DMI volume seems interesting. Waiting for Piomas.
I am not surprised at all and it fits well with the ice movement we saw from late August and throughout the September.
I am also awaiting for PIOMAS, but, from what I saw, PIOMAS tends to align more conservatively with its estimates. Not conservatively in a way of showing higher results than DMI (not at all), it just tends to align more with the perceived extent and area than the DMI's sea ice volume model. I'd say that DMI's model gives better estimates of the general volume and shape of sea ice, at least from what I saw until now.
Regarding the volume estimates rom DMI in September: ice moving towards fram and generally towards the south that late in the season generally means increased volume losses at the expense of final results in terms of extent. Even when you see the ice being pushed towards Laptev, it's like pushing it towards its doom at that point. An open sea that south and that late in the season means only one thing, its accumulated energy will help to melt the sea ice even faster, while the lower latitude also means more energy from the sun is also absorbed by the horizontally aligned ice on the sea surface as well (a double whammy). Due to loss of "steam" that late in the season and close to refreeze taking over, some of the thicker ice floes will survive, but their volume will drastically decrease than it would if they stayed on higher latitudes.
But there's another interesting fact to observe: climatereanalyzer repeatedly showed that the air temperatures across almost all over the Arctic were significantly warmer than usual, not only significantly warmer than the 1981-2000 averages, they were somewhat warmer than the other leading seasons, yet we saw significant decrease compared to these seasons, not only in terms of sea ice extent losses, but also sea ice area losses (and we even saw sea ice gains), much earlier than some of us anticipated. Essentially, we witnessed similar situation like in 2016 and I am yet puzzled whether we'll also see very thin ice in mid and late refreeze period in the season as well, compared to other refreeze periods, of course.
This season also gives us a better picture what we can expect in the future. I.e. the refreeze and minimum low of sea ice area may regularly occur much earlier than we anticipate today once such high latitudes start melting out on a regular basis and with no sea ice present further south. It's mainly due to significantly lower insolation in September on those latitudes than the insolation on latitudes between 80-85 or below 80 degrees North.
This also makes me think of the early refreeze of sea ice area as yet another proof of a disastrous season we saw, as absurd as it sounds, because it had the potential for further melt. In fact I had hoped that we'll see the ice going towards Beaufort in late melt season and early refreeze just like it did in 2012, for instance, yet it went in all the wrong directions, basically setting us up for yet another preparation for a bad refreeze season and ultimately a bad melt season in 2025, lowering the bar for weather to be even less extreme and yet yielding worse result. So the final outcome may look good or better than it could look like just weeks ago, but I'd say it's even worse.
