The 2019 melting season

[GoSouthYoungins]

ALL HAIL A-TEAM. LONG MAY HE REIGN.

[be cause]

no wonder I couldn't sleep tonight .. Welcome back A-team !   b.c.

[wdmn]

Just wanted to share tealight/nico sun's ice concentration map from the 20th of May. Not sure how it compares to previous years, but to my novice eyes, given what many of you have been saying about ice moving from the Pacific to Atlantic side due to winds/currents, it does not look good at all.

[Aluminium]

May 17-21.

[Rich]

Thank for the image Aluminum. Looks like quite a crack emanating from the Siberian Islands toward the coast.

The amount of ice connecting the main pack of ice to the coast on the Pacific side is shrinking. A piece near Barrow that doesn't look like it will last long and where the Chuchki meets Russia.

Does the whole thing speed up much when the coastal connections are lost?

[epiphyte]

May 17-21.

That's beyond scary. Is there anywhere important that isn't fading fast?

[oren]

May 17-21.

Seems the disturbing movement away from the Beaufort, into the Fram/Barents is continuing. Hopefully Neven's forecast is right and this sustained movement will subside soon.

In other news, aptly named A-Team is back, with A-class material. A happy day on the ASIF.

[Ice Shieldz]

Holy mother of some else's god, is A-Team going to be posting again!!!???

Aluminum thanks for your ice concentration gifs and abiding by a consistent naming convention for your files - that made it easier for me to compile several of them into an April 19th to May 19th animation. Please see oren's post below for the actual animation.

EDIT: For those interested, I uploaded the animation as a 698px wide mp4 file to a remote web server, and img embedded the file link directly in this message, but that only worked on Safari browser - should have checked other browsers. Anyways, to have an mp4 file be playable on screen, instead of requiring a click to open in a separate window, ftp/upload the file to a server, if you have access to one, then follow oren's guidance below and embed the file link with url instead of img, which seems to work cross platform in multiple browsers, although the video appears smaller than it actually is. On a final note, the mp4 is compressed for streaming.

[oren]

For those like me who are interested, here is Ice Shieldz' link as a URL, hopefully this works.

[jdallen]

I've been browsing worldview and here's the thing that strikes me thinking about the six odd years that I have been watching the ice on this forum; no one region (well maybe the Bering) is especially bad or "worst" that we have seen.  It is hard to quantify, but what stands out is no region is in "good" shape.  Metrics across the arctic for area, thickness and extent all seem to be in the bottom three worst of our record, with few exceptions. Visually, anecdotally across the basin the ice quality looks awful, and I'm waiting to watch melt ponds break across the basin like a nasty rash.

The metaphor I come back to is a punch-drunk boxer swaying helplessly after climbing up off the mat.

Instead of looking for 2+ sigma events that could mangle the ice, we are hoping for 2+ sigma events to prevent a repeat of 2012.  That, by itself is quite a change. One good shot, and it's over, but worse, it no longer needs to be a haymaker to put us into 2012 territory.

[BenB]

I agree that up to now nowhere has stood out as exceptionally bad, but Beaufort is beginning to look pretty awful:



The open water is probably mainly related to ice drift, but there is clear surface melting and melt ponding going on as well. The forecast is for high (above zero) temperatures for the coming week, so it's only likely to get worse.

[Neven]

ECMWF weather forecast for coming 6 days: Two more days of ice pulling away from the Beaufort Sea coast, and then slow things down, but Day 6 (bottom right) may be indicating a return to bad synoptics for the ice, with high pressure taking over the Central Arctic again. Day 7 to 10 are more emphatic, but they're too unreliable, so I generally don't post those.

[JayW]

132 hour loop, Beaufort sea.  Band I1 (red/visible) May 16, 12Z - May 22, 0Z.
http://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=jpss&z=3&im=60&ts=1&st=20190519111138&et=20190522041913&speed=130&motion=loop&map=1&lat=0&opacity%5B0%5D=1&hidden%5B0%5D=0&pause=0&slider=-1&hide_controls=1&mouse_draw=0&follow_feature=0&follow_hide=0&s=rammb-slider&sec=northern_hemisphere&p%5B0%5D=band_i01&x=16784&y=20096

[johnm33]

Worth looking at this to compare

[oren]

ECMWF weather forecast for coming 6 days: Two more days of ice pulling away from the Beaufort Sea coast, and then slow things down, but Day 6 (bottom right) may be indicating a return to bad synoptics for the ice, with high pressure taking over the Central Arctic again. Day 7 to 10 are more emphatic, but they're too unreliable, so I generally don't post those.

I normally leave synoptics to my betters, but isn't the day 3-4 setup highly supportive of ice export into the Barents/Fram?

[Jim Hunt]

Wind-driven ice motion has been extraordinary this freeze/melt season.

Welcome back, and it has indeed!

The Oden made a remarkable observation of open water at the north pole on 25 Aug 18, photographing a walrus there, messing with a research sled.

See below.

This and a few little things like ice thickness went seriously under-reported

Melt pond season is (almost?) upon us, so these CryoSat-2 sea ice thickness maps relate to the end of April. A comparison of 2019 with 2012. Not exactly apples versus oranges, but the 2019 version merges CS2 with SMOS around the edges.

P.S. Endeavouring to compare apples with apples I've discovered that the Alfred Wegener Institute makes NRT CS2 and merged CS2/SMOS data available at: ftp://ftpsrv2.awi.de/sea_ice/product/

See the last image below.

[be cause]

I see the walrus brought supplies . Sadly the reassuring mountainous ice behind him has long since been exported via Fram . I would like to see a photo same time and place this sunner .. b.c.

[Pavel]

The weather conditions are perfect for the MYI export and we'll have mostly FYI remaining at the North Pole. I'm also concerned about the possible early surface melting at the North Pole so we may have many holes by the end of season

[Sterks]

ECMWF weather forecast for coming 6 days: Two more days of ice pulling away from the Beaufort Sea coast, and then slow things down, but Day 6 (bottom right) may be indicating a return to bad synoptics for the ice, with high pressure taking over the Central Arctic again. Day 7 to 10 are more emphatic, but they're too unreliable, so I generally don't post those.

I normally leave synoptics to my betters, but isn't the day 3-4 setup highly supportive of ice export into the Barents/Fram?

Yes, and with high pressures parked over Greenland I would say day 1-6, but true that 1-4 seem most supportive

[Tor Bejnar]

Worth looking at this to compare
…

My IE shows this as a little box with an X.  The link is
https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycomcice1-12/navo/beaufortictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif
"Security" is bad, but I go to this Navy site with peace of mind.

[Rich]

I'm just a new layperson / lurker here so not sure what this means.....but it looks like there could be a continuous line of blue water from the Beaufort Sea  meandering all the way around the coast to the Laptev Sea within a week or two.

I think the last piece to detach will be in the Chuchki.

Whatever sticky resistance is currently being offered via the coastal connection will be severed. The pressure toward the Atlantic seems to be growing.

Take it with a grain. I'm just a newbie.

[Phil.]

Wind-driven ice motion has been extraordinary this freeze/melt season.

Welcome back, and it has indeed!

The Oden made a remarkable observation of open water at the north pole on 25 Aug 18, photographing a walrus there, messing with a research sled.

Not the only interested local on that trip;

[Jim Hunt]

Not the only interested local on that trip

Speaking of which, a couple of reminders of Oden's visit to the North Pole in 2016:

[RoxTheGeologist]

it looks like we started getting sediment in the water in front of the MacKenize a few days ago. The 16th seemed to be pretty clear, the 21st cloudy.

[be cause]

algal bloom ? .. b.c.

or .. you are right Rox .. the brown patches growing out from the delta across the ice suggests flow and other years esp. 2016 show this is exactly on cue ..

[gerontocrat]

algal bloom ? .. b.c.

I go for sediment - the flood comes in a rush bringing vast quantities of silt etc that flows and spreads as it hits the ocean.

[be cause]

Cheers Gerontocrat .. I had just corrected my post .. although the green tinge may well be algae too .. b.c.

[RoxTheGeologist]

algal bloom ? .. b.c.

I go for sediment - the flood comes in a rush bringing vast quantities of silt etc that flows and spreads as it hits the ocean.

Looks like it started on the 17th, day 126, slap bang in the middle of the flow data.

[Michael Hauber]

Here is a recent photo of sediment.



From Cat 6 blog.

Of course not all sediment will look exactly the same.

[be cause]

this winter and spring if you only followed dmi80 you would expect us to be in recovery mode this year . The cold has been hugging Greenland and the old ice as it passed to it's graveyard in the N. Atlantic .

For the last 4 weeks dmi80 has tracked 2018 incredibly closely . This day last year dmi80 temps dropped below the mean , where they essentially stayed for the next 3 months ...
 
If this year it is different , potentially everything will be .

I would assume a huge amount of energy would be involved in producing an air temp of 1'C above mean as opposed to 1'C below for any length of time above 80'N ?
 
And what energy no longer needs to be expended because of export of thick cold ice this season ?

How large has the energy balance shifted in the last few months and recent days toward a BOE ?
 
Does the living planet look like it may gift Greta with the most powerful symbol of the threat that awaits if we do not step back right now from consuming our own future ?  b.c.

nite nite

[GoSouthYoungins]

it looks like we started getting sediment in the water in front of the MacKenize a few days ago. The 16th seemed to be pretty clear, the 21st cloudy.

And on the 22nd, smoke (I'm pretty sure, from fires in Alberta).

The forecast has calmed a tiny bit as it has approached but the next two days are still going to be much hotter than today, and I'll be surprised if the fast ice around the delta isn't in bits and pieces by he 26th's imagery.

The fires throughout the canada are bad and likely to get much much worse. If the smokes settles on arctic ice, it is a death blow. The forecast was far out as is meaningful is terrible. Luckily it won't be windy, so the short term fire outlook is okayish, but the super heat causes dryness and the fuel in these areas is extremely abundant. The severe anomalies are currently north of the current fires, but this weather makes fires possible closer and closer to the arctic.

[magnamentis]

Not meaning to be overly pedantic, just think it's a distinction worth making.

it's not overly pedantic, on the contrary, it's obvious and self-evident and this is the probable reason why it's not talked about that much. what i'm saying is that the echo to your repeated mention of this is not because we don't believe you, but because i for one think, yeah, sure, has been clear from day one and nobody ever said otherwise.

so we fully agree and sometimes it's worth to remember that one fact does often not exclude another. mentioning one reason does not mean it's the only reason etc. etc.

hence all good you're 100% correct with your assessment.

[Rich]

Random observation.

After watching the gif that Aluminum posted in #953 above, I was very interested in the major crack developing across the East Siberian Sea over the last few days

I checked a map of ocean depth in the area and this crack is developing across arguably the shallowest shelf in the Arctic. From what I can tell, less than 10m depth.

It occurs to me that another part of the story of 2019 is warm subsurface water getting pushed against the coasts and weakening the perimeter defenses.

[Neven]

Right. Wind-driven ice motion has been extraordinary this freeze/melt season. By translocating thicker, older ice into zones that will melt out later in the summer, or exporting ice altogether out of the basin via the Fram, Nares and Svalbard-FJL chain plus blocking Kara Sea ice on the import side, wind-driven ice motion may challenge conventional bottom and top melt this year as the leading ice volume loss mechanism.

Welcome back, A-Team. 

This animation of weekly ice age distribution maps from Feb 5th to May 6th shows how much of the MYI has been pushed towards the Atlantic exit, while some of the oldest ice is sucked off by Nares, and the 'Arm' in the Beaufort doesn't look all that strong this year:

[oren]

This animation of weekly ice age distribution maps from Feb 5th to May 6th shows how much of the MYI has been pushed towards the Atlantic exit, while some of the oldest ice is sucked off by Nares, and the 'Arm' in the Beaufort doesn't look all that strong this year:

The animation looks very similar to the Ascat animation, which lends credibility to the ice age distribution near the Atlantic exits. With continued export expected for at least several more days, this will only get worse. And the red bits are actually shown as disappearing into the Nares, despite the coarse resolution. A very bad setup into the peak of the melting season. Dodging required - again.

[Neven]

For those interested in what happened in the Beaufort, back in 2016 (so as to compare to this year's siutation), I wrote about it extensively on the ASIB. Here's a blog post from May 21st, with links to previous blog posts in the first paragraph.

One thing I wondered about back then, and do again now:

The other thing is that there is actually not that much ice left between the large polynya (expanse of open water) in the Beaufort Sea and the smaller one in the Chukchi Sea:



Once this ice is gone, there will be open water all along the American coast of the Arctic Ocean. My guess is this could happen within two weeks or maybe even faster, which would be extremely early, given that the earliest time this has happened in the past decade (and probably much, much beyond that), was between July 1st and 7th in both 2009 and 2011.

My guess turned out to be wrong. It also took until the first week of July for open water to take over all along the Alaskan-Canadian coast.

But how about this year? Here's a comparison:



The maps look very similar, so much so that one would be tempted to think there is something causing the ice to stay glued to the coast, all the way up to Utqiaġvik. But there's no "Chukchi polynya" now, with open water all the way to the Pacific and far into the Chukchi, meaning there is less ice to be blown back towards the coast, should the winds turn.

And the winds are another similarity. Both the weather forecast back then and the one this year show a change in the set-up that caused the early Beaufort opening, around the same time. However, this year there may be a return to that set-up next week.

So, wondering if there will be open water all along the Alaskan-Canadian coast before July this year...

[Neven]

Mind you, 2016 came really, really close to opening in the first week of June, but then the fast ice off Barrow broke and disintegrated, blocking the way until ice floes from the Chukchi moved in for further blockage.

We'll see where 2019 is at 10 days from now.

[echoughton]

Terrific stuff, Neven!! Learning is so much fun

[wallen]

The fast ice at Barrow doesn't appear as resilent as in 2016.

[gerontocrat]

There is a bit of a cold blob in the centre of the far north of North America.
It looks like this will warm up by middle to late next week.

It gives me a little more confidence in the prediction that belongs to me that the North-West Passage will open this year.

[Jim Hunt]

This animation of weekly ice age distribution maps from Feb 5th to May 6th

Excellent! The NSIDC have released their promised "quick look" ice age product, including a NetCDF version. Here's an alternative take on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, comparing 2019 with 2012.

Should anyone else be interested 2019 data is available via: https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0749/versions/1

Older data is at: https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0611

[Jim Hunt]

But how about this year? Here's a comparison:

I can't see your image Neven. All I get is:

[Rich]

To Neven's question about whether there will be open water on the Alaska / Canada coast by July.

I think there may be an open water path all the way around the coast from CAA to the Laptev. There may be a stubborn remnant or two hanging on the coast, but nothing contiguous with the CAB.

I'm curious how far east the open coast in Canada will go. There's already open water along the Western 1/3 of the CAA and wonder if the open water will continue spreading toward Ellesmere.

I'm new here, but I did go back and peruse the 2016 thread and think 2019 is looking more vulnerable from the standpoint of coastal ice connection to the main pack.

My hunch is that we're seeing the effect of Atlantification.

[Neven]

But how about this year? Here's a comparison:

I can't see your image Neven. All I get is:

Sorry about that, Jim. Somehow, I always manage to screw up linking to Google Photo images.

Here it is:

[magnamentis]

The fast ice at Barrow doesn't appear as resilent as in 2016.

it will be gone very soon, one morning we wake up and it will be no more, i predict within days, rather than weeks.

my guess: 3-6 days from now but that's a guess based on the images of the webcam, one can't see the exact thickness.

[pearscot]

Although I don't post much, I do read here an awful lot and take a vast majority of what is said/posted to heart. I'm kinda in shock at how the arctic is looking...while my predictions have been inverse to the reality of emulating a 2012 event, the overall continuity of the ice looks far from 'healthy.' I don't know how the rest of the year will unfold, but I've been following the currents very closely the last two years and I still believe that the arctic's biggest foe may perhaps be the ever increasing atlantification.

Nonetheless, I will never claim to be in expert on this complex system, however seeing as the el nino is quickly fading into a more neutral pattern while at the same time the main development region of the Atlantic region continues to warm - the crux of this being more of a potential for heat engines (hurricanes/post tropical systems) to more readily/easily make their way into the northern latitudes in conjunction with an extremely strong gulf stream current. I will sit back and await the sad devolution of the pristine abyss.

[Rich]

The fast ice at Barrow doesn't appear as resilent as in 2016.

it will be gone very soon, one morning we wake up and it will be no more, i predict within days, rather than weeks.

my guess: 3-6 days from now but that's a guess based on the images of the webcam, one can't see the exact thickness.

I might be inclined the agree with your you. Given that there is something stubborn about that patch, I'm going to guess 1-2 weeks.

[Tor Bejnar]

With people making guesses on this thread, I opened a new poll on the topic.

…
my guess: 3-6 days from now but that's a guess based on the images of the webcam, one can't see the exact thickness.

I might be inclined the agree with your you. Given that there is something stubborn about that patch, I'm going to guess 1-2 weeks.

[El Cid]

Looking at the latest forecasts (GFS 1200UTC,ECMWF 00UTC) there seems to be no end in sight for sunny skies above the Pacific side. After day 5, both show consistent high pressure there. And looking at the picture above, posted by Neven, 2019 definitely looks much worse than 2016. If the sun keeps doing its job, we will lose the Beaufort and the Chukchi very soon...

[Pragma]

This animation of weekly ice age distribution maps from Feb 5th to May 6th shows how much of the MYI has been pushed towards the Atlantic exit, ...

Hello all,

I regularly learn from this excellent site, but rarely post. I can't always follow developments in detail, but studying the above animation, I was shocked by the widespread mobility of the ice, so early in the season.

It stands to reason that previously, older and thicker ice would tend to be more cohesive and resistant to winds and currents but then I realized I have no real reference for how things have changed. The whole arctic ocean seems to be one big slushie now.

I am guessing that the ice was never truly monolithic. I am aware of the huge drop in multiyear, low salinity ice but I can't relate that to stability. Can someone help me get a feel for average ice behaviour ten or twenty years ago regarding movement?

I'm happy to study it myself, if someone can recommend appropriate archive links, but I suspect the applicable tools and products weren't around then.

Things seem bad, but I guess I'm really asking "How bad, how fast?". Is this disintegration relatively recent and/or sudden?

Thanks