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Neven

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #100 on: March 05, 2015, 10:02:30 PM »
Wow, straight for Fram strait:



Sorry that it's a bit unclear what is where. So many isobars!

I wonder what this storm is going to bring about. Sure, increased transport, but major cracking? And if so, will it be bad for the ice pack, or will it allow a lot of ridging, heat expulsion and refreezing? Or is too late into the freezing season for that?
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Neven

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #101 on: March 05, 2015, 10:04:22 PM »
The ADS monitor has sea ice thickness going back to 2013, so here's another comparison:



Somehow I feel the map for 2015 isn't correct. There should be a lot of thick ice in the Beaufort, albeit heavily fragmented.
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anotheramethyst

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #102 on: March 05, 2015, 10:46:05 PM »
i just visited the webcam thread and its cut off just like the asig page.  of course, i got left wnd right reversed in my first comment :(  its the RIGHT column of graphs.  im awful with computers  (and left and right, apparently) but maybe if nothing else works you can use 2 columns instead of 3?  that still wint fix the fact that the toolbars also cut off on the right edge.  it may be a google / apple compatibility issue that google or apple might fix if brought to their attention.  i hope this helps.

DavidR

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #103 on: March 05, 2015, 10:48:02 PM »
Somehow I feel the map for 2015 isn't correct. There should be a lot of thick ice in the Beaufort, albeit heavily fragmented.
Unfortunately  Neven I think that's just wishful thinking on your part. The entire pack looks to be significantly thinner than last year and the ice around the pole looks quite vulnerable this year. The thick ice above Greenland has virtually disappeared and the 'yellow' ice is no longer close to the pole. .
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Neven

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #104 on: March 05, 2015, 11:24:44 PM »
i just visited the webcam thread and its cut off just like the asig page.  of course, i got left wnd right reversed in my first comment :(  its the RIGHT column of graphs.  im awful with computers  (and left and right, apparently) but maybe if nothing else works you can use 2 columns instead of 3?  that still wint fix the fact that the toolbars also cut off on the right edge.  it may be a google / apple compatibility issue that google or apple might fix if brought to their attention.  i hope this helps.

Thanks for checking, anotheramethyst. I'm afraid I won't be fiddling with the columns, because it's a lot of work to change the lay-out. Of course, I don't own a mobile phone (the graphs show up perfectly on my own monitor), and so I lack empathy.  ;)

I will see if I can get this to work in weeks to come. There's a couple of other things I have to update on the ASIG anyhow, like the SIC comparison pages.

Somehow I feel the map for 2015 isn't correct. There should be a lot of thick ice in the Beaufort, albeit heavily fragmented.

Unfortunately  Neven I think that's just wishful thinking on your part. The entire pack looks to be significantly thinner than last year and the ice around the pole looks quite vulnerable this year. The thick ice above Greenland has virtually disappeared and the 'yellow' ice is no longer close to the pole. .

I've done a couple of preliminary comparisons this past week, and all of them show an 'arm' of multi-year ice that has been transported into the Beaufort Sea, all the way up to the Chukchi Sea. I can't imagine this ice being as thin as the ADS monitor page shows it to be.

Here's an example of that multi-year ice in the Beaufort, that can also be seen on radar maps for instance:

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DavidR

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #105 on: March 06, 2015, 12:17:54 AM »

Somehow I feel the map for 2015 isn't correct. There should be a lot of thick ice in the Beaufort, albeit heavily fragmented.

Unfortunately  Neven I think that's just wishful thinking on your part. The entire pack looks to be significantly thinner than last year and the ice around the pole looks quite vulnerable this year. The thick ice above Greenland has virtually disappeared and the 'yellow' ice is no longer close to the pole. .

I've done a couple of preliminary comparisons this past week, and all of them show an 'arm' of multi-year ice that has been transported into the Beaufort Sea, all the way up to the Chukchi Sea. I can't imagine this ice being as thin as the ADS monitor page shows it to be.

I think the issue is that the average has dropped below  a threshhold. There is a small arm of increased thickness in your 2015 comparison map across the Beaufort. However the larger map also shows a lot of < 1m ice in the same area, and very little ice between 1-4 m.   I think the reality is the average thickness is a lot lower and at this granularity the thick ice just doesn't register at the levels you  expect. 
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jdallen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #106 on: March 06, 2015, 01:09:44 AM »
I think the disagreement has its source here.... Multi year no longer equates to greater thickness.

I expect a side effect of so many leads/so much fracturing is there may no longer be the kinetic forces being applied to large stretches of ice necessary to force ridging.

Without that, you only have thermal thickening, even with MYI.

QED, thickness maps and age maps may no longer match up.
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Peter Ellis

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #107 on: March 06, 2015, 01:14:39 AM »
Somehow I feel the map for 2015 isn't correct. There should be a lot of thick ice in the Beaufort, albeit heavily fragmented.

Hmm, possibly.  Certainly there's multi-year ice in the Beaufort as shown by the surface properties (roughness etc) monitored by ASCAT.  But is it thick multi-year ice?  Perhaps not.  This is the ice that spent last summer in the Beaufort and survived the summer melt, so it's now multi-year ice.  However the thickness at the end of the summer could easily have been down to below 2m, i.e. below the thickness of fully-grown FYI. So the Beaufort is now all at around 2m thick, but some of that is saline FYI and some of it is less saline MYI with a thin layer of FYI underneath.

This "thin multi-year ice" is the same "rotten ice" referred to by Barber et al - stuff that has some MYI characteristics, but isn't the same as the MYI you used to see in previous years.

LRC1962

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #108 on: March 06, 2015, 07:34:27 AM »
@ JD & PE: I have thought and tried to say what you have said so well for a few years. That is why I really think we need a new glossary for types of ice. What I have no clue. The only problem is, because the nature of ice, snow and water and how it affects even close up instrumentation, it is almost impossible to get a clear idea of both how much and what is it consisting of. Then of course you get to melt season and we are now supposed to look for melt ponds. If the ice is solid ice then ponds will form, but if the ice is full of small channels going from top to bottom, and water forming will drain out right away therefore no ponds. That draining will still melt ice except no instruments can track it and it will still appear as good thick ice until wind or waves make it disappear in a very few hours or minutes.
Could this be part of what is happening now? That the big flows that held together during the summer did not get the right conditions this winter to firm up and then when things warmed up too much and got too stressed all the bored out ice suddenly turned into mush that disappeared.
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BornFromTheVoid

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #109 on: March 06, 2015, 08:43:08 AM »
The current surface air temp anomaly over the Atlantic side is quite impressive, and that's where we've been losing much of the ice the last few days, after losing it from the Bering strait area at the weekend.



But look at how those anomalies go over the next few days.

3 days ahead


5 days ahead


The Bering side cools down, but that might not be enough to offset conditions on the Atlantic side.  Interesting time ahead, which isn't often the case at this time of year!
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jdallen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #110 on: March 06, 2015, 09:00:55 AM »
The current surface air temp anomaly over the Atlantic side is quite impressive, and that's where we've been losing much of the ice the last few days, after losing it from the Bering strait area at the weekend.

The Bering side cools down, but that might not be enough to offset conditions on the Atlantic side.  Interesting time ahead, which isn't often the case at this time of year!

Ice in the Bering is pretty much irrelevant.  The heat over the CAB is lethal for the pack - it effectively halts any thickening or creation of new ice in leads.  Underneath the anomalies are temperatures near freezing over much of the region.  This is far from optimal.  I think it's actually far more dangerous than a big storm in the middle of the melt season.  We're two months away from any serious insolation hitting the region, and it's already starting to act like we've started the melt season.

Damn I hope we get cold in the Arctic, REALLY cold, in the last half of March.
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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #111 on: March 06, 2015, 10:15:03 AM »
Leaving the ballpark:

Tonight's record low extent and daily ice loss figures gave me an interesting problem for later today: We're now by March 5th losing annual average extent in such a pace that there really is no precedent, at least not in the past two years, and we probably have to go back to 2012 to find a bigger daily delta. That means I'll have to extend the period searched through in the PHP script making this graph.

Sigh. Bad Arctic. Bad, bad Arctic!
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DavidR

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #112 on: March 06, 2015, 10:18:05 AM »

Sigh. Bad Arctic. Bad, bad Arctic!

Bad Viddaloo,
Don't blame the messenger here; The Arctic didn't volunteer for this!!
 ;)
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nick

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #113 on: March 06, 2015, 10:49:21 AM »
Somehow I feel the map for 2015 isn't correct. There should be a lot of thick ice in the Beaufort, albeit heavily fragmented.

The AMSR2 thickness would seem to be of dubious reliability to me. Compare, for example, the 19th and 20th August 2013 (picking a date at random). I find it unlikely the ice in large parts of the basin thickened 5m overnight.

crandles

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #114 on: March 06, 2015, 02:27:07 PM »

The AMSR2 thickness would seem to be of dubious reliability to me. Compare, for example, the 19th and 20th August 2013 (picking a date at random). I find it unlikely the ice in large parts of the basin thickened 5m overnight.

Summer seems a bad time to choose when they say it isn't good in Summer. Change from blues (surface melt I assume) to red/yellow/green just mean that the surface is no longer melting.

5m near pole and away from CAA/Greenland in August does seem far too thick. But I don't see any 5m thickening or how you could see 5m thickening.

Or do other people have different interpretation?

Neven

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #115 on: March 06, 2015, 11:41:07 PM »
I've published a blog post on the ASIB about current events in the Arctic: Mad max?

Thanks for all the input.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #116 on: March 07, 2015, 03:17:08 AM »
I've published a blog post on the ASIB about current events in the Arctic: Mad max?

Thanks for all the input.
Relevant to comments there (posting here, rather than clog your blog), I did some sifting through past years.

In particular, thoughts were that northerlies over the Bering would/could make up the difference.  Unfortunately, as shown below, the anomalies, while steep, still cover mostly the existing ice there, and do not really penetrate into the deeper open water.  The other thing that strikes me, is that those temperatures are generally greater than -20C, and mostly just below zero.  I don't see the gradient high enough to overcome the warmer water.

Comparing to 2012 at its warmest at start, and deepest cold in March, the "Warm" wasn't nearly as warm or pervasive as it is this year, and the cold far more broadly distributed.  I think we'd need to see a strong patch of weather like that shown on 19.3.2012 for the losses to be fully reversed.
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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #117 on: March 07, 2015, 09:01:08 AM »
I've published a blog post on the ASIB about current events in the Arctic: Mad max?

Things to do with a MILLION.

All due respect, but the 'mad max' really isn't the issue here.

On Feb 15, the day of the possible 'mad max', we were 87 thousand lower than 2012. Today we're more than a million km2 lower. That is the main absurdity of the situation, and not a maximum that could conceivably be exceeded for a day or two, before the big melt continues.

As documented elsewhere this morning, post–2007 the only time we've been close to a million head–start on the year with the lowest minimum at the time, it was early September and only days to go to the minimum.

Now it's early March and we have the entire 2015 melt season in which to spend and expand our million.

(True, 2012 had exceptional gains in this same Feb15 to Mar6 period, but 2015 is currently also a million short of the 2000s average. Therefore "it's not you, it's me", or IOW, it's 2015, and not the year you pick for comparisons.)

As someone already pointed out: Who needs meltponds when you have a million extra km2 of dark open seas? Plus it's not either–or: We can have the million AND abundant meltponds. We can have a million, abundant meltponds, extremely high temp anomalies in the Arctic AND furious cyclones. Plus Fram export of anomalously broken ice.

In short, you'd need something of a miracle to NOT go considerably lower than 2007 and 2012 in September this year.
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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #118 on: March 07, 2015, 09:27:42 AM »
Sigh. Bad Arctic. Bad, bad Arctic!

Bad Viddaloo,
Don't blame the messenger here; The Arctic didn't volunteer for this!!
 ;)

Code: [Select]
Annual Average Extent — mar6 — down 1630 km²/day, down 7521/week and down 7009/month.
The latest greater daily drop was Monday November 5th 2012 with 1642 km² lost per day.

In other words, it's more than 2 years since we had such dramatic drops in the average extent. If this abrupt plunge exceeds even 2012's steepest slope, the next year for comparison is 2007 (steepest to date). I instructed my script to search 9 years back in time, so it should be OK for a while.
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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #119 on: March 07, 2015, 10:41:06 AM »
Certainly there's multi-year ice in the Beaufort as shown by the surface properties (roughness etc) monitored by ASCAT.  But is it thick multi-year ice?  Perhaps not.

Here's the latest from ice mass balance buoy 2013F, which has survived two winters in the Beaufort Sea:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/ice-mass-balance-buoys/winter-201415-imbs/#2013F

The ice is slightly thicker this year than at the same time last year, but not by much:

 
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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #120 on: March 07, 2015, 11:45:09 AM »
It seems you are safe if you wait 22 days from the max extent candidate and require $drop >= $gain. (In fact, you are safe even without the $drop >= $gain check. If you wait 22 days and no new max arrives, your max candidate is the (mad) max.)
Code: [Select]
n = 22
Max called for 2003: Day 80 with 15066086 km² — mar21
Max called for 2004: Day 69 with 14701388 km² — mar10
Max called for 2005: Day 66 with 14396094 km² — mar7
Max called for 2006: Day 69 with 14132380 km² — mar10
Max called for 2007: Day 55 with 14209677 km² — feb24
Max called for 2008: Day 68 with 14774776 km² — mar9
Max called for 2009: Day 61 with 14657047 km² — mar2
Max called for 2010: Day 90 with 14688540 km² — mar31
Max called for 2011: Day 75 with 14127729 km² — mar16
Max called for 2012: Day 66 with 14709086 km² — mar7
Max called for 2013: Day 73 with 14523635 km² — mar14
Max called for 2014: Day 79 with 14448416 km² — mar20
Max called for 2015: Day 46 with 13942060 km² — feb15

This is what happens with n = 21:



I suppose that means crow meals have to be digested?  ;D
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lanevn

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #121 on: March 07, 2015, 12:12:25 PM »
If you wait 22 days and no new max arrives, your max candidate is the (mad) max.)
More fair will be to say "If you wait till march 31"

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #122 on: March 07, 2015, 12:33:28 PM »
The first ice mass balance buoy of 2015 has recently been installed just off Prudhoe Bay:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/ice-mass-balance-buoys/winter-201415-imbs/#2015A
« Last Edit: March 20, 2015, 07:24:59 PM by Jim Hunt »
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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #123 on: March 07, 2015, 01:20:02 PM »
If you wait 22 days and no new max arrives, your max candidate is the (mad) max.)
More fair will be to say "If you wait till march 31"
Yup, that's an alternative (if not more 'fair') way to interpret the stats. But using March 31 would be a rigid one–size–fits–all limit, while the 22 days would be flexible and more relative to the current strangeness of the year in front of us.

PS: My rule works even for NSIDC extent 1979—2014, but with n=26 because of the deceitful spring of 1993. But mind you, the 22 days in IJIS haven't been yet, so the 2015 max can be called on March 10th, at the earliest.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #124 on: March 07, 2015, 06:06:54 PM »
Certainly there's multi-year ice in the Beaufort as shown by the surface properties (roughness etc) monitored by ASCAT.  But is it thick multi-year ice?  Perhaps not.

Here's the latest from ice mass balance buoy 2013F, which has survived two winters in the Beaufort Sea:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/ice-mass-balance-buoys/winter-201415-imbs/#2013F

The ice is slightly thicker this year than at the same time last year, but not by much:

The key take away is, it's less than 2.5 meters.  I wish we had similar information about ice in the ESS and Laptev.  My hunch is that will be where we see the most furious early retreat.
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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #125 on: March 07, 2015, 08:02:52 PM »
Code: [Select]
Annual Average Extent — mar6 — down 1630 km²/day, down 7521/week and down 7009/month.
The latest greater daily drop was Monday November 5th 2012 with 1642 km² lost per day.

In other words, it's more than 2 years since we had such dramatic drops in the average extent. If this abrupt plunge exceeds even 2012's steepest slope, the next year for comparison is 2007 (steepest to date). I instructed my script to search 9 years back in time, so it should be OK for a while.
You can see the steepness of the 2007 slope compared to that of 2012 in this view. When 2012 is no longer steep enough, 2007 will be the only year left to compare to:

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Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #126 on: March 07, 2015, 08:48:12 PM »
I've published a blog post on the ASIB about current events in the Arctic: Mad max?

Things to do with a MILLION.

All due respect, but the 'mad max' really isn't the issue here.

On Feb 15, the day of the possible 'mad max', we were 87 thousand lower than 2012. Today we're more than a million km2 lower. That is the main absurdity of the situation, and not a maximum that could conceivably be exceeded for a day or two, before the big melt continues.


Half of this million is in the Sea of Okhotsk which is not connected to the Arctic at all.  The other half is in the Bering sea which has a thin connection to the Arctic.  It is interesting to note that the years 2006 to 2013 were chacterised by unusually high ice in Bering sea during winter and 2012 set the record ice area for this region for the entire satellite record since 1980.   The unusual low ice max in the Bering sea may actually reflect a continuation of the change away from the 2007-2012 weather pattern that allowed a slight gain in ice over 2013 to 2014. 

In contrast 2012 had less ice than 2015 on the Atlantic side which is directly connected to the Arctic on a wide front.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #127 on: March 07, 2015, 09:06:35 PM »
I've published a blog post on the ASIB about current events in the Arctic: Mad max?

Things to do with a MILLION.

All due respect, but the 'mad max' really isn't the issue here.

On Feb 15, the day of the possible 'mad max', we were 87 thousand lower than 2012. Today we're more than a million km2 lower. That is the main absurdity of the situation, and not a maximum that could conceivably be exceeded for a day or two, before the big melt continues.


Half of this million is in the Sea of Okhotsk which is not connected to the Arctic at all.  The other half is in the Bering sea which has a thin connection to the Arctic.  It is interesting to note that the years 2006 to 2013 were chacterised by unusually high ice in Bering sea during winter and 2012 set the record ice area for this region for the entire satellite record since 1980.   The unusual low ice max in the Bering sea may actually reflect a continuation of the change away from the 2007-2012 weather pattern that allowed a slight gain in ice over 2013 to 2014. 

In contrast 2012 had less ice than 2015 on the Atlantic side which is directly connected to the Arctic on a wide front.
Definitely modifies the quality of the difference and potential.  Open area on the Atlantic side is more dangerous in absolute terms than open water in the Bering and Okhotsk.

Contemplating the post I made elsewhere, the most likely negative impact would be acceleration of melting in the Chukchi and weakening of ice in the ESS.  In short, much less of a threat to the CAB.
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Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #128 on: March 08, 2015, 10:22:15 AM »
According to Canada Weather office the low approaching Fram strait is now starting to impact the Arctic, currently at 953 HP and was as low as 946 hp while approaching.  There is also another 960 hp low near Iceland.

For comparison the 2012 Great Arctic cyclone bottomed out at 966 hp.  Storms do tend to be stronger in winter than summer, and the strength of the 2012 event was not just its lowest pressure but other factors such as total size.
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Neven

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #129 on: March 08, 2015, 12:13:31 PM »
Thanks for checking this, Michael. 952 hPa is pretty intense...
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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #130 on: March 08, 2015, 12:36:43 PM »
Thanks for checking this, Michael. 952 hPa is pretty intense...

Is this storm heading south towards the Fram or north?

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #131 on: March 08, 2015, 12:47:05 PM »
Is this storm heading south towards the Fram or north?

Go here:

http://meteociel.fr/modeles/gfse_cartes.php?ech=6&code=code&mode=0&mode3h=0&runpara=0&carte=1

Then click "Précharger" followed by "Anim". Here's T+6:
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jdallen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #132 on: March 08, 2015, 06:52:57 PM »
Looking at the surface  winds using EarthLink, it's hard to imagine more optimal conditions for export through the Fram...
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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #133 on: March 09, 2015, 06:45:27 AM »
We are now 292 191 km² below the 2015 max on Feb 15. And while it's true that one single year actually gained more than that diff later in March — from Mar 9 to 20 — it is not that true when we look at the details:

The year in question — 2014 — dropped significantly from 14255140 on Mar 6 via 14015926 on Mar 9, but was back up at 14233829 again on Mar 12. After that week of back–and–forth, the gain from Mar 12 to the Mar 20 max was just 214 587 km², which is not nearly enough to match the 2015 diff of 292 191 km² to our max on Feb 15.

So picking 2014 and saying it gained enough for the 2015 not to be safely called at this point, is sort of cherry–picking. You pick the last extreme low caused by exceptional weather and say that it gained enough from that low.

2015 hasn't dropped 239 214 km² in recent days — only a tiny fraction of that, about 10 000 km² — so doesn't have an extreme wind–caused low to snap back from. That's why we've only got a maximum gain of 214 587 km² to look forward to, even following the most extreme March gain year.
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Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #134 on: March 09, 2015, 07:01:52 AM »
By CT area we are currently over 250k below average in Bering sea.  Near max in 2012 we were as high as 400k above average in Bering sea.  Currently weather looks just about perfect for expansion of ice in this area.  The maximum potential expansion looks to be a good 650k in this sea, its just a question of how close we can get to this roughly calculated maximum, and whether we have enough time.

The other big player this time of year, Okhotsk is about 500k below 2012, but the next week looks mild and stormy in this region, so I doubt there will be much if any ice growth there.

At the same time GFS is showing a warm blast at the end of its 7 days run which is strong enough to start noticeable melt (at least on the surface) in the Hudson bay which would strike me as unusual if it happens, and highly likely to freeze back over once the warm burst is over.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #135 on: March 09, 2015, 07:53:50 AM »
Michael Hauber - I agree with you mostly, but feel that increases on the scale you suggest in the Bering is mostly wishful thinking.  The blast isn't cold enough, far reaching enough or long lasting enough.  I also think there is too much heat in the water.

I'd be very surprised if we saw more than a 200k increase there.
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DavidR

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #136 on: March 09, 2015, 08:43:51 AM »
The year in question — 2014 — dropped significantly from 14255140 on Mar 6 via 14015926 on Mar 9, but was back up at 14233829 again on Mar 12. After that week of back–and–forth, the gain from Mar 12 to the Mar 20 max was just 214 587 km², which is not nearly enough to match the 2015 diff of 292 191 km² to our max on Feb 15.

So picking 2014 and saying it gained enough for the 2015 not to be safely called at this point, is sort of cherry–picking. You pick the last extreme low caused by exceptional weather and say that it gained enough from that low.

2015 hasn't dropped 239 214 km² in recent days — only a tiny fraction of that, about 10 000 km² — so doesn't have an extreme wind–caused low to snap back from. That's why we've only got a maximum gain of 214 587 km² to look forward to, even following the most extreme March gain year.
The NSIDC figures show a drop of around 150K km^2 in the past 4 days so there is certainly a similarity to 2014 there.  It is not likely that we will surpass the current max for this year and highly probable that  we will have a record low maximum. However,  although the Bering was the warmest  for 15 years this year it was also that in 2014 so we have to stick with waiting  out the month. 
False claims are eagerly jumped on by contrarians to conclude the scientists have no  idea. 
Unfortunately we will be right in the end, it  doesn't help to be unnecessarily wrong in the interim.
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BornFromTheVoid

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #137 on: March 09, 2015, 11:22:32 AM »
By CT area we are currently over 250k below average in Bering sea.  Near max in 2012 we were as high as 400k above average in Bering sea.  Currently weather looks just about perfect for expansion of ice in this area.  The maximum potential expansion looks to be a good 650k in this sea, its just a question of how close we can get to this roughly calculated maximum, and whether we have enough time.

The other big player this time of year, Okhotsk is about 500k below 2012, but the next week looks mild and stormy in this region, so I doubt there will be much if any ice growth there.

At the same time GFS is showing a warm blast at the end of its 7 days run which is strong enough to start noticeable melt (at least on the surface) in the Hudson bay which would strike me as unusual if it happens, and highly likely to freeze back over once the warm burst is over.

I wouldn't say conditions are ideal over the Bering sea. While there are currently cold temperatures there, they're are only cold enough to form sea ice over a relatively small area, and without strong northerly winds (as happened at the end of 2014) there will be nothing to spread out the ice.

2014
March 6th


10th


13th



This year, the forecast shows stable winds and no northerlies until after 5 days but they are northerlies coming more off Alaska and so increase the temperature, so nothing like 2014.
I think we will see some growth in the Bering sea, maybe 100k or 150k, but not enough to take us away from the lowest area coverage on record for the region.
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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #138 on: March 09, 2015, 06:36:57 PM »
By the way, Bob Henson (Wunderground contributor) has posted an update regarding the record low March extent reads. He also gives a shoutout to Neven (and the sea ice blog) and Jim Hunt on their contributions. Congrats guys!

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2929

The article itself goes into many of things we have covered here. This paragraph is especially pertinent in terms of the warm wave and the chances that we have either seen the annual max or much less will escape a record low annual maximum:

Quote
The current weather pattern is also pushing a huge pulse of extremely mild late-winter air across the central Arctic (see Figure 4). Temperatures on Sunday, March 8, reached 15.8°C (60.4°F) in Stockholm. Senior climatologist Sverker Hellström (Swedish Hydrological and Meteorological Institute) observed today in an email forwarded by weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera that the 15.8°C is the warmest reading prior to March 19 in records at Stockholm that go all the way back to 1756! If there is any major refreezing of Arctic sea ice in the next few days, it’s most likely to occur in the Bering Sea, but the freeze-up there would have to be vast and quick to counterbalance the major ice losses we’ve seen across the Arctic as a whole since February. Even if a new peak is reached this month, it’s unlikely to be enough to keep 2015 from setting the record for the lowest maximum Arctic ice extent.

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #139 on: March 09, 2015, 06:49:05 PM »
Here's a comment with a link to a blog post by Sverker Hellström and those records from do's quote. Yes, in Swedish...  ;)
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,179.msg47067.html#msg47067

Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #140 on: March 09, 2015, 10:05:16 PM »

I wouldn't say conditions are ideal over the Bering sea. While there are currently cold temperatures there, they're are only cold enough to form sea ice over a relatively small area, and without strong northerly winds (as happened at the end of 2014) there will be nothing to spread out the ice.



I'm sure when I looked at GFS just before I commented it was looking quite similar to the 2014 case.  Now they look pretty tame.  So perhaps it could shift back again.  Or the next run will be even milder.
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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #141 on: March 10, 2015, 08:12:40 AM »
We just passed a milestone: the median/average value for day of maximum is 67-69 for the nh, ijis and cryo datasets. So, from a purely statistical view we now have a 50% chance of having passed maximum and increasing daily.

Of course this completely ignores current weather, current values and physics in general, but still an interesting statistical datum.
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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #142 on: March 10, 2015, 09:57:43 AM »
Here we are....some fearing the worst.....all hoping for the best....while even the "likely" scenario as to how this melt season plays out will likely be a record low AT BEST.

What trajectory will the coming month put us on?  When will we get a "bounce" (recovery in the ice) if only for a week or two?

All the while the state with the most to lose in coming decades......doesn't allow the phrases "climate change" or "global warming" to be used (Florida)!  And the person (Rick Scott) that Floridians are entrusting their future to......is the least trustworthy politician in the US (he was at the center of the largest Medicare fraud in history when he was the CEO of Columbia Healthcare).

We humans are really gluttons for punishment sometimes.....

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viddaloo

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #143 on: March 10, 2015, 10:11:31 AM »
Icelook mar10: Average extent 4th lowest in 26 days, average volume peaks in 24 days and will be 6th in 5 months, and p1k (Piomas minus 1000) will be 3rd in 4 months. Continued losses in daily extent for the past 8 days has lead to further annual average extent drops, and today we have passed the 10.31 line for the first time this year, 2—4 days earlier than predicted last week. With the current weekly AAE drop pace of 9305 km²/week, we should now be able to lose almost 40 grand per month. That will take us past the 10.27 million line before mid April. On a shorter term, the weekly pace will have us below 10.3 million by Mar 17, or according to the prognosis graph on Saturday March 14th. The forecast is of course more reliable in the short term, but has us crossing into 4th lowest territory on April 5th. Today also marks the end of the 22–day wait for a new 2015 maximum extent — 22 being the 'safe' wait gleaned from the 2002—2014 IJIS extent time series. No year has ever come back with a higher maximum after 22 days of not beating the previous candidate. I therefore hereby call the 2015 maximum at 13,942,060 km² on Sunday February 15th. We won't see 13.94 million again before February or, perhaps, January 2016. Being as low as 13.6 million as early as March 9th — almost 7 weeks before record low year 2012 — is a very grave and extremely dangerous situation, and the fallout may be very unpleasant indeed. These consequences now require our full attention, as we move towards a very likely all–time August or September low. Volume: In Seattle today — Tuesday March 10th — the PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume model continues on its path towards irrelevancy with increased pace. Its scientists are not proud of it or of what they do, or they are at least not allowed to blog or tweet or write about it at all, in any case there is no news and also no notification to subscribers when they — either extra late or average late — publish their ice volume estimates, 35 to 45 days after the first of the month. Will they reflect the extraordinary losses we've seen so far this year, or will they claim, as someone summarised last month, that '2015 is still on a par with years like 2008 and 2009, and well above the low volume years of the post-2010 era'? I honestly almost do not care anymore.


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MikeAinOz

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #144 on: March 10, 2015, 10:13:44 AM »

All the while the state with the most to lose in coming decades
A matter of opinion, property investors can always move on.

My unskilled analysis says the melt has started, plg has the right idea.
Mike Allen

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #145 on: March 10, 2015, 10:29:16 AM »
Florida will lose 1/2 of their state or more to the sea..... eventually.  THAT is what I meant by the "state with the most to lose."



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OldLeatherneck

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #146 on: March 10, 2015, 10:58:11 AM »

<SNIP>.....................I therefore hereby call the 2015 maximum at 13,942,060 km² on Sunday February 15th.

While I tend to agree with you on that, I will wait 4-5 days to see if there are any significant or massive gains such as we saw in 2012.  Certainly, 2015 will have the record for the lowest maximum extent since we are currently 498,532 Km2 below the previous record maximum which occurred in 2011.



<SNIP>................ ..........as we move towards a very likely all–time August or September low.

It's far to early to claim that 2015 will most likely will surpass the record minimum of 2012.  In order for that to happen, every month between now and mid-September must exceed average losses by at least 10%.  To even stay in the game on par with 2007 or 2011 will require average losses every month.  And we all know what can happen when the weather turns unfavorable for a few weeks or months.
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Jim Pettit

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #147 on: March 10, 2015, 12:36:14 PM »
I'm with OL in agreeing that it's too early to call the maximum for either extent or area. Note that while JAXA extent is down 313k km2 from the 2015 maximum-to-date on 15 February, last year saw an increase of 432k between this date and the maximum. It's a similar story for CT area, which has dropped 307k since 17 February; last year saw an increase of 531k between this date and the max.

IOW: it's possible--and increasingly likely, given the forecasts--that 2015 maxed out in mid-February. But it's also very possible that it hasn't reached peak yet. And for that reason, I'm still going to wait another week or maybe two before declaring...

crandles

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #148 on: March 10, 2015, 12:47:57 PM »
No year has ever come back with a higher maximum after 22 days of not beating the previous candidate. I therefore hereby call the 2015 maximum at 13,942,060 km² on Sunday February 15th. We won't see 13.94 million again before February or, perhaps, January 2016.

With IJIS there aren't many years to compare to.

2014 gained 432k from this date, so following that years movements would get to a late maximum.

If 22 days after a very early maximum we were 5k below the value 22 days before, would you call the maximum? I would suggest that would mean you were very likely to end up eating some crow pie. 313k is quite a lot but 2014 managed noticeable more, 432k. Surely the criteria for calling the max has to be a combination of (how long after /late in) season max occurs and the amount below the peak?

1 of 12 years exceeding the 313k by a noticeable margin does not seem very safe especially as it was last year and recent years might be more typical of what happens these days.

As it happens CT area suggests 2014 is quite an extreme year with the biggest gain from this date (600k) of any of last 36 years. So it is a good bit safer for you for reasons you don't appear to have considered. So you have a very good chance of being right but your method seems a bit suspect.


edit I have 600k rather than 531k for CT area increase because I am going from 2014.1863 because we have a Wipneus update to .1863 date.

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Re: The 2015 melting season
« Reply #149 on: March 10, 2015, 02:36:39 PM »
I wonder if this forum has ever contemplated similar diets — for instance robin or magpie–stew — for overly careful individuals who for some idiosyncratic reason do not feel like calling the max before well after Solstice? Idunno, it's just a feeling I get that being on the lax side is perfectly OK, which to me doesn't harmonise well with the topic of catastrophic climate change.

It's more of a yes–or–no question than an actual suggestion. On the other hand I absolutely see the less attractive alternative, that it is less attractive, in this case reflecting over the very grave consequences, but I guess there is a time and place for everything, and it jives better with human nature to worry about those when they're already upon us.

After all, that's what we've been doing thus far, as a species. And for the record: Making the robin or magpie extinct to avoid having to eat them if deemed too careful, is considered cheating in this game!  ;D
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