worked for ESA??  My Gast is distinctly not Flabbered....  ;D ;D 8)
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romett1

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1498 on: December 20, 2016, 09:46:21 PM »
So my "solid block" is moving towards melting zone, movement in last 5 days.

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #1499 on: December 20, 2016, 10:08:47 PM »
 :o :o :o


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/12/20/forecast-north-pole-to-warm-50-degrees-above-normal-thursday-near-melting-point/

Forecast: North Pole to warm 50 degrees above normal Thursday, near melting point
By Jason Samenow December 20 at 3:17 PM

 :o :o :o

Haiku of Futures Passed
My "burning embers"
are not tri-color bar graphs
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