The 2016/2017 freezing season

[Tigertown]

The Fram bound ice is getting lynch mobbed before it can turn the corner.

[Tigertown]

Narrow bands of wind with moisture and positive temperatures are sneaking into the Arctic at the surface and just above at a fast pace, and will do so for at least a couple more days. This is already affecting the volume and no doubt other metrics.

[jai mitchell]

big compaction event reversing fram outflow but very very warm

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/02/10/0600Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-24.70,82.16,3000/loc=-20.363,83.680

[Neven]

WRONG THREAD!!!

ON TOPIC, PLEASE!!!

The Arctic don't care about Trump.

The correct thread to discus melting is closed.

Ah, so you want to talk about Trump in the 2017 melting season thread? Or shall I open the 2018, 2019 and 2020 melting season threads so you have more places to go off-topic? 

It's a crazy freezing season, but the melting season hasn't started yet.

[RikW]

wow, huge areas of goodbye waves in the Bering Sea today.

Just to make sure I interpret the colours correctly:
Green/blueish is just non-frozen sea
White is frozen sea

and the white wave-shaped lines are icebergs?

[seaicesailor]

WRONG THREAD!!!

ON TOPIC, PLEASE!!!

The Arctic don't care about Trump.

The correct thread to discus melting is closed.

Ah, so you want to talk about Trump in the 2017 melting season thread? Or shall I open the 2018, 2019 and 2020 melting season threads so you have more places to go off-topic? 

It's a crazy freezing season, but the melting season hasn't started yet.

Yes and I think I am missing half the stuff going on without A-Team and I would hate to know it is because of off topic BS. Surely not, will be great he back, really appreciate his work (or her work)

[seaicesailor]

wow, huge areas of goodbye waves in the Bering Sea today.

Just to make sure I interpret the colours correctly:
Green/blueish is just non-frozen sea
White is frozen sea

and the white wave-shaped lines are icebergs?

RikW look up for iceberg in wikipedia, or ask in the questions thread. They are not sea ice, but freshwater ice pieces coming from land glaciers and shelves. No icebergs in Bering. Big correction, there are icebergs in Bering sea from Alaskan glaciers. Anyway I dont think these can be resolved in these sat images
Not sure what it is, probably rubble ice due to wave action.

[Pmt111500]

Not sure what it is, probably rubble ice due to wave action.

Sea ice possibly from southern shores of st.Lawrence island, not sure though

[Glenn Tamblyn]

"So we may see some extent increases!"

Which in the broad scheme of things up there this year amount to not-much-at-all.

If the Summer is even moderately conducive to melt, it will be Yuge.

An Ice-free North Pole is plausible.

Oh I would love to be a fly on the wall - 'President Trump, any condolences for the Klaus family? It seems that  Klaus Sr has drowned.'

[pauldry600]

I will very be surprised if theres an ice free Arctic but we are headed that way. However theres still some cold left for another month to build more ice and  then it can flatline for a month so in late April real melt starts. Some Ice melts fast some really slowly like that chunk North of Alaska last year so no i just think it will be another lowest melt season not nothing.

[Paddy]

I'm with Pauldry. Could well be lowest, but no way it'll hit bottom yet.

[Tigertown]

I think the ice down the side of Greenland is gone. I have not seen any there in the last six or so images.

[crandles]

I think the ice down the side of Greenland is gone. I have not seen any there in the last six or so images.

There but wet from lots of spray?

[CognitiveBias]

I think the ice down the side of Greenland is gone. I have not seen any there in the last six or so images.

Intact ice today 74N-77N off Greenland coast

[CognitiveBias]

Same series, further north

[bairgon]

I think the ice down the side of Greenland is gone. I have not seen any there in the last six or so images.

Visible in that image, and also more clearly in the image below, is a rather large chunk of ice (300km long in total?) separated from where Independence Fjord and others open out to the Wandel Sea.

Looking at Nullschool shows strong winds off Greenland which have helped push this away. These continue from the south for a while so it will probably get into the general ice circulation.

[Tigertown]

Thanks CognitiveBias and bairgon. Good pics, and these show the impacts of the current weather. The intrusion of warm air and moisture is ongoing, at least for another day or two.

[PSJ]

I think the ice down the side of Greenland is gone. I have not seen any there in the last six or so images.

The ice is very much there, check e.g. the daily sentinel mosaic at www.seaice.dk.

http://www.seaice.dk/latest/todays-sentinel1-n-1daymos.jpg

[CognitiveBias]

Here's a comparison pic of NE Greenland coast.

Left Side is 2/8 16:51.  Right Side 2/9 7:45

About 15 hours difference.  I marked a few areas, but I'll leave the commentary for those more qualified.

[ecojosh]

More heat on the way as North Pole temps spike by 30 Celsius

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/arctic-storms-bring-another-winter-heatwave-to-north-pole/79190

Hopes for weather to return to normal before spring are melting.

[Neven]

Diablobanquisa has posted a nice analysis (in Spanish) with great images over on his blog.

[CognitiveBias]

Just Barely freezing at the pole in 24 hours.  The entire quadrant loosing freezing opportunity.  Looking forward to seeing the Svalbard and FJL comparison pics in a couple days.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/02/10/1800Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-89.28,84.95,670/loc=179.873,89.914

[magnamentis]

More heat on the way as North Pole temps spike by 30 Celsius

do you mean above average or do you mean F instead of C both would approximately fit as a possibility.

[CognitiveBias]

25C spike in 18 hours between here and the screen capture above.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/02/10/0000Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-89.28,84.95,670/loc=179.873,89.914

[crandles]

More heat on the way as North Pole temps spike by 30 Celsius

do you mean above average or do you mean F instead of C both would approximately fit as a possibility.

Actually neither, 30C in 24 hours. Well 27.5C anyway.

third from -28.5oC to -1.0oC, all in the span of roughly 24 hours!

Though average of -30C to actual -1C is nearer to 30C.

[seaicesailor]

Diablobanquisa has posted a nice analysis (in Spanish) with great images over on his blog.

Very interesting.
Also (s)he brings an interesting graph of accumulated drift during December and the Gyre was there, although weaker than in other occasions. Will it strengthen in March-April? Needs clockwise winds

[P-maker]

Crandles et al.,

Why not use degrees Kelvin (K), when discussing anomalies (you may give the difference in Fahrenheits (F) to serve our American audience), and then not talk about 30 degrees Celsius (C) in the Arctic in the middle of the winter. It is confusing everyone, I should think.

[CognitiveBias]

Another look at ice drift (click to animate).  It doesn't seem like there is any reliable pattern these days, unless we revert to the longer term weather patterns.  Also current ice thickness...  the Beaufort looks pretty fragile.

[ktonine]

[seaicesailor]

The ECMWF support the storm to become strong ~970s hPa for the weekend around the Atlantic front, not as much as GFS predicted but bad. After this passes, I want to see the edge from South tip of Greenland up to FJL.
Look at those isobars from Barents bending over Kara and across Laptev sea and ESS on Saturday (graph below)
Speaking of the Beaufort sea, the EC predicts cold Arctic next week just as GFS but much more influence of a warmer Canada (reliable), warmth reaching even Alaska and Beaufort sea in the last days of the forecast (more unreliable)

[seaicesailor]

Another way to visualize the effect of low FDD, comparing here ACNFS thickness with 2016 same date, and last year was bad!

[DrTskoul]

 

[Iceismylife]

WRONG THREAD!!!

ON TOPIC, PLEASE!!!

The Arctic don't care about Trump.

The correct thread to discus melting is closed.

Ah, so you want to talk about Trump in the 2017 melting season thread? Or shall I open the 2018, 2019 and 2020 melting season threads so you have more places to go off-topic? 

It's a crazy freezing season, but the melting season hasn't started yet.

All the heat needed to melt all the ice in the Arctic Ocean Is less than 200 vertical meters away from the ice.  When that heat gets mixed with the ice is when the melting season happens.  Sun up or sun down for the winter doesn't matter.

[Tigertown]

Crandles et al.,

Why not use degrees Kelvin (K), when discussing anomalies (you may give the difference in Fahrenheits (F) to serve our American audience), and then not talk about 30 degrees Celsius (C) in the Arctic in the middle of the winter. It is confusing everyone, I should think.

If I am in the Arctic in the middle of winter, will keep that in mind.

[ktonine]

quote author=P-maker link=topic=1611.msg102547#msg102547 date=1486681486]
Crandles et al.,

Why not use degrees Kelvin (K), when discussing anomalies (you may give the difference in Fahrenheits (F) to serve our American audience), and then not talk about 30 degrees Celsius (C) in the Arctic in the middle of the winter. It is confusing everyone, I should think.
[/quote]

I've never figured out why deniers haven't latched onto the Delisle scale as the one true temperature scale.  On the Delisle scale global temperatures are going down.  And the this latest arctic front?  Temperatures have not risen by 30 or 60°, they've fallen by 45° on the Delisle scale.

[Tigertown]

Starting to show where the wind and waves are gnawing on the edge of the ice front.

[CognitiveBias]

The visual from this morning, followed by 2 and 4 day old versions.  Actual UTC timestamp is in the filename.

The weather pattern continues and mostly strengthens for another 12 hours.

[seaicesailor]

AMSR2 Brightness Temperature provides much less resolution, but the change in color gives a hint of the wave of warmer air entering from the South, apart from showing the dispersal and melting of ice along the Atlantic front. The wedge of open water is reactivated due to the storm, and the ice that was building up in Barentsz around Svalbard will vanish (for good this season?)

[magnamentis]

Crandles et al.,

Why not use degrees Kelvin (K), when discussing anomalies (you may give the difference in Fahrenheits (F) to serve our American audience), and then not talk about 30 degrees Celsius (C) in the Arctic in the middle of the winter. It is confusing everyone, I should think.

i'm leaving my comfort zone here but if i'm not totally mistaken kelvin is unit used in physics and Celsius has been agreed upon (like the metric system) internationally to be the unit for temperatures. miles and fahrenheit are somehow only used in the US, canada has already entirely changed to km and celsius. hence talking about weather it should be celsius and talking about the universe, means physics, astrophysics and the likes its kelvin.
hence F would be an old-fashioned left-over :-) :-) put perhaps i'm wrong here, as i said, this is not something i paid a lot of attention to in the past.

i'm standing to be corrected (best with links and evidence) so that i can learn more details on the topic or, i wouldn't mind, to have confirmed the above, at least more or less.

[Jim Williams]

Crandles et al.,

Why not use degrees Kelvin (K), when discussing anomalies (you may give the difference in Fahrenheits (F) to serve our American audience), and then not talk about 30 degrees Celsius (C) in the Arctic in the middle of the winter. It is confusing everyone, I should think.

i'm leaving my comfort zone here but if i'm not totally mistaken kelvin is unit used in physics and Celsius has been agreed upon (like the metric system) internationally to be the unit for temperatures. miles and fahrenheit are somehow only used in the US, canada has already entirely changed to km and celsius. hence talking about weather it should be celsius and talking about the universe, means physics, astrophysics and the likes its kelvin.
hence F would be an old-fashioned left-over :-) :-) put perhaps i'm wrong here, as i said, this is not something i paid a lot of attention to in the past.

i'm standing to be corrected (best with links and evidence) so that i can learn more details on the topic or, i wouldn't mind, to have confirmed the above, at least more or less.

All fine and good, but 1 degree K equals 1 degree C, and I do believe the original statement was that there was a 30 degree C CHANGE.  (I.E.  It is a difference without a distinction.)

[P-maker]

Crandles,

What I meant was:

30 degrees C to me is a “hot summer day”.

30 degrees K is a relative measure indicating that this winter in Svalbard is 30 degrees warmer than average (equivalent to 86 degrees F above average for those stuck in American culture).

The fine thing about the Kelvin scale is that it is an absolute scale, thus 30 K is 30 K no matter where you are on the scale.

Hope this helps.

[Jim Williams]

More heat on the way as North Pole temps spike by 30 Celsius

do you mean above average or do you mean F instead of C both would approximately fit as a possibility.

It was clearly meant to be a spike above where the temp was at the time of the statement.  I did notice a huge temp jump yesterday, and am waiting to see if the prediction pans out today.

[crandles]

P-maker,

temps spike by 30 Celsius

To me this is quite clear, spike means rapid increase probably before falling again. I don't see that K vs C would help at all. We have words like spike, anomaly and temp to distinguish between well spikes, anomalies and actual temperatures. (Also residual for diff from trend.)

[Tigertown]

Not only has the latest weather gnawed at the good ice, but it has worked on running out the clock for adding new thickness. The Fram ice was on death row anyway, though it might flow a little smoother now, when the wind changes. Concentration is looking terrible. JAXA volume is down per Wipneus's chart.

[P-maker]

Crandles & ecojosh

First of all, it is not a spike. As is evident from diagrams in the Svalbard thread (such as this: http://www.projects.science.uu.nl/iceclim/aws/files_oper/oper_29102 ) air temperatures have been pretty stable around 2 degrees C for the past five days.

Using the phrases spike and 30 degrees C in this context, is in my view pretty misleading.

Hoping that temperatures in Svalbard may come down again later this winter is fine with me, but before we know that will actually happen, we should be careful putting spikes in the spike...

[gregcharles]

30 degrees K is a relative measure indicating that this winter in Svalbard is 30 degrees warmer than average (equivalent to 86 degrees F above average for those stuck in American culture).

30 C is 86 F, but a 30 C (or K) difference is a 54 F difference.

[P-maker]

Gregcharles,

Sure, thanks!. I knew there was something fishy with those relative temperature scales.

In my view, another good argument for using K for differences, anomalies and spikes (let's skip the F's) and stick to C, when we are talking real temperature measurements near the surface of the Earth.

Cheers P

[P-maker]

And by the way;

all those wonderful FDD diagrams up-thread could very well do with a K on the vertical axis, since it is meaningless to talk about -1400 C!

[Tor Bejnar]

Spikes like this happen, but 'here we go again'.  DMI 80N Temp:

[ktonine]

Gregcharles,

Sure, thanks!. I knew there was something fishy with those relative temperature scales.

In my view, another good argument for using K for differences, anomalies and spikes (let's skip the F's) and stick to C, when we are talking real temperature measurements near the surface of the Earth.

Relative temperature scales?  All temperature scales are relative to something and Kelvin is the least  arbitrary in that respect.  Celcius is relative to the freezing point of water.  Fahrenheit is relative to the temperature of a brine solution composed of equal parts ice and salt.  0°K is absolute zero.  I.e., zero actually means zero. 

As mentioned upthread, a relative difference in °K or °C is identical.

The main advantage of Kelvin is that temperatures are linear and computing the change in energy is simple math.  101°K is 1% more energy than 100°K.