Following on from post #1652 above, I wanted to compare the CMOS microwave maps from a) this year, 2018, to b) the record low extent year, 2012.
Anecdotally at least, the 2012 year was also notable for its preponderance of melt ponds, which is largely what CMOS measures during the melt season - rather than the ice depth, which is largely what is measured during the freeze season.
The CMOS maps for each day shown were downloaded from:
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/smos/png/ .
The first two map gifs shown below, are for 2018 and 2012, respectively.
The 2018 map gif is as in #1652 - showing the 40 days from 2018-05-17 to 2018-06-25 inclusive, with display lengths:
2.0 s for first and last day
0.1 s for the 38 intermediate days.
The 2012 map initially shows the same days as given above for 2018, and with the same delay lengths. It then extends in 10-day increments to approximately the end of the melt season, with display lengths
1.0 s for the intermediate days
2.0 s for the final day displayed, 2018-09-03.
Observations from gif 2 (and compared to gif 1):
o like 2018, 2012 was mostly beige on the starting date, 05-17, indicating essentially dry ice throughout most of the interior;
o 2012 surface water began appearing fast in early June;
o 2012 surface melt was more advanced than this year by the final comparison date, 06-25; the remaining large beige part corresponded roughly to the 'ice sanctuary' region North of the CAA and Greenland;
o by the next date shown in 2012, 2012-07-05, the beige had mostly disappeared even from the sanctuary region;
o the beige reappeared in the sanctuary region by 2012-08-14 - much of the ice outside that region had already melted out;
o the final date, 2012-09-03, appears to show in beige approximately the minimum ice extent for that year as constructed from other, independent data; it has a non-beige halo around it presumably corresponding to thin &/or slushy ice.
The third gif is also for 2012. It displays only 2 maps, for 2012-06-25 and 2012-09-03.
This third gif is intended to give an idea of how well the beige region on yesterday's date but in 2012, 2012-06-25, predicted the final extent at the end of the 2012 melt season, c. 2012-09-03.
It's seen that in 2012, the 06-25 beige region was larger than the final extent & largely encompassed it.
Will we see that again this year?
Intriguingly, this year still has a large beige region in the [CORRECTED: Eastern Siberian Sea (ESS)] (see 2018-06-25 map - the last map of the first gif). Will any of that ice remain at the end of the 2018 melt season?
The possibility of ice remaining in the [CORRECTED: Eastern Siberian Sea (ESS)] at the end of this year's melt season could be considered a weak prediction from these CMOS maps.
IGNORE THE COLOR LEGEND'S NUMERICAL SCALE & LABEL (the color order progression should be valid though) - DURING THE MELT SEASON THESE ARE NOT LEGITIMATE THICKNESS MEASUREMENTS.
Click on gifs to view day sequences.
