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bbr2314

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5700 on: August 15, 2019, 11:44:51 AM »
Laptev collapsed in two weeks. Will be 90% ice-free by 9/1 IMO. Here is 8/1-15. Today's image shows a dramatic drop.


Peter Ellis

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5701 on: August 15, 2019, 11:55:22 AM »
I found these graphs, and after 2012, the sea ice extent in the summer months has been relatively steady above trend. You'd expect at least one month to have an extreme, but I don't see it. Could bathymetry have something to do with this? Has a threshold been reached?

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php

Er, no?  Pretty much all the months are exactly on the trend, with 2007 and 2012 being below it.  The only point where 2019 is off-trend is the one for August, with a ? beside it. As you may or may not be aware, we are only half way through August, so this figure is inaccurate.

Freegrass

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5702 on: August 15, 2019, 01:53:00 PM »
That Herman Cain storm is strengthening quickly. And is it normal for the jetstream to take a shortcut over the pole? The polar vortex isn't looking quite normal either, but I'll leave that up to the professionals to explain what's going on. I'm starting to think that this cyclone could turn into the big one... But what do I know? I can make a GIF!   ;D ;D ::)
« Last Edit: August 15, 2019, 02:00:36 PM by Freegrass »
90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

Shared Humanity

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5703 on: August 15, 2019, 02:56:20 PM »
Any crystal ball owners out there?
I own a globe with weather predictions, and it's predicting a 999 hPa low to nestle on the pole in 5 days from now. Will this Herman Cain low turn into the "GAC" everyone is waiting for? Only time will tell...

Edit: Actually... that low forming off the coast of Norway looks pretty nasty...

That low over the pole will will serve to disperse the ice and slow the decline in extent

Freegrass

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5704 on: August 15, 2019, 03:06:54 PM »
There's only one place for the ice to go, into hot water...
90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

Thomas Barlow

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5705 on: August 15, 2019, 03:25:46 PM »
Apart from meltwater areas, pretty much the whole of the northern hemisphere SSTs are warmer than usual. Could that extend the melting season?
Not thinking so much about the local SSTs near the ice, but since the northern hemisphere SSTs are warmer than usual, the whole of the northern hemisphere (air) will likely be warmer than usual, and melting in the Arctic go longer.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/primary/waves/anim=off/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-168.27,28.84,508
« Last Edit: August 15, 2019, 05:55:36 PM by Thomas Barlow »

Ossifrage

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5706 on: August 15, 2019, 03:40:22 PM »
It looks like the southern part of the CAA will melt out, and the state of the Eurasian side of the ice + forecast suggests significant losses on the way.

How much of the northern CAA will hold out?

The CAA is not going ice-free this season. At the very least Ballantyne Strait and Wilkins Strait were pretty much solid ice the last time they had clear skies. Physics prevents that ice from going away entirely.

However, what's going on in the north CAA is still plenty concerning. Clouds have hidden a great deal of the action there, because clouds are jerks. However, we can see that the ice in Hassel Sound has a pale blue cast which is never a good omen for days ahead.

We also know that the PGAS shattered into a number of very large floes. In a good year for the ice, those would stay mostly confined to the PGAS and would refreeze into the matrix this winter. In a bad year for ice that followed historical hydrodynamics for the region, some number of those floes would be flushed south through the Maclean Strait on their way into the Parry Channel to die the following year. Some of that is probably happening now, but, again, clouds. However, we can tell that there's a second export pathway. A very large floe (~50km) formed from the pack ice off the northern peninsula of Ellef Ringnes, sometime around July 31. It's easily visible, offset by blue open water, on Worldview on August 8. Following an interaction (likely wind-driven) with another large floe, it broke in two on or about August 11, but the "core" of the floe remained intact and is still visible through the clouds on August 14.

Historically, ice movement in the PGAS was largely controlled by a clockwise current, running north to south along the west coast of Ellef Ringnes; it is this current that slowly exported PGAS ice to the southern CAA as part of the "garlic press". However, the floe I described has been moving steadily north and northwest against the local current expectations. Early in this period, the Crack was still the dominant feature in the region. The Crack was the result of steady wind pressure from the south. That has abated somewhat, especially over the Sverdrup Islands region, and so the Crack has "closed"... but that floe in the northern PGAS is still following the course set by the Crack hydrodynamics -- up and out of the CAA en route to the Beaufort. That suggests that it's not just wind driving this new export scheme.

That floe will probably survive the year; it's pretty big and not moving very fast. I'm don't think there's time to get it to the Beaufort, or heat enough to melt it there. We'll see. But the problem is the northern CAA is under stress from both sides. Melt and southern export are intended to be replaced by ice from the northern CAA that ultimately originated in the CAB. That's the whole point of the garlic press metaphor. But that supply chain is broken, first by the Crack itself and now by continued northbound export. A lot of places that should have their ice replenished externally are going to have only in situ freezing over this winter, which means even if next year's melt isn't as nasty, the soup will be on.

UCMiami

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5707 on: August 15, 2019, 04:11:41 PM »
There's a good view for the first time in a long time on the ice that's left in the ESS. I'm absolutely gobsmacked to see how long that ice is lasting. I think I predicted a month ago that it would only last a few more days. Yet today, it's still there... Amazing! That was a good lesson!

https://go.nasa.gov/2OXr2ei
You really only need to look at Hudson Bay to understand that what worldview shows as pretty wispy strands of ice can survive for a long time - the Bay has had SSTs around 6C but the SST around that ice has remained around 0C. We forget that the max resolution in WV is 10km/inch and some of those clumps in the wispy areas may be 30km long and 10km wide and represent a pretty large volume of remaining ice. And the surface SST around the clump is cooled by the surrounding wisps.

Without a lot of stormy mixing of the water and movement of the ice, the wisps can hang on for weeks - that said, the week to week clear images still show significant decreases and the wisps in the ESS are doomed this year.

Davidsf

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5708 on: August 15, 2019, 04:23:15 PM »
Ossifrage, thank you for the very interesting CAA update and analysis. Keep those coming.

I'm spending the day in CA's central valley where it's forecast to be 109...would be happy for some of those jerky clouds

Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5709 on: August 15, 2019, 05:04:03 PM »
Eyeballing the CAA it seems likely that the southern part of Northwest Passage will open up. Regarding the deeper Parry Channel I think it will remain blocked by ice. However, it is possible that McClure Strait will connect to the Parry Channel and at least partially open up the more northerly route.


Renerpho

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5710 on: August 15, 2019, 05:12:19 PM »
<snip> Clouds have hidden a great deal of the action there, because clouds are jerks. <snip>

Your analysis is both entertaining and deeply insightful, Ossifrage. Thanks a lot!  :)
Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.

Ossifrage

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5711 on: August 15, 2019, 05:14:20 PM »
Eyeballing the CAA it seems likely that the southern part of Northwest Passage will open up. Regarding the deeper Parry Channel I think it will remain blocked by ice. However, it is possible that McClure Strait will connect to the Parry Channel and at least partially open up the more northerly route.

Yeah, I expect that at least parts of Viscount Melville Sound and M'Clure Strait will stay icy. That affects the bottom line numbers, I suppose, but doesn't matter very much for the long-term health of the CAA ice, since the Parry Channel is a fast-export / melt region in general.

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5712 on: August 15, 2019, 06:52:06 PM »
Nares Strait export may be starting again. This is yesterday vs. today.

I think the wind is pushing ice floes south (right side in the GIF). You can see gaps emerging at the and of the GIF in the north (left).

When there is a surface current driven export, you can see the floes flowing down on the right side of the strait (if you go south), which is not the case ATM.

So i guess export is not on.

(click to play the GIF)

FrostKing70

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5713 on: August 15, 2019, 07:40:09 PM »
Interesting article over at Wunderground:

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/July-2019-Earths-Hottest-Month-Recorded-History?cm_ven=cat6-widget

Key part for me:

"2019 a lock to be among the 5 warmest years in Earth’s recorded history
The January through July year-to-date period was the tied with 2017 for the second warmest global temperatures on record, behind 2016, according to NOAA. According to their global annual temperature ranking outlook, it is virtually certain that 2019 will end among the top five warmest years in Earth’s history. This means that the six warmest years on record globally since 1880 will be the last six years--2014 through 2019."

philopek

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5714 on: August 15, 2019, 08:11:01 PM »
Weather forecast for the next 4 days.
This is so cool... :D
Thanks PETM!
I ended it with the smiley face that's still in the forecast... ;)

The image you posted (Air), combined with temps but still showing winds, highs and lows, is one of the best ways to illustrate where ice is currently dispersed, where it is currently compacted and where melted at the moment.

This way once can quite well asume what to expect for the next days numbers and at the same numbers alone will less cause short term discussions about the probable trajectory.

For examle, if weak ice is currently dispersed into warmer waters and become more exposed to wind and waves, extent will increase or slow down in trajectory but it will melt slowly but surely.

If there is compaction of weak ice to collide with heavy ice, extent will shrink short term but the resulting ridge will melt very slowly, at times not at all in the remaining time of the season.

In short, looking at such images and slide shows we can do much better assessments of the present and the short term future IMO

This is the link:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=0.07,93.13,1286/loc=132.975,83.651

To this image, update every 3 hours:

« Last Edit: August 15, 2019, 09:17:00 PM by philopek »

Lou

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5715 on: August 15, 2019, 08:24:31 PM »
<snip> Clouds have hidden a great deal of the action there, because clouds are jerks. <snip>

Your analysis is both entertaining and deeply insightful, Ossifrage. Thanks a lot!  :)

Agreed.  I would add that if this site were to make an official T-shirt, I could think of much worse things to do than cover the back with memorable one-liners, including, "...clouds are jerks."

pearscot

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5716 on: August 15, 2019, 08:25:44 PM »
I wanted to do a quick analysis of the huge iceberg which exists north of Greenland (formed along that new crack/feature). I don't know how helpful this is, but making it helps me learn my new software more anyways.

pls!

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5717 on: August 15, 2019, 08:38:23 PM »
I wanted to do a quick analysis of the huge iceberg which exists north of Greenland (formed along that new crack/feature). I don't know how helpful this is, but making it helps me learn my new software more anyways.

This is indeed helpful and super cool!

It's not an iceberg though. It's a floe of formally landfast ice. ;)

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5718 on: August 15, 2019, 08:39:47 PM »
Agreed.  I would add that if this site were to make an official T-shirt, I could think of much worse things to do than cover the back with memorable one-liners, including, "...clouds are jerks."

+1

pearscot

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5719 on: August 15, 2019, 08:59:21 PM »
I wanted to do a quick analysis of the huge iceberg which exists north of Greenland (formed along that new crack/feature). I don't know how helpful this is, but making it helps me learn my new software more anyways.

This is indeed helpful and super cool!

It's not an iceberg though. It's a floe of formally landfast ice. ;)

Yes you are right...I accidentally used the wrong word there. It's just SO strange to see that landfast ice floating north of Greenland - I really wonder if this event will become a new norm in the arctic in future summers (part of me kinda suspects it will).
pls!

pearscot

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5720 on: August 15, 2019, 09:11:46 PM »
This just came out...it's remarkable how much 2019 continues to look more similar to 2012 in terms of anomalies in the northern hemisphere (especially in the arctic). As others have said, I think this could potentially stall the refreeze by a couple of days. 

Other items of note - the neutral el nino continues to slowly diminish and may turn into a la nina...I live on an island off the coast of Washington and I con confirm that the Pacific does feel quite warm at the moment and this map only confirms that:

« Last Edit: August 15, 2019, 10:14:15 PM by pearscot »
pls!

DrTskoul

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5721 on: August 15, 2019, 09:35:51 PM »
2019 looks like itself? You mean 2016 or 2012 ?

Wildcatter

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5722 on: August 15, 2019, 09:53:12 PM »
I'm not exactly sure of the effects of Sea Level Pressure in the Arctic, but there is a high level amount in the ESS/Laptev stretching out over the pack.

The 3-day forecast has SLP ~1035mb. Dialed in over the ESS. May be interesting because of SLPs effect on sea water movement. I'm unsure of the result on underwater melting, but higher SLP usually results in lower sea levels so it may imply some movement going on that's not visible. I also imagine that amount of pressure will keep SSTs from cooling off in the event of cooler surface temps. Will be interesting to see if those ESS ice shreds make it out of the next week.

There's also a pressure gradient and strong winds from the North Pacific and Bering, which will continue, which may have an impact on the Bering Strait throughflow. Some very warm water in the N. Pacific. Not a huge deal, but may be interesting to consider.
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Klon

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5723 on: August 15, 2019, 10:30:39 PM »
is it normal for the jetstream to take a shortcut over the pole?

I would really be interested in hearing about this too.

DrTskoul

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5724 on: August 15, 2019, 10:32:56 PM »
is it normal for the jetstream to take a shortcut over the pole?

I would really be interested in hearing about this too.

Scenic route?

philopek

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5725 on: August 15, 2019, 11:35:43 PM »
Since we're in thight race to the bottom the question i legit as to how much the relatively large "Artifacts" circled in red, contribute to the numbers (km2) that are often based on these satellite data?

LARGE image linked below:

https://kuroshio.eorc.jaxa.jp/JASMES/daily/polar/data/SIC/201908/GW1AM2_20190813B_IC0300_NP.png

Renerpho

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5726 on: August 16, 2019, 01:25:01 AM »
Since we're in thight race to the bottom the question i legit as to how much the relatively large "Artifacts" circled in red, contribute to the numbers (km2) that are often based on these satellite data?

Naively (and I may be wrong), I'd assume they use a mask to exclude artifacts in regions where - heuristically - there can't possibly be ice at this time of the year. Is that correct?
Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.

philopek

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5727 on: August 16, 2019, 01:47:50 AM »
Since we're in thight race to the bottom the question i legit as to how much the relatively large "Artifacts" circled in red, contribute to the numbers (km2) that are often based on these satellite data?

Naively (and I may be wrong), I'd assume they use a mask to exclude artifacts in regions where - heuristically - there can't possibly be ice at this time of the year. Is that correct?

The no ice thingy is obvious, yes and you're probably right about the mask and/or algorithm.

I just observed those artifacts over a longer period of time and it would be nice to know that what you say is true, as far as your assumption is concerned I share it with you means see it the same way.

subgeometer

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5728 on: August 16, 2019, 04:26:13 AM »
There's only one place for the ice to go, into hot water...

This will restrain the advance of the melt edge, and the hot water, at least at the surface. And areas with cold surface waters and remnant ice can refreeze quickly once atmospheric temperatures drop sufficiently. If the weather is kind in a couple of weeks maybe the freezing thread can get off to a good start with a larger than normal dump of energy to space as a large amount of new ice forms. That requires high pressure and minimal clouds though.

In the meantime the disprsal can only further expand the holes and  ragged tears in the interior of the pack. Eg at 87N on the Eurasian side its already looking pretty bad, as we approach minimum the pack will look worse than we've ever seen it.

EC sees another 7 days of warm air from Eurasia pushing right across the pack, before(finally) indicating an end to it, to be replaced by the low over the pack sucking in other lows from Europe and the Atlantic, one of which may well bomb out. The N Atlantic cyclone cannon has been silent till now

subgeometer

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5729 on: August 16, 2019, 04:41:32 AM »



There's also a pressure gradient and strong winds from the North Pacific and Bering, which will continue, which may have an impact on the Bering Strait throughflow. Some very warm water in the N. Pacific. Not a huge deal, but may be interesting to consider.

Water is also very warm inside the straits, 8-11C for hundreds of km north. The water flowing in is much more saline though. Uniquorn posted some salinity model charts from Mercator earlier in the season that matched closely with melt patterns there in recent years(2016 and after?) and help to explain why the Chukchi struggles to freeze, and especially, why (expanding)parts of it melt out so easily even in mid winter.

Pressure builds to over 1040 for a couple of days, as the high moves to hover over the Chukchi Sea

subgeometer

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5730 on: August 16, 2019, 04:53:44 AM »
There's been an (at least for me) striking drop in Chukchi and some Bering SSTs that continues since they peaked in mid July Norton Sound peaked around 20C, and is now down to around 14-15C. Large areas of the Chukchi sea have also dropped ~3C. In more northern areas energy might be going into ice melt, with currents bringing cold surface water from under the ice.

But this region is a long way south, some of it outside the Arctic Circle entirely, so insolation does not drop off as sharply as at the pole. This leads me to suspect there's been some vertical mixing going on, which would raise salinity

sark

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5731 on: August 16, 2019, 05:08:11 AM »
IMHO September won't even keep it together for a positive AO... if it even pops positive barely in August.  That's as good as it gets??

 Latest GFS with confidence that the entire pattern of polar cell will be lined up centered on the North Pole.  Hour 186. We all know what comes next.  Dual ridges from E & W along the date line reaching into the Arctic simultaneously.  Heat incursion, second or third week of Sept.

This solar minimum will finish the Arctic job of losing the sea ice.  Heaven help us in the 2030s.


peterlvmeng

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5732 on: August 16, 2019, 05:18:40 AM »
IMHO September won't even keep it together for a positive AO... if it even pops positive barely in August.  That's as good as it gets??

 Latest GFS with confidence that the entire pattern of polar cell will be lined up centered on the North Pole.  Hour 186. We all know what comes next.  Dual ridges from E & W along the date line reaching into the Arctic simultaneously.  Heat incursion, second or third week of Sept.

This solar minimum will finish the Arctic job of losing the sea ice.  Heaven help us in the 2030s.

At this time, stormy day is more easily to melt the ice rather than sunny day. So GFS shows a perfect pattern to melt the whole ice.

sark

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5733 on: August 16, 2019, 05:58:42 AM »


Solar minimum lined up with thin sea ice during '19, '20, '21 could really finish the job.  Temps would be in runaway.  The collapse is year(s) off


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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5734 on: August 16, 2019, 06:08:11 AM »
Huge losses again in Laptev sector. If this continues, there may be just enough time yet...

Aug 9-15. 5-day min. Click.

subgeometer

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5735 on: August 16, 2019, 06:16:26 AM »
3 images of the western Laptev sea, and CAB north of it to the Atlantic side of the pole, showing disintegration in the south and fraying as far north as 88N. I've included an imae of the whole area, and 2 higher-res details, one of the ice by the bite that's being totally hammered, and one of some of the holes beween 86 and 88N, and 104 and 141E

Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5736 on: August 16, 2019, 06:20:16 AM »
Its very unlikely that 2019 will finish below 2012 in extent.

I would give it a 1 percent chance.

AMSR2 SCANS USING THE 36GHZ AND 18GHZ wavelength shows the whole of the ice pack left regardless of concentration is to thick.

There is just not enough energy coming in from the sun to support melting the ice North of 80 at the level needed to beat 2012. 


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Aluminium

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5737 on: August 16, 2019, 06:29:26 AM »
August 11-15.

2018.

petm

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5738 on: August 16, 2019, 06:39:38 AM »
Its very unlikely that 2019 will finish below 2012 in extent.

True. On the other hand, I have been expecting the loss rate to slow for over a week now, and despite noting much dramatic happening with the weather, it hasn't. And now we have a heat plume coming off Siberia, with concurrent rapid losses. Maybe the wet ice is fooling the censors, but the satellite photos also look weak. And as A-Team showed, this is an area that had unusual export this year, so has mostly 1st year ice left.

Improbable, yes. Impossible, no. This weekend will be interesting. These screenshots are for Sunday, but the weather is bad off and on for days.

binntho

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5739 on: August 16, 2019, 06:49:04 AM »
August 11-15.


Clear dispersion in the Bearing and around Svalbard - could well explain the lacklustre drop in extent these last few days.
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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5740 on: August 16, 2019, 07:11:56 AM »
The battle of North Pole. GFS predicts a cyclone will sweep North pole from August 20th-21st. The periphery area have been punched by several cyclone fist already. The ice becomes dispersed and highly mobile. The last fist is predicted to punch the central heart of Arctic. This is why I HAVE TO SAY a perfect weather pattern to destroy all of it even if those ice will not completely melt out in the end.

Freegrass

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5741 on: August 16, 2019, 08:04:15 AM »
Weather forecast for the next 5 days.
90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

Freegrass

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5742 on: August 16, 2019, 08:46:51 AM »
Five day forecast - Wind + Temp @ 850hPa
90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5743 on: August 16, 2019, 09:26:15 AM »
If the post-D6 weather forecast is correct, I also think it will be impossible to overtake 2012.
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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5744 on: August 16, 2019, 10:47:58 AM »
At this time people may think the tremendous ice melt will need high pressure intrusion or strong cyclone. However, we do not see them both in GFS/EC prediction after August 23. Maybe it is still too warm to form strong cyclone. Maybe the melting season in 2019 will be tremendous long as 2007 or even further?

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5745 on: August 16, 2019, 11:23:22 AM »
Laptev bite and ice north of it - 8 August and 16 August.

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5746 on: August 16, 2019, 03:33:30 PM »
Those pesky clouds parted over the PGAS, and I don't much care for what I see. Around the first of the month, the PGAS broke up into a collection of large floes. I don't think there's any danger that these blocks of ice are going to melt... or, at least, not where they are. But they're not staying where they are.

As philopek showed a few posts ago, the dominant wind pattern in the region is currently a very strong east-to-west flow just north of the CAA. You can imagine this wind as blowing the loose ice that has backfilled the Crack right into the Beaufort Sea. You can imagine that because it's exactly what is happening.

As that ice is pushed west, the same forces draw in ice from adjacent bodies. The result is textbook dispersion. And we know the total forces being applied are considerable because this wind-driven movement has entirely eclipsed the currents in the PGAS in terms of moving the ice. If this wind environment persists -- and I don't see much reason to think it won't -- there's more than enough season left to transport a significant amount of the ice currently in the PGAS at least into what is technically CAB waters, if not into the Beaufort. There's so much ice being transported in this manner that even the killing fields of the Beaufort won't be able to melt it all this season. That props up the area/extent numbers, but it doesn't make the ice itself any less awful.

Now, the northern CAA didn't have a record-setting melt season this year, so there's still a lot of ice hanging around, especially in the Byam Martin Channel and in Hecla and Griper Bay. That ice is starting to fracture now; it will disperse to fill the space left empty by the floes departing north from PGAS. Weather has been ice-favorable over that part of the CAA this year; the same conditions that have prevented the Parry from clearing at Viscount Melville Sound have kept ice in the Austin, Byam, and Byam Martin Channels. But that's not going to stop that ice from cracking and sliding north as the Crack-parallel wind holds a vacuum cleaner to the PGAS. The end result is that essentially no major bodies of water (Wilkins Strait might be okay, but isn't important) in the CAA will escape this season free of substantial disruption, either due to melt or export.

Speaking of melt, ice in Massey Sound looks stunningly awful, and I wouldn't be surprised to see significant losses there in the coming days.

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5747 on: August 16, 2019, 04:11:08 PM »
Laptev bite and ice north of it - 8 August and 16 August.

The most fragmented ice in this image may melt out but the more compact ice will survive the melt season

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5748 on: August 16, 2019, 05:51:45 PM »
I don't believe this year will beat 2012, but at the same time, that stat really isn't all that important to me. Even a 2nd place finish is quite notable this year and the ice itself is just shattered and broken everywhere. It will be interesting to see what happens later in September with all of of the relatively warm water  infilling the Pacific and Atlantic sides. I'm also extremely interested in witnessing how the landfast ice will reform in the large 'crack' above Greenland. I have no doubt it will fill in, but it will most certainly not be as strong as it once was.

I wish we could get a clear day to view more of the pack itself.
pls!

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Re: The 2019 melting season
« Reply #5749 on: August 16, 2019, 07:05:45 PM »
In good news for a tiny section of ice, there's snow expected over the next several days at Station Nord, so it looks like the Danmark Fjord meltwaters have missed their shot at breaking free the remaining fast ice around Princess Thyra Island and Princess Dagmar Island in the Wandel Sea.