The 2014 Melting Season

[Shared Humanity]

Polar Low

"A polar low is a small-scale, short-lived atmospheric low-pressure system (depression) that is found over the ocean areas poleward of the main polar front in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Polar lows are cold-core so they can be considered as a subset of extratropical cyclones. Polar lows were first identified on the meteorological satellite imagery that became available in the 1960s, which revealed many small-scale cloud vortices at high latitudes. The most active polar lows are found over certain ice-free maritime areas in or near the Arctic during the winter, such as the Norwegian Sea, Barents Sea, Labrador Sea and Gulf of Alaska. Polar lows dissipate rapidly when they make landfall. Antarctic systems tend to be weaker than their northern counterparts since the air-sea temperature differences around the continent are generally smaller. However, vigorous polar lows can be found over the Southern Ocean. During winter, when cold-core lows with temperatures in the mid-levels of the troposphere reach −45 °C (−49 °F) move over open waters, deep convection forms which allows polar low development to become possible. The systems usually have a horizontal length scale of less than 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) and exist for no more than a couple of days. They are part of the larger class of mesoscale weather systems. Polar lows can be difficult to detect using conventional weather reports and are a hazard to high-latitude operations, such as shipping and gas and oil platforms. Polar lows have been referred to by many other terms, such as polar mesoscale vortex, Arctic hurricane, Arctic low, and cold air depression. Today the term is usually reserved for the more vigorous systems that have near-surface winds of at least 17 m/s."

I would think this "mesoscale vortex" has formed and persisted for a couple of reasons. The warm air intrusion over The Arctic Basin has created adequate air/sea temperature differences that support the formation of the low. This polar low has persisted because winds over the basin are quite low, very little shear strength to disrupt the formation.

[werther]

Nice to see you weighing in, SH!
I tossed with a 'polar low'-classification. What's against it, is that, if I'm right, PL's originate over polar open sea and form mainly during autumn/winter. This one came from right over the pack and during mid-summer.
You write: "The warm air intrusion over The Arctic Basin has created adequate air/sea temperature difference...", well, I agree when it would say air/ice, which is at least peculiar.
Winds... this 'thingy' travelled at a mean 10 km/hour.

[Jim Hunt]

Over time the ice becomes isothermal at 0C.  During this same time we also see a slight increase in the sea water temperature.

I figure that what 2014C is currently revealing (as 2014B did previously) is water isothermal at 0C. See this paper:

http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/pdfs/SIMB.IGS.Final.pdf

from which the following illustration is extracted:

[Metamemesis]

A daily drop today of just 65k is required to achieve a mega melt week (>1 million km2 in 7 days) using the NSIDC 5 day mean extent.

Only 2 previous years have achieved this, 2007 and 2013, and both around the same time as now.

NSIDC just posted a 171k drop for 2nd July 2014, which puts 2014 just 148k behind 2012 on NSIDC extent figures. If this year continues at its present rate, it will pass 2012 NSIDC figures by 5th July 2014.

[Bruce]

Polar Low

"[...] The systems usually have a horizontal length scale of less than 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) [...] "

Granted, it's less than 1000 km, but it's a lot less than 1000 km.

It would be nice if the little guy ran over a buoy so we could get some temp/wind/pressure readings.

[Lord M Vader]

GFS 12z run better than previous runs.. Let's see what EURO 12z run says.. Regardless of what, it seems that the Pacific side will get warmer weather next week.

[Nightvid Cole]

Unfortunately I am on a work computer that won't let me post images, but melt-favoring SST's are forecast to go almost to the North Pole in a couple days:

http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticsst/nowcast/sst2014070218_2014070500_039_arcticsst.001.gif

Given the tight relationship between those ACNFS forecast maps at this time of year and the final extent and shape of the September minimum, I'm going to prepare for massive ice loss and for Spring of 2015 to have just FYI in the central Arctic Ocean for the first time in at least millennia.

[seattlerocks]

Here's the 'mini-cyclone / golfball again this morning:

...

Does it really pick up strength from the open Laptev Bite?

Yeah, imagine it grows up to cyclone proportions and sends all 240h forecasts to hell   

It'll be interesting to see how it evolves nevertheless

[Frivolousz21]

[Greenbelt]

10 degrees C at 86N 87W 
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/ICEX835100_atmos_recent.html

And at 0z ECMWF run posted by Friv just keeps the high pressure coming.  Maybe I'm too easily impressed, but I'm impressed.

[deep octopus]

That run is bad news bears. That dipole is going to make the Laptev Bite yawn open. Pacific side is looking especially vulnerable. And the GIS. High pressure could force the fracturing along the CAA to gape ever more and move away from the coast. I can't foresee a slow-down in melt anytime soon. This is a moment that is clearly separating 2014 from the slower years. I think extent will continue tracking with 2007 and 2012 for a while longer.

[Nightvid Cole]

10 degrees C at 86N 87W 
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/ICEX835100_atmos_recent.html

And at 0z ECMWF run posted by Friv just keeps the high pressure coming.  Maybe I'm too easily impressed, but I'm impressed.

As am I. That's only about 270 miles from the North Pole - a few hours' drive!

[jdallen]

10 degrees C at 86N 87W 
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/ICEX835100_atmos_recent.html

And at 0z ECMWF run posted by Friv just keeps the high pressure coming.  Maybe I'm too easily impressed, but I'm impressed.

As am I. That's only about 270 miles from the North Pole - a few hours' drive!

What is the melt rate for packed snow at that temperature I wonder?  Snow cover must be getting stripped off wholesale and melt ponds forming.

Let's assume a transfer coefficient of 15 joules/second/M2/degree kelvin difference.

With that coefficient, presuming reasonable air movement, 10C means a transfer rate of 150 joules/second/M2.  Assuming a density of 400KG/M3, that's about 4MM/hr of melt.

That should translate to about 1.6 kilos of snow melt an hour/meter squared, above and beyond that melted via insolation. Over an area of one KM2, that means 1.6 million liters of melt. 


Yup. Melt ponds.

[ChrisReynolds]

10 degrees C at 86N 87W 
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/ICEX835100_atmos_recent.html

And at 0z ECMWF run posted by Friv just keeps the high pressure coming.  Maybe I'm too easily impressed, but I'm impressed.

As am I. That's only about 270 miles from the North Pole - a few hours' drive!

What is the melt rate for packed snow at that temperature I wonder?  Snow cover must be getting stripped off wholesale and melt ponds forming.

Let's assume a transfer coefficient of 15 joules/second/M2/degree kelvin difference.

With that coefficient, presuming reasonable air movement, 10C means a transfer rate of 150 joules/second/M2.

That should translate to about 1.6 kilos of snow melt an hour/meter squared, above and beyond that melted via insolation. Over an area of one KM2, that means 1.6 million liters of melt.  Yup. Melt ponds.

10degC - Bloody hell! That's great news, that buoy (835100) is slap bang in the multi-year ice off the CAA!
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/DriftTrackMap.html

 

[Frivolousz21]

The 12z Euro is better for the Canadian Arpichelago and the far Southern Canadian basin in the medium range.

But the rest of the arctic besides the South central basin where the thick ice is that isn't melting out anyways is fucked.  Sorry cursing folks but it's fucked.

How many days in a row is there an off shore flow over the already massive laptev open water pushing it towards the pole and nansen basin?

How fast will the fast ice in the ESS melt while the chuchki and ESS pack ice is being smoked towards the pole while baking 24/7?

I made a rough out line of how I foresee the end.  I might of been to generous in the Canadian Basin and Laptev region of the Atlantic side.

That is only for the basin not the CA it's way to hard to even take a stab at.

[Neven]

And here's the SLP pattern map for June 25th to 30th from the SLP Patterns page for June:



Similar to 2011.

[Lord M Vader]

If things don't happen on the ice charts soon with those temps something is defintively really wrong!! However, I'm a bit sceptical to those data as Buoy819920 located at 85,2N; 12,1E only have a temp just above freeze point.

We should also see a surge of warm water from rive run-off soon. Temps are high and there have also been a lot of precipitation in for example Alaska...

The critical question is whether these conditions are to persist. Right now it looks like it will continue for the next week. If a dipolar combo is to come true there will for sure be a big drop in SIE. The only thing that will save us from having a new record low this year in that case is the very fact that the ice should be thicker this year compared to 2012, remark I'm saying "should"!

How and where do I find more ocean buoy data? Would be interesting to look at other buoys data!

[Frivolousz21]

There is no way it's 10C at the surface there. 

But that is probably a sign the sun has come out and stayed out now for a while.

[Bruce Steele]

The Beaufort Whoi ITP buoys have have seen temperature readings above 10C for severals days but the  ITP buoy #59 at  87.99 N is reading 13.57C on 2014/7/2.

http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=125516

[jdallen]

10degC - Bloody hell! That's great news, that buoy (835100) is slap bang in the multi-year ice off the CAA!
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/DriftTrackMap.html

 

<Guffaws>  I assume you mean good news as pertains to the useful location of the buoy and the quality of the data it is providing.  I think you'll agree, it is rather terrible news for the ice, and climate in general

[jdallen]

There is no way it's 10C at the surface there. 

But that is probably a sign the sun has come out and stayed out now for a while.

The Beaufort Whoi ITP buoys have have seen temperature readings above 10C for severals days but the  ITP buoy #59 at  87.99 N is reading 13.57C on 2014/7/2.

http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=125516

The SST's are probably not that high, but I'd argue, the temperatures being observed suggest a remarkable amount of heat is being applied to the ice from above.  That is true even if the absurdly high *consistent* buoy temperatures are higher than the actual air temperatures.

[greatdying2]

NSIDC June report is out: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

[Frivolousz21]

http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/newdata.htm

These buoys are co-located with most of those ITPs and have realistic surface temps with completely gel with the models.

[Bruce]

The Archipelago is starting to fall apart.

[Bruce Steele]

Friv, I realize there is a large discrepancy in the surface air temp readings from the buoys. I went to
2013F which is ( co-located ) with ITP-70

2013F     -2.71C.      2014/7/3.      77.02N. 153.46W
ITP-70.     5.01C.     2014/7/3.       76.99N. 153.26W

I couldn't find other co-located buoy's but I guess ( co-located ) is relative anyhow. I really don't want to just assume the ITP- surface air temperature readings are just ~ 5C to 7C off in the summer on a sunny day. Something is not right but whatever it is it sure is consistent.

[jdallen]

Friv, I realize there is a large discrepancy in the surface air temp readings from the buoys. I went to
2013F which is ( co-located ) with ITP-70

2013F     -2.71C.      2014/7/3.      77.02N. 153.46W
ITP-70.     5.01C.     2014/7/3.       76.99N. 153.26W

I couldn't find other co-located buoy's but I guess ( co-located ) is relative anyhow. I really don't want to just assume the ITP- surface air temperature readings are just ~ 5C to 7C off in the summer on a sunny day. Something is not right but whatever it is it sure is consistent.

I have another hypothesis... The height of the sensor from the surface of the ice.

[Bruce]

IJIS number for July 3 was -88K. So we've had a couple of days of slowdown, but we're essentially tied with 2012 and 2011, and only lag 2010 by 100K or so (but 2010's slowdown began about now). It seems like the easy, "sure thing," ice has melted, and if this year is going to stay with the record low years, it's going to have to pick up the pace in the Kara, Laptev, Beaufort, CAA, and maybe the Chukchi. I think the ESS will explode shortly, but the extent won't decline for some time after that as the ice floes spread out. The Greenland Sea may even gain some ice from the looks of the HYCOM drift maps. The CAB, as far as I can tell, is a big slushy mess, but there is a lot of it, so it will take some time. My guess is a few more days of slower melt, and then we'll see where the weather takes us.

Now that I've said that, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to see a week of record melt. The ice is crap, and the weather has finally started to warm up.

[werther]

The 'golfball-mini-cyclone in the Laptev Bite has faded out over the last 24 hours. The high pressure ridge has swept over the Laptev to the new Sib Islands, suppressing all convective activity and condensation.
Dry winds now flow from the Lena Delta right into the Bite (no french here ).

Sun is doing it's work over large portions of the ice now. ECMWF continues to project a nice set-up for Ra to keep coming.

[Laurent]

The splitting off the CAB and the Canadian archipelago is going on also. For the moment we can't see how it goes...let's see...

[F.Tnioli]

Friv, I realize there is a large discrepancy in the surface air temp readings from the buoys. I went to
2013F which is ( co-located ) with ITP-70

2013F     -2.71C.      2014/7/3.      77.02N. 153.46W
ITP-70.     5.01C.     2014/7/3.       76.99N. 153.26W

I couldn't find other co-located buoy's but I guess ( co-located ) is relative anyhow. I really don't want to just assume the ITP- surface air temperature readings are just ~ 5C to 7C off in the summer on a sunny day. Something is not right but whatever it is it sure is consistent.

I have another hypothesis... The height of the sensor from the surface of the ice.

Good old William would be proud of you, jdallen. A good one, and probably correct, too.

[Jim Hunt]

I have another hypothesis... The height of the sensor from the surface of the ice.

There may be something in that theory. See the assorted ice mass balance buoy temperature profiles above.

Here's the International Arctic Buoy Program list of current readings:

http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_table.html

Note that there are columns for both surface temperature and air temperature, and that in both cases they contain "NA" for all the ITPs.  The IMB buoys (and O-Buoys IIRC) have their air temperature sensors in mini Stevenson screens at roughly head height, and so would seem to be designed to measure what is usually referred to as "air temperature". The same does not apply to most of the other buoys.

[Andreas T]

I think Jim points to the main issue here, the temperature readings from the ITPs are called "buoy temperature" and come under the heading buoy status, which also lists battery voltage. It very much looks like this is information about the bouy itself rather than its environment.
This description http://www.whoi.edu/website/itp/overview  of the profiler makes no mention of air temperature either and shows colocated buoys in a photo sitting on the same ice floe, as can also be seen in the image from o-buoy 10.
The O-buoy gives temperature readings under the heading: "weather" which agrees with the IMB data under the heading: "air temperature" which is below zero at the moment.

[seattlerocks]

The 'golfball-mini-cyclone in the Laptev Bite has faded out over the last 24 hours.

Thanks for keeping an eye on it, Wherther.
So much for our nice little fellow. I wonder if this sort of arctic mini-low has been reported and studied before. I can't find anything over the internet. As weird as the high CT-area of the CAB, its fog of lately, even under sunny days. Arctic meteorology must have been a great unknown until ten years ago or so.

[Frivolousz21]

Looks like the euro backed off a bit.  That's good the last few runs were absurd

[TerryM]

Our Mini-Cyclone is reminiscent of the desert "dust devils" so prevalent on hot days over dried lake beds in the American Southwest. Dust devils form from very hot near surface air interacting with relatively cooler air above & flat surfaces help their formation, intensity & duration.
Wonder if our little friend functions in the  same manner?
Terry

[werther]

Yes Friv,
ECMWF comes in with extreme dipoles in the morning (which seem to stand at least some possibility) and runs the more conservative outcome in the afternoon.
Both runs get along quite parallel up to six,seven days, then diverge. Next thursday is the "plume day".
Until then, high pressure remains strong over the CAB. After, who knows?

How is GFS?

[Lord M Vader]

4th July today.. Where are we at July 31 wrt SIE? Well, we can be almost 99% that 2,2-3,1 Mn km2 ice will melt out through the month... That would put us somewhere in the range of 5,8-6,7 Mn km2 per July 31. Assuming a conservative august melt of about 1,5 Mn km2 yields a SIE of 4,3-5,2 Mn km2 per August 31. An additional loss of 0,3 Mn km2 in september and we are down to 4,0-4,9 Mn km2..

EURO 12z run continue the HP over Arctic but shows indications of a switch to more cyclonical weather in about a week or so. Still a high degree of uncertainity but interesting tough!

//LMV

[Bruce]

Here are the HYCOM drift maps for today and the next three days. Interesting to note that despite some changes, there is consistent flow across the pole and through the Fram Strait and the one east of it (whatever it is called, the one between Svalbard and Franz Josef Land). So I think we'll see increases in the Greenland and Barents Seas. But the Chukchi and Laptev look like they'll open up.

The 6th and 7th look kind of like an ice grinding machine. The ice is already pretty fragmented, but I suspect by the middle of next week there won't be much solid ice left.

[ChrisReynolds]

Thanks to Wipneus producing a regional dataset of sea ice extent and area from NSIDC gridded data we can now get more of a historical view of whether things are unusual. I've started work on a spreadsheet to process the data, here are some first results before I wrap up for the night.

It makes up for not having PIOMAS data yet.

Extent data used is for 3/7/14
1) Hudson Bay extent anomalies - the recession of ice in Hudson is not unusual.
2) Laptev Sea Extent anomalies - the Laptev Polnya appears to be unusually large in the context of the post 1979 data. Surely that can be the only reason for the very negative extent anomalies?
3) Arctic Ocean extent anomalies - Arctic Ocean including the CAA and Greenland Sea, anomalies of extent put 2014 in the set of post 2010 years. Of the years before 2010, only 2007 has an anomaly more negative than 0.8.

[Lord M Vader]

Nice job Mr Reynolds!

And Bruce, informative pics! Not only do we have the possibility to see transport through Fram strait but also that a tongue of thicker ice according to HYCOM is to be pushed toward Frams and being replaced with thinner ice.

Kara sea seems like it should be about to fall apart very soon if it would be just slightly warmer. Ice quality there seems to be of crap status.. Also looks like Laptev will see a real big ice loss soon, in fact I think there is a distinct possibility that we'll see more ice melt just north of the big polynya than in ESS..

Beaufort should also manage to connect to Chukchi Sea before next sunday of July 13.

[Frivolousz21]

the GFS is pretty salty for the arctic.


the models have backed off the extreme solutions.  But are never favorable or anything of that ilk.

The Euro is funky after day 5-6 but the Euro ensemble mean is steady as she goes for continually arctic ridging especially based on the ESS side of the Pacific.



I feel like an animation of the Euro would be a waste of time because of how noisy it is.
You can see the difference between the Euro and Euro ENS.

Still pretty damn bad but not epic like the euro had yesterday.

[Frivolousz21]

In spite of area saying pretty much the entire central artic basin has seen no melting.  Visible says that is wrong.  I am not sure what it is now. Surface skin temps at diurnal min?

We can clearly see by looking at the dry snow on GIS that the arctic has seen melting everwhere visible on the graphic below to some degree.

The Atlantic side ice from the Laptev to thru the Nansen basin is in real trouble.  And the weather is about to go bad for that area something fierce.

Either way it will all work itself out at some point.

[jdallen]

4th July today.. Where are we at July 31 wrt SIE? Well, we can be almost 99% that 2,2-3,1 Mn km2 ice will melt out through the month... That would put us somewhere in the range of 5,8-6,7 Mn km2 per July 31. Assuming a conservative august melt of about 1,5 Mn km2 yields a SIE of 4,3-5,2 Mn km2 per August 31. An additional loss of 0,3 Mn km2 in september and we are down to 4,0-4,9 Mn km2..

EURO 12z run continue the HP over Arctic but shows indications of a switch to more cyclonical weather in about a week or so. Still a high degree of uncertainity but interesting tough!

//LMV

You are echoing pretty much exactly what quite a number of us are thinking, LMV. 

[Frivolousz21]

This area is supposed to be seeing freezing rain today.

I am not sure about the rain part but it's certainly not freezing regardless of temp being slightly below 0C on the last update.  Secondly only where the actual snow that is left there would 0C be the melting point.  So any rain is probably not good for the ice situation given temps have likely warmed above 0C given what the latest Jaxa scan this afternoon shows.

We can also see the melt ponds taking intermediate shape and pooling with water. 

Again this is 77N. 





96 hours or so in a row of sun around this area of the pole and CT still shows no surface melt?

You can clearly see the surface melt.




When there is clouds and precip in the arctic we surely want it to not be rain period. 

[jdallen]

I feel like an animation of the Euro would be a waste of time because of how noisy it is.
You can see the difference between the Euro and Euro ENS.

It's all kinda like determining what the surface of a boiling pot will look like in two minutes...

[Michael Hauber]

The ECMWF hints at low pressure lining up over much of eastern Asia with low pressure over Laptev to draw extremely warm air from tropical pacific into the Arctic.  Small variations from run to run vary whether all the lows line up well or poorly for this transport.

The models also seem to be keen on a Fram strait torch which is quite unusual from what I can remember seeing.  This is on the back of a major storm near Iceland happening now which I'd think should send some decent waves up that way.  Will be interesting to see how far the Greenland sea ice might retreat in the coming week.

[TerryM]

Any thoughts re. Arnold?
Lots of tropical air (and humidity?) being delivered to the north.


Terry

[gideonlow]

This looks very much like eddy's we sometimes get during summertime off the coast of Central California.  They form in the stratocumulus (marine fog) layer, which is of-course cooler/denser air underneath warm/hot high pressure air.  These eddy's don't usually have their circulation close-off so cleanly, but I've seen it happen.  They CAN produce some moderately strong winds (20 to 30 or 35kts).

Our Mini-Cyclone is reminiscent of the desert "dust devils" so prevalent on hot days over dried lake beds in the American Southwest. Dust devils form from very hot near surface air interacting with relatively cooler air above & flat surfaces help their formation, intensity & duration.
Wonder if our little friend functions in the  same manner?
Terry

[Frivolousz21]

Just posting this more or less for fun at this point.  Bu the 18z GFS shows a transient reverse dipole anomaly.  Warm based(HP) based. 

Because it is warm based it would be awful for the Atlantic side, Nansen basin, parts of the ESS, and Laptev, Kara.  But the Beaufort melt that has been awful so far would not only reverse.

But the Beaufort would be cloudy and cold enough for melt to come to a halt at the surface. 

[wili]

Hi Terry.

I assume you mean Arthur. It looks as if it is going to be hovering around southern Greenland by the middle of next week, so I would think it would bring a lot of rain and warmth to the melting of the ice sheet there, but I doubt there would be much of it left by the time it gets to any substantial sea ice, if it ever does.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/04/hurricane-arthur-could-dump-inches-rain/vBZWQzr1wxswCO2G5TuaOI/story.html