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Rick Aster

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3000 on: August 09, 2014, 04:22:05 AM »
Weather forecasts are never climate science predictions. Isn’t it so much simpler just to say it that way?

cesium62

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3001 on: August 09, 2014, 06:30:17 AM »
I suppose it boils down to how one defines the term "recovery". To some denialists, if today's temperature is a degree lower than yesterday's, the climate is in a "recovery".

Ah, well, to each their own.

Having said that, this has been a confounding season for me. After a decent start, and in spite of many weeks worth of predictions that the Arctic ice would be "blasted" or "pounded" or "beat" or "torched" due to a coming weather pattern, the ice simply isn't going away. For instance:

JAXA sea ice extent started July in pretty poor shape, staying in third place for the first half of the month. Since then, however, extent has decreased at one of the slowest rates ever measured for the period. In fact, only 2010 lost less extent from 01 July to now, while both 2007 and 2012 lost a million or so square kilometers more for that period. Even "recovery year" 2013 had a much steeper rate of decrease. (From July 11 through now, JAXA SIE has experienced but a single century drop. By way of comparison, 2013 recorded eight, 2012 had 11, and 2007 saw 14. Even 2010, which was nothing special, managed to scrape together five century breaks over the period.) (2014 extent is, for the first time ever, more than a million km2 above 2012's same day number.)

Cryosphere Today sea ice area has been equally confounding, especially with its repeated plunging and stalling, plunging and stalling, plunging and stalling; this year, SIA hasn't been able to put together a long string of days with substantial drop as we've sen in previous years. And this wasn't due to a "bad start"; in fact, 2014 fellow below the 12 million mark two days faster than did 2012, and it fell below 11 million earlier as well. Since then, however, 2014 has fallen consistently back; it's now 16 days behind 2012. 2012 dropped below 3 million on August 15; it's highly doubtful that 2014 will manage to limp below 4 million by that date.

And so on.

So. If the very short term is considered, I suppose there's ample excuse to call 2013 and 2014 "recovery" years. But given the past 3-5 year periodicity of Arctic ice, I will be highly surprised if this current "recovery" lasts into another season or longer.

Y'all need to take up farming. 

One year, the day after the apple blossoms open, a storm blows through and blows the blossoms off the tree.  Not too many apples that year.

The next year, there's a hot spell at the wrong time, and again the apple harvest sucks.

The next year, the rains fall at the wrong time, and the apple harvest sucks.

But on the 4th year, the wind doesn't blow at the wrong time, the sun doesn't get too hot at the wrong time, the rain doesn't fall at the wrong time, and you're eating apple pie all winter long.

It's a chaotic system.  Each year is a little bit different from any other year.  Was it a year when the wind blew south through the Fram Strait in July?  Did a June cyclone come through and spread the ice out?  Was there a good layer of summer ice for soot to land on during the burning season?  Or had it all melted out?  Trying to read patterns into randomness is superstitious behavior.

cesium62

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3002 on: August 09, 2014, 06:46:09 AM »
To expect Arctic sea ice to end up with higher (2013) and then possibly higher yet again (2014) extent "naturally" in such conditions? Difficult, to say the least.

I am not alone, too. Wadhams - who, may i remind, spend some 15+ years doing udner-ice trips in submarines in the Arctic, - was firmly sure few years ago that ASI will only accelerate the decrease of its annual-minimum extent (and, of course, area and volume). Maslowski et al and, i guess, US Navy in general - were expecting it ice-free by 2016 plus-minus 3 years since ~2011 or even earlier. Papers are available (still available, i hope). PIOMASS showing ~80% minimum summer volume loss since 1979 by 2012, and obvious acceleration of the loss during 2000s. All those and other quite respectable works are pointing out that even if 2013 was "freak cold once-in-a-century kind of Arctic summer" - the general trends must lead to the 2014 being not so far from 2012, quite likely below it, in terms of minimum extent and volume.

You have a poor mental model as to how data distributions work.  Let's work on an exercise to improve our intuition.  Go to http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ .  Turn off all the lines.  Now turn on the lines for the 1980s.  See how the lines bounce around the average for the 1980s?    Now, turn off the 1980s and turn on the 1990s.  The lines continue to bounce around, but now around a lower average.  When you get down to the 2010s, the lines continue to bounce around, but around a still lower average.

2013 was a freaking hot year.  2014 is a freaking hot year.  Neither of them are that much different from 2012.  The lines are bouncing around just as they always do, and the average they are bouncing around is quite low.

And again, let's please get through to at least the middle of September before we start bemoaning that 2014 had a higher minimum sea ice extent than 2013.

cesium62

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3003 on: August 09, 2014, 06:50:56 AM »
The arctic is not being geo engineered.

It's called weather

Rofl  ;D

Bruce

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3004 on: August 09, 2014, 07:11:29 AM »
Where is the energy going?

Increased water temps, modest air temp, all that insolation... What unseen (by me, anyway) changes in energy transport are saving the ice in the face of more measurably greater total energy in the system?
The problem here is that you're not fully appreciating the scale of the system. Yes, this year there is more total energy in the system than last, and last year there was more than the year before, etc. But it is a very, very big system. The relative changes from year to year are very small. If you look at "now" as the last ten years, and compare that to a decade a hundred years ago, there is considerably more energy in the system now(ish), and the amount of ice is dramatically less than it was. But looking at just a few recent years, you can get any "trend" you want -- up, down, flat -- because the short term variance is large.

If you could accurately measure the total energy in the system then, yes, it would likely increase every year. But expecting surface measurements (or proxies, like ice) to show warming every year, year after year, is simply to misunderstand the system. The vast majority of the warming goes into the ocean. If the ocean takes in just a little bit more heat, the year is relatively "cool". If the oceans release a bit more heat than average, then then year is relatively "hot." But these are the characteristics of a very large, very complicated system. It is only by stepping back and taking the long view that the signal separates from the noise, and the true picture emerges.

So the short answer to your question is that the energy is going into the oceans. The practical answer is: just wait a while, it'll make its presence known. If not this year, then next. If not next, then the year after. But eventually it will show up, and probably with a vengeance.

seattlerocks

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3005 on: August 09, 2014, 07:13:44 AM »
When I say "recovery", I don't mean Arctic ice is going to increase year on year. I strictly mean a relative recovery which disproves the more aggressive predictions of complete Arctic melt-out in the next few years.  It's encouraging only in as much as it means it may not already be too late to arrest the process if the political will is there to fix carbon emissions.

The reason I'm now trying to combat the more aggressive predictions of imminent collapse (not just Friv)  is because I strongly believe they'll be falsified outright in the next few years - just as the couple of people predicting record or near-record values this year will be falsified in a few short weeks' time.  Arctic ice will be with us for a few years yet, and will not suddenly poof out of existence. As and when the wilder predictions fail, it is INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT that the failure is not used to discredit the whole (known) science of AGW. . .

I think you are absolutely right in many senses, the most important one being that denialists will use exaggerated catastrophism to discredit real science. But I think you may be hitting on the wrong subjects. Ultimately it is not friv or anybody here that predicted doom in 2016. What is dangerous is the advocacies of a few scientists that lead them often to exaggerate, because that is what is being used  for instance by Fox News to distort and discredit AGW causes. Thus this activism defeats its own purpose and harms good science.

Quite the contrary, I believe friv like others is doing the right thing: to bring real data to this forum and interpret it with his own criterion. Because here we are not doing strict science but discussing the Melting season real-time. Actually friv is a pretty honest guy if u think about it, and a very informative one! That his exaggerated expressions could be used by denialists? Sure, but that doesn't worry me. It worries me that O'Reilly discredits a famous activist for going too far in some claims, ans so discredits real science in front of millions that will buy his arguments. Maybe we are losing perspective and inflating the trascendence of this and other threads of whatever direction that they have. I really enjoy this thread precisely for what it is and for what is not

cesium62

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3006 on: August 09, 2014, 07:27:26 AM »
My insistence on simple functions does have a consequence I should acknowledge. No trend represented by a simple function will ever show a recovery.

x^2, when values of x are near zero, can show a recovery.  Presumably, then, (x-k)^2, which is a simple translation of graph to the origin is still simple.

But I like your basic point:  Claiming a recovery or any other pattern based on points on a graph is numerology and superstition.  Having a physical justification backed by multiple lines of evidence to explain trend lines is ever so much more satisfying.

cesium62

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3007 on: August 09, 2014, 07:32:20 AM »
I can't imagine any model you could choose would not show a positive error term in 2013 (and barring an August surprise, 2014). Such a comprehensive model is probably impossible if the short-term behavior is as chaotic as I think it is. 

I'll pick up that gauntlet if you don't insist I actually fill in all the details.  The story goes:  By 2012, the ice had picked up a lot of soot, dust, and dirt.  2012 melted a bunch of the extent and the new FYI ice was nice and clean and much more difficult to melt.

cesium62

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3008 on: August 09, 2014, 07:41:06 AM »
Where is the energy going?

Increased water temps, modest air temp, all that insolation... What unseen (by me, anyway) changes in energy transport are saving the ice in the face of more measurably greater total energy in the system?
The problem here is that you're not fully appreciating the scale of the system. Yes, this year there is more total energy in the system than last, and last year there was more than the year before, etc. But it is a very, very big system. The relative changes from year to year are very small. If you look at "now" as the last ten years, and compare that to a decade a hundred years ago, there is considerably more energy in the system now(ish), and the amount of ice is dramatically less than it was. But looking at just a few recent years, you can get any "trend" you want -- up, down, flat -- because the short term variance is large.

To help quantify that...  The IPCC predicted global surface temperature increases on the order of 0.2 degrees per decade.  Which is roughly the variance from month to month in the global average temperature measured by GISS.  The noise is as large as the decadal change in energy.

cesium62

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3009 on: August 09, 2014, 07:46:21 AM »
I really enjoy this thread precisely for what it is and for what is not

And when you start getting depressed with all the irrelevant chit-chat on this thread, I strongly recommend going over to WUWT and reading a few comments on one of those threads.  Y'all are so much more interesting and thought-provoking.

wili

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3010 on: August 09, 2014, 08:00:36 AM »
c wrote: "By 2012, the ice had picked up a lot of soot, dust, and dirt.  2012 melted a bunch of the extent and the new FYI ice was nice and clean and much more difficult to melt."

That's pretty much what I thought was happening, too, but I don't have any albedo data to back it up.

I also wonder about increased run off. More open water in the fall means more evaporation means more snowfall in the following months, much of it on the surrounding land surfaces. In the spring and even into summer, much of this will return as increased fresh water flows into the Arctic. That extra fresh water will be easier to freeze.

But mostly I agree with the above posters that it is largely variation from weather.
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ChasingIce

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3011 on: August 09, 2014, 08:01:28 AM »
Arctic miminums: I'd agree there's no such thing as a recovery... it not in the data.

Arctic maximums: thats a different story.

Antarctic anything: thats a monkey wrench into a global anything too, and I'm totally miffed about things not lining up logically.

seattlerocks

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3012 on: August 09, 2014, 08:15:41 AM »
I really enjoy this thread precisely for what it is and for what is not

And when you start getting depressed with all the irrelevant chit-chat on this thread, I strongly recommend going over to WUWT and reading a few comments on one of those threads.  Y'all are so much more interesting and thought-provoking.

Yeah, as soon as the melting season is done I leave but I won't go over to WUWT. Sorry to have hurt your pride.

Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3013 on: August 09, 2014, 08:22:08 AM »
I have never said the ice was going to melt out completely soon.  I argued on this thread earlier this year that it would be at least 2020 probably 2025 or later that it would happen.

For anyone to sit here and look at this image and imply the ice isn't taking a beating is insulting.  It's total straw-man horseshit.

It's just like the so called hiatus.  On Americanwx posters called years like 2008 and 2009 "cool" globally.  Cool huh?  Yeah if the records started in 2005. 

This is no different.  So the 4th lowest July monthly extent isn't horrible? Got it.  So I am full of shit in July saying the ice is doing horrible because it's only the 4th lowest on record but not 2012 worthy.

Again the last week I am full of shit and hyperbole when I claim the ice is getting smacked because the numerical data doesn't show that melt yet. 

Well the concentration graphics do.  They don't count I guess?  Not 2007, 2011, and 2012 worthy so it's not horrible?  Did the world start spinning in 2007? 

below is August 1st and 8th.  Yeah no big changes happening at all. 








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Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3014 on: August 09, 2014, 08:38:18 AM »
Next time my local weather forecaster calls the 4th worst flood in local river history horrible I will march down to the station and tell him to stop talking nonsense like that and to apologize to the people for mis-leading them.

When we set our 6th or 7th warmest year on record and they call it "EXTREME" again that can't be allowed that is just wrong and misleading.

When the 7th or 10th or 15th strongest hurricane on record plows into a GOM city and kills 2000 people no calling it terrible.  It was only a Category 3 after-all. 


Oh how fast people become desensitized to the changes taking place or they are intentionally moving the goal posts. 


I got a nickname for all my guns
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and a dirty pistol that love to crew hop
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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3015 on: August 09, 2014, 09:01:45 AM »
"The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening" - Rosa Luxemburg

slow wing

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3016 on: August 09, 2014, 09:28:41 AM »
... below is August 1st and 8th.  Yeah no big changes happening at all. 



...
That certainly looks like an impressive change over one week.



The simple question I have for the experts is: given the way that map is constructed, how much of the change is likely to be melt ponds forming on the ice surface rather than actual loss of ice area?

wili

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3017 on: August 09, 2014, 09:37:19 AM »
Good question. It purports to be a "concentration" not specifically area map, but I'm not sure what the technical difference is, if any. My experience from watching it over the years is that once an area goes yellow to green, it doesn't last long.

On the other hand, scattered patches of reddish in the middle of the pack can pop up in the middle of the pack and then close back up, or just persist (as they did last year, in a line right throught the middle of the pack that never then melted out, iirc).

That lighter stuff on the ESS/Pacific/Alaska side, though, is almost all going to go in just the next few days, imho, unless there is a big unexpected change in the weather.
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Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3018 on: August 09, 2014, 10:11:37 AM »
SSTs are still expanding in the Pacific and Laptev.


I don't think that large area of lowered concentration in the ESS will melt out in the next few days.  Probably tho over the next 2 weeks+ with the weather staying bad for this time of year.

It's a combo of melt ponds, thinning ice, water logged ice, and the ice opening up.

But it's falling apart quickly after being well protected for so long. 

The sats are showing lots of open water in the Chukchi and heat expanding in all areas of the Pacific with the waning sun energy still making an impact.  The water next to the ESS ice North of Wrangle has cooled a bit the last two days.  Want to make sure I say that before some clever hipster calls me out for it.

These ssts are only sampled at night or during whatever is closest to night according to their source. 

So they may not be capturing the full extent of the heat coming during the waning peak insolation but again that is pure speculation on my part. 



Winds are not that favorable for compaction along the Beaufort/Chuchki/ESS while they are for the Laptev and Nansen Basin.  While there is diurnal swings and periods of the day below freezing under the high it's still above normal.  Especially the low level air mass and there is good heat getting to the ice when the sun is going during the day or where winds carry heat thru.

I think we are setting up for larger than normal losses in the 10th-20th and on time frame especially if the Euro is right depicting that HP moving back towards North America.  By then this large area of lower concentration ice will be considerably weaker.

It's also prudent to point out in spite of mostly parallel winds they have been relatively strong around the HP and that itself causes mixing and helps get bottom melt going.  Probably part of why the Chukchi is opening up now quickly.










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

jdallen

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3019 on: August 09, 2014, 11:20:46 AM »
Where is the energy going?

Increased water temps, modest air temp, all that insolation... What unseen (by me, anyway) changes in energy transport are saving the ice in the face of more measurably greater total energy in the system?
The problem here is that you're not fully appreciating the scale of the system.

Bruce; You are in earnest, so I will be polite.  Yes, I do appreciate the scale of the system.  We're talking in terms of pentajoules, spread across 10's of millions of KM2, both stored in it currently, and getting dumped into it by insolation and transport by current.

The question still remains, given equality of inputs of heat into the system, and the behavior of the weather, which is strongly favorable to melt, what sink has picked up the energy, or by what mechanism has the energy been re-radiated or transferred, rather than dumped into the ice?

Yes, this year there is more total energy in the system than last, and last year there was more than the year before, etc. But it is a very, very big system. The relative changes from year to year are very small. If you look at "now" as the last ten years, and compare that to a decade a hundred years ago, there is considerably more energy in the system now(ish), and the amount of ice is dramatically less than it was. But looking at just a few recent years, you can get any "trend" you want -- up, down, flat -- because the short term variance is large.

If you could accurately measure the total energy in the system then, yes, it would likely increase every year. But expecting surface measurements (or proxies, like ice) to show warming every year, year after year, is simply to misunderstand the system. The vast majority of the warming goes into the ocean. If the ocean takes in just a little bit more heat, the year is relatively "cool". If the oceans release a bit more heat than average, then then year is relatively "hot." But these are the characteristics of a very large, very complicated system. It is only by stepping back and taking the long view that the signal separates from the noise, and the true picture emerges.

I am stepping back, I am taking a long view.  I'm pointing out that the short term phenomena do not appear to be syncing up with the apparent inputs, and the observational tools we have appear to be coming up seriously short in giving us a clear idea of what is happening.

So the short answer to your question is that the energy is going into the oceans. The practical answer is: just wait a while, it'll make its presence known. If not this year, then next. If not next, then the year after. But eventually it will show up, and probably with a vengeance.

Into the oceans, possibly.  I'm not so sure about that.  My own money is leaning towards changes in albedo and LW emissions out of the top of the troposphere, but, I've got no way right now of seeing that.

The frustrating part is, it is all conjecture, as we don't have good measurements of sensible heat that might inform us.  In fact, I'm led to the conclusion we don't have a firm grip on the insensible heat, as represented by the net enthalpy of the volume of ice that makes up the Arctic pack.  My memory is, the possible error for estimates of volume are as much as 25% of the stated value.  That makes definitive, exacting statement of it rather hard to swallow.

It occurred to me we might be able to estimate loss to albedo from the long-term satellite record.  Sadly my own tools, time and skill are insufficient to assemble such a study, but that might offer us clues.

So I am frustrated, both with my own ability to evaluate data, my available time, and the quality of information we have.  That is rather different than not appreciating the scale of the system.
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Gray-Wolf

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3020 on: August 09, 2014, 12:02:18 PM »
I'm still of the opinion that 2012 imparted a slight spin on the climate system ( the extreme ridges/troughs of the jet remained but the'frequency' altered giving the US a central trough to replace the ridge it , and Greenland, had been under since 07' and shifting the 'trough' from the UK further into Europe) due to the extra energy the Arctic basin pushed out into the climate system that year?

The results are the 'pattern shift' that we have seen around the N.Hemisphere . The extremes are still there but some are now occurring over different geographic locations? It does mean that Arctic winters are now set to be more blighted than they had been ( last years showing just that with ridges pushing over warm oceans before entering the basin and not 'chilled' continents?).

The other factor might involve the super warm west Pacific and the heat imbalance between Atlantic and Pacific (pushing up the speed of the trades and inducing deep ocean heat uptake)?

The heat is still there and growing so the end result is still the same, just that the post 07' 'averages' of pressure distribution across the basin have changed.

The Jenga tower of ice over Fram does not fill me with confidence though. even if we see another good 'rebound' year that ice will get the shove it needs to leave the basin and though not captured in the extent/area plots for the melt season the loss of that 'good ice' from the Atlantic side of the basin must weaken the pack there for next year?

07' saw two 'rebound years', why should 2012 not see the same? 2010 saw a volume drop below 07' so will this winter/next summer see similar occur? should we see a stormy Autumn and the loss of the the ice bound for Fram it may well be the first instalment of those losses taking the positive July PIOMAS increases with it.
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Nightvid Cole

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3021 on: August 09, 2014, 02:35:53 PM »
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c04.2014221.terra

Is it just me, or has wildfire smoke now settled onto the snow/ice?

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3022 on: August 09, 2014, 02:46:29 PM »


below is August 1st and 8th.  Yeah no big changes happening at all. 






The persistent ridge over the Pacific side of the basin is beating the hell out of the ice. I enjoy your posts and use them to focus my attention on the interesting areas. Following  these ridges has been enjoyable and the impact on the ice has been significant.

There is one other thing about these 2 images that fascinates me. As concentration drops quickly, the perimeter of the ice field remains remarkably unchanged. Even in the lowest concentration areas of the Chukchi, an arm of higher concentration sits calmly as its concentration drops. I think the relative immobility of the ice is the big story in this melt season. While these high pressure areas have been melting large amounts of ice, the pressure gradients on these highs and adjacent lows have not been steep. The wind fields are correspondingly weak. We have been watching a melt season that is dominated by in situ melt.

It's not that the ice is not ready to be shoved around. It is every bit as fragmented as in 2012. What use to be large flows of MYI has turned into a melange across the whole of the basin. Transport out the Fram has been weak, transport through the Nares as well. If we had a repeat of the GAC2012 in the next 2 weeks, this melange would melt quickly.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 02:53:48 PM by Shared Humanity »

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3023 on: August 09, 2014, 02:57:49 PM »
There is a substantial fraction of MYI vanishing/vanished in the Pacific side and a bulk of it ready to get the boot in the Atlantic side. I wouldnt be surprised PIOMAS anomaly becomes much more negative in September, and I'd be surprised PIOMAS March 2015 is not the same or less than 2014

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3024 on: August 09, 2014, 03:08:37 PM »
Another interesting feature of this melt season that can be seen on these two images is the transport of ice between Svalbard and Franz Josef. It's as if the Fram transport has migrated here. Wipneus has been tracking this for much of the season here.

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,382.1100.html

This happens to be one of my favorite places to visit on this site as Wipneus does a remarkable job combining metrics and images to tell a story.

Another one of my favorite places to visit is here....

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,12.0.html

....as Espen provides fascinating images and interpretation of the dynamic glaciers of Greenland.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3025 on: August 09, 2014, 03:56:06 PM »
Friv:

Nice pics of the Arctic Aug 8 vs Aug 1.  There is nothing better than a "good visual" to tell the story.  The next month will be interesting as usual....

Thanks...
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3026 on: August 09, 2014, 04:48:39 PM »
My insistence on simple functions does have a consequence I should acknowledge. No trend represented by a simple function will ever show a recovery.

x^2, when values of x are near zero, can show a recovery.  Presumably, then, (x-k)^2, which is a simple translation of graph to the origin is still simple.

But I like your basic point:  Claiming a recovery or any other pattern based on points on a graph is numerology and superstition.  Having a physical justification backed by multiple lines of evidence to explain trend lines is ever so much more satisfying.

This makes sense within the time frame under discussion.  My counterpoint below is OT for the 2014 Melting Season thread, but I don't see an obvious place for it elsewhere on the forum.

Essentially, any function complicated enough to be able to show a recovery will be too complicated to use as a trend function by my standards.
If you go out to Milankovitch time scales, it's plausible to construct a physical model - and accompanying function - that shows a recovery with decreasing summertime insolation and reduced greenhouse gases. Provided, of course, that positive feedbacks from the latter don't overwhelm the former.  If the system becomes too unstable (whether from geoengineering or otherwise), an overshoot in either direction is a serious possibility.  A true "fire and ice" scenario, even if it will be generations before our descendants have to deal with it.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 04:59:50 PM by iceman »

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3027 on: August 09, 2014, 06:02:32 PM »
I am stepping back, I am taking a long view.  I'm pointing out that the short term phenomena do not appear to be syncing up with the apparent inputs, and the observational tools we have appear to be coming up seriously short in giving us a clear idea of what is happening.
By "short term" are you talking about just the last couple of weeks? I though you were talking about the last five or so years. In the very short term (this year) we've had a summer of fairly mild weather and it's only the last week or so that it's gotten really bad for the ice. And it seems to be having a significant impact (see Friv's Aug. 1 vs 8 AMSR2 plots). So I guess I'm missing your point.

I agree that the tools we have are inadequate to fully understand the the system, but that's the nature of science. If it was easy, it'd be done already. One thing a couple of people have mentioned is export through the Fram and other routes to the Atlantic. I think when the story of this year is written, it will show that the export of ice was fairly low. I'd like to be able to quantify the export since no one seems to have a handle on it. Maybe this fall/winter I'll take a crack at something to measure the flux. It will be hard to calibrate, but it might give some relative numbers from year to year.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3028 on: August 09, 2014, 06:47:30 PM »
"We have been watching a melt season that is dominated by in situ melt."

Good point, SH. I've been noticing those relatively stable boundaries, too. But I hadn't put that all together in my head.

The other thing I'm noticing about the most recent of Friv's uni-bremen map is the line of open water developing between the Canadian Archipelago and the main ice pack. As I recall, there was a crack along that line early in the season, but now we see substantial open water. Will we end up with a Central Basin completely detached from the (sort of) fast ice of the Archipelago and from Greenland this year? Has that happened before?
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3029 on: August 09, 2014, 07:20:40 PM »
Hi wili,

As you probably know, the enormous and ancient landfast ice shelves that were once attached to northern Ellesmere are all gone now.  The water between Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Island was open last year or the year before.  Peter Wadhams (priv. comm.) told me that some Danish scientists had drilled through there some years ago, and the sea floor sediments indicated that that water had not been open for 14,000 years.  He seemed to be a little stunned by the news that it was open.

The open areas off the Canadian Archipelago and northern Greenland seem to arrive earlier and stay longer and appear off NNE Greenland even during the winter, now.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3030 on: August 09, 2014, 07:32:39 PM »
The water between Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg Island was open last year or the year before.
This year, within the last week the ice in that location has broken into large floes and appears to be moving south and melting.
The Permian–Triassic extinction event, a.k.a. the Great Dying, occurred about 250 million years ago and is the most severe known extinction event. Up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct; it is also the only known mass extinction of insects.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3031 on: August 09, 2014, 07:47:51 PM »
"sea floor sediments indicated that that water had not been open for 14,000 years."

Wow! Thanks for that long-term perspective, Tenney.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3032 on: August 09, 2014, 07:53:23 PM »


I got a nickname for all my guns
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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

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3033 on: August 09, 2014, 08:10:34 PM »
yesterday:
Impressive image. I'm struck by the quality of the ice.  Consider this image from near Bering strait on May 13th:

http://map2.vis.earthdata.nasa.gov/imagegen/index.php?TIME=2014133&extent=-2290912,1320256,-2017504,1512768&epsg=3413&layers=MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,arctic_coastlines_3413&format=image/jpeg&width=1068&height=752

I think there are significant similarities in ice quality, though the sheer scale of your image - 250,000 km2, more or less - is staggering.  From my May image, I get the implication that the the ice in your image has not much more than a week of life left.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2014, 08:38:32 PM by jdallen »
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Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3034 on: August 09, 2014, 08:13:39 PM »
JD. I think quite a bit of MYI has pushed into the Chukchi the last couple of months. 

Then weather became quite favorable for ice retention.

The CAB is surely to retain more ice then it looked a month ago
I got a nickname for all my guns
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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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3035 on: August 09, 2014, 09:08:06 PM »
I had to go back to July 27th to get a fair(clear skies) comparison of jaxa channel 89ghz scans of the ice.

If we had 2009 or 2013s August weather I believe we could have finished with 5.5 mil min Jaxa, 4.0 min CT and 7000KM3 piomas.

I got a nickname for all my guns
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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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3036 on: August 09, 2014, 09:13:53 PM »
The euro keeps getting crazier.  The CAB and CAA get it next and the Laptev gets pummeled for days days days on end.


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

Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3037 on: August 09, 2014, 09:55:01 PM »
something I was thinking about today is that we now have a negative AO which have been quite persistent since the end of May. Last year we had a positive AO throughout most of the year. The first half of this year was dominated by weak positive anomaly but has since then been on the negative side for the last two months. Should this trend continue during the coming winter with "hot Arctic - Cold continent" and throughout next year I bet we'll see a really big melt during 2015. Something more similar to 2007 and 2010. This year may have been "saved" by a juxtapostion of several factors, for example not all snow from last year melted out which grew during the winter which was dominated by cyclonic activity.

One interesting note is that both 2007 and 2010 were years after El Niño events... Would be interesting to see if a similar effect will take place next year if El Niño manage to evolve later this year.

Friv: the EURO OP is truly interesting and I should be very surprised if we won't see at leats 2-4 century breaks in extent per JAXA from now and until August 20.

finally, how thick is the remaining ice in the Arctic? HYCOM clearly overestimates the thickness but are there other sources?

//LMV

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3038 on: August 09, 2014, 11:08:11 PM »
Let me repeat this one here:

Next time my local weather forecaster calls the 4th worst flood in local river history horrible I will march down to the station and tell him to stop talking nonsense like that and to apologize to the people for mis-leading them.

When we set our 6th or 7th warmest year on record and they call it "EXTREME" again that can't be allowed that is just wrong and misleading.

When the 7th or 10th or 15th strongest hurricane on record plows into a GOM city and kills 2000 people no calling it terrible.  It was only a Category 3 after-all. 


Oh how fast people become desensitized to the changes taking place or they are intentionally moving the goal posts.

Very well said, Friv. I will try and paraphrase this when the melting season is over. To me it also seems as if a lot of people think that the consequences will start as soon as the Arctic is ice-free. As if they couldn't be happening already.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3039 on: August 10, 2014, 12:21:19 AM »
I personally find the developments in the Atlantic sector of the arctic rather odd this year, so I cherry picked a date in the midst of winter (18. February) and compared the Uni Bremen map of that particular date with today's map. The result, which is attached at the bottom, demonstrates something quite astonishing about this season, and that is the increase of sea ice extent from February to August in rather a broad area.

Wonder how many quids the Daily Mail would consider such information to be worth ;).

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3040 on: August 10, 2014, 02:10:48 AM »
That is actually pretty ugly Rubiks. 

In a month that all becomes official MYI and it will be the first ice to be destroyed this winter.

If this weather started on July 1st and not August 1st holy cow.

Or this August:




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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3041 on: August 10, 2014, 04:05:37 AM »
The ESS continues to fall apart.



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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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3042 on: August 10, 2014, 06:52:38 AM »
Everything on the low concentration of the black line I put in the danger category for a melt out by the end.

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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3043 on: August 10, 2014, 07:18:40 AM »
A summer of lame is ending with a bang.

We may see a large region of the laptev carved out between 83/85N back thru the Nansen Basin. 

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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3044 on: August 10, 2014, 07:41:15 AM »
Here are some nice visible images. 

The ESS over 12 days change.  Big changes.



Overall Pacific side with 7-2-1 channel for enhancement of where the ice is the worst off.

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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3045 on: August 10, 2014, 09:16:57 AM »
The Euro is amazing folks.

« Last Edit: August 10, 2014, 09:29:34 AM by Frivolousz21 »
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

Neven

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3046 on: August 10, 2014, 09:28:29 AM »
The Euro is mind blowing!

I have just posted the ASI update 7 on the ASIB: late momentum. I want to thank everyone here for discussion and data sharing. Especially Frivvy and Wippy.  ;)

Here's the conclusion:

Quote
It looks like this second rebound year in a row will be accentuated by the late arrival of (almost) perfect weather conditions for melting ice. I say almost, because it's still mostly insolation taking and making the charge, with some warm winds being pulled in as well. There's still very little transport through Fram Strait - more ice seems to be going through Victoria Channel (formerly and erroneously known as Olga Strait) bertween Svalbard and Franz Josef Land - and there is neither much compaction or divergence to speak of when we look at the ice pack as a whole.

If 2012 was the year of the record dominoes and GAC-2012, and 2013 was the year of the persistent cyclones, then 2014 is the melting season of the in situ melting. Though different all, this melting season has confirmed what was witnessed in 2012 and 2013: the start of the melting season is incredibly important for the remainder of it. Just a couple of weeks of sustained open skies and heat from lower latitudes, can build up a massive momentum that keeps the melt going. But it matters a lot when the momentum is built up.

One can't help but wonder what would've happened had these conditions occured in May and early June, but it's definitely much better for the ice pack to occur later or not at all. One also wonders what is influencing the timing and magnitude of these conditions, especially after three melting seasons that have been so distinctly different. I guess we'll keep wondering about that for years to come.

In the meantime we watch what this late momentum can still achieve and whether 2014 might still end up below 2013. The race is on.

This melting season has been incredibly interesting so far. I feel like I'm starting to understand a bit more how things work again, but I'd like to work out some more what to watch out for (and how to see it) during that crucial start of the melting season.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3047 on: August 10, 2014, 09:34:17 AM »
I love that we get to see how things go after a Summer of good weather then an unfavorable pattern for most of August it seems.

It' pretty obvious that if we went thru all of August with good ice weather we probably would have ended up better than any post 2007 year.

I am confident that is over now and the models apparently want to nail that coffin in even harder.

I give the chances of an ESS melt out 50-60% now.  It was probably 5-10% a week ago.

In theory what is happening was likely but seeing that area go from relatively great to what it is right now is astonishing to me.

At face value our records for area and extent show a big time plummet from here has never really happened. 

But these are unique conditions and the melt season for 70-80N doesn't end for another 30 days typically.

That is a long time when there is so much heat in the water and you have a large ridge compaction regime. 

That is expected to get much more favorable for big time compaction as we go along.

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 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3048 on: August 10, 2014, 09:49:44 AM »
We can see warm water now showing up on satellite in some of the ESS budding open water areas within the pack ice.

That screams rapid deterioration of the ice where insolation is aiding wind to get bottom ice melt likely rocking out hard.



That screams rapid deterioration of the ice where insolation is aiding wind to get bottom ice melt likely rocking out hard.

Winds are not perfect but they are favorable for losses to steadily continue while insitu melt keeps at it then after the 16th the CAB gets it good.




How far can the laptev region get smoked out?  The models are showing like 10 days in a row with winds between 10-20kts most of the time.
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 Pettit

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #3049 on: August 10, 2014, 04:22:16 PM »
2014 area and extent continue their abnormally slow and shallow slide toward their respective annual minimums.

Over the past 16 days--Day 0.5616 through today--CT SIA has experienced an increase on seven separate days, and a decrease of fewer than 10k km2 on two others, for a total net for the period of -591k. By way of contrast, 2012 recorded just a single increase during the period, and lost a total of 1.246 million km2. 2014 now trails 2012 by a whopping 1.433 million km2, an area more than twice as large as Texas.

A similar story is being told on the JAXA SIE side, where a prolonged period of weak melt shows up as a relative flatline when compared with other recent seasons. For instance, over the past week, SIE has decreased by about 385k km2, an amount substantially lower than 2012's 998k for the same period. And where 2012 recorded 13 century decreases from 11 July through today, 2014 has seen but one.

Obviously, 2014 isn't 2012. In fact, current forecasts aside, it is at this point not only a near mathematical certainty that none of the primary ice metrics will wind up in record territory, but it's becoming increasingly likely that finishes in the top (bottom?) ten seasons on record may not even be reached.

But, as always, we'll see...