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Author Topic: The 2016/2017 freezing season  (Read 1468968 times)

Hefaistos

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #200 on: October 08, 2016, 12:39:42 PM »
Hansen explains the relation between AO and jet stream in this way:
"The degree to which Arctic air penetrates into middle latitudes is related to the AO index, which is defined by surface atmospheric pressure patterns. When the AO index is positive, surface pressure is low in the polar region. This helps the middle latitude jet stream to blow strongly and consistently from west to east, thus keeping cold Arctic air locked in the polar region. When the AO index is negative, there tends to be high pressure in the polar region, weaker zonal winds, and greater movement of frigid polar air into middle latitudes."

Hansen, James; Reto Ruedy; Makiko Sato; Ken Lo (2009). "If It's That Warm, How Come It's So Damned Cold?"

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #201 on: October 08, 2016, 01:29:14 PM »
Seaicesailor, Yes the layer of warm water can persist year round. It is called Pacific Warm water and it's origin is via the Bering Strait. The Pacific Warm Water is one of the major defining characteristics  of Beaufort gyre water that differentiate it from arctic waters on the Atlantic side. You can see the durability of these waters in the yellow band in the Temperature/Salinity contours from this 300 +day run on WHOI ITP  buoy # 85 .  See link

Although there is a lot of heat represented it is usually insulated by the much colder fresh water lens that floats above it so direct transfer of Pacific Warm Water heat to the surface ice is rare. Surface insolation is a much larger contributor to ice melt.

http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=139056


I also noticed a ice mass balance buoy went in with ITP 98. This should make Jim Hunt happy.

Thank you Bruce. I would assume this year had seen some of this heat impact the now impressively void of ice Pacific sector, but rocket science is kindergarten stuff compared to ocean processes in the Arctic it seems.

So, on another note, what used to be an early refreeze season, "baaaad for the ice for whatever reasons" is morphing into a late refreeze "baaaad for the ice for whatever reasons". Or not so bad. Or just the way it is.
What seems clear is how bad the thick ice is positioned for next year.
A-Team amazing stuff!! Enjoying every day lecture. Thank you very much.


seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #202 on: October 08, 2016, 01:46:54 PM »
The HYCOM is nowcasting a tremendous :-) pulse of Bering inflow.
SSS being represented. Green, more saline. Blue, less saline

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #203 on: October 08, 2016, 02:57:42 PM »
Quote
don't forget peripheral seas such as Kara, Okhotsk, Bering, Norwegian and earlier snow-free permafrost land.
As a public service, I digitized the key journal graphic of DK Perovich showing a full season of solar heat influx measured at the surface of the Beaufort. That's provided as the .txt attachment below which is really a .cvs spreadsheet file.

The initial graphic was a bit funky, not being provided at high resolution and using phong-rendered metallic balls (inset on first graphic) instead of points or cross-hatches to indicate the data points. However just like a Landsat can be grossly over-sampled yet still be informative, it proved feasible to position vertical bars precisely and use their pixel heights as watts/sq meter values (after adjusting for irrationality in the vertical scale rendering).

Powerful online curve-fitting tools (such as http://www.xuru.org/rt/LR.asp) aren't helpful here because the data, being so affected by clouds, is just a single noisy sample from an unknown underlying distribution. However common sense suggests that function peaks at the summer solstice and tapers off monotonically on both sides without inflection points, constraining its first and second derivatives.

A rolling window convolution can then 'take out the clouds' to a certain extent (6th column of spreadsheet), yielding a reasonably tight upper bound on daily solar heat influx into open water at the latitudes of the Beaufort Sea. A top-down approach starting with the TOA solar black body spectrum and taking out atmospheric absorption isn't going to work as well, either via Ceres or modeling, because of the oblique optical path taken by light reaching the Arctic Ocean.

In summary, taking the 'dot product' of AMSR2 daily open water with column 6 solar heat influx over the 2016 season (coming shortly) will likely indicate that a quite respectable fraction of the total solar heat to be absorbed by the 'seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean' is already being taken up (since the remaining non-peripheral seas are at even more unfavorable solar latitudes).

Consequently, the effects of polar radiator loss have already begun -- what mysterious physical process could be holding them off? There's little purpose served waiting upon tipping points or invoking changes of state, whistling in your tent won't keep the bear out. Yes, there is a distinction between polar bear, grizzly bear and black bear but it's still a bear.

Shared Humanity

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #204 on: October 08, 2016, 08:08:58 PM »
This freeze season is unprecedented if for no other reason than the state of the ice at the end of the melt season, highly fractured and widely dispersed, more so than any other season that I have witnessed. We should pay close attention to how this freeze season progresses with this in mind. How might the initial state of the ice and open seas impact the freeze season?

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #205 on: October 08, 2016, 11:15:09 PM »
The HYCOM is nowcasting a tremendous :-) pulse of Bering inflow.
SSS being represented. Green, more saline. Blue, less saline

Is this natural or perhaps being driven by the "Blob" so to speak?
"....and the appointed time came for God to bring to ruin those ruining the earth." Revelation 11:18.

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #206 on: October 09, 2016, 12:30:44 AM »
The HYCOM is nowcasting a tremendous :-) pulse of Bering inflow.
SSS being represented. Green, more saline. Blue, less saline

Is this natural or perhaps being driven by the "Blob" so to speak?
It is being pushed by strong southernlies, note the isobars due to the low in the Asian side. Natural in any case.
Not sure how persistent it will be, but sure it is very noticeable in the simulations.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #207 on: October 09, 2016, 01:16:24 AM »
And I am also sure that,in addition to extra salinity, warmth is being carried into the Arctic as well.
Not that it needs anymore.But that will most likely keep the waters on that side from cooling like they should. That's some of the warmest in the Pacific(for that latitude anyhow), just off the Alaskan coast.
"....and the appointed time came for God to bring to ruin those ruining the earth." Revelation 11:18.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #208 on: October 09, 2016, 07:46:38 AM »
Cross-posting this, as I just left the IJIS thread. Interestingly, no update today. Only a small gain yesterday. NSIDC showed a slight drop on the 7th. Wipneus reported shadow CT-area drops 4 days in a row on the 2016 sea ice area and extent data thread, and concentration drops. You can see this just by eyeballing polarview over the last 7 or 8 days.
For anyone that doesn't have the link, I know most do.
www.polarview.aq/sic/arctic/

[Update]  IJIS finally updated with 5k+ gain, BornFromTheVoid  says this October has smallest increase in extent on record.

Maybe some losses due to export. Mostly stall, I guess. If there's melt going on, it's hidden, other than the exported ice. I know this can't last perpetually, but it's got to sting.
Anyhow, just trying to summarize for perspective sake.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2016, 03:38:50 PM by Tigertown »
"....and the appointed time came for God to bring to ruin those ruining the earth." Revelation 11:18.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #209 on: October 09, 2016, 08:22:11 PM »
O.K.  With the caveat that the WHOI ITP 97 buoy is new and the info it is sending maybe somewhat suspect I would like to point to the data is has sent the last couple days as something curious and maybe indicative of what a breakdown in the surface freshwater lens might look like.

Now the interesting looking profiles seem to have vanished?
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magnamentis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #210 on: October 09, 2016, 09:01:25 PM »
I think from time to time it's well worth to have a look at global sea-ice extent as well :-)

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #211 on: October 09, 2016, 11:04:26 PM »
Quote
Mostly stalled.
The first animation shows, despite the encroaching pole hole of winter, not much much net retreat of open water in the Beaufort/Chukchi.

The second shows an apparent algal bloom in the Barents area, with right half split frame showing the muddy green enhanced by false color. Suomi is shown (as it is synched with AMRSR2 ice edge sequences) but Aqua and Terra also show green here.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #212 on: October 09, 2016, 11:18:49 PM »
Jim Hunt,  I guess preliminary data was faulty , I had some reservations. The top reading we get from the ITP buoys is at 7 meters. For ITP 97 , 98 , and 99 we have -1.5175 , -1.5694 and -1.5016 respectively  with salinity at 27.8635 , 28.8205 , and 27.6486. 
 There is a conversation over on the ASIB about surface water temperatures in the refreezing areas . Ostensibly surface water with ice floating around is -1.8 so it appears there is still a bit of heat
 ( within 7 meters ) of the surface ice at ITP 98 . It wouldn't take much wind to mix water that close to the surface. Not the same thing as upwelling but surface mixing has some potential to keep refreeze constrained for awhile longer.  So these buoys from 77.0832 N to 78.6829 N. are giving us some interesting info.

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #213 on: October 10, 2016, 01:17:06 AM »
Surface mixing has some potential to keep refreeze constrained for awhile longer.

If you've not seen it before you may be interested in the September 2015 "ArcticMix" cruise by R/V Sikuliaq in the Beaufort Sea:

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1385.msg63473.html#msg63473

Quote
While we hypothesized this might be happening, we have been genuinely thunderstruck by how incredibly strong the turbulence is below the surface. This heat is likely playing a substantial role in the melting of the ice that we can see all around us, growing thinner every day, and our job now is to distinguish summer melting from longer term change.

Near-inertial internal waves (NIW) can propagate downwards into stratified water and break hundreds of meters or more below the surface. Crucially, mixing in this depth range can tap into the large heat reservoir of Atlantic-origin water. Increased turbulent heat fluxes up from this water mass could significantly warm the upper ocean and accelerate ice loss.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #214 on: October 10, 2016, 02:19:11 AM »
I think from time to time it's well worth to have a look at global sea-ice extent as well :-)

The southern hemisphere decided to copy the 2016 Arctic spring in terms of sea ice area  ;)

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #215 on: October 10, 2016, 04:03:10 AM »

Quote
While we hypothesized this might be happening, we have been genuinely thunderstruck by how incredibly strong the turbulence is below the surface. This heat is likely playing a substantial role in the melting of the ice that we can see all around us, growing thinner every day, and our job now is to distinguish summer melting from longer term change.

Near-inertial internal waves (NIW) can propagate downwards into stratified water and break hundreds of meters or more below the surface. Crucially, mixing in this depth range can tap into the large heat reservoir of Atlantic-origin water. Increased turbulent heat fluxes up from this water mass could significantly warm the upper ocean and accelerate ice loss.


Thank you Jim Hunt for bringing this out again,as some of us were not here last year. It would seem to me that the Arctic is more vulnerable to these kind of waves now than ever before. When thick heavy ice served as a sort of ballast(maybe someone has a better word), the heat down from the deep stayed there, but is now very accessible. That is scary;no sunlight needed for melting. Moisture and cloud cover,it seems would just hold the heat longer.

P.S. I had to haul water in an open container once on the back of a truck. Someone told me to put a heavy block of wood in the water. It absorbed much of the energy from the sloshing of the water, and cut down on loss. Without it, we probably would have been wasting our time, and arrived with a half empty container. Ice being heavier than wood(even wet wood), I can imagine how much energy it would absorb, and how much more the water gets disturbed with a lack of it.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #216 on: October 10, 2016, 06:02:21 AM »
I think from time to time it's well worth to have a look at global sea-ice extent as well :-)

The southern hemisphere decided to copy the 2016 Arctic spring in terms of sea ice area  ;)
In the context of the Arctic spring, which was itself an outlier event, that's a very interesting graph.

Bruce Steele

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #217 on: October 10, 2016, 07:05:49 AM »
Jim Hunt, Although I try to read as much as I can on the forum I did miss the Arctic -Mix cruise. The links posted there gave me some impetus to look a little deeper into internal waves and mixing across isopycnal layers.  I found a paper on the subject with some pictures that help me better understand a subject I will need to study more closely .  There are plenty of difficult subjects discussed here that give me plenty to think about. Anyway thanks for the little push.

I would put up the link but it failed .

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #218 on: October 10, 2016, 10:20:23 PM »
The first animation shows ice that is neither open water nor solid ice (100% concentration) according to UHH AMSR2 from Sept 1st to Oct 9th. The 9th is reproduced separately as a fixed image (dates offset).

The ups and downs in the area of intermediate ice are plotted in the static graph (3rd image) from data supplied as a cvs .txt attachment. As noted before, persistent patterns in sequential AMSR2 images cannot be attributed to fleeting atmospheric or surface artifacts.

The maximum occurred on Sept 5th and the minimum on Oct 3rd. If the trend to Sept 5th had continued a few more days, the ice would have been in sorry shape indeed.

Parallel comprehensive commentary over at another forum is coming to similar conclusions using alternative approaches:
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1457.msg91228.html#msg91228  #961- #968
« Last Edit: October 10, 2016, 10:58:38 PM by A-Team »

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #219 on: October 10, 2016, 11:28:59 PM »
Amazing graph of Jan-Sept arctic (>66N) warming Can't embed gif but worth viewing

https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/782972414774775809
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #220 on: October 10, 2016, 11:39:00 PM »
Webinar:
 
"The 2016 Sea Ice Outlook (SIO) – Post Season Discussion” on Tuesday, 11 October 2016, 8:00am to 9:00am (AKDT) – Speakers: Larry Hamilton, University of New Hampshire and Edward Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, University of Washington.

Preregistration is required - only requirement an email address register at

https://www.arcus.org/sipn/meetings/webinars/register

Quote
This webinar is designed for the sea ice research community and others
interested in discussion about the 2016 SIO and post season analysis.
While this is an open event, attendees should be aware that the discussions
will largely be of a technical nature.

Probably wrong place for this, sorry, but wasn't sure where else to place it. Also sorry if it has been linked before.

A-Team

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #221 on: October 11, 2016, 12:09:21 AM »
Quote
Amazing graph of Jan-Sept arctic (>66N) warming Can't embed gif but worth viewing
Yes, that new html5 'gif' twitter format for animations is really annoying. There seems to be no access to the actual gif image stack and no way of re-dstributing. It does not "protect IP content" (NCAR is public domain to begin with) because a tool providing very fast sequential screen shots, followed by cropping, retiming, and reposting, would fall under new art and fair use. On a mac, the free utility 'Grab' can be variably timed to do just that. Twitter stock down 15% today, interest has dwindled.

Here, no real purpose was served by animating. The final frame says it all.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #222 on: October 11, 2016, 12:40:26 AM »
Thanks! You can find the original gif here along with other sea ice figures (extent/thickness/volume/etc) under "Research Areas" on the website. I try to update them daily; eventually I will get them self-updated when I have some extra time... http://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/arctic-temperatures/
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #223 on: October 11, 2016, 06:48:39 AM »
I think from time to time it's well worth to have a look at global sea-ice extent as well :-)

The southern hemisphere decided to copy the 2016 Arctic spring in terms of sea ice area  ;)
Excellent: good call from magnamentis and backed up by tealight! GO TEAM!!

 ;)

I too think the global sea ice pattern is worth looking at and the Antarctic has certainly gone up and down. I think it was wayne that said science generally regards observation before explanation as the preferred timing of events.

 ;) ;)
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #224 on: October 11, 2016, 11:33:20 AM »
Thanks! You can find the original gif here along with other sea ice figures (extent/thickness/volume/etc) under "Research Areas" on the website. I try to update them daily; eventually I will get them self-updated when I have some extra time... http://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/arctic-temperatures/

Thanks for those two temperature images. I've added them to the long-term graphs page on the ASIG.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #225 on: October 11, 2016, 03:09:07 PM »
Below the freezing of open water in the Beaufort-Chukchi seas is compared for the last five years from the equinox on Sept 22nd to Oct 15th. (The 2016 panel is static from the 10th on as future days are not yet available; the 2012 panel stops on Sep 30th as no later dates have been processed yet at UH.) This needs a click to animate, it is ineffectual reduced to the forum's 700 pixel limit.
« Last Edit: October 11, 2016, 03:15:14 PM by A-Team »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #226 on: October 11, 2016, 03:37:57 PM »
Quote
Thanks for those two temperature images
That one with the monthly ranking is quite dramatic after blurring the color squares and rotating the hue ...

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #227 on: October 11, 2016, 04:50:16 PM »
Here is the ice edge for 2013-2015 compared 2016 for the whole Arctic Ocean on Oct 10th.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #228 on: October 12, 2016, 05:28:46 AM »
Anyone have an inkling of an idea as to how to estimate how much ice(volume-wise) that's being lost through the CAA passages and the Fram. Watching these over several days time, they look like some sort of mechanized pump station.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #229 on: October 14, 2016, 05:38:12 AM »
Looks like we are back in the freezing business. Good thing. It was getting close to lay-off time.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #230 on: October 14, 2016, 07:33:07 AM »
Anyone have an inkling of an idea as to how to estimate how much ice(volume-wise) that's being lost through the CAA passages and the Fram. Watching these over several days time, they look like some sort of mechanized pump station.
Not that much through the CAA - 5000KM2 of export a day would only add up to 2 or 3 KM3/day of volume at this stage.

At its fastest, the Fram will dump out about 20,000KM2 of ice.  Assuming a reasonable average of about 2.5M in thickness, that would be about 50KM3/Day.  In winter that will be recovered pretty quickly.

I'd recon more reasonably, we're looking at 15-20KM3/day of export over time.

The export is far more critical in the summer when it translates into open water further north.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #231 on: October 14, 2016, 04:01:21 PM »
Is NOAA predicting a powerful Arctic Winter?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/htmls/glbT2me3Sea.html

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #232 on: October 14, 2016, 10:19:59 PM »
Looks like we are back in the freezing business. Good thing. It was getting close to lay-off time.

What makes you think so? Any reliable source?

It doesn't look so to me, not according to earth.nullschool.net. Look at the air temps, we are consistently in the -1 - (-5)C range even near the north pole. Only some regions near the Canadian Archipelago drop below -10C. Wind patterns aren't particularly favourable for fast freezing either, not to mention the water temp anomalies all around the arctic circle. This is further confirmed by NSIDC - the Oct 13th extent is 5.466 mln km^2, only beaten by 2012 and 2007 and even these records might get broken if the current trend lasts another 3-4 days.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #233 on: October 15, 2016, 12:06:17 AM »
I think from time to time it's well worth to have a look at global sea-ice extent as well :-)

The southern hemisphere decided to copy the 2016 Arctic spring in terms of sea ice area  ;)
Excellent: good call from magnamentis and backed up by tealight! GO TEAM!!

 ;)

I too think the global sea ice pattern is worth looking at and the Antarctic has certainly gone up and down. I think it was wayne that said science generally regards observation before explanation as the preferred timing of events.

 ;) ;)

I disagree with this.  I don't think it tells us much at all.  Back in about 2010 the likes of Monckton were claiming that Global extent and area numbers proved there was no problem with sea-ice melt.  Of course they were wrong.  The trend of the past few years for area and extent to decrease is probably El Nino related, as the El Nino wanes then Antarctic extent will probably increase again - in the short term anyway - it will increase for the same reasons that it was increasing in 2010 - stronger katabatic winds and freshening of the coastal sea-water due to melt from the ice-cap.

The Arctic and the Antarctic need to be studied separately.  Adding their numbers does not give a meaningful statistic.  I could add my height in inches to my weight in kilograms and multply by my shoe size, but the resulting number wouldn't tell you anything about me.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #234 on: October 15, 2016, 12:16:00 AM »
The Arctic and the Antarctic need to be studied separately.  Adding their numbers does not give a meaningful statistic.
Totally agree. And when one of them is in summer the other is in winter, with albedo having very different meanings.

magnamentis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #235 on: October 15, 2016, 12:37:05 AM »
The Arctic and the Antarctic need to be studied separately.  Adding their numbers does not give a meaningful statistic.
Totally agree. And when one of them is in summer the other is in winter, with albedo having very different meanings.

the point was not to compare them but to look out for trends, new highs lows etc. means for extremes. as it happens we currently see a new low and not by only i tiny bit but by far and this IS interesting.

however if someone would post that the skies are blue i'm quite sure that there would be someone go contra from the dark side of the globe and tell that when he looks out the window can see only a black sky LOL

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #236 on: October 15, 2016, 12:46:17 AM »
Looks like we are back in the freezing business. Good thing. It was getting close to lay-off time.

What makes you think so? Any reliable source?

It doesn't look so to me, not according to earth.nullschool.net. Look at the air temps, we are consistently in the -1 - (-5)C range even near the north pole. Only some regions near the Canadian Archipelago drop below -10C. Wind patterns aren't particularly favourable for fast freezing either, not to mention the water temp anomalies all around the arctic circle. This is further confirmed by NSIDC - the Oct 13th extent is 5.466 mln km^2, only beaten by 2012 and 2007 and even these records might get broken if the current trend lasts another 3-4 days.

For a few days extent was practically stalled and concentration was going down. Now, both are back on an upward trend. Though not moving anything close to the pace these should be, we have to take what we can get...

P.S. add to it all a century plus gain today per JAXA
« Last Edit: October 15, 2016, 06:06:27 AM by Tigertown »
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werther

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #237 on: October 15, 2016, 08:20:39 AM »
What we have already been discussing is extraordinary clear on this NCEP/NCAR daily composite:



It underlines that the ‘refreeze’ during the first four weeks of the winter season has been anomalously weak. I think this is unprecedented. It concerns all of the Arctic, up to and in some regions even across the Polar Circle.

I suppose the rapid increase of the amount of greenhouse gases during the last year is now leading to an enhanced Polar Amplification. Because it is also occurring over the Antarctic. The mechanism behind this set-up would be well worthwhile a study.

If this phenomenon would continue, the ‘winter power’ weakness from last season could easily be repeated. It is obvious that the 2017 melt season could be the year of the feared ‘black swan’-event in that case.

Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #238 on: October 15, 2016, 09:51:35 AM »
To add to Werthers latest post wrt the extremely warm first half of October in the Arctic: Longyearbyen at Svalbard usually sees winter temps by the end of September but so far the average temp for October is about +3C. The normal avg for the first half of October is -4C. In addition, there have only been about three days significantly below zero.

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #239 on: October 15, 2016, 11:55:17 AM »
If this indicates significant heat being vented out that otherwise would have been trapped, well, so much for that adds to the winter power.
However, I am not convinced the timing of ocean sealing has such a strong effect on the final ocean heat content. This should be an interesting year to debunk, or not, that belief.
Is NOAA predicting a powerful Arctic Winter?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/htmls/glbT2me3Sea.html


I would not trust cfs v2. predictions on the Arctic. However last winter LMV brought some attention to some CFS predictions showing colder ESS in Spring and it came about right.
An Arctic lacking thick MYI completely would really thank the combination of heat escape now (if that really makes a diff...) and coldness later.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2016, 12:20:09 PM by seaicesailor »

A-Team

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #240 on: October 15, 2016, 04:42:00 PM »
Quote
the ‘refreeze’ during the first four weeks of the winter season has been anomalously weak. I think this is unprecedented. It concerns all of the Arctic
Since the equinox, open water has been declining at about 1% per day with only 3 slightly positive days out of 25 according to the AMSR2 UHH ice edge product. The animation begins on Sept 20th and pauses on Oct 12th. It does seem anomalously slow; that could be a combination of warmer water (possibly mixed from some depth), persistent warmer weather, and back-reflection by clouds of infrared emitted by open water. Low angle solar input is inconsequential at this point.

Note that, as in past years, new ice so far is forming almost solely on the perimeter of the existing ice pack.  That's not because older ice is nucleating crystallization but rather, ipso facto, because it's colder there (because of the perimeter ice).

Ice Shieldz

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #241 on: October 16, 2016, 12:54:52 AM »
Look at the similarities in air temps above 80 degrees north coming into and going out of the melting seasons of the 3 years with the lowest sea ice extent (2007, 2012, 2016).  Higher than the mean temps going in and then an interesting increase from the mean starting around August 25th. 

Can't help but think that this consistent air temp increase around the 25th is directly related to a more negative AO due to lack of ice extent and possibly increased ocean temps.

From Arctic Oscillation and Polar Vortex Analysis and Forecasts - October 13th https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation :

Quote
Recent research has shown that regional anomalies are important and the sea ice region most highly correlated with the winter AO is the Barents-Kara seas region where low Arctic sea ice favors a negative winter AO.

Also they forecast the following:

Quote
The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is currently strongly negative and is predicted to remain negative over the next two weeks.
Quote
The polar vortex both in the stratosphere and the troposphere look to remain relatively weak for the remainder of October, if this trend continues severe winter weather is likely for widespread portions of northern Eurasia, including Europe and East Asia, and the eastern United States (US).
« Last Edit: October 16, 2016, 01:04:44 AM by Ice Shieldz »

Pmt111500

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #242 on: October 16, 2016, 07:06:56 AM »
So I took the DMI above 80N Temperature charts since 1990 and noticed they're not all of the same size. Did some color adjustment to those and layered them on top of each other. This generates quite a mess as can be seen in the picture below. Still you can find 2016 autumn in there, so I'll have to say this is quite exceptional ::) :P ??? :o . Color codes would be nice, I know, blues are the earliest and reds the latest running 10 or 5 hue points in between years almost round the spectrum. (I think there's a 80 point gap so there are no purples.) Really, this should be simultaneously be done in greyscale (darkest would be most recent) as the earlier years mess up the later ones here. I thought you might get some sort of rainbow effect at some point of the year but apparently this is not the case. Weather fluctuates too much in the high Arctic for that.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2016, 09:07:59 AM by Pmt111500 »

oren

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #243 on: October 16, 2016, 10:21:01 AM »
Great visualization!
Interestingly enough, in winter spring and autumn The blues are below and the reds/greens on top, but in the summer it's the opposite, blues are on top, reds below.

dnem

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #244 on: October 16, 2016, 02:59:40 PM »
Are the DMI temp data available anywhere so you don't have to mess around with layering a bunch of images?

Archimid

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #245 on: October 16, 2016, 03:05:30 PM »
A similar graph with percentiles, taken from the late Andrew Slater site:

http://cires1.colorado.edu/~aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/index_80_t2m.html

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Pmt111500

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #246 on: October 16, 2016, 03:43:32 PM »
Are the DMI temp data available anywhere so you don't have to mess around with layering a bunch of images?

I don't know, anyway it would likely be a csv or some similar file so I'd have to make it yearly on a spreadsheet so this time it was "easier' to do this way.

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #247 on: October 16, 2016, 06:57:11 PM »
A similar graph with percentiles, taken from the late Andrew Slater site:

http://cires1.colorado.edu/~aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/index_80_t2m.html

this graphic is not accurate.  The smoothing of the data was not performed correctly.  the bands of probability do not change with historic day to day peaks and troughs but incorporate all of those variables into regional and temporal means.
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Pmt111500

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #248 on: October 16, 2016, 07:25:36 PM »
Great visualization!
Interestingly enough, in winter spring and autumn The blues are below and the reds/greens on top, but in the summer it's the opposite, blues are on top, reds below.


Yes, that'× interesting and could be because the ice has been less salty in the past, or some similar switch of the ocean state.

seaicesailor

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #249 on: October 16, 2016, 08:05:24 PM »
Great visualization!
Interestingly enough, in winter spring and autumn The blues are below and the reds/greens on top, but in the summer it's the opposite, blues are on top, reds below.


Yes, that'× interesting and could be because the ice has been less salty in the past, or some similar switch of the ocean state.

A vast region of surface-melting multi year ice absorbs summer heat while maintaining temperatures near zero, fresh water melting temperature. (That is because after some years the salt has drained down from the surface of the ice).
A vast region of surface-melting first year ice absorbs summer heat while maintaining -1.8 C or so (salty water melting temperature).
It just so happens that the Arctic ocean is composed nowadays of less than 20% of MYI when it used to be more than 50%.
The temperature itself does not say much about how much heat is being absorbed or how much ice there is. There used to be a lot more ice that survived the summer, and paradoxically it was a bit warmer while it was (never completely) melting.
In winter I guess we can see global warming effect on winter temperatures.
The excess of temperatures of 2016 is indeed extraordinary, as pre-2008 and pre-2013. If 2017 brings epic melting, so much for giving too much relevance of heat being currently released, or conversely over-rating the importance of early refreeze (I know I repeat myself a lot but I want to remember it next year... sorry...).

« Last Edit: October 16, 2016, 08:11:04 PM by seaicesailor »