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gerontocrat

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #550 on: May 01, 2020, 08:38:35 PM »
Slater is predicting the ESS to melt out before the Laptev it seems. That would be interesting...

This is from Slater thread. Pls take a look at the picture.  Something odd seems to be going on there. The North Hole or just a sensor artifact?

Edit: couldn’t post the picture with phone. The pic on Freegrass’s post shows the ”Hole” between Svalbard and the Pole
The images from Bremen & NSIDC for 30 April show an awful lot of not-a-lot-of-ice from the pole to FJL / Svalbard
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HapHazard

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #551 on: May 01, 2020, 08:46:25 PM »
So what is that, really? Cloud/storm tracks throwing off the data or something?

Are different data collectors getting this same result?

Don't we see this same sort of thing all the time in different areas, so this is unremarkable?

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gerontocrat

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #552 on: May 01, 2020, 09:01:24 PM »
So what is that, really? Cloud/storm tracks throwing off the data or something?

Are different data collectors getting this same result?

Don't we see this same sort of thing all the time in different areas, so this is unremarkable?
If memory serves me right, melt ponds are the usual culprit for the sensors seeing open water where there is actually ice, but it is too early for melt ponding at such high latitudes.

It is also unusual for such a strong signal over such a wide area.

Scientists are always there when you don't want them, and when you do.......

& yes, Bremen uses data from the high res sensor with the big radar dish, NSIDC is using 1970/1980's technology.

& the JAXa thckness image shows dark green (= 1 metre thick ice which is thin) twixt the pole & FJL
« Last Edit: May 01, 2020, 09:25:44 PM by gerontocrat »
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #553 on: May 01, 2020, 09:10:12 PM »
So what is that, really?
I think the ice got "stretched out" there last week. That created a lot of open water between the flows.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #554 on: May 01, 2020, 09:12:14 PM »
Re: Graying

Click to play. All years are first of May.

oren

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #555 on: May 01, 2020, 09:17:30 PM »
Niall, of course, it's not true.

But the sensors see something there. What is it in your opinion?
I expect these are transient weather artifacts. Animate it to get a better sense of it.

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #556 on: May 01, 2020, 09:25:22 PM »
... Animate it ...

Here you go! :)

Niall Dollard

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #557 on: May 01, 2020, 09:51:33 PM »
Niall, of course, it's not true.

But the sensors see something there. What is it in your opinion?

I wonder is it cloud related ?

Just looking at the timing of the Terra Modis image for the 30th shows a band of cloud immediately to the north of Svalbard. In this area Bremen has a dark purple area. Further north of Svalbard Terra is clear and Bremen has much lower concentration.

But of course this happens often on any given day (the interplay of cloud and clear area).

Earlier in April we were questioning something similar over the Beaufort and general conclusion was that it was an artefact because of the sudden day to day movement.

I really don't know why.   

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #558 on: May 01, 2020, 09:57:46 PM »
Me neither, Neill. ;) Perhaps it rained, perhaps moisture, perhaps clouds. Let's see if we hear something from the Polarstern.

Thanks for your answer.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #559 on: May 01, 2020, 10:23:37 PM »
The five day forecast looks boring. But maybe boring is good for a change?
It looks like boring was good indeed. The temperature is back to normal, and the forecast stays "boring" for a few more days.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #560 on: May 01, 2020, 10:34:44 PM »
JAXA thckness

Haven't seen this before, what can we find historical data and how is it calculated?

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #561 on: May 01, 2020, 11:06:36 PM »
Me neither, Neill. ;) Perhaps it rained, perhaps moisture, perhaps clouds. Let's see if we hear something from the Polarstern.
...
This photograph, i believe, was created from Polarstern's bridge ~3 days ago, 28th April:



Can you see the bear? Anyhow, from the accompanying note posted at nasa.gov, we can read that the bear is, quote, "standing behind Met City near a small lead, likely waiting for a seal". Earlier in the note, we also read that bear, quote, "... sat near a small crack in the ice for almost two hours, likely waiting for a seal to surface".  Seals, i understand, would need open water to come onto the ice, where polar bears could hunt them. So, it seems there are some areas of open water per the above - and it looks like at least some of such openings do not freeze up any much for ~2 hours. I don't think bears are that stupid to spend some hour+ hunting a piece of any significantly thick ice, are they?

Much more importantly, however, is shape of sea ice which above picture presents. As one can see, ice in this particular area is abundantly uneven. With Sun being low over horizon for the time being, this creates really long shadows, clearly visible on the picture. Yet surfaces which are _creating_ those shadows - are often nearly vertical, and thus they absorb lots of sunlight. I think those surfaces are wet, - now that air is much cleaner than in previous melt season, very long path it takes sun rays to go through the athmosphere (because Sun is so low yet) does not deplete energy of sunlight anywhere close as it did previous seasons. Like was mentioned couple pages ago, one can easily see from Finland shore all the way to Estonia now - visibility is _times_ better. Same story would mean times higher W/m2 hitting those "bumps" on sea ice, per above picture - and wet them up good deal even while overall 2m tempeatures may be at -10C or even lower.

And we clearly see the area was quite well lit as of 3 days ago, too.

If someone has any better explanation than above, then please share.
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gerontocrat

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #562 on: May 01, 2020, 11:21:45 PM »
JAXA thckness

Haven't seen this before, what can we find historical data and how is it calculated?
Standard JAXA provision @ https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop.ver1/vishop-monitor.html?N
Several image choices.

Data goes back to 2002?

How calculated ? Beyond my pay grade. Ask Japan.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #563 on: May 02, 2020, 12:01:32 AM »
So what is that, really?
I think the ice got "stretched out" there last week. That created a lot of open water between the flows.
The ice definetly got stretched out and not only allowed for open water but probably with this same movement caused upwelling. Anyone know the temperature in this area? Not the surface but just below it.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #564 on: May 02, 2020, 12:30:01 AM »
'stretched' I agree the low though not powerful was huge and slowed the movement of water towards Fram if it was far enough away. If the water flowed back we should see an opening forming in Laptev soon, otherwise the stretching should continue for a couple of days. 
Local buoy https://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=165636

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #565 on: May 02, 2020, 07:16:10 AM »
JAXA thckness

Haven't seen this before, what can we find historical data and how is it calculated?
I have no clue how he's doing it, but Wipneus has crunched the numbers.
Below the JAXA AMSR2 volume graph from 2012 onward (seems to be discontinued since 08-19), he has also thickness graphs on his site:
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #566 on: May 02, 2020, 08:01:43 AM »

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #567 on: May 02, 2020, 08:13:54 AM »
Those Bremen images are because of water vapor.  Frozen or not it messes with the scan of the ice.

It's why jaxa uses a lower scanning resolution

It's also why some big time scientists at Bremen or Hamburg(can't remember) have designed algorithms for a theoretical ice imaging satellite that incorporates all of the different channel frequencies in real time to offer a look at the sea ice that is no more than 95% Percent perfectly accurate with 5km resolution any time of the year.

As someone also said melt ponds cause that look as well but that's not happening this early.  Would need a miraculous warm air feed/ridge to get any of that.

But we're close.

The major global models all forecast the first ARCTIC DIPOLE ANOMALY OF THE SEASON.

We'll see it comes to fruition.  But this would bring warming sunshine into the 60-75N range of the Arctic.  Enough to start surface melting of some degree.

But even so it will be very weak and entirely preconditional in nature.

Does anyone have a reliable snow depth map of the Arctic basin?


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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #568 on: May 02, 2020, 09:37:33 AM »
April 26 - May 1.

2019.

Niall Dollard

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #569 on: May 02, 2020, 10:35:37 AM »
Thanks for that F.Tnioli and Friv.

Later on in the season the Bremen images will become more trustworthy/useful as ice conc diminishes and especially useful at the edges.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #570 on: May 02, 2020, 12:44:08 PM »
Can you see the bear? Anyhow, from the accompanying note posted at nasa.gov, we can read that the bear is, quote, "standing behind Met City near a small lead, likely waiting for a seal". Earlier in the note, we also read that bear, quote, "... sat near a small crack in the ice for almost two hours, likely waiting for a seal to surface".  Seals, i understand, would need open water to come onto the ice, where polar bears could hunt them.

Sometimes when you think something is general knowledge ... but apparently not. Seals nead to breathe. They maintain breathing holes in the ice. Polar bears seek out these breathing holes and wait patiently, up to several hours (often hiding their black snout with a small clump of ice). If the seal does take the change to stick it's nose up for a quick gulp of breath, the waiting polar bear clobbers it and draws it up onto the ice. Seals do NOT crawl onto the ice where polar bears "can hunt them"!

The seal creates breathing holes in the ice as it is forming in the fall, and can maintain them all winter with their paws, sometimes through as much as 2m of ice. But of course, once the ice starts moving and shifting, the seals probably get tempted to use the leads that open op in this way as well, maintaining a short-term breathing hole in a rapidly refreezing lead.

The polarstern people probably were seeing the latter, since they most certainly would have noticed the "aglus" or proper breathing holes if they had been in their vicinity.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #571 on: May 02, 2020, 01:11:30 PM »
Five Day Forecast
Wind + Temp @ Surface
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F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #572 on: May 02, 2020, 02:50:42 PM »
... Seals do NOT crawl onto the ice where polar bears "can hunt them"!
...
They do, see v=zNO0kxTClYo on YT. However, i'm much more interested to know what you think about my above hypothesis of sunlight actually adding some melt water whenever irregular ice/snow surfaces are present. I agree with others when they say it'd be highly unusual to see melt ponds forming now, but then i also see highly (pun intended) unusual temperatures in March on Atlantic and Siberian sides, too:



I wish we could just ask good gents on Polarstern to go out and check if snow/ice is any wet when it's sunny around the ship. I know satellite sensors can pick up liquid water even when it's not in distinct ponds, but mixed with snow on top of ice. Could be one big part of those "strangely little ice" images posted above, me thinks.
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be cause

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #573 on: May 02, 2020, 07:28:44 PM »
Hi F. Tnioli .. I have been raising a similar hypothesis here for some years .. low angle sun melting near vertical ice faces .. my thoughts were mostly relating to the exposed fracture surfaces as they seemed to increase in number over the years , Last year I was remarking on the obvious 360' melt and run-off on the steep slopes around an mini island ice sheet N of russia while the horizontal surface was unaffected . b.c.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #574 on: May 02, 2020, 10:17:11 PM »
Here are the Meereisportal pre-packed charts from their (hopefully) currently active Mosaic snowbuoys click to run

Also an ascat animation for this freezing/melting season so far. I dug out this quote from A-team explaining some of the reasons for light and dark colouration (which has been considerably enhanced. ImageJ, contrast minimum=41, clahe=127,256,5.3)
Quote
Ascat grays show near-surface ice salinity, ie upward brine extrusion. Ice Ih crystals cannot accommodate any guest atoms, not even fluoride. The radar penetrates dry snow but beam reflection back to the satellite is diminished (darkening) by its surface dielectric constant (polarity of Na+ Cl- salts) escaping above and below through brine channels. In MYI, the brine exclusion process is near completion. MYI can be melted and drunk, unlike FYI or SYI (Borneo experience).

Thus whiteness on Ascat is closely correlated with increasing ice age which in turn is strongly correlated with ice thickness. That’s the reason cryo2smos (as panoply grayscale) looks so much like Ascat. There’s little value to summer Ascat because of airborne spray in liquid cloud aerosols and brine reforming in meltwater.
I would add that the whiteness in new ice seen along the ESS and Laptev coasts, and that appearing in new leads, is due to some reason other than old age. The mp4 is 5.5MB with no additional -crf compression
« Last Edit: May 02, 2020, 11:20:53 PM by uniquorn »

oren

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #575 on: May 03, 2020, 09:31:58 AM »
Also an ascat animation for this freezing/melting season so far.
I think I've replayed this more than 30 times. I am deeply concerned with the sustained ~month of west-to-east movement and export into the Fram. The movement pulls back the ice from almost as far as the Beaufort. This kind of movement could gut the Arctic of its most important ice, if it happens again and is sustained for longer. Not sure what kind of weather pattern can cause this and what the probability is for it to remain sustained for a long period.
The animation clearly shows that while Fram export continues throughout the freezing season, not all export is equal. Most of it comes from newish and thinninsh ice to the "left" of Svalbard and FJL. But during the said movement, the exported ice comes from thick ice between the Pole and Greenland. At the same time, a lot of thick ice also moves from this area to the region between the Pole and Svalbard, ready to be exported later. (This is shown in PIOMAS now as a region with very high volume). I tried to measure this movement. There is a small blackish circle halfway between the Nares entrance and the North Pole on day 68, having been there for a few weeks. Then suddenly it starts moving to the right, and ends close to the northeast tip of Greenland on day 105. I estimate the distance moved at 400-500 km. With the width of the moving front at around 400 km, and a thickness of around 3m, this would be ~200k km2 of area and 600 km3 of volume that were lost or are surely doomed, all of which is hard-to-melt ice that could resist and persist beyond September. All the above numbers are rough guesses.
I repeat an earlier post on the same subject, that air temps up or down a few degrees at this stage of the season are much less important than the movement of the ice, if sustained, and I will keep on hoping that the lull in export in recent weeks is continued.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #576 on: May 03, 2020, 03:08:19 PM »
Current NH albedo is about normal overall. Spring is coming late over Canada.

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #577 on: May 03, 2020, 03:14:55 PM »
... Not sure what kind of weather pattern can cause this and what the probability is for it to remain sustained for a long period. ...
Why, we can see it alright. Quite a pattern indeed.

Day 68 is early March, and we had "positively persistent, persistently positive" AO at the time, as conviniently reported exactly in early March on this page.

So i took a quick look and it seems we had up to some 25 km/h winds exactly "between Pole and Greenland" at day ~68, surface level:



Importantly, this was very wide wind field, as you can see. Looks like ~25% of CAB ice was pushed sough and then south-east by those winds, which push mounts to huge pressure, i'd imagine, given how large area this wind was working against. Which usually doesn't do much in winter because ice holds structurally. But i think this time, it snapped under the pressure near that day 68. It'd probably still remain mostly stuck, but ~4 days later, this started (and lasted for a few days):



Given your numbers, which mean some ~0,5 km/h drift speed average for those 37 days, and given this wind speed - that drift does not surprise me the least.

I also checked same (or very close if no data for exactly March 8th is available) all the way back to 2014, and not a single year had anything similar even to 1st picture, normally it's smaller much more wavy winds much within CAB itself; and especially nothing even remotely close to the 2nd picture.

P.S. It was also then and there we had that massive ozone hole present. I read most stratospheric ozone was gone. The gas absorbs / traps IR really well, so when there is little of it and no sunlight to speak of, big temperature gradients form up. Ergo, stronger winds. Which we exactly see per above.
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oren

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #578 on: May 03, 2020, 06:06:50 PM »
I want to correct my estimates above. The black circle moved 600km from day 68 to day 105 (red arrow to blue arrow). The width of the ice movement was about 650km-700km. Lacking geographical tools, I base this on eyeballing Ascat and using the known distance of 712km between the North Pole and Cape Morris Jesup (blue line).
So using my crude math, ice area in question was ~400,000km2, and volume was ~1000km3-1200km3, using average thickness of 2.5m-3m.
Notes:
* Not all of this area and volume was lost, some of it is now hanging off Svalbard, and with some very good luck could avoid its export fate.
* As the Arctic Ocean was still very cold during this time, I expect some of the lost volume and a lot of the lost area was recreated by freezing of opened leads during the "stretching" process.

So in essence thick ice was replace with thin ice, and other thick ice was relocated to a more vulnerable region. As the melting season should be enough to do away with thin ice, I see this as a potential for a lower September area result by 200k-300k km2, all other things being equal. Of course, such things happened in other years as well, it is well beyond my pay grade to try and quantify just the anomaly. But it's certainly not good, and bears watching should it recur.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #579 on: May 03, 2020, 07:37:08 PM »
I will keep on hoping that the lull in export in recent weeks is continued.
Sad to inform you that Fram export will begin again in two days from now. I already planned to post a wind forecast about that, but I'll do it tomorrow, because I already posted a temp forecast just yesterday.
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blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #580 on: May 03, 2020, 07:42:53 PM »
Meanwhile, let's look into what happened last week.

First, the ozone hole closed. Hence i didn't make a GIF. If someone wants it, let me know, i do have the pictures.

Here is the Fram export via SAR.

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #581 on: May 03, 2020, 07:43:40 PM »
7-day hindsight mean temperature anomalies.

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #582 on: May 03, 2020, 07:44:10 PM »
Ice drift map.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #583 on: May 03, 2020, 08:48:23 PM »
The black circle moved 600km from day 68 to day 105
whoi itp116 tends to confirm your observations, though drifting from further north it possibly covered a larger distance of 691.2km from the beginning of day68 to end of day105
2020   68.00019   -54.9353  87.0807
2020  105.97934    -8.6480  83.0588
movable type haversine distance calculator
Full drift path is inset.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2020, 09:05:03 PM by uniquorn »

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #584 on: May 03, 2020, 08:56:44 PM »
Good ol' ITP116! Had a purpose after all!
« Last Edit: May 04, 2020, 08:02:27 AM by blumenkraft »

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #585 on: May 04, 2020, 07:07:08 AM »
Current NH albedo is about normal overall. Spring is coming late over Canada.

That's a pretty crude way of making a determination on albedo.

Things are about to rapidly change in the NW 1/3td of North America
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Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #586 on: May 04, 2020, 07:10:11 AM »
On the whole, the 2020 melt season has been pretty uneventful.

The latest JAXA extent #'s have 2020 in 5th place, closer to 14th place than 1st. The latest 5 day NSIDC area average is a slight net gain.

Fram / Barents export should be perking up again this week with a high pressure of ~ 1050 heading for Greenland and a low in the Kara, but the early season has been much cooler thus far than last year. 

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #587 on: May 04, 2020, 07:15:22 AM »
The euro is going ham on the dipole but more importantly major ridging over the NW 1/3rd of NA bringing a huge influx of sunshine and huge WAA.

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it go e-e-e-e-ow e-e-e-e-e-e-blaow

Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #588 on: May 04, 2020, 07:17:59 AM »
On the whole, the 2020 melt season has been pretty uneventful.

The latest JAXA extent #'s have 2020 in 5th place, closer to 14th place than 1st. The latest 5 day NSIDC area average is a slight net gain.

Fram / Barents export should be perking up again this week with a high pressure of ~ 1050 heading for Greenland and a low in the Kara, but the early season has been much cooler thus far than last year.

It's pretty irrelevant.

We are a month away before any mass  melt ponding in the Arctic basin will even take place.

I got a nickname for all my guns
a Desert Eagle that I call Big Pun
a two shot that I call Tupac
and a dirty pistol that love to crew hop
my TEC 9 Imma call T-Pain
my 3-8 snub Imma call Lil Wayne
machine gun named Missy so loud
it go e-e-e-e-ow e-e-e-e-e-e-blaow

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #589 on: May 04, 2020, 07:47:55 AM »
2-3 weeks is what i expect, Friv. Not 1 month. Cleaner air, you know. Instruments confirm, overall Arctic.
To everyone: before posting in a melting season topic, please be sure to know contents of this moderator's post: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,3017.msg261893.html#msg261893 . Thanks!

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #590 on: May 04, 2020, 08:01:26 AM »

It's pretty irrelevant.

We are a month away before any mass  melt ponding in the Arctic basin will even take place.

2D ice measures in May are clearly relevant. They impact albedo and are providing a buffer against intrusion of warm Pacific water. We're 7 weeks from solstice. At this time last year we had substantial open water in the Beaufort Sea.

Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #591 on: May 04, 2020, 08:07:13 AM »
2-3 weeks is what i expect, Friv. Not 1 month. Cleaner air, you know. Instruments confirm, overall Arctic.

I'm just going by the historic modis 3-6-7 images.

Not one year sees surface darkening over the Arctic basin until the first week of June at the earliest.

And most of the major melt season's don't see that until the 10th-20th.

The models are showing some favorable patterns going into mid May but we have seen that many times and the issue is while the mid levels 500-900MB scream warm sunshine the bad angled sun even with it shining all day takes so much time to start denting and lowering that silly high .75-.85 albedo.

We really need to see snow cover start to vanish earlier than it ever has on the modern records.

And we have seen the last decade see a wall being hit in spring snow melt which delays the advance of warm surface air and warm melted river water flooding parts of the basin.

The forecast is looking like 3-4 days or more soon of major sunshine with 3-6C 850mb temps taking over all of Northwest NA and a Southerly to SSW wind blowing over the Yukon and over Alaska downsloping into the Arctic.

And this is with major incoming insolation.

Insolation by the 10th will be blowing well over 400w/m2 really about 425w/m2 between 60-70N and yet it sure takes a while to melt that snow and warm up the ground and local lakes and rivers.


I got a nickname for all my guns
a Desert Eagle that I call Big Pun
a two shot that I call Tupac
and a dirty pistol that love to crew hop
my TEC 9 Imma call T-Pain
my 3-8 snub Imma call Lil Wayne
machine gun named Missy so loud
it go e-e-e-e-ow e-e-e-e-e-e-blaow

Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #592 on: May 04, 2020, 08:11:06 AM »

It's pretty irrelevant.

We are a month away before any mass  melt ponding in the Arctic basin will even take place.

2D ice measures in May are clearly relevant. They impact albedo and are providing a buffer against intrusion of warm Pacific water. We're 7 weeks from solstice. At this time last year we had substantial open water in the Beaufort Sea.

Saying there was substantial open water in the Beaufort sea last year at this time is severely disingenuous.


I got a nickname for all my guns
a Desert Eagle that I call Big Pun
a two shot that I call Tupac
and a dirty pistol that love to crew hop
my TEC 9 Imma call T-Pain
my 3-8 snub Imma call Lil Wayne
machine gun named Missy so loud
it go e-e-e-e-ow e-e-e-e-e-e-blaow

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #593 on: May 04, 2020, 08:31:38 AM »
In case it's of interest to anybody else in here, I'm currently remotely attending an EGU session on "Citizen Science":

https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2020/displays/35918
"The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening" - Rosa Luxemburg

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #594 on: May 04, 2020, 08:40:48 AM »

Saying there was substantial open water in the Beaufort sea last year at this time is severely disingenuous.

Maybe you should grab a dictionary and look up the definition of disingenuous.

I see a lot of open water near Utqiagvik in the image from last year and a significant amount of open water near between Banks Island and the Alaska coast that isn't present at this time this year.

We interpret the term "substantial" differently.


Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #595 on: May 04, 2020, 09:05:07 AM »
I see a lot of open water near Utqiagvik in the image from last year and a significant amount of open water near between Banks Island and the Alaska coast that isn't present at this time this year.


The "open water near Utqiagvik" you refer to was in the Chukchi Sea using the usual definitions. Below is an "objective" view on historical Beaufort Sea ice area.

2016 was the year for early open water in the Beaufort Sea:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2016/04/the-beaufort-gyre-goes-into-overdrive/
"The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening" - Rosa Luxemburg

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #596 on: May 04, 2020, 09:20:52 AM »
I see a lot of open water near Utqiagvik in the image from last year and a significant amount of open water near between Banks Island and the Alaska coast that isn't present at this time this year.


The "open water near Utqiagvik" you refer to was in the Chukchi Sea using the usual definitions. Below is an "objective" view on historical Beaufort Sea ice area.


Fair enough. I'll stand corrected. The point remains that there was a lot more open water on the Pacific side last year at this point.

oren

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #597 on: May 04, 2020, 10:05:12 AM »
And there was even more open water on thr Pacific side in 2016. But it's not the only thing that matters. The melting season in the High Arctic hasn't really begun yet, we will wait and see.

gandul

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #598 on: May 04, 2020, 10:29:18 AM »
Current NH albedo is about normal overall. Spring is coming late over Canada.

That's a pretty crude way of making a determination on albedo.

Things are about to rapidly change in the NW 1/3td of North America
It's a first order component of albedo, it's capable to self preserve, or self-accelerate its own reduction, and this Spring evolution matters in the Arctic Summer

Paul

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #599 on: May 04, 2020, 01:24:35 PM »
There was some open water on between the ice floes in the Beaufort sea this time last year and the ice did not look all that strong but even then, who would of thought we would see the large amount of true open water by the end of the month. If you go like for like then this year's ice there does look a little more robust but let's see what it looks like by May 11th after it experience a few days of warm off shore winds and the Beaufort Gyre kicked into gear.

One thing for sure, it does look like it's a dipole that could last a good while and perhaps the only saving grace is that it's not a further 3 to 4 weeks down the line but even so, at least at upper levels, the air could be quite warm.

Also note the strong low forecast for the Kara Sea again, be interesting how the ice responds to this storm, so plenty to look at that's for sure.