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Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1200 on: May 27, 2020, 05:04:26 PM »
It looks like 2020 has caught 2019 for the time being.

The sea ice data thread has 2020 at 253k km2 below 2019 through 5.26 for the entire Arctic.

But it's a leap year and an extra day is a big misleading advantage at a time of year with heavy daily losses. We could take away today's 83k in losses or give 2019 it's 5.27.19 losses of 53k.

Let's use the smaller number and say that the date adjusted lead is 200k.

Then we have 2020 in the lead in four peripheral seas that will have no likely bearing on the minimum because they melted out fully in 2019 and are locks to do the same in 2020. (Hudson, Baffin, Okhotsk, St. Lawrence). Here 2020 is ahead by 185k.

Take that away and you're left with a 15k edge for 2020. Pretty much a dead heat. Rest of the Arctic has a big divide. 2019 is ruling the west and 2020 is ruling the east.

We're approaching the portion of the year where 2019 hit it's sweet spot. From 6.11 to 7.15, 2019 recorded an area century loss on 34 of 35 days and narrowly missed by 1k on the other day. If 2020 can pull away from that, we'll have a big year. My gut still has 2019 as a slight favorite, but that's my bias showing.

uniquorn

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1201 on: May 27, 2020, 05:39:19 PM »
Worldview, Beaufort Sea, May18-26, heavy linear contrast to show floe characteristics. Using colour this time to show slight 'blueing' in some coastal areas. We have become used to having a protective MYI arc along the Alaskan coast that is sadly missing, mostly, this year.
click to play

Simon

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1202 on: May 27, 2020, 05:49:48 PM »
Re my post on additional heat transfer from solar irradiation due to reduced albedo. I assumed sea ice to be very close to 0C on June 1st and I assumed no cloud cover which Phoenix kindly pointed out is not correct. Assuming clouds reduce incident radiation at the surface by half then I consider it safe to assume an additional 60W/m2 could be absorbed by sea ice in the event of zero snow cover. Thus 40x24x60x60x60 being the number of joule absorbed and dividing this by the specific latent heat of fusion of ice being 336000J/kg gives about 600kg of additional ice melt per m2 which corresponds to a 60cm reduced depth by mid July. Interesting I think.

Freegrass

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1203 on: May 27, 2020, 06:10:33 PM »
We have become used to having a protective MYI arc along the Alaskan coast that is sadly missing, mostly, this year.
I've said this already a few months ago; I think that this will become one of the biggest problems for this season. When you don't have that protective arm of thick ice, I believe that hot Pacific water will be able to penetrate deeper into the CAB this season, and melt out (possibly) the pole as some of that hot pacific fresh meltwater flows towards the Fram.

We'll know in August if I was right.

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oren

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1204 on: May 27, 2020, 06:12:27 PM »
Simon, thanks for the interesting calculation. Bear in mind albedo reductions are not 40 days ahead of other years. As Phoenix said it is more reasonable to assume a week or two-week advantage averaged across the whole pack. This still would result in a whopping 15cm of added melt, which IMHO is a huge extra.

ArcticMelt2

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1205 on: May 27, 2020, 06:43:14 PM »
Snow position as of may 26 compared to other years after 2005.

El Cid

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1206 on: May 27, 2020, 07:12:39 PM »


Then we have 2020 in the lead in four peripheral seas that will have no likely bearing on the minimum because they melted out fully in 2019

You said that many many times, yet it won't make that true. As others have pointed out, although these seas do fully melt out but that is not the point. They are gateways to more central seas and the earlier they melt out, the more access they provide for warm waters to melt out these inner seas. It absolutely matters WHEN they melt out. Therefore the basic tenet of your teaching is probably not right

jdallen

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1207 on: May 27, 2020, 07:51:01 PM »
The sea ice area in the Central Arctic Sea (which extends over 3.22 million km2 of ocean) has declined from highest in the satellite record on April 16 (#42) to lowest in the satellite record on the 26th May (#1).

Whether such strong sea ice area losses can be maintained from the current sea ice area of 3.03 million km2, is, of course, another story.

What this event does is underscore this - that as the volume of ice and durability of the pack decline, volatility in the metrics we follow will increase dramatically.  The physical metaphor I think of is a wobbling top about to fall over.

The fate of the ice year over year is more dependent on the whims of weather, even relatively mild weather, than it ever has been previously in human memory.
This space for Rent.

grixm

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1208 on: May 27, 2020, 07:55:41 PM »
Has anyone seen the Laptev sea today on Worldview? The inner half is so dark, but it almost looks like a camera glitch because the contrast line is so straight and sharp, like that of a giant shadow. But it shows up on all the true color feeds. Is it real?

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1209 on: May 27, 2020, 08:03:11 PM »


Then we have 2020 in the lead in four peripheral seas that will have no likely bearing on the minimum because they melted out fully in 2019

You said that many many times, yet it won't make that true. As others have pointed out, although these seas do fully melt out but that is not the point. They are gateways to more central seas and the earlier they melt out, the more access they provide for warm waters to melt out these inner seas. It absolutely matters WHEN they melt out. Therefore the basic tenet of your teaching is probably not right

This is the second time I've produced this type of comparison. The first time I included Kara and Barents and someone objected because they were connected to the CAB. Respecting that objection, I removed them to make the comparison more straightforward.

I don't think it's overly controversial to indicate that the differences in Hudson, Baffin, St. Lawrence and Okhotsk will be made up later in the season. Those seas really shouldn't be expected to materially influence the outcome in the other seas going forward. I did name them specifically and that was a part of the post you chose to snip.

2019 is the closest we have to 2020 in terms of ghg levels and we have a lot more recent content such as gerontocrat's historical regional area figures which allow us to make more educated comparisons. 2019 was also an extremely impressive melt season resulting in 2nd lowest all-time extent, volume and Greenland melt and 3rd lowest area. Indicating that 2020 is on a similar pace is an acknowledgement that 2020 is having a robust start and provides perspective.

oren

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1210 on: May 27, 2020, 08:07:29 PM »
Has anyone seen the Laptev sea today on Worldview? The inner half is so dark, but it almost looks like a camera glitch because the contrast line is so straight and sharp, like that of a giant shadow. But it shows up on all the true color feeds. Is it real?
I am sure it's real. Temps not far from the Laptev have been soaring in the past few days.

mdoliner

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1211 on: May 27, 2020, 08:36:44 PM »
Lowered albedo does increase short wave solar absorption, but also long wave earth radiation. Since in the winter the latter predominates and in the summer the former, they must be roughly equal somewhere, probably mid-May. Likewise aerosols both cool and warm. As anyone who has had a garden knows, the first frost is on a cloudless night. People seem to be writing about only half of the effects of these phenomena.

Freegrass

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1212 on: May 27, 2020, 08:50:11 PM »
Has anyone seen the Laptev sea today on Worldview? The inner half is so dark, but it almost looks like a camera glitch because the contrast line is so straight and sharp, like that of a giant shadow. But it shows up on all the true color feeds. Is it real?
Can it be rain?
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pearscot

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1213 on: May 27, 2020, 09:30:08 PM »
Has anyone seen the Laptev sea today on Worldview? The inner half is so dark, but it almost looks like a camera glitch because the contrast line is so straight and sharp, like that of a giant shadow. But it shows up on all the true color feeds. Is it real?
Can it be rain?

I'm fairly convinced that area is completely saturated with melt ponds. That's been the warmest spot in the arctic for a while now so I think that ice is ready to melt out. It's very possible it also rained over that region too. Either way, I think that ice will be breaking up very soon.

That same hue/type of ice is also seen in the Hudson Bay in areas which are melting out right now too. It is quite interesting and significant given the large area, but given how the appearance has changed so dramatically over a week, I will not be surprised to see that area open within the first week of June.
pls!

paolo

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1214 on: May 27, 2020, 09:31:35 PM »
Worldview, by using the 7-2-1 bands, seems to me to confirm

Aluminium

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1215 on: May 27, 2020, 09:39:43 PM »
Lowered albedo does increase short wave solar absorption, but also long wave earth radiation.
Visual albedo and longwave albedo are two different numbers. Second one is already low for snow and ice.

romett1

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1216 on: May 27, 2020, 10:09:01 PM »
Latest June 4th forecast for Laptev coast is a bit less dramatic than yesterday's. But still - this image is for June 6th, Climate Reanalyzer.

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1217 on: May 27, 2020, 10:36:15 PM »
...
I have a question for anyone here regarding the importance of continental snow levels in evaluating the sea ice situation. My simple interpretation is that they are an indicator of continental albedo. Lower continental albedo means the land can heat up more and has increased potential to contribute heat to the ice via warm air advection (WAA). Do others see it the same way or is their more to the connection between continental snow and sea ice?
Oh yes, there is more. Much, much more.

Imagine you try to hit a nail with a hammer, but hit your finger instead. Then you ask: what's the importance of my finger being hit by this hammer? Is it that the nail nearby was a bit shaken by the impact of this hammer hit - by the shockwave spreading through my finger and into the board and through it, into the nail? Why, certainly, there is that. But much more important thing is - IT HURTS!!!

Right? :)

Well, same deal with snow cover going away that much earlier. The hammer is sunlight. And the importance of this sunlight wiping away all that snow - is that that same sunlight also hammers the sea ice. Directly. Massively. It melts it. If the snow is gone, then we now it's mainly Sun to blame.

Why look at snow and not at the ice? For the time being - this part of melt season - it is simply so much easier to see the impact exactly on land, because snow is white, while land under it is dark. While ice under snow which was over that ice - is not dark, it's white.

By estimating snow cover in areas directly adjucent to ice-covered areas especially vulnerable to melt during this time of melt season (regarding temperatures, how high sun is over horizon for how long every day, thickness, etc) - first and foremost we can see, with high degree of confidence, how much melt is likely to be happening to snow cover of sea ice and sea ice itself. Everything else - is secondary.

Secondary effects can pile up longer-term, of course, and yes, heat content of air masses is one such thing. Warmer and earlier river runoff is yet another. Possible regional methane release, already mentioned above, is also one - by the way its GWP over 1 year is ~120 of CO2; over few weeks / months? Hundreds times higher than CO2, so any serious release is no joke. Yet another consequence is that further insolation will likely heat up that dark soil well above 0C, - while areas still covered by (by then melting) sea ice will remain near 0C, thus often helping to intensify winds, with further consequences for the ice.

But again, all those are relatively small deal. Insolation is "the" thing to be looking for in June (and near it). Particularly this year, with cleaner air - which intensifies things. To the point it, kind of, "HURTS!!!".

<Great post, removed one word. O>

<It is in my country's culture to keep such words in when emotionally fit, despite obscenity. Apologies... F.T.>
« Last Edit: May 28, 2020, 09:57:02 AM by F.Tnioli »
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Freegrass

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1218 on: May 27, 2020, 11:03:29 PM »
<snip>Possible regional methane release, already mentioned above, is also one - by the way its GWP over 1 year is ~120 of CO2; over few weeks / months? Hundreds times higher than CO2, so any serious release is no joke. <snip>
Excellent post FT! I wasn't sure if methane had an immediate effect, but I assumed it did. Happy you were able to confirm that!
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Aluminium

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1219 on: May 28, 2020, 12:13:56 AM »
Imagine you try to hit a nail with a hammer, but hit your finger instead.
Nice analogy.

WAA probably can affect the ice seriously. I got about 50 km3 of ice per day by calculations assuming high moisture. Though part of this energy will not be received by ice. And it reduces albedo sharply. Another thing is drought. May dry air mass cause a dust storm into the Arctic?

Often Distant

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1220 on: May 28, 2020, 02:37:20 AM »
Comes melt, comes fire. East Siberia getting some warmth.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1221 on: May 28, 2020, 03:33:57 AM »
It seems that the hammer of melting coming down now is primarily atmospheric delivered moisture and heat. See today's RAMMB CIRA snowmelt product and Nullschool GFS precipitable water and surface temps below. Note Chukchi's melt too. Laptev is covered by the cyclone's clouds but we already know the hammering that's going on there.

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1222 on: May 28, 2020, 08:16:34 AM »
The rapidly diminishing ENSO index is reflecting a transfer of heat from ocean surface to depth.

The diminished heat available to the atmosphere may offset some of the increased insolation due to Covid and moderate the rest of the melt season. One can hope.

oren

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1223 on: May 28, 2020, 08:34:17 AM »
One can always hope, but I believe no serious correlation has been found between ENSO cycle and Arctic sea ice.
This can be discussed further in Does El Niño affect Arctic sea ice?

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1224 on: May 28, 2020, 09:04:05 AM »

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1225 on: May 28, 2020, 09:29:52 AM »
Interesting article on Siberian forest fires. Up to 6 C average temp anomalies in the area....

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/environment/massive-arctic-heatwave-reignites-siberian-forest-fires/article/572337

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1226 on: May 28, 2020, 10:48:19 AM »

Another well below average extent loss despite very warm temperatures over much of the Arctic yesterday.  I revert to normal mode - i.e. confused. Will the NSIDC data later today confuse me even more?

This pattern of huge disparity between JAXA extent and NSIDC area is just like last year.

My swag is a different sensor. JAXA is better at determining when ice is completely gone, NSIDC sensor misreading lots of melt ponds as open water.

NSIDC gives a better reflection of momentum which one can easily argue is more important at this stage. I'm rooting for low melt, but I don't take any comfort in the low JAXA numbers.

Best insight comes when the 3D PIOMAS model shows up and you put all three together. Another week + for that to drop.

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1227 on: May 28, 2020, 01:35:13 PM »
Nice analogy.

WAA probably can affect the ice seriously. I got about 50 km3 of ice per day by calculations assuming high moisture. Though part of this energy will not be received by ice. And it reduces albedo sharply. Another thing is drought. May dry air mass cause a dust storm into the Arctic?
50 km^3 per day by WAA would be extremely serious, yes. If it'd happen... You sure you got the number right? Just stunned by that figure, tbh. And yet it still would be secondary, in the same time. How much km^3 can be gone by sunlight directly? Very roughly speaking, it's triple-digit figure, i.e. over 100 km^3 / day, as evident even from as simple info as "Perspective: Ice Loss and Energy" small chapter on this page and couple simplest napkin math lines, assuming (obviously) than most of ice melt during a melting season comes from direct insolation in less than 90 days (which is maximum insolation times in the Arctic).

Dust storms, were a concern in the past, already. One major effect is albedo drop of dust-covered ice. Personally i call it "dirty ice" (because it's quite that when you experience such ice personally), and i've seen such ice melt way, way faster than clean ice in real-world conditions, myself. Much of the dirt remains on top of it as it melts, continuously soaking lots of extra heat whenever exposed to the sun.

How likely / big dust storms can be? I don't really know, but at least we can see it's serious enough for Arctic dust storm monitoring network being talked about in 2016 (some details - here); glaciologists are acknowledging great effect dust can have on any ice (see for example this short piece); marine ecosystems can be affected strongly enough for piece like this one to exist.

However, from what i know, there is one major obstacle for dust storms to become a "key" factor for any large (means, thousands kilometers in diameter roughly) areas in the Arctic: usually, conditions which lead to extreme soil drying in the same time are resulting in lack of any strong winds in such (dried) areas. Largely, that is; exceptions regularly happen. But still. I.e., i don't think we'll have any significant (say over 10%) portion of Arctic sea ice ending up covered in so much dust that albedo drop caused by dust would dwarf other things which reduce albedo. I think dust storms will remain strong but regional factor, only.

Again, this is merely uneducated guess, though.
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Aluminium

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1228 on: May 28, 2020, 02:58:24 PM »
May 23-27.

2019.

Aluminium

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1229 on: May 28, 2020, 03:45:01 PM »
50 km^3 per day by WAA would be extremely serious, yes. If it'd happen... You sure you got the number right?
My assumptions: 1 km x 1000 km x 5 m/s of air, 1 kJ/ (kg * °C), 1.2 kg/m3, 10°C, 10 g/m3 of water vapor, 2.3 MJ/kg. I saw warmer and wetter events. Infrared radiation provides effective interaction between snow/ice surface and wet air mass.

Meanwhile, the melting season intensifies.

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1230 on: May 28, 2020, 03:50:27 PM »
Some forecast observations.

Fram export looking to ramp up again in early June after a few weeks hiatus. Wind over the 10 day forecast period is working to minimize the formation of open water in the Beaufort during this period approaching peak potential insolation. This would delay progression of albedo loss. Some good luck helps when fundamental conditions and momentum are strong.

Milwen

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1231 on: May 28, 2020, 04:37:00 PM »
Looks like end of snow cover in Siberia next week.

Freegrass

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1232 on: May 28, 2020, 05:03:18 PM »
Latest Five Day Forecast
Wind + Temp @ Surface

A lot of heat keeps lingering around the pole, and it looks like at the end of the week we could see some more Fram export.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1233 on: May 28, 2020, 05:14:40 PM »
Lowered albedo does increase short wave solar absorption, but also long-wave earth radiation. Since in the winter the latter predominates and in the summer the former, they must be roughly equal somewhere, probably mid-May. Likewise aerosols both cool and warm. As anyone who has had a garden knows, the first frost is on a cloudless night. People seem to be writing about only half of the effects of these phenomena.

I'm not sure I read this correctly; note that emissivity is controlled by temperature and not by colour. Just because something is dark doesn't mean it will emit more radiation. Colour is largely controlled by how the object reflects visible light (unless the object is hot enough to emit light in the visible spectrum). The two properties are unrelated.


Freegrass

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1234 on: May 28, 2020, 06:55:41 PM »
May 23-27.

2019.
What do you see Aluminium?
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Aluminium

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1235 on: May 28, 2020, 08:50:48 PM »
What do you see Aluminium?
There is quite active movement everywhere. In general, I see high degree of swisscheesification.

Freegrass

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1236 on: May 28, 2020, 09:05:55 PM »
What do you see Aluminium?
There is quite active movement everywhere. In general, I see high degree of swisscheesification.
I'm seeing the ESS getting drained again of ice instead of filling up. It filled up a little, but now she's in bad shape again...
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?

Phoenix

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1237 on: May 28, 2020, 10:09:41 PM »
50 km^3 per day by WAA would be extremely serious, yes. If it'd happen... You sure you got the number right?
My assumptions: 1 km x 1000 km x 5 m/s of air, 1 kJ/ (kg * °C), 1.2 kg/m3, 10°C, 10 g/m3 of water vapor, 2.3 MJ/kg. I saw warmer and wetter events. Infrared radiation provides effective interaction between snow/ice surface and wet air mass.

Meanwhile, the melting season intensifies.

I'm not a physics expert, but you seem to be providing some testimony in support of the magnitude of land based WAA. If you're interested in providing a tutorial on another thread or via PM or can suggest a source where this math is explained, I'd appreciate it.

pearscot

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1238 on: May 28, 2020, 11:01:42 PM »
This is absolutely astonishing. If there were not landfast ice, I would say it already looks like mid July up in Barrow. It's also now possible to see some ocean water coming up in that dark patch, although the next large storm will more than likely rip what exists off the coast.

pls!

blumenkraft

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1239 on: May 28, 2020, 11:08:08 PM »
Again, on the topic of the Kara sea. Here's a zoom in. 24./26./28.05.

uniquorn

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1240 on: May 28, 2020, 11:30:03 PM »
uni-hamburg amsr2-uhh, mar21-may27, ESS and (most of) Laptev

Glen Koehler

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1241 on: May 29, 2020, 12:54:02 AM »
Again, on the topic of the Kara sea. Here's a zoom in. 24./26./28.05.
       Thanks for those superb and highly informative images blumenkraft.  Am I correct that the reported Extent and Area values for that location on those three days is likely to show virtually no change?  Yet the change is dramatic when ice quality and thickness is considered.  That is the monster hiding under the bed for ASI loss.  It doesn't change much for a long time as it absorbs energy and rots out .... and then it falls prey to some intermittent melting event.

        A similar point (albeit in a far distant context) about smooth model projection tractories vs. the bumpy ups and downs of what actually happens is made in a short video by Peter Sinclair https://climatecrocks.com/2020/05/28/new-video-breaking-bad-news-in-florida-keys/
 
       That may seem off-topic, but my point is that the same principle applies to Arctic melt and is becoming increasingly relevant as 2020 early season conditioning softens up the ice for a potential sucker punch later.  Because of the ways we measure/perceive changes, they don't make an impression until a threshold is exceeded and then change seems to erupt suddenly.  But it was building all along.

       Loss of MYI was strike 1 of 'below the surface' change.  Thickness decline leading to structural weakness, fracturing and increased mobility is strike 2.  Strike 3 is when the rot is no longer hidden.

       As Juan Garcia's tag line says, Extent losses mask the other dimension of Thickness loss which is not as intuitively apparent to our visually based monitoring.  Thus, an entire dimension of ASI decline is essentially hidden, and accumulates with less notice.  Then another GAC (or current forecast for large areas of clear sky within 24-->10 days before solstice, https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/fcst/#gfs.arc-lea.prcp-tcld-topo) comes around and Wham!, a whole lot of built-up change potential suddenly becomes manifest, appearing as a dramatic new event even to folks who have been watching all along. 

       I'm preaching to the choir of course, and not revealing anything new to the people who come here.  But those pictures compelled me to comment on ice condition as an under-appreciated dimension, and as the defining characteristic of the 2020 melt season so far.  Call me Chicken-Little, but that ice looks dangerous.  And the records indicate that reaching that condition in May is anomalously early for the Kara Sea.

       All of which is a long-winded way of saying what A-Team (I think) once said.... one of these days... the ice will go "poof."  The nature of complex, interactive, chaotic systems is to not see change coming until it suddenly happens.
« Last Edit: May 29, 2020, 06:04:18 PM by Glen Koehler »
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1242 on: May 29, 2020, 01:01:58 AM »
uni-hamburg amsr2-uhh, mar21-may27, ESS and (most of) Laptev
Thanks for this graphic Uniquorn. It's shows exactly what I was talking about and more. The ESS did fill up, but it seems that all that ice just vanished as it got compressed into the island. Looking on worldview it was mostly rubble, so it looks like there wasn't much ice to compress to begin with...

I can't find a year where temperatures are going up as fast as they are now in this time of year.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1243 on: May 29, 2020, 01:14:22 AM »
uni-hamburg amsr2-uhh, mar21-may27, ESS and (most of) Laptev
Thanks for this graphic Uniquorn. It's shows exactly what I was talking about and more. The ESS did fill up, but it seems that all that ice just vanished as it got compressed into the island. Looking on worldview it was mostly rubble, so it looks like there wasn't much ice to compress to begin with...
I can't find a year where temperatures are going up as fast as they are now in this time of year.
What the animation shows is that the ESS never emptied. Yet.
« Last Edit: May 29, 2020, 01:41:00 PM by uniquorn »

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1244 on: May 29, 2020, 02:45:44 AM »
uni-hamburg amsr2-uhh, mar21-may27, ESS and (most of) Laptev
Thanks for this graphic Uniquorn. It's shows exactly what I was talking about and more. The ESS did fill up, but it seems that all that ice just vanished as it got compressed into the island. Looking on worldview it was mostly rubble, so it looks like there wasn't much ice to compress to begin with...

I can't find a year where temperatures are going up as fast as they are now in this time of year.



Been saying for many months now, the ESS is the one to watch due to a lack of fast ice and the normal ice looking fairly weak for the most part, good evidence of that is the massive hole that developed from the new Siberian Islands. 2014 had similar and it led to the most northerly Laptev bite(about 300 miles from the pole) but at least in 2014, the ESS had lots of fast ice so melt in the ESS was slow as a result, not the case this year and we could have melting as fast as 2007 and 2017.

Expect a little bit more openings in the ESS as the winds will blow the ice away from the coasts and the fast ice, at least I guess it means the CAB ice keeps compacted. Then the weather over the basin starts to turn slack with not much wind around to move the ice although pressure is forecast to remain high on the Pacific side of the basin but there is more troughing over the CAB. Basically weather in a melt season where we should not see anything extraordinary but you just don't know with this year.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1245 on: May 29, 2020, 02:49:56 AM »
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1246 on: May 29, 2020, 04:16:52 AM »
Some pockets of >0C SST growing near coast in Beaufort and ESS. Should see some beyond the Bering Strait into Chukchi any day now.

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1247 on: May 29, 2020, 04:37:24 AM »
This came I believe from the NSIDC or NASA I cant remember.

But its probably decently accurate.
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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1248 on: May 29, 2020, 08:59:43 AM »
Can't find a year ? Try 1998 :) .. b.c,

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_1998.png

Interestingly enough, 1997/98 was one of the warmest winters in Europe. Just like 2006/2007. And just like 2019/20. In fact these are the three warmest winters in the past 100 years (at least in my country). What it means for the Arctic is anyone's guess, but I think the warm winter (= warmer soil, less snow) is an important precondition of fast spring melt and eventual fast Arctic melt. It happened in 2007, it did not really happen in 1998. 2020 is anyone's guess, but still...   

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Re: The 2020 melting season
« Reply #1249 on: May 29, 2020, 10:00:29 AM »
Thanks for those superb and highly informative images blumenkraft.

Most welcome, Glen. :)

Quote
  Am I correct that the reported Extent and Area values for that location on those three days is likely to show virtually no change?

I think so, yes. The gaps between the floes should be small enough to not get picked up by the sensors. Not an expert though.