The 2018 melting season

[Sebastian Jones]

The record early ice loss in the Bering Sea is expected to continue as the Chukchi and the Beaufort start to melt. However the NWS long range forecast is that once the early melt of thin ice is done, melt will stall:

As we look forward to break-up through July, we expect to continue
to see a remarkably early break-up through the southern Chukchi Sea.
Farther north toward the multi-year ice, break-up is expected to be
significantly slower than locations to the south (and slower than
2017) due to the time it will take to melt the multi-year ice in the
area. The Beaufort Sea will likely see ice break up from the Alaska
coast northward as is common, however we expect to see the main ice
pack melt at a much slower rate than last year due to the much more
widespread multi-year ice that remains throughout much of the
Beaufort Sea this year.

Detailed information can be found in each pertinent section below.

This is the NWS 3 month forecast, and like all long range forecasts, is typically "wrong" and almost always conservative.
http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/raw/fz/fzak30.pafc.ico.afc.txt

[jdallen]

The record early ice loss in the Bering Sea is expected to continue as the Chukchi and the Beaufort start to melt. However the NWS long range forecast is that once the early melt of thin ice is done, melt will stall:

<snippage>

This is the NWS 3 month forecast, and like all long range forecasts, is typically "wrong" and almost always conservative.
http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/raw/fz/fzak30.pafc.ico.afc.txt

Considering the current administration's pressure on the EPA I'm not surprised. Considering the weakness of that "multi year ice" I think if they consider their statement seriously they are whistling in the dark.

[A-Team]

Let's be clear that this is just the distant Anchorage office forecast for US bays and coastal waters off Alaska. It is not a melting season forecast for the Arctic Ocean. It comes not from NOAA but a sub-agency NWS (formerly the Weather Bureau). Both are part of the US Dept of Commerce, with former Trump casino bankruptcy restructuring savior Wilbur Ross, 81, the current Secretary.

You can recognize NWS news releases at a glance: 8-point typewriter font awash in ALL CAP HEADERS with no graphics, continuing a proud tradition that began in 1870. Courier font is much better suited for distribution by telegraph* than maps or satellite imagery. NWS relies more on local weather knowledge of old hands than coupled computer models that risk introduction of the metric system:

"For Cape Krusenstern to Point Hope to 20 NM [[nautical miles]] offshore, sea ice is  expected to move away from the coast occasionally with northerly to  easterly winds, but will likely move back toward the coast during times of southerly winds."

* a system for transmitting messages from a distance along a wire, especially one creating signals by making and breaking an electrical connection.

The go-to forecaster for off-shore Alaska conditions, forecasts and history is Rick Thoman of NOAA. His twitter and climate.gov sites are two of the best:

https://twitter.com/AlaskaWx
https://www.climate.gov/author/rick-thoman

Note the very useful graphic below uses the Fahrenheit scale! Here Kotzbue is on that big bay north of the Bering Strait, Utqiagvik was called Barrow, and Deadhorse is ~ Prudhoe Bay.

[Thomas Barlow]

Meanwhile, the 2018 melting season on Mars may have stalled.
"Lead researcher Nicolas Thomas said Thursday the colors in the resulting image were also adjusted to best resemble those visible to the human eye."

'European Space Agency Releases 1st Image From Mars Orbiter'
"The European Space Agency has released its first image taken by a probe orbiting Mars, showing the ice-covered edge of a vast crater."
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/tech/European-Space-Agency-Releases-1st-Image-From-Mars-Orbiter-480953601.html

[Neven]

The ECMWF forecast (as provided by Tropical Tidbits) shows high pressure staying put over the CAB, but not nearly as strong as it was until recently. The AO Index points to this situation probably continuing into May. The big question, to me right now, is how clear skies will be during May.

[gerontocrat]

Whoops

[Greenbelt]

In the longer run, both GFS and ECMWF bring surface high pressure to the Barents Sea as well.
EDIT -- sorry I see now off the right side of Neven's prior image post also shows this, sorry for redundant

[JayW]

April 23-26, 2018, 78 hour loop of the Beaufort Sea.  Doubt there is much melting, but certainly a fair amount of wind driven displacement.

Contrast slightly increased for detail.

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/npp-gina-alaska-truecolor-images?page=3&search%5Bfeeds%5D%5B5%5D=1&search%5Bsensors%5D%5B3%5D=1

[oren]

April 23-26, 2018, 78 hour loop of the Beaufort Sea.  Doubt there is much melting, but certainly a fair amount of wind driven displacement.

My concern is there doesn't seem to be much refreezing going on in the opened cracks.

Elsewhere in the Arctic, we have been hearing that Fram export is quite low these days. The anomalously low ice area reported for the Greenland Sea certainly support this notion, but a look at the Barents shows IMHO that the export machine is humming but has just changed direction.
The same conclusion seems to be supported by the north-of-Svalbard ice killing zone, which gets vigorous imports into it.

[jdallen]

April 23-26, 2018, 78 hour loop of the Beaufort Sea.  Doubt there is much melting, but certainly a fair amount of wind driven displacement.

<snip>

It's a non-trivial decrease in Albedo is what it is... aside from the fragmentation of the ice that is taking place.

[bbr2314]

We are about where we were one month ahead of now in May of 2016 as of 4/26/2018, at least on the Pacific front. See 5/26/2016 vs. 4/26/2018 (2018 is much brighter, more snow)



I think this is important to note because May of 2016 saw the massive event in the Beaufort, but that kind of absorbed the "shock" of the heat that month and the Bering front advanced more slowly. The opposite is happening this year -- the Bering front has now broadened to encompass a much larger swath of entry, and the Beaufort shock capacity has been reduced by its massive decrease in volume. The Beaufort will still melt out all the same but it will go poof instead of isolating into Big Blocks (maybe a few "feeble floes").

IMO this comparison and the D10 forecast from the models portends a disastrous June over the Beaufort / Siberian Seas / peripheral CAB. It will basically look like 2016 but with one extra month of peak insolation on top. I expect we see a record minimum extent and area this year. The amount of heat incoming from both the ATL and the PAC is simply overwhelming everything else.

[JayW]

April 23-26, 2018, 78 hour loop of the Beaufort Sea.  Doubt there is much melting, but certainly a fair amount of wind driven displacement.

<snip>

It's a non-trivial decrease in Albedo is what it is... aside from the fragmentation of the ice that is taking place.

I agree. According to the ECMWF (and largely agreed upon by other models), the easterly winds north of Alaska are progged to pick up over the next 24-36 hours and persist for the next four days.  Forecast skill decreases rapidly, so I won't speculate beyond that, but it suggests the "rifting" in the Beaufort should continue in the near future.

https://weather.us/model-charts/euro/north-pole/wind-mean-direction/20180503-0000z.html

[gerontocrat]

The little table below is calculated from NSIDC regional Sea total change LESS Hudson and Okhotsk.
I did this as many regard both of those seas as physically separate from the main Arctic Ocean.

If one does that little bit of arithmetic it seems area loss reversed recently into area gain.

Area Change excluding Okhotsk and Hudson in Km2 18-Apr   -24,251 19-Apr   -29,493 20-Apr   -24,356 21-Apr    76 22-Apr    2,531 23-Apr   -190 24-Apr    12,677 25-Apr    10,548 26-Apr    5,304

[Sterks]

The ECMWF forecast (as provided by Tropical Tidbits) shows high pressure staying put over the CAB, but not nearly as strong as it was until recently. The AO Index points to this situation probably continuing into May. The big question, to me right now, is how clear skies will be during May.

And how will clear skies during May, may they come, affect the land? Rutgers' land snow cover departure suggests average advance of the snow "melt wave" (or better "melt front") over the big extents in Russia and Canada. A bit more delayed in the American continent but it seems to be catching up with climatological average, which is still "cold", compared to the past 10 years except 2017. 

[Niall Dollard]

Two animations of worldview (satellite) and Norwegian Met Ice charts, show that the open water to the north of Svalbard has decreased in size between 17 and 26 April.

This may seem contrary to the images posted by Uniquorn earlier - but such are the vagaries of ice movement/export.

[Hyperion]

Two animations of worldview (satellite) and Norwegian Met Ice charts, show that the open water to the north of Svalbard has decreased in size between 17 and 26 April.

This may seem contrary to the images posted by Uniquorn earlier - but such are the vagaries of ice movement/export.

But has it?
Perhaps being a bit of of a pederist but although the area of ocean with no ice may have increased, the fragmentation that caused this has produced an area with much less than full areal concentration. And flung the shrapnel well into the high SST kill zone. The latent heat absorbed by this ice committing hari-kari may buffer the high Arctic pack. But it's the blanket unraveling at the end of the day.

BTW Niall. Can you possibly datestamp the images you make gifs from? It makes it much easier to understand what you are looking at if you know the  chronology.

[binntho]

Perhaps being a bit of of a pederist ...

I hope not! You probably meant being a bit pedantic?

[romett1]

Heat travelling towards North Pole from the Atlantic side - May 02 - May 07 forecast. Images: https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/

[Alexander555]

I think it would be normal if their would be some extra ice north of Svalbard. Because there is a flow of warm water in that area. Otherwise it would not stay open the entire winter at a point so close to the North pole. And that flow is somewhere now at it's coldest point. If there is no extra ice now, it want be for this year.

[Hyperion]

Perhaps being a bit of of a pederist ...

I hope not! You probably meant being a bit pedantic?

Gotcha! 

[uniquorn]

Two animations of worldview (satellite) and Norwegian Met Ice charts, show that the open water to the north of Svalbard has decreased in size between 17 and 26 April.
This may seem contrary to the images posted by Uniquorn earlier - but such are the vagaries of ice movement/export.

Sorry if my images gave that impression. I thought amsr2 clearly showed the ice front moving toward Svalbard.
The worldview animation was to track the plucky flow which zoomed around the 'killing ground', though it does also show the speed at which individual floes are melting.
Here is a closer look from amsr2 uni-hamburg for this melting season.

[oren]

Thanks for the animation. I think it would be more accurate to say that the ice front north of Svalbard (on the left of the animation) advanced significantly on the last days of March, and has been stable since. On the other hand, the north-east front (at the top of the animation) has been slowly advancing during April, and made a big advance in the last few days.

[uniquorn]

With warm winds forecast for the Greenland sea next week, an animation for Baffin and Greenland seas for this melting season with yesterdays worldview for comparison.

uni-hamburg amsr2 ice concentration for Baffin and Greenland seas Mar21-Apr27.
Worldview terra/modis apr27

[Shared Humanity]

The ice is advancing rapidly but this is transport towards the Fram and, unless my eyes are deceiving me, the leading edge of the ice front is suffering from extensive melt.

[Niall Dollard]

But has it?
The latent heat absorbed by this ice committing hari-kari may buffer the high Arctic pack. But it's the blanket unraveling at the end of the day.

BTW Niall. Can you possibly datestamp the images you make gifs from? It makes it much easier to understand what you are looking at if you know the  chronology.

The Norwegian Met also produce a sea ice area chart for Svalbard (attached). Currently standing at  391,000 km² which is its peak so far this year. Ice area has been rising through April. The storms earlier in the year had a big impact on ice area. We saw the edge torn apart in February with a large open area to the north of the islands. I think this graph really shows how much the ice has been ravaged in this area through winter storms surges and warm currents.

It is more difficult to pick out some of the thinner ice on the satellite images, which is why I put up the ice chart images also. The ice edge is more or less the same to the NW of Spitsbergen Island with typical NE to SW movement of the ice into the Fram Strait. Over at the island to the NE of Sptizbergen (Nordaustlandet) ice has moved across westwards from the east to run along the north coast of that island. In addition the main fragmented pack edge has drifted a little further south to almost meet up with the ice north of Nordaustlandet.

Looking at the SSTs in the area north of Sptizbergen on the Norwegian Ice charts it shows that SSTs have been dropping a little over the passed 2 months. 27th April shows it between 0 and 2 C, 27th March has a small area > 2C and 27th Feb has a much larger area > 2C.

It is possible the overall pack edge moves further south as part of a more general movement of the pack away from the Pacific side and down over the Atlantic side. But of course that would ultimately condemn more ice for final melt out via the Fram Strait.

Re date stamps. I did date the first date of the animations and the last date of the animations, at the top left, but maybe they were scrolling too quickly.   

@ Uniquorn. No I wasn't trying to nit pic your images. It is always worthwhile to track individual chunks and see where they end up !

[Thomas Barlow]

This seems significant in the 2018 melting season, in case anyone missed it.

Russian North Pole camp - 12 days only were achieved due to instability of ice. Shortest by far I think? And I don't think they landed a cargo plane as they usually do (just helicopters and parachutists).
Is it just anecdotally interesting, or does it fit in as an example of the overall state of the Arctic Ocean icepack?

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2290.msg151807.html#msg151807

[Shared Humanity]

The overall state of the ice pack is highly fractured and mobile. While we follow closely the SIE and SIA measures, this new physical state of the ice pack has been, IMHO, permanently set in place. There is no going back to the large rafts of thick, ridged, MYI.

[jdallen]

The overall state of the ice pack is highly fractured and mobile. While we follow closely the SIE and SIA measures, this new physical state of the ice pack has been, IMHO, permanently set in place. There is no going back to the large rafts of thick, ridged, MYI.

There are additional factors in play here as well. It is not just ice age or thickness, but strength as well.

A non-visible effect of the increased heat is significant loss of compressive strength of the ice.  Ice at -10C has 1/5th the strength of that at -20 and degrades further from there.  This means the ice even if thick simply does not have the strength to support larger rafts as it cannot resist the forces being applied to it.

As such, we see more fracturing and smaller average floe sizes as a result.  This translates further into more mobility and less resistance to weather, and once a small enough size is reached = about ~100M or so - side melt becomes a significant contribution to volume loss.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1021134128038

[charles_oil]

Thomas - see the Barneo 2018 thread for the dates... & the (few) posts provided during the season.

Separately it looks like there is a Russian ship being commissioned to replace the floating camp in the future - so another victim of warming. See my post in 2018 North Pole Expeditions thread #14 March 30th.

[Pmt111500]

The overall state of the ice pack is highly fractured and mobile. While we follow closely the SIE and SIA measures, this new physical state of the ice pack has been, IMHO, permanently set in place. There is no going back to the large rafts of thick, ridged, MYI.

Yep, no solid pieces of MYI left thus the optimal model could simplify to something with icebergs from Greenland and 1 and 2-year ice. MYI is almost irrelevant nowadays.

[uniquorn]

uni-hamburg amsr2 and dmi ice temperature for the current melting season Mar21-Apr27

[Dharma Rupa]

The mean seems to have become the minimum.

[uniquorn]

The ice close to CAA and the string of floes making their way round the Beaufort are MYI. I'm not sure how much of the rest is.
Ascat melting season day78-116.
(hopefully one of us will volunteer to check ascat every day)

technical notes:
imagej: brightness/contrast 43,255 (some loss) CLAHE 63,255,2.2
gimp: duplicate last frames, scale to 700, delay 250
thanks to A-team for graphics tips

[uniquorn]

Heat travelling towards North Pole from the Atlantic side - May 02 - May 07 forecast. Images: https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/

yikes, another zero fram export event?
edit: maybe the models are confused.

[Telihod]

Is the temperature anomaly difference in the Labrador Sea caused by the different baselines (NOAA and Climate Reanalyzer)?

[subgeometer]

The mean seems to have become the minimum.

In recent years this is the point in the spring where80N temps can drop below the line, a period until the start of refreze, as in 2017.

Its going to spike again this year tho, GFS on Climate Analyser is showing a huge Atlantic heat intrusion starting about 3 days out and continuing until forecast end. The chart will go to maybe -5C if the forecast is to be believed, and remain there for days/ The pole will enjoy periods above freezing . The ECWMf forecast on windy tv is not quite extreme but shows a similar pattern of warm southerly winds on the Atlantic side, spreading to the Kara sea later

[uniquorn]

Beaufort Sea yesterday.

Worldview terra/modis, viirs brightness temperature band 15,night

[Gray-Wolf]

I'll bring this here from the area/extent thread.
The crux being that April melt does not give any feel for the minimum?
The degradation of the ice across Beaufort, currently ongoing, will surely have impact on the rest of the melt season bringing a more mobile pack and areas of dark water to harvest any incoming solar?
The 'stall' in ice loss is probably an illusion with fragmented ice filling in open water so fooling the 15% or more measure into seeing ice gain where none is occurring?

My thoughts are " your old road is rapidly changing" and that things we once held as true may no longer necessarily be so? The rapidity of ice breakup and reduction in floe sizes must have some say in how fast that ice melts out under good melt conditions?
If we keep on with HP dominance across the basin we might witness a start to the season not seen since 2012 and the ice then , I believe, will have been more resilient to today's?

[Daniel B.]

I'll bring this here from the area/extent thread.
The crux being that April melt does not give any feel for the minimum?
The degradation of the ice across Beaufort, currently ongoing, will surely have impact on the rest of the melt season bringing a more mobile pack and areas of dark water to harvest any incoming solar?
The 'stall' in ice loss is probably an illusion with fragmented ice filling in open water so fooling the 15% or more measure into seeing ice gain where none is occurring?

My thoughts are " your old road is rapidly changing" and that things we once held as true may no longer necessarily be so? The rapidity of ice breakup and reduction in floe sizes must have some say in how fast that ice melts out under good melt conditions?
If we keep on with HP dominance across the basin we might witness a start to the season not seen since 2012 and the ice then , I believe, will have been more resilient to today's?

I doubt it is an illusion.  The extent maps show that while the Beaufort is mostly open, the rest of the Arctic is ice covered.  That would be a remarkable amount of fragmentation.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[gerontocrat]

Extent and area loss as measured by NSIDC has been slow over the last few days. That is merely an observation - not a prediction.

Here is a prediction - warmth travelling north up the east coast of Greenland starting tomorrow to a maximum impact on Saturday will change things somewhat.

[gerontocrat]

It also looks like temperatures at 80+ degrees North will be different from 2017 at least for the next few days

[Dharma Rupa]

It also looks like temperatures at 80+ degrees North will be different from 2017 at least for the next few days

Something feels different about this year, but it is hard to find anything objective to make it clear... Just muttering about ice mobility, reminders of FDD...  For now we watch the Sunlight, and see if it spends a lot of time making it to the ground.

[litesong]

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It is good to hear that present Arctic sea ice maximums will return to 16+ million square kilometers & present Arctic sea ice will gain 8000+ cubic kilometers, back to 1980's levels........ NOT!!!

[litesong]

.... we watch the Sunlight, and see if it spends a lot of time making it to the ground.

..... & that solar TSI is at sub-normal levels.

[Daniel B.]

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It is good to hear that present Arctic sea ice maximums will return to 16+ million square kilometers & present Arctic sea ice will gain 8000+ cubic kilometers, back to 1980's levels........ NOT!!!

Why would you think that?

[oren]

I'll bring this here from the area/extent thread.
The crux being that April melt does not give any feel for the minimum?
The degradation of the ice across Beaufort, currently ongoing, will surely have impact on the rest of the melt season bringing a more mobile pack and areas of dark water to harvest any incoming solar?
The 'stall' in ice loss is probably an illusion with fragmented ice filling in open water so fooling the 15% or more measure into seeing ice gain where none is occurring?

My thoughts are " your old road is rapidly changing" and that things we once held as true may no longer necessarily be so? The rapidity of ice breakup and reduction in floe sizes must have some say in how fast that ice melts out under good melt conditions?
If we keep on with HP dominance across the basin we might witness a start to the season not seen since 2012 and the ice then , I believe, will have been more resilient to today's?

I think it's quite true that April extent does not give a feel for the minimum. Extent falls almost exclusively in the peripheral seas, some of them not even affecting the rest of the arctic, while the central basin even continues to thicken.
I do think this year might be somewhat different in terms of unpredictability, as it had a poor refreeze in a very specific area - Chukchi and Bering, and it had record early extent and area loss in the same region, plus it has lots of thin ice in the same region (see images). And this region does have implications for the rest of the arctic, both due to early advance of the melting front into the basin, and due to possible greater-than-usual warm Pacific water intrusion into the basin. But so much can happen from now to September that this is a weak effect.
Note that Beaufort had a worse start in 2016, and even 2015, so I'm not sure anything significant is happening there at the moment.
I also wish to note that while extent at maximum is very affected by the irrelevant Okhotsk, south Baffin, and other very peripheral locations, therefore subject to high variance, we still got the last three years become the lowest three years, hinting at some statistical change due to underlying physics.

[Alexander555]

It also looks like temperatures at 80+ degrees North will be different from 2017 at least for the next few days

Something feels different about this year, but it is hard to find anything objective to make it clear... Just muttering about ice mobility, reminders of FDD...  For now we watch the Sunlight, and see if it spends a lot of time making it to the ground.

I think we will see a very low september minimum. Very high anomolies at the Arctic ,almost the entire winter. And the cold that moved out was mainly over land. That has very little impact on the ice.

[jdallen]

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It is good to hear that present Arctic sea ice maximums will return to 16+ million square kilometers & present Arctic sea ice will gain 8000+ cubic kilometers, back to 1980's levels........ NOT!!!

Why would you think that?

Please don't bait people.    If you have a point to argue here (...the more they...), please offer your supporting facts.

[romett1]

Beaufort is moving fast as winds were favourable (Apr 28 - Apr 30). Also favourable winds expected for today. Images: Worldview and https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycomcice1-12/arctic.html

[Alexander555]

And on top of a warm Arctic winter. We now already have small positive temperature anomaly in big area's not that far from the equator for many weeks .Like in places like India, Pakistan.... These anomalies are not big, but they come on top of already high temperaures. Probably they have been creating these high anomalies whe have seen in Europe and other places the last weeks. And that extra heat is now going to move into the Arctic, for at least a week. Creating positive temperatures in several area's in the arctic. That's at least one extra bad week for the Arctic ice. And that small positive anomaly near the equator is still going on. That gives the possibility for some extra bad weeks for the Arctic. There are several subjects i have to dig in deeper. Like snow cover and cloud cover, and these special events. Like these sudden stratosferic warming events. That probably all have a big impact. But because of that extra heat i think we are going to see a very low september minimum.