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dnem

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #650 on: November 12, 2016, 10:36:26 PM »
Well I didn't intend to ascribe any particular significance to that result (hence referring to it in parentheses).  BUT, the 80N temperature anomaly so far this refreeze IS more than twice as large as any other one in the past five years.

jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #651 on: November 12, 2016, 10:37:06 PM »
Keeping an eye on the predictions of the Hycom, a more textbook-like drift pattern may be emerging soon, how persistent we will see.
The model has been predicting refreezing very well btw.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #652 on: November 12, 2016, 10:41:30 PM »
Well I didn't intend to ascribe any particular significance to that result (hence referring to it in parentheses).  BUT, the 80N temperature anomaly so far this refreeze IS more than twice as large as any other one in the past five years.
It is far from a good start, to be certain.  That so much open water remains after the release of so much heat strikes me as ominous as well.  It implies substantial heat remains to get sealed under the ice for the rest of the season, which will limit thickening.
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Feeltheburn

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #653 on: November 13, 2016, 02:55:40 AM »
I remain optimistic. 3 million new km2 of ice extent the past 30 days, nearly 1 million more the past 8 days.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #654 on: November 13, 2016, 04:02:57 AM »
Im optimistic also. But still think 13.5m will be the max before a 3m min but by 2018 the min will be 1m possibly

Pmt111500

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #655 on: November 13, 2016, 04:33:54 AM »
Ju-ust checking the wider world. MSLP + 250 hPa winds from nullschool, ah, nothing too special. Considering unfollowing people who post too detailed forecasts too far into the future.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #656 on: November 13, 2016, 06:18:40 AM »
Found these Argo temp graphs and thought I might post these here first. Maybe later under the Ocean Temperatures thread.
First is CircumArctic Jan2004-June2016
I found the heat stored at depths very intriguing .



« Last Edit: November 13, 2016, 06:28:56 AM by Tigertown »
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #657 on: November 13, 2016, 06:22:38 AM »
Second is the Barents from 1955.
Note: Anomaly in GJ/m2

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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #658 on: November 13, 2016, 06:26:51 AM »
In the third, we have the East Greenland Sea.
Note: Also, Anomaly in GJ/m2

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oren

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #659 on: November 13, 2016, 07:29:06 AM »
Found these Argo temp graphs and thought I might post these here first. Maybe later under the Ocean Temperatures thread.
First is CircumArctic Jan2004-June2016
I found the heat stored at depths very intriguing .

Interesting how the temps at mid-depths have been visibly dropping since about 2012. It's as if surface ice loss is slowly sucking the heat from the depths. I wonder if this means ice loss will be slowed down at some point (though I doubt it). Has anyone seen any research to explain these trends?

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #660 on: November 13, 2016, 07:45:13 AM »
I can't find much info on mid-depths. In some areas giant gyres draw the heat down to the depths, though not sure about the Arctic area in general. Once down there, disturbances by wind and waves are less likely to pull the heat back from such depths. So you may be right about the heat coming back up from the mid-depths.

Edit: As oren said, more sub-Arctic than Arctic area.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2016, 01:55:46 PM by Tigertown »
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Pmt111500

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #661 on: November 13, 2016, 07:52:09 AM »
Found these Argo temp graphs and thought I might post these here first. Maybe later under the Ocean Temperatures thread.
First is CircumArctic Jan2004-June2016
I found the heat stored at depths very intriguing .

Interesting how the temps at mid-depths have been visibly dropping since about 2012. It's as if surface ice loss is slowly sucking the heat from the depths. I wonder if this means ice loss will be slowed down at some point (though I doubt it). Has anyone seen any research to explain these trends?

Rumors of AMOC dying have been exaggarated, I'd say, maybe the overturning locations have shifted. Would love to be proven wrong here. Attaching 55-65N map so people know where the graph orginates. (always scares me to see I'd be likerly to eaten by a polar bear on the same latitude on the shore of Hudson Bay, it looks like the most close location would be Thlewiaza River (no, I hadn't heard about it either before) mouth)
« Last Edit: November 13, 2016, 08:34:48 AM by Pmt111500 »

Rob Dekker

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #662 on: November 13, 2016, 09:00:30 AM »
Found these Argo temp graphs and thought I might post these here first. Maybe later under the Ocean Temperatures thread.
First is CircumArctic Jan2004-June2016
I found the heat stored at depths very intriguing .


Where did you find these graphs ?
« Last Edit: November 13, 2016, 09:09:08 AM by Rob Dekker »
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oren

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #663 on: November 13, 2016, 11:12:28 AM »
Attaching 55-65N map so people know where the graph orginates.
Thanks, didn't notice it was sub-arctic.

be cause

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #664 on: November 13, 2016, 11:36:52 AM »
Has PMT got pmt ?   Not much happening up north ?
 Much of the Arctic is currently too warm to stop an ice lolly melting and the forecasts suggest little change . DMI 80 @ 15'C above norm .. a 960mb low within 48 hours drawing more warm wet  weather with it .
  Must go back to bed .. nothing to see here folks ....
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #665 on: November 13, 2016, 12:13:51 PM »
Current 2m temps by DMI and anomalies/snowdepth for Sweden (I've had somewhere between 20-30 cm and that's below 60°N).

P-maker

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #666 on: November 13, 2016, 01:06:02 PM »
Rob:

Quote
Where did you find these graphs ?

Watch out!. The Climate4you site is maintained by Ole Humlum (see Desmogblog for a description). Although he is not himself an outrigtht "Fact-Resistant-Evidence-Denier (FRED), some of his friends posting stuff like this may be in that league...

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #667 on: November 13, 2016, 01:39:03 PM »
I got the graphs from Climate4you, but they are from Argo data. I doubt anyone would have changed Argo data, to make their point. The first one was labeled CircumArctic, as having read before how the Argo system works, it most likely could not be deployed in the Arctic proper.
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A-Team

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #668 on: November 13, 2016, 10:22:42 PM »
Quote
"The Bering Sea has been off-the-charts warm," said Nate Mantua, an ecologist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, California. "We've never seen anything like this. We're in uncharted territory. We're in the midst of an extraordinary time."
NOAA has put together an amazing Arctic, Antarctic and global bathymetry resource at the link below. It is light-years more sophisticated than what we do around here or see in climate science products, requiring 334 separate files to build a single map view. Of these, 169 are rendered vector files, 141 items are java scripts, 12 css, 11 png, 1 gif and then the html shell itself.

This is a full-blown GIS setup, a huge improvement over the IBCAO wall poster, for example in finding depth contours on the continental shelves or colocating with various sea ice concentration, thickness, hycom, nullschool and satellite maps such as Worldview.

The polar stereographic used, ESPG3995, does not differ materially from 3413 but is rotated 45º with respect to our favorite orientation (Greenland down). Both the DEM and The animation below shows a sampler of layer choices north of the Bering Strait.

https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/bathymetry/

We’re interested in colocated bathymetry because almost a third of the Arctic Ocean is very shallow, less than 100 m in depth at current mean sea level (the greatest depths are the Molloy Hole of 5669 m and Litke Deep at 5,450 m). Both inflowing warm currents follow continental shelf breaks (for reasons given by Rossby in the 1930’s). Shallower waters have greater prospects for wind mixing of vertical stratification with adverse consequences for ice formation, not to mention the massive quantities of subsurface methane clathrate.

The second animation below shows bathymetry contours showing through a cut-out of AMSR2 open water from 22 Oct-12 Nov 2016 for the Beaufort, Chukchi, ESS and Bering Strait regions. It did not work out stubbing in SSTA, RTG-SST, or hycom SST for the Bering Sea itself because the coastline resolutions are far too coarse in these. However forecasts show the unprecedented anomaly in SST dissipating over the coming week. They’ve been between 2 and 10.5º Celsius above average as illustrated in previous time series.

The refreeze is belatedly closing in around the Chukchi region following a flash freeze in the Laptev followed by consolidation. The correspondence is not so strong here as along the Front north of Svalbard, where the ice is stopped by the sharp shelf break with delimited leakage at the St Anna Trough.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2016, 10:29:49 PM by A-Team »

johnm33

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #669 on: November 14, 2016, 02:05:36 AM »
YES! now we're cooking. great stuff A-Team

RoxTheGeologist

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #670 on: November 14, 2016, 03:33:14 AM »

Fantastic work A Team!

slow wing

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #671 on: November 14, 2016, 04:12:59 AM »
Yep, fantastic work, A-team and the others working on this - really helps to understand what is going on.


  In the short term, yet another strong storm is predicted to be entering the Arctic Basin through the Fram Strait around tomorrow, with a central pressure bottoming out in the 950s in hPa - see attached graphics.

This will bring waves and strong, warmer, moist winds into the Arctic Basin from the Atlantic side.

For those watching the graph of average surface air temperature north of 80N, that should bump the temperature value up even further above the temperature baseline for this time of year. 

magnamentis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #672 on: November 14, 2016, 04:18:27 AM »
you're referring to this, not to forget the upcoming similar event on the pacific side a few days later

Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season

jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #673 on: November 14, 2016, 09:31:59 AM »
Great work, A-Team - thanks for the work and research.

That said, looking at Climate Reanalyzer 6 days out, I can't say as I see where the heat is dissipating particularly....
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6roucho

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #674 on: November 14, 2016, 04:14:06 PM »
I got the graphs from Climate4you, but they are from Argo data. I doubt anyone would have changed Argo data, to make their point. The first one was labeled CircumArctic, as having read before how the Argo system works, it most likely could not be deployed in the Arctic proper.
Unfortunately climate obfuscation usually results from cherry-picking subsets, rather than changing data.

Metamemesis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #675 on: November 14, 2016, 04:47:39 PM »

That said, looking at Climate Reanalyzer 6 days out, I can't say as I see where the heat is dissipating particularly....

You may have a point, there. +7.45 degrees air temp anomoly seems...excessive.

bbr2314

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #676 on: November 14, 2016, 04:55:48 PM »
I think the plume of heat that extends over the Arctic does get resolved somewhat, but the bigger factor is now +++snowcover over Eurasia... the huge Siberian high we've seen this yr is a very effective mechanism for getting rid of heat; as the warm ATL/Arctic air advects over Siberia it is dissipated through albedo mechanisms. Maybe I'm wrong but that would explain why we're seeing such a huge area of -anomalies over Eurasia.

PS if the models are correct, the entirety of the NHEM (or well, most of it) is about to enter the brutal grip of winter... with temps wayyyyyyy below normal across all of Europe/Eurasia and soon, North America as well.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #677 on: November 14, 2016, 04:59:12 PM »
I got the graphs from Climate4you, but they are from Argo data. I doubt anyone would have changed Argo data, to make their point. The first one was labeled CircumArctic, as having read before how the Argo system works, it most likely could not be deployed in the Arctic proper.
Unfortunately climate obfuscation usually results from cherry-picking subsets, rather than changing data.

Can you describe more specifically how that applies. I am always looking for more information on ocean heating and if you have more detailed regional data, please share.

P.S. I never have tried to be an advocate for any particular site.
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JimboOmega

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #678 on: November 14, 2016, 05:59:10 PM »
I think the plume of heat that extends over the Arctic does get resolved somewhat, but the bigger factor is now +++snowcover over Eurasia... the huge Siberian high we've seen this yr is a very effective mechanism for getting rid of heat; as the warm ATL/Arctic air advects over Siberia it is dissipated through albedo mechanisms. Maybe I'm wrong but that would explain why we're seeing such a huge area of -anomalies over Eurasia.

PS if the models are correct, the entirety of the NHEM (or well, most of it) is about to enter the brutal grip of winter... with temps wayyyyyyy below normal across all of Europe/Eurasia and soon, North America as well.

Albedo shouldn't really matter at this time of year.  Clouds and water vapor do matter, but surface snow (or not) doesn't matter, because what sun does shine at those latitudes is weak. The air at very high latitudes is cooling all the time, there is no input of heat other than what is slowly being released from the ice pack and the ocean beneath it, and heat is always heading off to space.

My understanding of the anomaly: the system is always seeking balance thermodynamically speaking. Heat is being added wherever the sun shines brightest (near the tropic of capricorn, this time of year), and heads out from there, trying to balance (and getting rather turned around thanks to coriolis "forces", giving us the trades, westerlies, etc)

But when these things are all disrupted - when the arctic basin has warm(relative to the continents) water in it, the gradients are all mixed up - the big cells that pump all this energy around start to get confused. 

So the flow fails in Asia - temperatures at the North Pole and Beijing are not that far apart, really. So the air sits, slowly stewing around. In the long Siberian night, it just gets colder and colder, not getting heat from anywhere in particular.

So it comes to be still in Siberia... and very, very cold
« Last Edit: November 14, 2016, 08:04:59 PM by JimboOmega »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #679 on: November 14, 2016, 06:08:22 PM »
I got the graphs from Climate4you, but they are from Argo data. I doubt anyone would have changed Argo data, to make their point. The first one was labeled CircumArctic, as having read before how the Argo system works, it most likely could not be deployed in the Arctic proper.
Unfortunately climate obfuscation usually results from cherry-picking subsets, rather than changing data.

Can you describe more specifically how that applies. I am always looking for more information on ocean heating and if you have more detailed regional data, please share.

P.S. I never have tried to be an advocate for any particular site.
I don't have data in this case, Tigertown. It was a general observation, from a working mathematician in my case. Generally speaking, effective obfuscators (not you of course - I'm referring to Climate4you as a source of possibly 'massaged' results) cherry-pick by optimizing start and end dates for data ranges to produce favourable outcomes, and by picking subsets of data ranges favourable to their argument. It's a recurring form of dishonesty in fringe climate science, and can be very difficult to spot, and can find its way into popular and even established science. I certainly wasn't intending to criticize you.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #680 on: November 14, 2016, 06:40:25 PM »
No problem Groucho, and I see your point. Seriously though, I have searched for more Argo data in the past and could not find much. If I recall correctly, the only links Argo provides are for raw data which I could not make heads or tails out of. It would be a good cause to take up for someone with the experience and ability.
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bbr2314

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #681 on: November 14, 2016, 06:44:49 PM »
I think the plume of heat that extends over the Arctic does get resolved somewhat, but the bigger factor is now +++snowcover over Eurasia... the huge Siberian high we've seen this yr is a very effective mechanism for getting rid of heat; as the warm ATL/Arctic air advects over Siberia it is dissipated through albedo mechanisms. Maybe I'm wrong but that would explain why we're seeing such a huge area of -anomalies over Eurasia.

PS if the models are correct, the entirety of the NHEM (or well, most of it) is about to enter the brutal grip of winter... with temps wayyyyyyy below normal across all of Europe/Eurasia and soon, North America as well.

Albedo shouldn't really matter at this time of year.  Clouds and water vapor do matter, but surface snow (or not) doesn't matter, because what sun does shine at those latitudes is weak. The air at very high latitudes is cooling all the time, there is no input of heat other than what is slowly being released from the ice pack and the ocean beneath it, and heat is always heading off to space.

My understanding of the anomaly: the system is always seeking balance thermodynamically speaking. Heat is being added wherever the sun shines brightest (near the tropic of capricorn, this time of year), and heads out from there, trying to balance (and getting rather turned around thanks to coriolis "forces", giving us the trades, westerlies, etc)

But when these things are all disrupted - when the arctic basin has warm(relative to the continents) water in it, the gradients are all mixed up - the big cells that pump all this energy around start to get confused. 

So the flow fails in Asia - temperatures at the North Pole and Beijing are not that far apart, really. So the air sits, slowly stewing around. In the long Siberian night, it just gets colder and colder, not getting heat from anywhere in particular.

So it comes to be still in Siberia,

idk about that. of course the sun is weak right now but it is still the main heat source even far N. and i think the implications of +++Eurasian snowcover extend into areas that still receive substantial sun, even now -- consider the mountains of southern/central Asia, which are more likely to become snow-covered with a very cold Siberia, as airmasses sag in various directions.

even if the effect in a specific location is relatively small, the sheer area covered by +++snow this fall has been near record-setting, and that was back in October as well. *yes* that comes at a time when solar insolation is dropping but the differential is still significant vs previous years, IMO.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #682 on: November 14, 2016, 07:44:41 PM »
idk about that. of course the sun is weak right now but it is still the main heat source even far N. and i think the implications of +++Eurasian snowcover extend into areas that still receive substantial sun, even now -- consider the mountains of southern/central Asia, which are more likely to become snow-covered with a very cold Siberia, as airmasses sag in various directions.

even if the effect in a specific location is relatively small, the sheer area covered by +++snow this fall has been near record-setting, and that was back in October as well. *yes* that comes at a time when solar insolation is dropping but the differential is still significant vs previous years, IMO.
Opinion I'm afraid doesn't sway me.

To prove your point - that increased albedo due to snow cover significantly reduces heat north of 65 degrees latitude this time of year - you're going to have to show me numbers which back up your claim.

You are also going to have to demonstrate how much additional snow cover is present, what the net effect of that is on heat uptake, and that this *also* changes the heat equation enough to make a difference.
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bbr2314

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #683 on: November 14, 2016, 07:49:28 PM »
idk about that. of course the sun is weak right now but it is still the main heat source even far N. and i think the implications of +++Eurasian snowcover extend into areas that still receive substantial sun, even now -- consider the mountains of southern/central Asia, which are more likely to become snow-covered with a very cold Siberia, as airmasses sag in various directions.

even if the effect in a specific location is relatively small, the sheer area covered by +++snow this fall has been near record-setting, and that was back in October as well. *yes* that comes at a time when solar insolation is dropping but the differential is still significant vs previous years, IMO.
Opinion I'm afraid doesn't sway me.

To prove your point - that increased albedo due to snow cover significantly reduces heat north of 65 degrees latitude this time of year - you're going to have to show me numbers which back up your claim.

You are also going to have to demonstrate how much additional snow cover is present, what the net effect of that is on heat uptake, and that this *also* changes the heat equation enough to make a difference.

not just 65N, mid-latitudes are where it is most prominent, probs 40-65N or so...



see impact below re: anomalies



which are there bc snowcover is much more extensive than normal... already nearing snows in Shanghai where snow even in mid winter is unusual




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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #684 on: November 14, 2016, 08:16:06 PM »
not just 65N, mid-latitudes are where it is most prominent, probs 40-65N or so...



see impact below re: anomalies

which are there bc snowcover is much more extensive than normal... already nearing snows in Shanghai where snow even in mid winter is unusual


You are not quantifying the effect, even considering your adding land mass down to 45N.

Your images show increased snow fall depth - I'm not seeing what they indicate in the way of increased *Persistent* area coverage.  That's where the rubber needs to meet the road in your argument.
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JimboOmega

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #685 on: November 14, 2016, 08:32:58 PM »

not just 65N, mid-latitudes are where it is most prominent, probs 40-65N or so...

(pictures snipped for space)

So compared to the arctic-based cci-reanalyzer graphs we're used to (plenty posted upthread), you're showing me a very different image.   Just north of Kazakhstan/Russian border sits a 10C+ blob of warmth, where today's 'nowcast' shows -20C anomaly. That's a huge swing and makes these hard to compare. Granted you've picked a 9-day-in-the-future forecast, but I don't think we'll see a flip like that.

Your graph of snowfall anomaly is hard to compare because it doesn't show the coverage anomaly. Snowfall has been very heavy in Greenland this year (just look at DMI surface mass budgets) but that does little for Albedo. Also, It's currently 16 C in Shanghai with 20s forecast later in the week. It doesn't look like "almost snowing" weather to me.

Granted - Rutgers does show a lot of positive snow cover anomaly as such. I'm willing to accept it as a real thing.

So is there enough light? Messing with a calculator -

75 N - always night (0 W/m^2)
65 N - 26 W/m^2 average today, dropping to 10 W/m^2 by the end of the month
55 N -  89 W/m^2 average, dropping to 65 W/m^2
45 N - 159 W/m^2 average, dropping to 133 W/m^2
and Shanghai? 33N - 262 -> 232

The core of the cold anomaly (as seen on CCI-reanalyzer's GFS-generated anomaly plot) I'd put somewhere near Tomsk, so (say) 56N. It's about 1/6th the peak  of the summer.

Sadly I don't have time to calculate the snow coverage anomaly at those latitudes, compare with albedo numbers, and put an actual number on it, but we could do all those things.

Except... I notice that the snow cover anomaly covers all of Canada, where it's been warm, too.   It makes it a much more difficult argument given that.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #686 on: November 14, 2016, 09:09:48 PM »
Some thoughts without any research.


1 C of snow, 1 M of snow, and 10 M of snow have ~= albedo but an insulative value roughly proportional to their depth.


If the underlying surface is not subject to the very cold arctic air temperatures yet to come, is it possible that a thicker snow cover might preserve a reservoir of the past summer's heat?


I do recall a study posted here some years ago by Lodger that showed that ice in the CAA was much more resistant to thaw if it had not been covered by snow for much of the winter. The insulative property mentioned above was partly to blame, but the snow cover also caused enhanced melt ponds which affected albedo early in the melt season.


If deep snow cover melt leads to more warm water than usual in the spring, and if in addition the covered landforms have retained even a small fraction of last summer's heat, extensive snow cover is probably a positive factor favoring next summer's melt.


Terry




bbr2314

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #687 on: November 14, 2016, 09:17:15 PM »
I don't think land really retains heat unless you are talking permafrost areas.

Re: previous comment -- here is the graph for extent for NHEM.



Eurasia has boomed which has mostly compensated for the stunning drop across North America. That should correct over the next 10 days as models show snow reaching back/exceeding normal coverage across Canada and the US.



& Eurasia...



As you can see, the largest extent anomalies occurred in October, when the impact to insolation would've been even greater than now. I may be wrong here but if we are running at +5% coverage over all NHEM land surfaces, the differential in terms of solar insolation is probably more than enough to counter the absolute feedbacks of a broiling Arctic (considering that is the first spot to lose sunlight).

Please rip ^ apart with data points/etc as best as you all can as I am very much enjoying the data in the rebuttals here. :)

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #688 on: November 14, 2016, 09:38:04 PM »
I don't think land really retains heat unless you are talking permafrost areas.

Re: previous comment -- here is the graph for extent for NHEM.

(images removed)

As you can see, the largest extent anomalies occurred in October, when the impact to insolation would've been even greater than now. I may be wrong here but if we are running at +5% coverage over all NHEM land surfaces, the differential in terms of solar insolation is probably more than enough to counter the absolute feedbacks of a broiling Arctic (considering that is the first spot to lose sunlight).

Please rip ^ apart with data points/etc as best as you all can as I am very much enjoying the data in the rebuttals here. :)

Thanks for posting the more relevant graphs! Weird that we were more than + 1 SD over normal at the start of the season (in August/September), and never really went that far from that number. Any idea why? 

You give the number of 5% above average. I personally don't think this is "more than enough" to counter the heat in the arctic oceans, though it may be "more than enough" to counter the reduced albedo anomaly of the water itself.

However... perhaps most of all, if snow is falling that much more, it is cloudy that much more, and we all know what clouds and water vapor do in the winter. I think "clouds over snow" is a warmer regime than "clear skies over bare earth" in the NH winter.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #689 on: November 14, 2016, 09:58:45 PM »
may i throw in that 5cm of snow have the same impact on albedo like 50 or more cm of snow and the snow covered area does not seam significantly higher, all the increased snowfall does not automatically indicate wider area, just the amount of snow which as mentioned above does not necessarily have an impact on albedo. sibiria for example is generally snow covered this time of the year, so if there is an increase in area it must be marginal as compared to the entire are that is snow covered anyways this time of the year IMO

and then i agree with all those who doubt a significant impact on albedo in that region this time of the year as well and then overfrozen tundra has a lower albedo than greenish summer vegetation anyways, so any difference, no matter how small, is even smaller due to that fact.

EDIT: as you it was mentioned hereafter, even the theoretically still postive impact of insolation according to the angle is even more reduced through mist, cloud and fog coverage, not even puting into account the short hours that the sun angle is in a range of having any significant effect.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2016, 10:04:12 PM by magnamentis »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #690 on: November 14, 2016, 10:00:50 PM »
I don't think land really retains heat unless you are talking permafrost areas.

Re: previous comment -- here is the graph for extent for NHEM.

(images removed)

As you can see, the largest extent anomalies occurred in October, when the impact to insolation would've been even greater than now. I may be wrong here but if we are running at +5% coverage over all NHEM land surfaces, the differential in terms of solar insolation is probably more than enough to counter the absolute feedbacks of a broiling Arctic (considering that is the first spot to lose sunlight).

Please rip ^ apart with data points/etc as best as you all can as I am very much enjoying the data in the rebuttals here. :)

Thanks for posting the more relevant graphs! Weird that we were more than + 1 SD over normal at the start of the season (in August/September), and never really went that far from that number. Any idea why? 

You give the number of 5% above average. I personally don't think this is "more than enough" to counter the heat in the arctic oceans, though it may be "more than enough" to counter the reduced albedo anomaly of the water itself.

However... perhaps most of all, if snow is falling that much more, it is cloudy that much more, and we all know what clouds and water vapor do in the winter. I think "clouds over snow" is a warmer regime than "clear skies over bare earth" in the NH winter.

IDK if 5% is accurate or not... it looks like it was significantly more than that earlier on and as average increases the incremental difference is less and less as you head into winter... but!

I highly suspect that clouds over snow is still much colder than clear skies over bare earth unless you are talking the permafrost regions... at the same time, those areas with unusually early snowfall aren't always covered by clouds, and may also have clear skies a decent amount of time... and that is where the albedo feedback really kicks in. Look at the massively enlarged Siberian High this yr... sure there are clouds over Russia a decent part of the time, but I think that it largely favors clear skies over the (newly) snowcovered regions of Eurasia.

bbr2314

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #691 on: November 14, 2016, 10:03:59 PM »
may i throw in that 5cm of snow have the same impact on albedo like 50 or more cm of snow and the snow covered area does not seam significantly higher, all the increased snowfall does not automatically indicate wider area, just the amount of snow which as mentioned above does not necessarily have an impact on albedo. sibiria for example is generally snow covered this time of the year, so if there is an increase in area it must be marginal as compared to the entire are that is snow covered anyways this time of the year IMO

and then i agree with all those who doubt a significant impact on albedo in that region this time of the year as well and then overfrozen tundra has a lower albedo than greenish summer vegetation anyways, so any difference, no matter how small, is even smaller due to that fact.
I think the key thing to look at is September/October... the earlier mid-lower latitude areas see snowcovered the more sunlight is reflected.

This also has an important impact on the Arctic... since more of the NHEM is now snow-covered earlier in the yr, I think it helps force more heat into the Arctic as the "warm" ocean ends up quickly (at least, more quickly than normal) surrounded by snow-covered land, which sheds tremendous amounts of heat. The sandwiching of the polar ice cap between warm oceans and even colder land acts to further increase poleward heat transport, which results in additional heat dissipation over landmasses but additional retention in the Arctic (as we can see from the anomaly charts this yr).

 :-\


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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #692 on: November 14, 2016, 10:48:21 PM »
is it time to panic yet?
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #693 on: November 14, 2016, 10:55:37 PM »
bbr,

  Yes, the high, and rising, average surface air temperature above 80N is unprecedented for the date in the DMI record, going at least as far back as 1958, as Terry has checked & posted on another thread.

  This is as I predicted yesterday in comment #671 above.

  It is caused by the strong low pressure currently at 954 hPa that is entering the Arctic Basin through the Fram Strait and is additionally opposed by high pressures above 1040 hPa over Siberia - see first graphic below.

  This dipole setup across the Atlantic side of the Arctic is sweeping warmer (and presumably moisture laden) strong winds into the Arctic basin - see the nullschool graphic below. The point marked by the small green circle, North of Svalbard, registers 64 km/h winds at +0.4oC.


  The current air pressure configuration, at its current strength, is probably also unprecedented in the records for the Arctic at this time of year, given the unprecedented DMI temperature value.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #694 on: November 14, 2016, 11:27:46 PM »
I did some more programming with the DMI 80N charts. The Unit is now Degree Day Freezing like Andrew Slater used, but for the whole year and not a freezing season spanning over two years. In summer the temperature is above freezing so the graphs take a small dip downwards.


Andrew Slaters graphs:
http://cires1.colorado.edu/~aslater/ARCTIC_TAIR/

« Last Edit: November 15, 2016, 12:49:37 AM by Tealight »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #695 on: November 14, 2016, 11:48:31 PM »
The more I look at the DMI 80 degrees and North graph the more I wonder what 0 Fahrenheit has to do with it.  That seems to be the current bottom.

Quote
If you’ve ever stopped to ponder why exactly the freezing point on the Fahrenheit scale is set at 32 degrees–a rather arbitrary number, all things considered–you’ll need to ponder all the way back to the 18th century.

It was then, in the 1720s, that Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was ironing out zero point for his temperature scale. The coldest temperature that Fahrenheit could produce in his laboratory was the result of mixing ice, water, and ammonia chloride to make a frigid slurry. This measurement became the zero-point for the scale. The second point of reference was the temperature of water when chilled to the point that ice began to form–pure water forming ice was assigned to 32 degrees. Fahrenheit later assigned 212 degrees as the value for boiling water because the 180 degree difference between the two is 180 degrees because 180 can be easily and evenly divided by a variety of numbers.

After a long period of metrification starting in the 1960s, the only countries that still use Fahrenheit for conventional measurements are the United States, Belize, and the British territory of the Cayman Islands.

BTW -- I see it is up again today.

P.S.  It was also last Winter's top, and I have even less understanding of about 246 Kelvin; which after it popped up was the bottom.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2016, 12:07:06 AM by Jim Williams »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #696 on: November 15, 2016, 12:08:55 AM »
Of course Fahrenheit was also a member of the Royal Society, who's currency was a mixture of Bases 12, 20 and 10.  Nobody thought it odd to have a scale of 212 when there were 240 pennies, 480 ha'pnies and 960 farthings to the £.....

Sorry just a bit of history...  ;D  I digress...
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #697 on: November 15, 2016, 12:36:01 AM »
is it time to panic yet?

there is never a time to panic, panic makes the probable certain the negative way :-)

as the sayin' goes, fear is a horrible counselor !

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #698 on: November 15, 2016, 12:38:21 AM »
is it time to panic yet?

there is never a time to panic, panic makes the probable certain the negative way :-)

as the sayin' goes, fear is a horrible counselor !
i guess the only alternative to panic is a stoic acceptance that the world is going to end sooner rather than later...?  ;D

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #699 on: November 15, 2016, 12:47:30 AM »
is it time to panic yet?

there is never a time to panic, panic makes the probable certain the negative way :-)

as the sayin' goes, fear is a horrible counselor !
i guess the only alternative to panic is a stoic acceptance that the world is going to end sooner rather than later...?  ;D

World isn't going to end for billions of years.  It doesn't care if we live or die.