The 2022 melting season

[binntho]

Well the bomb cyclone has had it's day, and looking at nullschool and tidbits, the current AHAA seems about to end by tomorrow. So perhaps a bit of a rebound in the extent numbers in the short term. (AHAA = Atlantic Hot Air Attact)

It turned out to be only a very small bit, net increase of +3241 km2 over the last 4 days. Impossible to tell if it is wind-driven dispersion or refreeze or both, but I for one was expecting significantly more gain than this.

Like nadir says, there is a nice fat storm koming up the Barents and into the Kara but it fizzles out in a couple of days after which the winds and temps certainly seem to favor further increases in extent. Below is Nullschool forecast for March 22 at 12:00Z, a lot of strong northerly winds on the Atlantic front, and very cold as well. The rule-of-thumb for surface freeze is that it starts at -11C but I think that assumes very little wind.

[Aluminium]

March 9-20.

2021.

[Jim Hunt]

Thanks to a hint from the Ruth Mottram, temperature readings from the DMI's automated weather station at Kap Morris Jesup on March 15th:

https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2022/03/facts-about-the-arctic-in-march-2022/#comment-553125

"Likely driven by føhn wind & an atmospheric river with a marked effect on the sea ice"

[jdallen]

Hey, people.

Just a friendly reminder of some of the recent science that should impact our analyses:

2021 Heat Bombs in the Arctic, via Scripps:

Natural evolution of the "Cyclone Cannon" phenomenon we identified here starting back around 2016.

<waves cheerily> How's everyone been?

-J

[jdallen]

The Barents looks as bad at this date as I think we have ever seen it.  I need to spend some time putting together a few comparisons.  The conditions are present to permit the reentry of heat into the region (via decreased albedo and greater heat capture) in amounts sufficient to cause significant preconditioning for later this spring.

Shooting from the hip, implications on the Atlantic side melt season are already quite dire.

March 9-20.

2021.

[Paul]

The Barents looks as bad at this date as I think we have ever seen it.  I need to spend some time putting together a few comparisons.  The conditions are present to permit the reentry of heat into the region (via decreased albedo and greater heat capture) in amounts sufficient to cause significant preconditioning for later this spring.

Shooting from the hip, implications on the Atlantic side melt season are already quite dire.

March 9-20.

2021.

Been years where Barants ice extent was low in March but ice has remained until September like it did in both 2014 and 2016. Some cold northerlies are set to become persistent here(which I notice does tend to happen more during the Spring months) which may increase extent but does it actually mean anything and could it actually be worse for the ice condition nearer the pole?

[uniquorn]

Been years where Barants ice extent was low in March but ice has remained until September like it did in both 2014 and 2016

2014 yes
2016 no

ascat, atlantic side, mar-sep 2014 and 2016

[Freegrass]

Latest Five Day Forecast + Last 48h
Wind + Temp @ Surface
Large GiF!

Added 30 day HYCOM, which shows thick ice building up along the coast in the Beaufort sea, and a closure of the gaps around Svalbard.

[Jim Hunt]

30 day HYCOM, which shows thick ice building up along the coast in the Beaufort Sea

Here's the "measured" perspective:

[Freegrass]

Measured vs Modeled
Some serious differences...
But also some similarities...
I still love HYCOM, it helped me last year to make a good prediction... 
Click to play

[binntho]

While waiting for the numbers to escape the doldrums, I thought an animation with a marked floe would be just the thing! The animation shows ice 6 days of ice movement north of Franz Josef land (the small island  on the right is Arthur Island, and capes Battenberg and Bruce on the northerne end of Prince George Land are just visible on the right edge).

The wind has been very strong from the north, and the temps way below freezing, but the open water is very resilient and the ice edge is 100km from Albert Island on both the first and the last frame.

Click to animate.

[be cause]

 March 10, 2022 ,
' A change of pattern will bring storms into the basin from east of Greenland producing gales or more in pretty well every part over the coming week or so . The recent influx of Pacific water will be met by a surge from the Atlantic and warmth , potentially bringing 0'C to the pole in a few days . This could by the dramatic start that portends a dramatic season that challenges records . b.c.

14 days later and the last low of the series has settled over Kara where it and future lows will combine with a series of highs over Beaufort and the CAB during the next 14 days to create dipoles exporting ice to Barents and Greenland seas .
    Following the last 2 weeks this is certainly preparations for a potentially calamitous year for the Arctic as well as the rest of the world .
  As a lot of cold will be exported too , temps will remain stubbornly on the mild side with some major influxes of 'warmth' including that crossing Siberia , rather early in the season .

  ps. If you are not , I would strongly recommend following Zack Labe on twitter . His monthly analysis has both Jan and Feb as 4th warmest in the Arctic in the satellite era . March may make it to the podium . b.c.

[Jim Hunt]

The NSIDC have finally called the 2022 maximum:

https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2022/02/the-2022-maximum-arctic-sea-ice-extent/#Mar-24

Arctic sea ice has likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.88 million square kilometers (5.75 million square miles) on February 25.

[oren]

An AMSR2 animation of sea ice concentration in the central Arctic, excluding the more peripheral regions, courtesy of the Alfred Wegener institute (AWI). Note the Leads experimental product exaggerates the width of leads, in order to better show movement which I find very useful. Much more information available in the AWI thread mostly updated by uniquorn.
Click to animate and click again for maximum resolution.
The gif source is mirrored on https://seaice.de/AMSR2_Central_Arctic_SIC-LEADS.gif by the esteemed Dr. Lars Kaleschke, who also posts on this forum from time to time.

[Shared Humanity]

Neat to see how quickly the open water in the Laptev freezes over as the sea ice moves away from the shore.

[nadir]

The ECMWF predicts a persistent high over the Beaufort and western CAB for the entire week. Expect more open water in Beaufort which will rapidly refreeze (and rapidly melt again in May).

High pressure in Greenland and CAA as well which will keep Fram export alive. If this “banana” pattern of high pressure happened in May or June it would be really interesting.

[Aluminium]

March 18-27.

2021.

[Freegrass]

Latest Five Day Forecast + Last 48h
Wind + Temp @ Surface
Large GiF!

High pressure is dominating the basin, with northerlies over the Barents extending the ice.
I'm curious if we're gonna get a new maximum in the coning days. Looking at the 30 day HYCOM that I added, you can see ice extent growing in the sea of Okhotsk, Bering, and Barents. Only in the Labrador sea I can see ice extent shrinking. So will that keep the numbers under a new max? Time will tell...

[nadir]

Beautifully made graph of temperature anomalies per Arctic region, by Zach Labe.

I can’t but hope he plans to update this graph during the melting season.

https://twitter.com/zlabe/status/1508800298680258564?s=21&t=Uzi5pl3WrBOhZBZNmGdJUQ

Edit. The graph can be found in his website and it seems he plans to update it each month. Lots of great material here:

https://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/arctic-temperatures/

[dnem]

Gorgeous graphic!

[kassy]

Very nice indeed now if only Japan could reboot that would be great.

[oren]

A great animation by uniquorn posted in another thread.
A combination of CS2SMOS (itself a combination of Cryosat2 thickness and SMOS thin ice measurements) and AWI's SIC-LEADS experimental product, showing together thickness, extent and movement over the whole freezing season.
Warning: very large file, click to animate

[Alphabet Hotel]

Big area of ice S of Severnaya Zemlaya broke up today.

[The Blob warned us]

Two different records showing near surface air temp anomalies for the past 3 months. Really surprised by the location and intensity of the anomaly, what is that?

* only JFM 2016 in the same league

[Glen Koehler]

     FWIW - For folks not used to looking at temperature anomalies, a few degrees +/- C for a few days or a week is common.  But a 10+C anomaly for a 3-month average is bizarre (even moreso for the middle map which is for 4-months).  Three-month average temperature anomalies in the North American mid-latitudes are rarely more than +/- 1 C. 
      In addition, the most intense anomaly's in Blob's post above, while covering a minority of the entire Arctic Ocean, are still for a rather large area.  And it's not like the rest of the AO was normal.  The +4-8C anomaly for the majority of the AO over a 3-month period is also strangely deviant with respect to what happens at lower latitudes.  I can't speak to how much precedence there is for such variation in the Arctic.  It may be more common in that unique geography.  But I also think it is prudent to assume as Dorothy said upon landing in Oz, "We are not in Kansas anymore."

       I was thinking that given global conditions of 1) Continuing La Nina, 2) Still near the low end of the solar cycle, and 3) An apparently healthy re-freeze season - as measured by the rather fickle Extent, but it is what we have -, that the 2022 melting season would be similar to 2021 and rather mundane compared to chart breakers like 2020 or 2016.  Between Kacimi and Kwok 2022 and these temperature anomaly maps, now I'm not so sure.

[Glen Koehler]

     PS - I know that ENSO cycle, solar cycle, and spring max Extent are not well correlated with ASI level in September, so we don't need to argue about that.  But you gotta have something to base a 6-month forecast on, and those are the best ones available for which I have some understanding.  If there are more ASI-specific predictor metrics, please share what they are and what they say about the 2022 melt season. 

     Perhaps there is a semi-reliable seasonal Arctic weather forecast, but based on the weak seasonal weather predictors that we have available for the mid-latitudes which is right over our heads I doubt that there is a seasonal Arctic weather outlook with much skill.  As far as I can tell the melt season weather and the ASI response continues to surprise us in one or more ways every year.  So beyond looking at long-term trends, we just have to watch ASIF to see what happens.   Let's hope that the JAXA satellite and our sturdy data wranglers both enjoy good health.

[nadir]

These recent months the polar vortex has been disrupted, even split a few times. That displaces the coldness toward the continents and a warm temp anomaly appears near the Pole. The cold anomaly in the lower latitudes tends to displace and get blurred while the warm anomaly at the Pole is persistent.

That would be my 2c guess. For polar vortex recent history see Judah Cohen blog:

https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation/

Below 2m temp reanalysis for Jan 2022, Feb is similar. Despite the anomaly magnitude it’s really cold everywhere but it seems Northern Canada got much colder than usual too.

[The Blob warned us]

It is visible in the 5 day running mean back to mid-November 2021. Here is month to date back to October. NCEP/NCAR data has this, any others?

Click for gif

[gerontocrat]

The Tokyo climate center tells us....

A major stratospheric sudden warming (SSW) event started at 30 hPa level in the Northern Hemisphere around 19 March 2022 (See criteria in the Explanation).

What the effects of that are beyond my ken.

https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/

[Aluminium]

2) Still near the low end of the solar cycle

The Sun is ready to strike. There were X-class flares recently.

[Glen Koehler]

     My interpretation of solar influence follows the observation by James Hansen that there is a 1-2 year lag between the solar cycle and influence on the global warming signal.  The previous cycle bottomed out in December 2019, so 2022 is still near the bottom by that view.  Even at its peak/nadir, the solar cycle influence maxes out at about +/- 0.1C with respect to the global annual average surface temperature.  Presumably, any effect on ASI would also be relatively small, and no more than about half that of a strong El Nino/La Nina which can nudge annual average global temperature by about +/- 0.2C.  Every little bit can make a difference, especially when dealing with a discrete transition like the melting point of ice.  But I don't know if the solar cycle has any identifiable effect on ASI.  We should move any further discussion about this to another thread or else Oren will get after us!

[oren]

True on all counts...

[El Cid]

My 2 cents:

1) The polar vortex was not split at all but actually behaved very well during this year, that is why NH midlatitudes did not experience major cold breakouts
2) This helped freezing as it kept the cold core close to the Arctic
3) Yet, the loss of multiyear ice means a generally warmer Arctic
3) The March SSW is a so called "final warming" bu also could lead to cold breakouts during April into NH midlatitudes (actually it is happening right now in  most of Europe)

[Aluminium]

As usual, the weather will make final decision. Europe may be cold but Siberian snow is going to melt rapidly next week.

[oren]

An AMSR2 animation of sea ice concentration in the central Arctic, excluding the more peripheral regions, courtesy of the Alfred Wegener institute (AWI). Note the Leads experimental product exaggerates the width of leads, in order to better show movement which I find very useful. Much more information available in the AWI thread mostly updated by uniquorn.
Click to animate and click again for maximum resolution.
The gif source is mirrored on https://seaice.de/AMSR2_Central_Arctic_SIC-LEADS.gif by the esteemed Dr. Lars Kaleschke, who also posts on this forum from time to time.

[Neven]

Last March was the warmest on record in the Arctic:

[Paul]

These recent months the polar vortex has been disrupted, even split a few times. That displaces the coldness toward the continents and a warm temp anomaly appears near the Pole. The cold anomaly in the lower latitudes tends to displace and get blurred while the warm anomaly at the Pole is persistent.

That would be my 2c guess. For polar vortex recent history see Judah Cohen blog:

https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation/

Below 2m temp reanalysis for Jan 2022, Feb is similar. Despite the anomaly magnitude it’s really cold everywhere but it seems Northern Canada got much colder than usual too.

I have noticed during the winter months and looking at nullschool at times that area between the CAA and the pole had higher temperatures than one might expect regardless of the set up, no idea what the cause of that would be though but it's surprising too see though.

In general from my own observations, the winter had more spells of high pressure than low pressure, not always over the central basin but it has meant ice pulling away from Laptev and temperatures being more above normal over the pole whilst more (just)below average temperatures were recorded in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. In general though, fortunately it has not been the shocker like it was in 2016/17 and if the volume models are to be believed, the basin ice is slightly thicker than normal(in comparison to the last 10 years) in most parts so in theory the ice should be more resilient this year.

Edit: Neven, how does the 925hpa temperatures relate to temperatures at ice level? I know the 850hpa temperatures are not always representive of temperatures at ice level as during high pressure spells in winter you can have 850hpa of - 15 but temperatures at 2m level of - 30 and lower. No doubt that spell of very warm souutherlies which lasted a few days during March has had an affect on those statistics also but interesting to note none the less.

[binntho]

An AMSR2 animation of sea ice concentration in the central Arctic, excluding the more peripheral regions, courtesy of the Alfred Wegener institute (AWI).

I absolutely agree, these animations are the proverbial bees knees, no other product shows the dynamism of the Arctic ice this well.

And I almost fell off the chair when I saw a psost from Neven! Welcome back Neven!

[nadir]

My 2 cents:

1) The polar vortex was not split at all but actually behaved very well during this year, that is why NH midlatitudes did not experience major cold breakouts
2) This helped freezing as it kept the cold core close to the Arctic
3) Yet, the loss of multiyear ice means a generally warmer Arctic
3) The March SSW is a so called "final warming" bu also could lead to cold breakouts during April into NH midlatitudes (actually it is happening right now in  most of Europe)

About point 1) I am not sure about splitting or not, but polar vortex disrupted in recent months leading to cold spells in mid latitudes, I think you should ask somebody living in the Northeastern states of the US. Perhaps the perception in central Europe is the opposite (as the original map hints).

[El Cid]

I've been keeping a close eye on the polar vortex this year. It was unusually strong, with no breakdown at all - on the contrary:

"On the image below we have the seasonal average zonal wind speed for the Polar Vortex at 10mb level. The black line is the long-term average, and the blue line is the polar vortex strength in the 2021/22cold season. We can see that for most of the cold season, the polar vortex was stronger than normal."


This is a fact, let's not argue about facts.


https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/strong-polar-vortex-warming-collapse-event-forecast-spring-2022-usa-europe-fa/

[The Blob warned us]

Yes there was a strong vortex as seen at 10hPa 60N, until a final warming around March 20th. Interesting this year's chart shows a persistent heat flux... radiating? high into the stratosphere? Since October the polar vortex has had a dipole at 10hPa, with various forecasters calling the various pulses of 10hPa heat a "sudden warming." It calmed down for about 2 weeks in February but then began the stretching, splitting and eventual collapse as seen in zonal winds.

But let's talk nonsense

Strong zonal winds, low ozone values, strong heat flux. If this NCEP/NCAR data is accurate and air temperatures at 925mb are presenting an anomaly this stationary, I would wonder if the ice is thin enough to radiate heat out to space, with the strong dipole in the atmosphere at planetary wave 1 being the radiative mode? IMHO we would see this at 10hPa as strong interference with acceleration and deceleration. So I think ABW must be upwelling at this spot. Please correct.

* I am reading your posts in the freezing season thread about the warm jet of the Bering Strait. And about clouds over polynya.

[Freegrass]

March 2022 Weather Hindcast
Very large GIF!

[Freegrass]

HYCOM 2022 vs 2021 and 2022 - 2018

[The Blob warned us]

Visible each month before March going back 5-6 months, and unusual.

November thru February this area 110W to 170W from 75th parallel to the North Pole shows elevated near surface air temperature up to 925mb. March also, but it is visible down to a 5-day running mean just sitting there since mid-November. NCEP/NCAR data.

[Aluminium]

March 25 - April 3.

2021.

[be cause]

https://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/files/2022/01/ERA5_70N_rank.png and
 https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1510724788485951491/photo/1
   
    should both lead to Zack Labe's latest update ..  the warmest March in the Arctic on record after 2 exceptionally cold ones . . Only 2016 has had a warmer start to the year .
   

[The Blob warned us]

Scott Duncan has posted a temperature map for the Arctic using ERA data and there is no intense heat anomaly in March north of the CAA. The NCEP/NCAR record shows a very different picture. Will look for any news

https://twitter.com/ScottDuncanWX/status/1511070851688542210

[KenB]

Scott Duncan has posted a temperature map for the Arctic using ERA data and there is no intense heat anomaly in March north of the CAA. The NCEP/NCAR record shows a very different picture. Will look for any news

https://twitter.com/ScottDuncanWX/status/1511070851688542210

"there is no intense heat anomaly in March north of the CAA"

Sorry, but is this a typo?  The map you linked to seems to have a fairly intense anomaly almost everywhere above the Arctic Circle with only a few small regions at 0 anomaly.  Or perhaps we differ on what counts as 'intense?'

[oren]

Scott Duncan has posted a temperature map for the Arctic using ERA data and there is no intense heat anomaly in March north of the CAA. The NCEP/NCAR record shows a very different picture. Will look for any news

https://twitter.com/ScottDuncanWX/status/1511070851688542210

"there is no intense heat anomaly in March north of the CAA"

Sorry, but is this a typo?  The map you linked to seems to have a fairly intense anomaly almost everywhere above the Arctic Circle with only a few small regions at 0 anomaly.  Or perhaps we differ on what counts as 'intense?'

Indeed, no specific intense anomaly north of the CAA, but a general anomaly around all the Arctic (screenshot from Twitter).

[The Blob warned us]

Yeah it is a data problem and not physical. Here is another source, JRA-55.



https://psl.noaa.gov/data/writ