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uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1100 on: February 25, 2018, 12:44:38 PM »
That warm wind does appear to be affecting the ice north of Greenland.
amsr2, uni-hamburg Feb24

seaice.de

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1101 on: February 25, 2018, 01:10:19 PM »
That warm wind does appear to be affecting the ice north of Greenland.
amsr2, uni-hamburg Feb24
Yes:

There is open water north of #Greenland where the thickest sea ice of the #Arctic used to be. It is not refreezing quickly because air temperatures are above zero confirmed by @dmidk's weather station #KapMorrisJesup. Wacky weather continues with scary strength and persistence.

https://twitter.com/seaice_de/status/967679640402874369

Click to view

Cid_Yama

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1102 on: February 25, 2018, 01:11:00 PM »
That image tells the whole story right there.  Regardless of extent numbers, it is OBVIOUS that the Arctic ice is in trouble. (Not that the extent numbers are that great, but the recent bump has the pollyannas out.)

I'm so glad I'm in my mid-70s and have lived a full life.  That movie, The Road, ... too real.
I would not want to live through that, and feel sorry for those that will.  When the crops fail globally, so do the governments.  They aren't capable of handling things adequately as they are now. They will be too busy just trying to take care of their own.  After all, they are people just like you and me.  With family and loved ones who will be in peril.  They won't still be there trying to fix things.   
« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 01:41:38 PM by Cid_Yama »
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uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1103 on: February 25, 2018, 02:11:23 PM »
Mobile ice in the Kara Sea looks like it is refreezing ok for now.
uni-hamburg amsr2 feb24
nasa worldview band15 brightness temperature (squashed palette) feb17-25

Alexander555

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1104 on: February 25, 2018, 05:22:55 PM »
That warm wind does appear to be affecting the ice north of Greenland.
amsr2, uni-hamburg Feb24
Yes:

There is open water north of #Greenland where the thickest sea ice of the #Arctic used to be. It is not refreezing quickly because air temperatures are above zero confirmed by @dmidk's weather station #KapMorrisJesup. Wacky weather continues with scary strength and persistence.

https://twitter.com/seaice_de/status/967679640402874369

Click to view


Do you think there will be an effect on the next melting season because of that ice free area ?

Dharma Rupa

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1105 on: February 25, 2018, 06:00:54 PM »
I was checking out NOAA's State of the Climate and this graph for January Sea Ice Extent struck me:

litesong

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1106 on: February 25, 2018, 06:03:40 PM »
There  is even a little spot that's 30 degree C warmer than average.
Your catch came right after(?) a much larger area of 30degC over-temperature which covered about 500+miles by 500+miles area, or ~ 1/6th the size of the High Arctic.
Right now, another huge "hot spot" is on the North Pole region:
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
It might be nearly as large in area as the previous "hot spot", which was ~  500+miles by 500+ miles, in size. Again, it appears, tho heat pours into the High Arctic from various southern regions, that the main driver of present High Arctic heat is coming from eastern Atlantic & western european heat, originating as far south as Northwestern Africa & Spain. This "north to the North Pole diversion of heat", hasn't proceeded into europe (as normal?), & has allowed siberian cold to engulf almost all of europe.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 06:34:28 PM by litesong »

bbr2314

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1107 on: February 25, 2018, 06:03:52 PM »
Quote
It would seem that just as Okhotsk may be exacerbating Bering, Baffin is doing the same to Barents/Greenland.

Or vice versa. I think latent heat is a weak hypothesis bbr. Though outbound heat blocking by the cold sstas in those regions could be assisting Arctic bound heat in the waters sliding in below them.
I would advance the hypothesis that a fresh surface water purge similar but possibly larger than the 2016 one is happening in the Beaufort and eastern basin. Coriolis is holding the freshwater being expelled thru Bering and between CAA and Greenland to the right as it heads south, enabling it to flood Okhotsk and Baffin. The animations provided by A-team show the flows pouring prolifically out of the CAA channels both to the east and west. the slush streams hugging eastern coasts of siberia in bering str, and baffin island peg these as southbound flows, rather than the clear water eastwards, even if they are not always travelling in this direction.
just the fact that all the southern CAA channels are flowing strongly outward demonstrates that the northern openings are guzzling lots of near surface water even if the ice is being strained out. The very high  sea surface elevation anomaly off barrow relative to CAA and Okhotsk presently is sure to be part of the driver of this.
Certainly you are right about the SSTA contrasts being bound to provoke big weather systems. And their effect seems so far to be a reinforcing feedback. Heat in Barent and Bering feeding cyclones that hose Baffin and Okhotsk with polar cold
Won't hold my breath hoping that Baffin and Okhotsk melt late though. Land warms fast, snow cover is low, lots of high sst nearby. come may they are toast.

Snowcover is actually high, though some dispute these maps. SWE is possibly at a record.





Extent is +1SD.



But the story is definitely in the volume anomalies over Quebec and Eastern Siberia. Both of these actually have two things in common --

1) Sea ice in most proximate adjacent open ocean (Okhotsk and Baffin)

2) Large positive anomalies in the waters beyond those (in Canada's case, the NW NATL, in E Siberia, the NW PAC and Bering).

In fact, the gradient between the deepening Canadian snowpack and what appear to be the warmest Gulf Stream waters we've ever seen is probably one of the reasons so much mid-latitude heat is making it into the Arctic.. (same story on other side of the world)

I think Ewing-Donn was incorrect because it missed all of these developing nuances but in the end A + B may end up equaling E-D even if it looks like C in the meantime (hysteresis).

A-Team

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1108 on: February 25, 2018, 06:39:49 PM »
The movie below shows 'Ascat interferometry' of Arctic sea ice motion over the last hundred days. This amounts to land-masked framen of (R,G.B) = (dayn - dayn-1, dayn - dayn-2, dayn - dayn-3) - (50,50,50)) after contrast renormalization, adaptive histogram equalization and bicubic rescaling. In other words, it's plain gray when and where the ice isn't moving.

During the most recent event, wind up the Fram pushed the icepack over the pole towards the Bering Strait, leaving a wedge along the CAA that widened towards Barrow largely unaffected (bottom animation). This severely deformed ice in the Chukchi; in ice dynamics terminology, the EVP rheology is a lot mushier there (elastic-viscous-plastic: Hunke and Dukowicz 2001).   

EC Hunke, along with two CAA papers, review the 40 years of academic ice deformation physics that goes into CICE:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-9735-7_24
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrc.20330/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079661115001871
« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 08:43:41 PM by A-Team »

Thomas Barlow

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1109 on: February 25, 2018, 07:04:50 PM »
Comparing 2m+ thickness, Feb. 24, 2012, 2017, 2018.
(I deleted ice below 2m thick n DMI chart)
« Last Edit: March 01, 2018, 04:16:52 PM by Thomas Barlow »

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1110 on: February 25, 2018, 07:14:26 PM »
These Ascat animations are amazing. It's too bad that the American government is cutting satellite programs when they should be putting up new ones, but what you're doing is almost like finding a satellite we didn't know we had!

uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1111 on: February 25, 2018, 08:49:06 PM »
This severely deformed ice in the Chukchi
Climatereanalyzer.org is forecasting 2 warm anomalies for the Chukchi. Tomorrow and Friday. Here is a rather cloudy view of the recent ice condition from Worldview Terra/Modis, Feb20-25

Edit: oops, this is East Siberian Sea, not Chukchi.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 10:04:35 PM by uniquorn »

uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1112 on: February 25, 2018, 08:56:38 PM »
Do you think there will be an effect on the next melting season because of that ice free area ?

Yes, but this is the freezing season thread ;)

Dharma Rupa

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1113 on: February 25, 2018, 09:09:51 PM »
Do you think there will be an effect on the next melting season because of that ice free area ?

Yes, but this is the freezing season thread ;)

Speaking of melting season....

oren

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1114 on: February 25, 2018, 09:37:40 PM »
These Ascat animations are amazing. It's too bad that the American government is cutting satellite programs when they should be putting up new ones, but what you're doing is almost like finding a satellite we didn't know we had!
Yes. Especially the interferometry animation.

Apocalypse4Real

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1115 on: February 25, 2018, 09:57:29 PM »
The ice fracturing and pack movement from Northern Greenland is resulting in ice fracturing across the Canadian CAB including near 90N.

subgeometer

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1116 on: February 25, 2018, 10:04:27 PM »
Not sure if anyone else on the interwebs picked this up, but as far as i can tell these heat intrusions have already broken the record DMI deviation from mean temp set in the fall of 2016. Data goes back to 1958.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Its just broken that record again

Gray-Wolf

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1117 on: February 25, 2018, 10:11:10 PM »
Hi Subg!

I wonder just how much of the 80N circle will see above freezing temps on tues/weds and how that will play out on the DMI plot?

Over summer the latent heat of fusion keeps temps close to freezing ( due to ongoing melt) but Warm Air Advection passing over the pole whilst it is frozen?

Could we see temps beyond what we see mid summer over those days?

What would the world make of all that once they're made aware of it
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subgeometer

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1118 on: February 25, 2018, 10:22:17 PM »
I think the relation between low ice in the Bering, and lots in Okhotsk comes from the lows that have driven southerlies through the Bering Strait, and  Siberian cold into the Sea of Okhotsk - its simply been much colder there.

I have no expertise in Ocean currents, but I find it impossible to believe a significant amount of freshish water can mosey around Kamchatka, frequently pummeled by storms

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1119 on: February 25, 2018, 10:24:48 PM »
Does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of the DMI +80N daily numbers for all the years in their range (1958-2018)? There are no obvious links to the source data on their page, but Zach Labe's version of it a couple of days ago had all years plotted on one chart....

bbr2314

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1120 on: February 25, 2018, 10:50:15 PM »
I can't imagine reds, however faint, have ever appeared in Northern Greenland in February before:



The excess QPF along the coast must have also resulted in some low-elevation/offshore rain (probably in copious amounts), will probably have some sort of impact moving forward.

A-Team

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1121 on: February 25, 2018, 11:42:43 PM »
Quote
almost like finding a satellite we didn't know we had! interferometry!
Right, quite a few satellites, like the cloud and soil ones, end up more important after re-purposing. Here NOAA doesn't have the gain set correctly on Ascat's antenna (for our purposes) but rather than hack the satellite itself (unintended consequences? archive continuity?), it is better just to crank up the voltage virtually since since its sequential field-of-view processing has to be re-configured anyway.

There might even have been 10- or 12-bit sensitivity, restricted to ice, in the initial ground transmission (but did they save the data, probably not), the point of all this being a lot better feature tesselation (finite mesh, discrete lattice) results.

OSI-SAF settled on two-day intervals for their sea ice product as more movement takes place so there's less error in measurement of small displacements. I'll post the two-day 'interferometric' product (rgb = n, n-2, n-4) in a bit. These are easy to make but hard to understand.

Right now I'm looking at the one-day, one-degree rotation product (rgbn = 0º, 1º, 2º). That puts the emphasis on zonal (latitudinal) ice motion as opposed to meridional, that is componentize ice motion into coriolis (radial) coordinates. Again, easy to make, though the North Pole is not symmetrically situated; islands and basin move too.

Supposing now we had synchronous rescaled grayscale surface pressure, ice concentration and thinness channels to extend Ascat out to a CMYK, those extra dimensions might put us in position to procede incrementally towards an ice dynamic classifications scheme such as k-means, SVM or PCA/EOF.

The outcome would be specific to winter Arctic ice but not uncorrelated with synoptic-scale weather  -- the North Atlantic Oscillation has really gone haywire this week (https://twitter.com/MJVentrice, http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/NAO/, https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/nao/).
« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 11:58:32 AM by A-Team »

Ice Shieldz

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1122 on: February 26, 2018, 12:04:41 AM »
Does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of the DMI +80N daily numbers for all the years in their range (1958-2018)? There are no obvious links to the source data on their page, but Zach Labe's version of it a couple of days ago had all years plotted on one chart....

You may need to email someone at DMI directly. Or you could ask Zach or Jeff Masters over at the weather underground about where to look.  This is what Dr Masters had two say about DMI second place record back in Nov 16 2016:

"This week’s heat spike to 20°C (36°F) above average is a greater deviation from average than any previous spike recorded at any time of year since DMI began tracking Arctic temperatures in 1956. Previous record: 17°C warmer than average, set in December 2002 and January 2006."

Dharma Rupa

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1123 on: February 26, 2018, 12:14:47 AM »
Not sure if anyone else on the interwebs picked this up, but as far as i can tell these heat intrusions have already broken the record DMI deviation from mean temp set in the fall of 2016. Data goes back to 1958.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Its just broken that record again

I'm looking at this DMI 80N trying to understand how it tracks with "first light," and I think it precedes first light.

Even if the temp falls all the way to average (which hasn't happened in a long time), average is about to start up.

I'm going to bet that Summer is going to be cold and wet.  I'm also going to bet that it doesn't matter and we are going to see another record in the Fall.



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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1124 on: February 26, 2018, 12:16:30 AM »
Does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of the DMI +80N daily numbers for all the years in their range (1958-2018)? There are no obvious links to the source data on their page, but Zach Labe's version of it a couple of days ago had all years plotted on one chart....

You may need to email someone at DMI directly. Or you could ask Zach or Jeff Masters over at the weather underground about where to look.  This is what Dr Masters had two say about DMI second place record back in Nov 16 2016:

"This week’s heat spike to 20°C (36°F) above average is a greater deviation from average than any previous spike recorded at any time of year since DMI began tracking Arctic temperatures in 1956. Previous record: 17°C warmer than average, set in December 2002 and January 2006."
I emailed them some time ago about access to data - silence.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1125 on: February 26, 2018, 01:23:04 AM »
Does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of the DMI +80N daily numbers for all the years in their range (1958-2018)? There are no obvious links to the source data on their page, but Zach Labe's version of it a couple of days ago had all years plotted on one chart....

Try their FTP site: ftp://ftp.dmi.dk/plus80N_temperatureindex/
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1126 on: February 26, 2018, 02:19:43 AM »
Not sure if anyone else on the interwebs picked this up, but as far as i can tell these heat intrusions have already broken the record DMI deviation from mean temp set in the fall of 2016. Data goes back to 1958.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Its just broken that record again

It’s just screamingly clear that the Arctic amplification that will come with just 1.5 will be way, way too much.

Human Habitat Index

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1127 on: February 26, 2018, 02:39:14 AM »
Polar warming - wavy jetreams - more polar warming - even wavier jetstreams - feedback loop established - build up of polar heat - sudden stratospheric warming - polar votex split and displaced - extreme polar warming -.....................................
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation. - Herbert Spencer

Hyperion

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1128 on: February 26, 2018, 02:43:19 AM »
I think the relation between low ice in the Bering, and lots in Okhotsk comes from the lows that have driven southerlies through the Bering Strait, and  Siberian cold into the Sea of Okhotsk - its simply been much colder there.

I have no expertise in Ocean currents, but I find it impossible to believe a significant amount of freshish water can mosey around Kamchatka, frequently pummeled by storms

Well I can't really claim to be either, but Nullschool seems to be claiming it does. though panning through at 3 hr intervals theres a lot of variation in the SSTA's maybe tidal as well as wind based.
I did work with Salter and Wadhams at AMEG some four years ago on the taming bering strait problem. at that time it came out that Bering thruflows had multiplied x10 over the preceding decade. Making Salters kelp-net proposal less than adequate.
sorry no screenshot. on a public computer w/out capability right now. Currents and SSTA Kamchatka:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/02/23/0000Z/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-211.77,51.18,2958/loc=157.166,49.882
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1129 on: February 26, 2018, 03:44:22 AM »
Let me get this straight...

Polar warming - wavy jetreams - more polar warming - even wavier jetstreams - feedback loop established - build up of polar heat - sudden stratospheric warming - polar votex split and displaced - extreme polar warming -.....................................

..... chaotic jet stream attempting a figure 8, which completely weakens and then dissolves
cold, high pressure returns to the 80N arctic.  polar jet re-emerges in perfect condition
waviness begins to build up
5 lobe pattern emerges
beginnings of pinched off lows and arctic warmth incursions
system becomes chaotic, delivering huge amounts of heat to the arctic
system attempts to do a figure 8 during warm arctic cold continent regime
system in chaos dissolves, and quickly reforms again

Each cycle in the progression of polar jet decay delivers more heat to the arctic, and each cycle completes faster than the last?

wili

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1130 on: February 26, 2018, 03:45:23 AM »
rs on some of the...odd...goings on in the Arctic: "There's a Hole in Winter's Heart..."

https://robertscribbler.com/2018/02/25/a-hole-in-winters-heart-temperatures-rise-to-above-freezing-at-the-north-pole-in-february/
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1131 on: February 26, 2018, 07:45:31 AM »
Wonderful headline there, wili.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1132 on: February 26, 2018, 09:34:16 AM »
I imagine that the increased snow pack on land represents a resource of stored fresh water which can be quite readily released into rivers with warming due to elevated air temperatures or rain fall.  So increased fresh water on coastal oceans among the current absurdly high temperature regime seems quite plausible, IMHO.

Ah!  But I see on another thread that its minus 30C thereabouts at the moment.  So the snow pack represents potential for summer fresh water lenses, but I doubt that there is much fresh water moving on land there right now!
« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 09:42:38 AM by Adam Ash »

uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1133 on: February 26, 2018, 11:59:59 AM »
Today's nasa worldview band15 brightness temperature image of nares-lincoln.
Some refreezing with Kap Morris Jesup low of -19C last night

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1134 on: February 26, 2018, 12:38:45 PM »
weather-forecast.com says the Bering Strait coold get interesting by Mar 1st

cci-reanalyzer says the Arctic will get somewhat chilly by March 7 (yes,I know that is too many days ahead for confidence)
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1135 on: February 26, 2018, 02:52:26 PM »
Here is another version of Ascat interferometry, this time with two day separations to get more color from more motion. That is, starting with a week of Ascats, the R,G,B frame is Mon-Wed, Mon-Fri, Mon-Sun. Here I started with 105 Ascats, enough to give the mp4 101 frames.

The second mp4 gives the baseline sequence of 105, no differencing. It has a land mask (attached separately at DevCor) but not one for AMSR2 open water because the Bering Sea weather artifacts have some interest, not so much for the Barents, Fram or Baffin Bay. It's easy enough to make a split open water mask though.

Because we've seen plain ice motion before, a type of bump map on the grayscale values was applied resulting in a hill-shading visual effect. That actually makes some physical sense for Ascat display since its values are the smoother, the blacker. It's also feasible to hang on colors from daily SMOS thickness, MSLP, AMSR2 and so forth.

Technical note: uniquorn has expressed interest in doing up the interferometry on the 8 previous years so the steps are explained one by one at DevCorner. The degree of difficulty here is about 3 on a scale of 10. Dryland is looking at stably scripting the process to make daily or weekly updates during the freezing season, that has some issues.

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1259.msg143664.html#msg143664
« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 03:55:33 PM by A-Team »

Sourabh

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1136 on: February 26, 2018, 03:00:34 PM »
Can anyone throw some light on the following pressure map? Can this be called a dipole? If so, how rare such dipoles are at end of winter seasons as compared to, say May/June, ?




Edited: somehow the above link is showing a different image that what is actually shown on the website.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/weather/arcticweather_imagecontainer.php

A-Team

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1137 on: February 26, 2018, 04:47:51 PM »
Wow ... total blow-out continues at northern end of Greenland (image needs click). Nilas/grease/pancake ice presumably forming on open water, Lincoln Sea reserve continuing to peel back, influx from Bering Sea pushing along the Alaskan coast and remarkable fragmentation overall from compressive stress.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 05:45:20 PM by A-Team »

A-Team

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1138 on: February 26, 2018, 06:15:31 PM »
Here is another perspective on the events leading up the what is unfolding today ... an ice roughness (thickness, age) bump map (vs the emboss above). A nicer version in blue did not survive the rounds of movie codecs so I had to delete it.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 10:26:11 PM by A-Team »

numerobis

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1139 on: February 26, 2018, 06:22:46 PM »
Quote
It would seem that just as Okhotsk may be exacerbating Bering, Baffin is doing the same to Barents/Greenland.

Or vice versa. I think latent heat is a weak hypothesis bbr. Though outbound heat blocking by the cold sstas in those regions could be assisting Arctic bound heat in the waters sliding in below them.
I would advance the hypothesis that a fresh surface water purge similar but possibly larger than the 2016 one is happening in the Beaufort and eastern basin. Coriolis is holding the freshwater being expelled thru Bering and between CAA and Greenland to the right as it heads south, enabling it to flood Okhotsk and Baffin. The animations provided by A-team show the flows pouring prolifically out of the CAA channels both to the east and west. the slush streams hugging eastern coasts of siberia in bering str, and baffin island peg these as southbound flows, rather than the clear water eastwards, even if they are not always travelling in this direction.
just the fact that all the southern CAA channels are flowing strongly outward demonstrates that the northern openings are guzzling lots of near surface water even if the ice is being strained out. The very high  sea surface elevation anomaly off barrow relative to CAA and Okhotsk presently is sure to be part of the driver of this.
Certainly you are right about the SSTA contrasts being bound to provoke big weather systems. And their effect seems so far to be a reinforcing feedback. Heat in Barent and Bering feeding cyclones that hose Baffin and Okhotsk with polar cold
Won't hold my breath hoping that Baffin and Okhotsk melt late though. Land warms fast, snow cover is low, lots of high sst nearby. come may they are toast.

Snowcover is actually high, though some dispute these maps. SWE is possibly at a record.

Extent is +1SD.

But the story is definitely in the volume anomalies over Quebec and Eastern Siberia. Both of these actually have two things in common --

1) Sea ice in most proximate adjacent open ocean (Okhotsk and Baffin)

2) Large positive anomalies in the waters beyond those (in Canada's case, the NW NATL, in E Siberia, the NW PAC and Bering).

In fact, the gradient between the deepening Canadian snowpack and what appear to be the warmest Gulf Stream waters we've ever seen is probably one of the reasons so much mid-latitude heat is making it into the Arctic.. (same story on other side of the world)

I think Ewing-Donn was incorrect because it missed all of these developing nuances but in the end A + B may end up equaling E-D even if it looks like C in the meantime (hysteresis).

I'm fairly certain the bulk of precipitable water over Quebec is coming from the Atlantic, brought up by low pressure systems that roll up the US coast. Some will be from Hudson Bay. Those systems often end up in Baffin -- I haven't seen any start up here and go South. It's cold here, you can't get a whole lot of precipitable moisture out.

Currently there's some warm and soon very warm (but still below freezing) temperatures over South Baffin. It's a welcome respite from the mid-30s with lows to -40 or so that we had most of February, I have to admit.

bbr2314

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1140 on: February 26, 2018, 07:36:13 PM »
Quote
It would seem that just as Okhotsk may be exacerbating Bering, Baffin is doing the same to Barents/Greenland.

Or vice versa. I think latent heat is a weak hypothesis bbr. Though outbound heat blocking by the cold sstas in those regions could be assisting Arctic bound heat in the waters sliding in below them.
I would advance the hypothesis that a fresh surface water purge similar but possibly larger than the 2016 one is happening in the Beaufort and eastern basin. Coriolis is holding the freshwater being expelled thru Bering and between CAA and Greenland to the right as it heads south, enabling it to flood Okhotsk and Baffin. The animations provided by A-team show the flows pouring prolifically out of the CAA channels both to the east and west. the slush streams hugging eastern coasts of siberia in bering str, and baffin island peg these as southbound flows, rather than the clear water eastwards, even if they are not always travelling in this direction.
just the fact that all the southern CAA channels are flowing strongly outward demonstrates that the northern openings are guzzling lots of near surface water even if the ice is being strained out. The very high  sea surface elevation anomaly off barrow relative to CAA and Okhotsk presently is sure to be part of the driver of this.
Certainly you are right about the SSTA contrasts being bound to provoke big weather systems. And their effect seems so far to be a reinforcing feedback. Heat in Barent and Bering feeding cyclones that hose Baffin and Okhotsk with polar cold
Won't hold my breath hoping that Baffin and Okhotsk melt late though. Land warms fast, snow cover is low, lots of high sst nearby. come may they are toast.

Snowcover is actually high, though some dispute these maps. SWE is possibly at a record.

Extent is +1SD.

But the story is definitely in the volume anomalies over Quebec and Eastern Siberia. Both of these actually have two things in common --

1) Sea ice in most proximate adjacent open ocean (Okhotsk and Baffin)

2) Large positive anomalies in the waters beyond those (in Canada's case, the NW NATL, in E Siberia, the NW PAC and Bering).

In fact, the gradient between the deepening Canadian snowpack and what appear to be the warmest Gulf Stream waters we've ever seen is probably one of the reasons so much mid-latitude heat is making it into the Arctic.. (same story on other side of the world)

I think Ewing-Donn was incorrect because it missed all of these developing nuances but in the end A + B may end up equaling E-D even if it looks like C in the meantime (hysteresis).

I'm fairly certain the bulk of precipitable water over Quebec is coming from the Atlantic, brought up by low pressure systems that roll up the US coast. Some will be from Hudson Bay. Those systems often end up in Baffin -- I haven't seen any start up here and go South. It's cold here, you can't get a whole lot of precipitable moisture out.

Currently there's some warm and soon very warm (but still below freezing) temperatures over South Baffin. It's a welcome respite from the mid-30s with lows to -40 or so that we had most of February, I have to admit.
I believe you are correct -- I think the bulk of QPF is inbound from the broiling SSTs of the North Atlantic. The uptick the past month has been nothing short of incredible and it appears most of it is now seeing record warmth.

I think that adjacent sea ice/cold temps in Baffin enable the cleaner cross-bay transit of Greenland airmasses (i.e., if Baffin is 45F, a -40F airmass from Greenland will be modified substantially or will probably drift NE. as Arctic ice breaks down and Baffin is encrusted with thick ice, the -40F airmass keeps its cool entirely when displaced S/SW into Quebec/Hudson Bay).

History says that the combination of both yields to snow totals that are sufficient for glaciation every several thousand years. Perhaps this is why we are seeing what we are currently seeing -- and perhaps not. But history would argue that a rapid response to freshwater melt during an ice age results in growing ice caps across a substantial portion of the NHEM and we may be seeing the beginnings of a mechanism that could result in exactly that.

Neven

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1141 on: February 26, 2018, 07:52:07 PM »
I've written up a summary of this recent event over on the ASIB (mentioning some of the comments here): Talk about unprecedented.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1142 on: February 26, 2018, 08:51:26 PM »
I guess the origin of the air making the pole so hot for the season was Sahara. Normally this might have started the spring in France, but the cold high pressure blast was on the way so it followed the ocean all the way up.

JimboOmega

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1143 on: February 26, 2018, 09:07:29 PM »
The current spike in temps is amazing and unprecedented, but I don't *think* it means that much for the coming melt season. We're only a little bit below last year on extent.  The sun has yet to rise so that excess heat is going to be vented to space.  Looks like the GFS is bringing its forecast of return to normal temps earlier, even with the anomalous open ocean on the northern coast of greenland. Open water there is about as good a thing as we could hope for this time of year in terms of venting heat to space. The warmer it is, the more heat the system loses.

All things considered winter still has time, and moreover, the current (ice) numbers aren't that different than what has come before. Not enough to forecast anything calamitous, yet. If the CAB numbers stay this low through March/Sunrise, I'll be worried, because Albedo will kick in hard at that point.

Hi Subg!

I wonder just how much of the 80N circle will see above freezing temps on tues/weds and how that will play out on the DMI plot?

Over summer the latent heat of fusion keeps temps close to freezing ( due to ongoing melt) but Warm Air Advection passing over the pole whilst it is frozen?

Could we see temps beyond what we see mid summer over those days?

What would the world make of all that once they're made aware of it

Warm area over the pole will only cause it to melt some (assuming the net heat balance is sufficient, which I'm not sure it is - it's still dark and energy is still being lost to space).

It still can't get much above freezing until all the ice is gone.  And honestly, melting the snow on top and then refreezing it as ice... I'm not sure what the impact of that would be, but it might even help with albedo (ice being more reflective than snow iirc).

FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1144 on: February 26, 2018, 09:28:38 PM »
But history would argue that a rapid response to freshwater melt during an ice age results in growing ice caps across a substantial portion of the NHEM and we may be seeing the beginnings of a mechanism that could result in exactly that.

No. We are in a period of rapid warming. That snow is annual and will be gone by summer. It takes cold summers to bring on ice ages.

meddoc

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1145 on: February 26, 2018, 09:43:14 PM »
cci- reanalyzer shows the Polar Vortex being tossed back over the central Arctic first, then a possible collapse again, over Svalbard & Scandinavia. Not good. It may be dissolved completely the coming week(s)- 2 Months earlier than normal.

bbr2314

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1146 on: February 26, 2018, 09:59:41 PM »
<snip, too long, not on-topic enough, let me know if you want those texts and post them elsewhere, I've copied them; N.>
« Last Edit: February 26, 2018, 11:29:36 PM by Neven »

uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1147 on: February 26, 2018, 11:08:28 PM »
A relatively good view over the cab today using Nasa Worldview brightness temperature band15.
https://tinyurl.com/ydyv7ch6

The animation below zooms in on an area of ice in the path of the recent warm cyclone that passed over the cab. I don't know what the normal state of ice in the cab is at this time of year and brightness temperature band15 is not available for previous years for comparison. So I post this for reference. Maybe someone with sentinel skills can show us.

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1148 on: February 26, 2018, 11:51:53 PM »
Does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of the DMI +80N daily numbers for all the years in their range (1958-2018)? There are no obvious links to the source data on their page, but Zach Labe's version of it a couple of days ago had all years plotted on one chart....

Try their FTP site: ftp://ftp.dmi.dk/plus80N_temperatureindex/



Thanks Jim. I downloaded and unzipped, which provides one text file for each year (1958-2018).

A-Team

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1149 on: February 26, 2018, 11:53:36 PM »
Quote
Maybe someone can show sentinels of this CAB scene:
PolarView is well organized, first mouse over your Worldview feature to get accurate lat, lon; then mouse over PolarView to get the right tile, then mouse over the date line to get more dates. The resolution is fabulous. Sentinel-1AB won't go very far back however.

http://www.polarview.aq/images/105_S1jpgfull/S1B_EW_GRDM_1SDH_20180222T191439_2288_N_1.final.jpg

Quote
substantial snowcover ...
Why so many mumbo-jumbo posts about snow cover? Some folks are confusing the Northern Hemisphere (half the planet) with the Arctic Ocean (a cold desert seasonally covered with floating ice occupying ten percent of the planet's oceans). Snow on permafrost, NH snow anomaly sites, 2m lake effect snowstorms in Buffalo NY (resp. home town anecdote), Arctic snow pack residuals 6 months from now?

Wrong forum. This is the Arctic sea ice freezing season forum. Neven will start an Arctic melt season forum when that becomes appropriate.

Actual daily data specific to the Arctic Ocean shows ankle-deep snow at best over almost the entire Arctic Ocean today, yesterday, the whole season (graphic below, open source data RASM-ESRL_4UAF_ICE_2018-02-25).

People here have been struggling with that: "Buffalo NY is not even half-way to the pole, it gets tons of snow, the Arctic Ocean is much farther north, it follows the Arctic Ocean has a vastly deeper snow cover than Buffalo NY". It doesn't. It has vastly less.

Ankle-deep is a stand-in for 100 mm (0.1 m, 3.9 inches). Ankle-deep is much less than knee-deep  or waist-deep. Google has pictures for those words if they are unfamiliar. Would you snow-camp in ankle-deep snow, using it for a thermal blanket? It accomplishes nothing to post away here wishing/assuming/claiming the Arctic Ocean snow is deeper. It is not.

That same site has daily radiative energy fluxes, up and down. Numbers for each location. Why share vague feelings about generic clouds and possible snow six month out? Look at their watts/m2 and spare us flux intuiting.

Clouds and snow are highly variable and very complex so can't be intuited, that's why universities have physics depts, that's why we put sampling teams and radiometers out on the ice. Maybe you have an unannounced Nobel Prize in physics? After assimilating flux numbers from the scientific community, sure, post away if you have something better (include a working url and why you think it is better).
« Last Edit: February 27, 2018, 12:34:15 AM by A-Team »