EURO/CMC now in agreement that next storm ~D7 will drop below 960mbs...
The WunderBlog has a good article on the current Arctic cyclone (with a central low pressure of 968 hPa at 2am EDT Tuesday morning), with an honorable mention of the ASIF; but it does not acknowledge the possible 959 hPa event circa August 24 2016:
Bob Henson , 6:29 PM GMT on August 16, 2016, "The Great Arctic Cyclone of 2016: After Four Years, a Summer Sequel"
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/the-great-arctic-cyclone-of-2016-after-four-years-a-summer-sequelExtract: "As of Tuesday, the deepest cyclone in the Northern Hemisphere wasn’t anywhere near the tropics--it was spinning in the central Arctic Ocean. A surface low located near 83°N, about 500 miles from the North Pole and about 1000 miles north of Barrow, Alaska, deepened to a central pressure of 968 mb at 2 am EDT Tuesday morning, August 16. This is on par with the central pressure you might find in a moderately-sized Category 2 hurricane. Such lows are a common feature of Arctic climate, but they rarely gain such intensity in the middle of summer. The only deeper Arctic cyclone on record in August is the Great Arctic Cyclone (GAC) of 2012, a low that bottomed out at 966 mb on August 6. This was the lowest pressure analyzed across more than 1600 August cyclones in the Arctic since 1979, according to a 2012 study by Ian Simmonds and Irina Rudeva (University of Melbourne).
The GAC of 2012 churned across the Arctic for ten days while its central pressure was below 1000 mb. The cyclone had major effects on the distribution of regional ice and appears to have played at least some role in that summer’s record depletion of Arctic sea ice. Normally, low pressure near the North Pole causes ice to spread out (as surface waters and sea ice move to the right of the surface wind). Yet the intensity and duration of the 2012 cyclone’s winds and waves appears to have more than compensated for that effect, leading to an overall loss of ice extent. The extent plummeted in August 2012 en route to a record-low extent in September.
A study in 2013 led by Jinlun Zhang (University of Washington) found that the GAC quadrupled the melting of sea ice from below by pushing warm surface water against the bottom of wind- and wave-tossed ice floes. However, because much of the Arctic ice was already thin and compromised, much of the extent loss that occurred in August and September was baked into the system when the cyclone came along. Zhang and colleagues estimated from a model simulation that the record September minimum was only about 4% lower as a result of the GAC of 2012.
It’s too soon to know exactly how this year’s storm--let’s call it the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2016 for now--will affect the Arctic. However, according to polar researcher James Screen (University of Exeter), “This certainly has the potential to be an interesting event and possibly have a big influence on whether or not we see a new record sea ice minimum next month.”
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For deep coverage of the deep Arctic cyclone, check out the dedicated post at the Arctic Sea Ice Blog, as well as recent entries in “The 2016 melting season” at the Arctic Sea Ice Forum."
Edit: Caption for the attached image: "Figure 5. Largely due to incredible winter warmth, temperatures averaged north of the Arctic Circle for the period January through July were far higher this year than in any year since records began in 1948. Image credit: Zach Labe, Cornell University, @ZLabe."