IJIS

[Espen]

IJIS is really heading south now April 17, 2013:

13,174,375 km2

Now at 2000s average, but with this attitude go below that within days, easily.

[Neven]

Thanks for opening this thread, Espen. It will be a useful central repository of everything concerning IJIS numbers.

[Neven]

So, two big centuries, that probably won't be revised. Has anyone seen where the drop is occurring? Probably Bering and Okhotsk, but I haven't checked.

I wonder when this drop will show up in the CT SIA numbers as well.

It's all foreplay, of course.

[Espen]

Neven,

That is the nice thing about this new forum! 
I got few more threads on my mind when the time is right!

[Laurent]

Yes, certainly Okhotsk :
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif

[Yuha]

Yes, certainly Okhotsk :

And southeastern Barents Sea.

[wanderer]

IJIS up to 13,283,594 km2 (April 18, 2013)

CT sea ice area now below 13.000 (12.986) (million sq. km)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png

[Neven]

Still very fickle, that IJIS, eh? Just like last year: lots of century breaks, followed by days of increases.

[Vergent]

IJIS is counting the fog banks off southern Greenland as ice. They have an algorythem problem. Last year they would put out a preliminary # and revise it later. The revisions were sometimes quite large.

V

[Shared Humanity]

Still very fickle, that IJIS, eh? Just like last year: lots of century breaks, followed by days of increases.

Maybe fickle but the graph sure shows a steep downward trend despite the recent slight uptick.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

[Shared Humanity]

If extent is dropping while SIA is holding up, does this mean the pack is spreading out? Is this a result of fracturing and refreeze?

[Artful Dodger]

If extent is dropping while SIA is holding up, does this mean the pack is spreading out? Is this a result of fracturing and refreeze?

No. CT SIA lags 1 to 2 days behind IJIS SIE. Read more on the 'blog. It's been discussed to death. 

[frankendoodle]

Maybe fickle but the graph sure shows a steep downward trend despite the recent slight uptick.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
[/quote]

There is something to be said for NSIDC displaying the 5 day rolling average on their graph. Much softer curves and easier to rectify.

[Shared Humanity]

Maybe fickle but the graph sure shows a steep downward trend despite the recent slight uptick.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

There is something to be said for NSIDC displaying the 5 day rolling average on their graph. Much softer curves and easier to rectify.
[/quote]

I agree the graph seems to suggest the possibility of a steep plunge, well past the early melts of previous years. The next couple of weeks should either confirm or assuage my fears.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

[Shared Humanity]

Yes, certainly Okhotsk :

And southeastern Barents Sea.

Also Bering.

[wanderer]

IJIS down to 12,864,844 km2 (April 26, 2013) 

[deep octopus]

JAXA's latest AMSR2 sea ice concentration image for April 29th showing some new polynyas opening up around Kara and Laptev. Will be interesting to see if a significant drop shows in the CT SIA in the next few days. Seems the western Siberian side of the Arctic (especially Barents) has taken a massive blow in the last week.

[dree12]

IJIS now at 12727813 km² (May 1, could be revised). We're following the 2000's average pretty closely at the moment.

[Espen]

IJIS at (a century) :12,584,375 km2 (May 6, 2013)  down from 12,699,063 km2

[Neven]

IJIS just recorded the biggest May daily drop since 2005, with 177,343 km2 (May 8th). As far as I can tell the biggest drop so far was on May 19th 2008 with 127,188 km2.

Of course, this number might be revised tomorrow, but there weren't any revisions for quite a few days now.

[Jim Pettit]

IJIS just recorded the biggest May daily drop since 2005, with 177,343 km2 (May 8th). As far as I can tell the biggest drop so far was on May 19th 2008 with 127,188 km2.

Of course, this number might be revised tomorrow, but there weren't any revisions for quite a few days now.

I noticed that. That completes (again assuming no revision) a four-day extent decrease of 357k km2. (Over that same four days, SIA has dropped by just 74k. In fact, SIA just had its greatest one-day increase in nearly a month. But I suspect that area will drop precipitously over the next few days.)

[dree12]

IJIS just recorded the biggest May daily drop since 2005, with 177,343 km2 (May 8th). As far as I can tell the biggest drop so far was on May 19th 2008 with 127,188 km2.

Of course, this number might be revised tomorrow, but there weren't any revisions for quite a few days now.

I noticed that. That completes (again assuming no revision) a four-day extent decrease of 357k km2. (Over that same four days, SIA has dropped by just 74k. In fact, SIA just had its greatest one-day increase in nearly a month. But I suspect that area will drop precipitously over the next few days.)

We are, however, entering a zone where the differential between years is at its minimum. The above-average melting periods are likely to be followed by below-average melting periods, and vice-versa. How much extent decreases doesn't seem to matter much until June. 2012 is an excellent example of this.

[Neven]

IJIS just recorded the biggest May daily drop since 2005, with 177,343 km2 (May 8th). As far as I can tell the biggest drop so far was on May 19th 2008 with 127,188 km2.

Of course, this number might be revised tomorrow, but there weren't any revisions for quite a few days now.

Heavily revised upwards, with 65K. So 'just' a 112K melt for the 8th.

[Espen]

IJIS: Has been growing for the last 2 days: 12,388,281 km2 (May 12, 2013) 

[Jim Pettit]

IJIS: Has been growing for the last 2 days: 12,388,281 km2 (May 12, 2013)

It's not unusual for extent to bounce up and down a bit at this time of year, of course, but, still, while the average extent drop for mid-May is about 50k km2 per day, it's notable that it's dropped just 25k over the past four days combined. (FWIW, much the same has happened with SIA; area has decreased by just 80k km2 over the past week, whereas in the previous two weeks before that, it dropped by 1.1 million km2.)

Of course, this is all just a bit of a temporary slowdown that won't make much of a difference in the end; nothing is going to stop the disappearance of all the easy ice well before mid-September.

[Espen]

IJIS: 12,230,000 km2 (May 13, 2013) down more than a 1½ century from May 12.

Still above 2000s average but below 2012 (118281 km2)

[Wipneus]

Sea ice monitor is still stuck on the 10th of May :-(

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e

[Espen]

Sea ice monitor is still stuck on the 10th of May :-(

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e

So is Bremen:

http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/

[Artful Dodger]

NASA: Three X-class Flares in 24 Hours

Third Update: May 14, 9 a.m. EDT

The sun emitted a third significant solar flare in under 24 hours, peaking at 9:11 p.m. EDT on May 13, 2013. This flare is classified as an X3.2 flare. This is the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far, surpassing in strength the two X-class flares that occurred earlier in the 24-hour period.

The flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection, or CME. The CME began at 9:30 p.m. EDT and was not Earth-directed. Experimental NASA research models show that the CME left the sun at approximately 1,400 miles per second, which is particularly fast for a CME. The models suggest that it will catch up to the two CMEs associated with the earlier flares. The merged cloud of solar material will pass by the Spitzer spacecraft and may give a glancing blow to the STEREO-B and Epoxi spacecraft. Their mission operators have been notified. If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from solar material.

Even if Earth Observation satellites do not have to go into protected mode, blogperience shows that this is often a period of slower satellite data updates.

[Neven]

Thanks, Lodger! That makes sense.

[Espen]

IJIS: 12,104,688 km2 (May 14, 2013) another century, on par with 2000s average but below 2012 (-210.781 km2) and above 2011 (109.844 km2)
.

[OldLeatherneck]

how

Last year as we were watching the dramatic loss of Arctic Sea Ice, I started plotting the IARC-JAXA data using anywhere from 6 weeks to 3 months for the X-axis.  It helps me get a better grasp of how the ice loss compares to selected previous years.

I'm noticing that this years seems to be a much bumpier ride than the previous years I've plotted.  I'm attributing this to the fact that the ice is thinner and severely fractured, making it more vulnerable to being compacted or disbursed.  Right now, I won't start getting excited about the current state unless it deviates from previoius years by more than 2 weeks.

If anyone else finds this useful, I can post it weekly, monthly or when something really dramatic happens.  I can also change the X-axis to 6-weeks, 2 months or any other requested time period.

[Espen]

OldLeatherneck;

All data is welcome! I think the 2 most important comparable years is 11 and 12.

[Peter Ellis]

It's seemed bumpier to me ever since the new satellite went up.  Possibly they're still working out the kinks of the detection algorithm, possibly extent really is that bumpy and the new satellite does a better job of capturing it.  Regardless, until we know why it's that much bumpier than previous years I wouldn't bother looking at daily values at all, I'd take 2- or 3-day averages as a minimum, or stick to the 5-day average data produced by NSIDC.

[Wipneus]

Sea Ice Monitor is updating again. May 11, 12, 13, and 14 (partly) images are missing.

[Wipneus]

Announcement: Jaxa delevering standard AMSR2 products, including sea ice concentration:

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2013/05/20130517_shizuku_e.html

[Peter Ellis]

Almost a century break upwards today!  Looking back through the images, it looks like there is a load of "milky swirl" ice in the Bering and off the Labrador coast, and this is variably detected from day to day as clouds pass overhead and obscure (or sometimes reinforce) the signal.  Clearly the greater sensitivity of the new satellite will take some further optimisation of algorithms to deliver stable results.

[Espen]

IJIS: 11,968,594 km2 (May 20, 2013)  for the first time this season under 12 mil. Pretty late up to "today's standard", I can almost hear someone singing recovery?!

[wanderer]

Temperatures have been very low over the last two weeks. I think rapid melting will start to kick in soon!

[Espen]

Yes +temps only came to Kimmirut a few days ago: http://www.kimmirutweather.com/

[ChrisReynolds]

NCEP/NCAR surface air temperatures from 8 to 18/5/13: -2 to 3 degC over the Canadian (Western) side of the Arctic. +3 to 4 degC over Barents and Kara. Within +/-1degC of climatology over the rest of the pack.

[Espen]

IJIS: 11,941,094 km2 (May 21, 2013)  74,219 km2 over 2012 and just above the 2000s average.

[wanderer]

Comparing May 21 2012 and May 21 2013 on http://earthdata.nasa.gov/labs/worldview/

it seems that there was much less ice in 2012.

[Espen]

Wanderer;

Not realy! :
SFJigloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=05&fd=19&fy=2012&sm=05&sd=19&sy=2013

[wanderer]

Espen;
I believe you, but your link isn't working.

Whatever it was, please try to make it work :-)

It just seemed to me that melt North of Europe/Russia and in Beaufort was much more advanced this time last year.

[Bob Wallace]

People might find it interesting to look at the shape of the "final freeze and beginning melt" for this year on those areas that boarder Europe/Asia.

Here's the East Siberian region graph.  2012/13 didn't produce the normal flat-topped curve of past years. 

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.9.html


Laptev and Chukchi are also less flat on top than they have been most years in the past.  The Kara was more pointed than usual.  Barents produced a real spike.

I take that as a sign that a lot less thickening occurred.  Maximums were hit and lost quickly.

[Espen]

Wanderer:

Sorry about that!

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=15&fy=2007&sm=06&sd=14&sy=2012

[Espen]

IJIS date comparison:

IJIS: 11,894,688 km2 (May 23, 2013) well above 2012 11,733,906 km2 (+160,782 km2) only 2009  (11,908,906 km2) was a fraction (+ 14,216 km2) higher over the last 10 years.

[Neven]

Indeed, we're experiencing an extremely slow start to the melting season (will publish the first ASI update tomorrow discussing this). I'm actually surprised that fake skeptics haven't jumped on this yet. Probably afraid to get bitten in the ass again...

[wanderer]

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

Temperatures have been lower, I expect this will change soon.