The 2018/2019 freezing season

[Aluminium]

January 21 - February 2.

[gerontocrat]

The attached image is from Japan's Net Office (Climate System Monitoring)
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/

You can see the SSW in late December / early January.

Is there any significance when the stratosphere suddenly cools?

[oren]

January 21 - February 2.

The Atlantic strikes again, which is how it went from 10th to 4th.

[Neven]

More data, SAT for January. Second lowest Arctic-wide for the last 15 years, all sectors down compared to last three years:

[Davidsf]

The difference between 2016 and 2019 air temps is quite striking, but interesting how other factors are weighing in heavily since extent seems to be lagging. Ocean salinity (and temps?) perhaps, as Oren mentions above. Or more likely I'm greatly oversimplifying it.

[kassy]

The last colder year is 2008. 2016 is the anomalous one so this could just be a regression to the mean.

[Niall Dollard]

With low pressure dominant in the western Arctic basin, ESRL is showing an anticlockwise circulation around the Beaufort Gyre over the coming few days.

[Phil42]

I think the Pacific sector may see some further decline / slow gain in the coming week.

There is a hurricane-force cyclone off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula (https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1092868696102494208). According to ECMWF it will maintain a lot of its power through the weekend and wander further north-east towards the Bering straight. There's a good possibility that this cyclone with the resulting waves up to 10m bring some disruption to sea ice in the Bering and Okhotsk Sea (attachment 1 is the forecast for Saturday).

Also temperature anomalies are being forcasted to stay a lot above normal over Bering, Chuckhi and Beaufort area in the coming week (attachment 2).

[uniquorn]

amsr2-uhh, atlantic front, jan11-feb5.
Polarview, between Svalbard and FJL, feb5
No predictions  edit: Well, perhaps a smaller contribution from Kara to the CAB as the year goes on. That possible up or downwelling north of Svalbard is starting to look very persistent.

[uniquorn]

Revenge of the SSW or just 'quite similar to last year'?
amsr2-uhh, Pacific, jan11-feb5

[jdallen]

Revenge of the SSW or just 'quite similar to last year'?
amsr2-uhh, Pacific, jan11-feb5

More than passing resemblance to last year.

Phil42 earlier reported a major storm with hurricane force winds and 10M waves off the Kamchatka peninsula.  That is going to drag heat north in a major way and disrupt the existing ice.

With sunlight returning and the equinox just under 6 weeks away the balance of heat exchange is already starting to slip back in favor of open water.  We may not see a lot more Bering Sea ice formation except near the coast lines, or via export from the Chukchi.

[gerontocrat]

Revenge of the SSW or just 'quite similar to last year'?
amsr2-uhh, Pacific, jan11-feb5

More than passing resemblance to last year.

Phil42 earlier reported a major storm with hurricane force winds and 10M waves off the Kamchatka peninsula.  That is going to drag heat north in a major way and disrupt the existing ice.

With sunlight returning and the equinox just under 6 weeks away the balance of heat exchange is already starting to slip back in favor of open water.  We may not see a lot more Bering Sea ice formation except near the coast lines, or via export from the Chukchi.

Last year the Okhotsk and Sea of Japan were really cold -Siberian high pressure. This seemed to encourage warm and windy weather coming up the North Pacific to hit the Bering Sea. The Okhotsk froze, the Bering did not.

This year behaved very differently until the last week of January. But since then a similar weather pattern seems to have taken hold.

[Thomas Barlow]

Warm in Bering.

[uniquorn]

A comparison of Bering sea ice from 2015-2019, jan1-feb8 using ImageJ edge detect on amsr2-uhh. Some lower concentration data has been removed to clean up the animation so this should only be seen as a guide.

[Paladiea]

Pictured: Beaufort Gyre on the same day (Feb 9th) 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2012, and 2010. Ran the pics through a sharpening algorithm to make cracks under the clouds more visible.

[Niall Dollard]

The Nenana Ice Classic reported some extraordinary low figures for the ice thickness on the Tanana river. Somehow they are showing no increase since January reading (Only 16 inches)

Surely there is some mistake with this.

Rick Thoman seems to think so. He has tweeted that the NWS also take readings on the Tanana and their thickness figure recently was more like 28 inches. 

[Aluminium]

January 31 - February 12.

[Sciguy]

The Nenana Ice Classic reported some extraordinary low figures for the ice thickness on the Tanana river. Somehow they are showing no increase since January reading (Only 16 inches)

Surely there is some mistake with this.

Rick Thoman seems to think so. He has tweeted that the NWS also take readings on the Tanana and their thickness figure recently was more like 28 inches.

It may not be an error.  Temperatures have been way above normal in Alaska this winter:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/02/13/strange-days-winter-temperatures-have-been-way-above-normal-northernmost-part-united-states/?utm_term=.021e09db9bdb

Part of an alarming trend in recent years, temperatures have been scarily above normal this month at the northernmost point of the United States.

Through the first 12 days of February, Utqiaġvik (previously known as Barrow) is running 21 degrees warmer than normal. On Friday, readings soared as high as 30 to 50 degrees above normal for the date across Alaska’s North Slope, a region north of the Arctic Circle.

The combination of warmer-than-normal conditions and significant storminess was enough to create open water in parts of the region. This kind of weather is an extreme rarity in the middle of winter.

Temperatures even ticked above freezing in Utqiaġvik, which is something that has only happened in winter a handful of times since the early 1900s. The 33-degree high on Feb. 8 is one of the top 10 warmest readings so early in the year, and the third-warmest for this point in February.

Edit: Since this is a US news source, I assume the temperatures are being reported in Farenheit, not Celsius.

[uniquorn]

Warmer air over the beaufort, feb15.
Worldview terra/modis and viirs,bt15day.  https://go.nasa.gov/2SWeUe9

edit: blue ~-40C, red ~-20C, yellow ~-6C on the brightness temperature image (warmer but not warm)

[uniquorn]

Following on from the previous post, here is ascat, jan1-feb16. Having seen all the ITP buoys in the beaufort move north recently, several surges towards the atlantic side are visible this year in the animation below. Thicker Beaufort ice has been pushed away from the coast in this way since 2015. This would appear to be significantly further.
Please see https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2417.msg188990.html#msg188990 for a historical comparison from 2010-2018.

[Niall Dollard]

The Nenana Ice Classic reported some extraordinary low figures for the ice thickness on the Tanana river. Somehow they are showing no increase since January reading (Only 16 inches)

Surely there is some mistake with this.

Rick Thoman seems to think so. He has tweeted that the NWS also take readings on the Tanana and their thickness figure recently was more like 28 inches.

It may not be an error.  Temperatures have been way above normal in Alaska this winter:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/02/13/strange-days-winter-temperatures-have-been-way-above-normal-northernmost-part-united-states/?utm_term=.021e09db9bdb

Part of an alarming trend in recent years, temperatures have been scarily above normal this month at the northernmost point of the United States.

Through the first 12 days of February, Utqiaġvik (previously known as Barrow) is running 21 degrees warmer than normal. On Friday, readings soared as high as 30 to 50 degrees above normal for the date across Alaska’s North Slope, a region north of the Arctic Circle.

The combination of warmer-than-normal conditions and significant storminess was enough to create open water in parts of the region. This kind of weather is an extreme rarity in the middle of winter.

Temperatures even ticked above freezing in Utqiaġvik, which is something that has only happened in winter a handful of times since the early 1900s. The 33-degree high on Feb. 8 is one of the top 10 warmest readings so early in the year, and the third-warmest for this point in February.

Edit: Since this is a US news source, I assume the temperatures are being reported in Farenheit, not Celsius.

I can see Rick Thoman's point though. Whatever about differences from normal, there had been sufficient amount of cold to thicken the ice during the period between the two ice measurements. But yet they are reporting not one inch thicker and this despite 9 days when it was below -27 C. (See temperatures from nearby Fairbanks Airport).

There was a short time when temps actually maxed slightly above zero - but hardly enough to melt ice. I wonder are the ice thickness measurements made at just one spot or an average ?

The only other thing I can think of (other than it being just a plain reading error) is maybe there were some anthropogenic discharges into the Tanana river upstream at Fairbanks which thinned the ice ?

[uniquorn]

The only other thing I can think of (other than it being just a plain reading error) is maybe there were some anthropogenic discharges into the Tanana river upstream at Fairbanks which thinned the ice ?

Wild guess - permafrost depth, warmer river water?

Update on the big chunk in the Nares, now 2chunks, possibly more, jan15-feb18. The animation does cast some doubt on 3m ice in the Lincoln Sea. https://go.nasa.gov/2T2tII4

[gerontocrat]

I get the impression that a new weather pattern is getting entrenched in the Arctic.

Precipitation in Greenland is switching from well below average to well above average,
The contrast in temperature anomalies between the Pacific and Atlantic halves of the Arctic is impressive and looks like continuing for some time.

But I am not a meteorologist.

[FrostKing70]

How close are we to the maximum for the year?   I seem to recall it usually occurs in early to mid March?

[FrostKing70]

Found a table of the recent maximum and associated date:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/arctic-sea-ice-maximum-second-lowest/

[jdallen]

How close are we to the maximum for the year?   I seem to recall it usually occurs in early to mid March?

Found a table of the recent maximum and associated date:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/arctic-sea-ice-maximum-second-lowest/

Averaged, looks like it should be about 3 weeks out.

Curiously, I think there is still a significant probability we could see a new low max extent.

[Klondike Kat]

How close are we to the maximum for the year?   I seem to recall it usually occurs in early to mid March?

Found a table of the recent maximum and associated date:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/arctic-sea-ice-maximum-second-lowest/

Averaged, looks like it should be about 3 weeks out.

Curiously, I think there is still a significant probability we could see a new low max extent.

I think that possibility has been exhausted already.  According to NSIDC, the recent extent is 14.492 million km2.  That already exceeds the maximum for both 2018 (14.475) and 2017 (14.42).  If the current rate of growth continues, this year will surpass 2016 (14.522) and 2015 (14.517) maxima in two days.  After that, it is anyone's guess.  Currently, extent is 9th lowest, and based on previous years, I would predict 2019 will fall somewhere between 5th and 10th.  But what do I know?

[jdallen]

How close are we to the maximum for the year?   I seem to recall it usually occurs in early to mid March?

Found a table of the recent maximum and associated date:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/arctic-sea-ice-maximum-second-lowest/

Averaged, looks like it should be about 3 weeks out.

Curiously, I think there is still a significant probability we could see a new low max extent.

I think that possibility has been exhausted already.  According to NSIDC, the recent extent is 14.492 million km2.  That already exceeds the maximum for both 2018 (14.475) and 2017 (14.42).  If the current rate of growth continues, this year will surpass 2016 (14.522) and 2015 (14.517) maxima in two days.  After that, it is anyone's guess.  Currently, extent is 9th lowest, and based on previous years, I would predict 2019 will fall somewhere between 5th and 10th.  But what do I know?

For NSIDC, yes. I was looking most recently at JAXA, which still has lower numbers.

[Sterks]

Jaxa can't make it either. Already above 14M...

[uniquorn]

<snippage>
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. <snip>
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1259.msg143664.html#msg143664

Having taken a year to reach 'best efforts' production of difficulty 3/10 here are 339 days up to feb17. Quality has been sacrificed to keep size down to ~9MB mp4 though, in some ways, that helps when looking at the overall picture.

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.

... and it's brighter (within the grey ice) when the ice is moving faster.
Note the movement along the interface of old/new ice and the surges towards the end in the Beaufort/Chukchi. Ascat images are affected by weather, particularly in summer, but the ice movement is still visible and it is valuable background information.
apologies in advance to anyone affected by flashing images
edit: no land mask as I think the weather effects over land are probably useful to some

 

[oren]

Despite any seizure I may have had watching this, thank you uniquorn for your "A-Team uptake" and amazing animations.

[Feeltheburn]

Curiously, I think there is still a significant probability we could see a new low max extent.

Not possible. Currently at 14,085,455 km2
Already exceeds the maxima for 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and likely others before it's through.

[uniquorn]

Thanks Oren. Would probably only get 2/10 for including summer and no land mask. 
amsr2-uhh, peripheral seas, dec1-feb21.

edit: It may be a very short freezing season for the Bering sea.

[Feeltheburn]

Found a table of the recent maximum and associated date:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/arctic-sea-ice-maximum-second-lowest/

The table must have a 5- or 10-day moving average because March 4, 2014 was 15,007,000 according to the NSIDC spreadsheet.

[Aluminium]

February 10-22.

[uniquorn]

With the sun coming up over the Kara sea here is the Vil'kitskogo Strait (from Kara to Laptev) through clouds, feb9-22. Worldview viirsbt15day. https://go.nasa.gov/2IxB5DF

[El Cid]

It seems to me that the current relatively large extent is just a mirage: dispersed ice in the Atlantic - prone to quick meltout as soon as it gets a bit warmer and the Bering -already low on extent - will now probably weaken further due to consistent warmth there and will evaporate quickly come the melt season. We could get very fast melting during late spring/early summer if things stay like this

[Klondike Kat]

It seems to me that the current relatively large extent is just a mirage: dispersed ice in the Atlantic - prone to quick meltout as soon as it gets a bit warmer and the Bering -already low on extent - will now probably weaken further due to consistent warmth there and will evaporate quickly come the melt season. We could get very fast melting during late spring/early summer if things stay like this

Quite possibly.  But can you say with any certainty that this is different from previous years.  The metrics have not changed over time.

[El Cid]

I am sure gerontocrat has great charts about this. I only looked at

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/sea-ice-comparison-tool/

and I saw that every year (except for 2018) Bering had more ice than in 2019. Considering the heat that will hit the Bering & Chukchi Sea, it seems likely that this area will probably be quite weak this summer.

We'll see. It is a very complex system, and I know that it is quite futile to forecast any given year, still...we can try

[uniquorn]

uni-bremen smos is helpful for comparison of peripheral ice thickness up to 50cm. Here is 2011-2019 for feb23.
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/smos/png/

[Sterks]

Looking at the charts above, there's nothing really exceptional that can help us predict summer outcome I think. Except perhaps a weak ice at the start for the Pacific side, which has become the norm it seems.

But hey look at 2012 extent in Bering by this date, we all know how it ended. And in 2014 it looked like Barents was heading to stay season-free, it ended season-full.

[bbr2314]

The Atlantic front is way S vs normal (but also much circumscribed in Baffin). In fact Halifax is on the verge of being iced in for the first time since 1987 (which happened in April).

[uniquorn]

Looking at the charts above, there's nothing really exceptional that can help us predict summer outcome I think. Except perhaps a weak ice at the start for the Pacific side, which has become the norm it seems.

But hey look at 2012 extent in Bering by this date, we all know how it ended. And in 2014 it looked like Barents was heading to stay season-free, it ended season-full.

Agreed, comparison of one random date doesn't help much. Perhaps an average a few consecutive dates would be better. There is also the possiblity of (very) approximate measurement with pixel counting.

A weak end to the freezing season for bering/chukchi, Worldview terra modis, feb24.
https://go.nasa.gov/2Iw1xNM

edit: update on the atlantic side. Large floes breaking up as they drift towards the Svalbard coast, probably as the 'glue ice' melts. Smaller floes along the drift line from the up/downwelling. Goodbye waves further south in the Barents.
The path of the warm current still visible all the way to FJL.  https://go.nasa.gov/2GLz196

@bbr I can't see the first image

[bbr2314]

#byebyebering

[uniquorn]

#byebyebering

Probably. Some ice in the Gulf of Anadyr may survive the upcoming warm spell but, like last year, the new ice in open water has no resistance to air temperatures down to -5C(ish). Southern Chukchi also very weak. Meanwhile thicker ice on the Atlantic side heads for the exit.

Refreeze on the coast of the Anzhu islands (laptev/ess), feb12-26, worldview viirsbt15d and terramodis.
click on image to run.

[Jim Hunt]

A new (to me at least) "prototype" combined CryoSat-2/SMOS Arctic sea ice thickness product from the Finnish Meteorological Institute , including gridded data:

http://ice.fmi.fi/data/arctic/cs2-smos-nrt-sea-ice-thickness/

[Aluminium]

February 20-27.

There is unusual ice loss in the Bering Sea... Two years in a row.

[El Cid]

"There is unusual ice loss in the Bering Sea"

Given the continued warmth around Bering and Chukchi this looks set to continue...

[SimonF92]

Its colder in Texas than on the North Slope today. In February. This will be preconditioning for melt-vulnerability.

[uniquorn]

Mercator 0m salinity, Bering to Kara, jan-feb for background info.