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magnamentis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2000 on: January 18, 2017, 02:11:08 PM »
Magnamentis, while I agree with everything you said, I would like to point out that extra heat falling on ocean that should be ice doesn't just dissipate. It accumulates. As you well point out, at this point is not nearly enough to gather any melt momentum, but the momentum it's starting to accumulate earlier.

absolutely, we're in full agreement here. after all, 50 days >0 will have an impact and later momentum certainly will be higher and/or reached earlier depending on the base, exactly like a
race car that turns high in idle to perform a perfect start if i may use this a bit out of context example :-)
Per the earlier discussion - any heat picked up prior to the equinox due to decreased albedo will not prevent freezing, but instead will displace loss from existing heat in the water.  Even then, it will be a rather small amount, compared to the 80W/M2/second or so normally radiating out of the sea surface at winter temperature differentials.

[Edit:  The daily maximum potential insolation doesn't reach parity with that surface loss until early March.  If you factor in albedo, that parity really isn't reached until just before the equinox.  If you have ice, it won't be reached until mid-April. ]

thanks a lot for the further insight and especially for putting it into understandable words that very accurately describe it.

A-Team

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2001 on: January 18, 2017, 02:13:47 PM »
The image below, pinched and consolidated from @ZLabe, shows the astonishing Arctic temperature anomaly over the last 107 days, with 80º+N tracking the very warm winter of last year. The storm last winter studied by Boisvert and Moore took 10 cm off ice thickness. The previous year saw six very strong storms between January and June in the Svalbard area, documented in N-ICE2015.

It will thus be quite difficult (for lack of a 'control') to disentangle the effects of persistent temperature anomalies from the synergistic effects of big storms, though we might follow along on Simmonds' analysis of August's GAC2012 and its 107 subsequent cites.

subgeometer

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2002 on: January 18, 2017, 02:40:02 PM »
A-Team

Earlier years show spikes in DMI 80 north temp charts, only from llower baseline temperatures, likely warm air coming from the oceans. I guess the effect would be to slow ice growth in those all too recent days except at the former edge, now open sea.

Would there be ice thickness data etc to serve as a kind of control?

FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2003 on: January 18, 2017, 03:13:08 PM »
Note on that stunning image of temperatures greater than 20 degrees F above normal on the Atlantic side of the Arctic ocean that Svalbard has an anomaly of +13C where the contours show it as around +10C. The reanalysis may be underestimating the intensity of the warm anomaly.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2004 on: January 18, 2017, 03:26:36 PM »
Quote
JayW #1997 the I05 VIIRS band from puffin-feeder picks up the sea ice better
Thanks for periodically checking in at this resource ... it provides a nice combination of surface feature status, weather and motion for a strategic region. The animation crops this down a bit to Wrangel <--> Banks Island to Bering Strait, bumps contrast and adds a synchronized comparison to false color, to bring out ice features which make it easier to follow ice motion. That motion is quite unusual and certainly not that of the Beaufort Gyre.

The SMOS thin ice (one up from bottom) shows that all the ice exported out the Bering Strait to date has been less than 0.5m. Export will continue through Jan 25th and includes some landfast ice from Siberia and additional ice from the Chukchi which, according to Hycom, is thicker than 0.5m but not much.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2017, 09:33:45 PM by A-Team »

subgeometer

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2005 on: January 18, 2017, 03:31:27 PM »
This thread is a fantastic unfolding history of this storm & epochal freezing season but by nature is somewhat messy.

OT comments and discussions irritate and disrupt, but the line is grey because of the uncertainties, incomplete understanding and data, uncharted waters. And we all have different levels and scope of knowledge. Wayne's critique of obsolete measures like extent was dismissed by many as a crazy pet theory not so long ago.

I think once the season is historic some editorial post production could create a more usable resource alongside the source thread

For example, a page dedicated to techniques for extracting compiling and displaying relevant data like sentinel, weather, etc, with any scripts

Breakouts of various discussions that turn out to be important, referenced to or quoting important relevent contributions on other threads, as well as important events like the current storm.

Who would do it? I'm guessing Contributors of the calibre of ATeam will be too busy to more than consult because there seems no way events will slow down, perhaps a postdoc could assemble a group? As an artist my skills aren't right, and my resources too slim now.

The perhaps outlandish pet question now is whether the loops in 250mb jet ushering the stormsvto the ice edge will become a spiral or pair of sspirals in winter once the black swan fully appears in open waters in the central arctic



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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2006 on: January 18, 2017, 04:45:54 PM »
Quote
subgeo: once the season is historic some editorial post-production could create a more usable resource
Good ideas there, what WAS the take-home anyway for the storm or seasonal? It tends to get buried in press of later events.

With 2006 posts so far, editing the whole season would be challenging so it would be better to practice on a storm with fairly narrow bounds (though this one seems sort of run-on). Even then, producing our own little Arctic Report Card is quite a task.

It is feasible to grab everything, delete forum template prose and people quoting priors and recompile as a flatfile database which would allow flagging comment areas to group related ones by sort. However it might be better to first mirror the forum and do a lot of initial editing, deleting and combining using restricted admin privileges.

An easy way to do that is to convert all the posted by's to a single virtual persona at the time of mirroring with the editing team all allowed a second registration. Staying within the forum is simpler than say a google docs collaborative environment and reformatting for forum return.

On the figures, forecasts need to be replaced by reanalysis. Time series mostly would need lengthening. For example, above VIIRS is current but AMSR2 lags by a day and SMOS by two days. Hycom provides a rolling 365-day easily restricted to a given date range, orientation, regional crop, and resize. On the Piomas forum, wipneus maintains updating images and data on the very first post. The 'storm template' series above are similar but spread out; they can be updated in situ and then called in later.

Images that are still 'keepers' can be repurposed at the meta-forum with tag reinsertion. That provides in effect cross-posting of images. It apparently defeats the four attachment limit though at some point, like text length in a post, it may hit a forum wall.

Neven of course is the go-to guy for pulling things together concisely and accurately with good graphics. For example, the ASIB is newly updated today with J Francis and the new Arctic feedback. http://neven1.typepad.com

Quote
Note on that stunning image of temperatures greater than 20 degrees F above normal on the Atlantic side of the Arctic ocean that Svalbard has an anomaly of +13C where the contours show it as around +10C. The reanalysis may be underestimating the intensity of the warm anomaly.
The attached looks at these contours more closely on this beautiful map. The center of the Chukchi is between 11-12ºC warmer than the ERA40 1958-2002 mean (used in nearby figure); Svalbard and Franz Josef are two notches warmer so between 13-14ºC.

Zack's image has a fuzzed palette that does not quite correspond to map colors; it's perhaps better to label a few contours with text. This map applies to 107 days of reanalysis data between 01 Oct 16 to 15 Jan 2017.

The use of a long-term climate mean has the effect of dramatizing the anomaly. Relative to say 2010-2015, the numbers would presumably be less dramatic (see above 80+N similarities to last year). Either way, the 2 m air has been way too warm so far this refreeze season.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 01:43:38 AM by A-Team »

bairgon

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2007 on: January 18, 2017, 05:58:43 PM »
A Sentinel image has now arrived for Lincoln on 18th Jan at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/lincoln.uk.php

17th Jan image: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Lincoln/20170117s01b.ASAR.jpg

18th Jan image: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Lincoln/20170118s01b.ASAR.jpg

Observations:
 - leads on the lee of Ellesmere are visible
 - movement and compaction of ice in the Lincoln sea "polynya" is visible
 - the "bridge" between Greenland and Ellesmere appears to be holding
 - the ice north of the bridge is showing a lot of westward motion as expected.

Jim Williams

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2008 on: January 18, 2017, 06:12:32 PM »
It is feasible to grab everything, delete forum template prose and people quoting priors and recompile as a flatfile database which would allow flagging comment areas to group related ones by sort. However it might be better to first mirror the forum and do a lot of initial editing, deleting and combining using restricted admin privileges.

An easy way to do that is to convert all the posted by's to a single virtual persona at the time of mirroring with the editing team all allowed a second registration. Staying within the forum is simpler than say a google docs collaborative environment and reformatting for forum return.

You could in theory run into some legal trouble there, however I doubt anyone here would press the issue.

For the record:  Anything I post here is in the public domain and on First Amendment grounds I object to the notion that something is automatically copyrighted unless stated otherwise.  (I do not believe in IP.)  I do not think I have an obligation to express the fact that it is in the public domain.

I would, however, suggest that Neven make some sort of clear policy that things posted here are either public domain or belong to the original source -- even though I disagree with the theory.

DavidR

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2009 on: January 18, 2017, 09:54:51 PM »
NASA GISS zonal  temperatures for the year were released today. The Arctic region 64N-90N was measured at a +3.2 degC anomaly. The previous record anomaly was +2.16 in 2011.

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

For zonal temps see:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/ZonAnn.Ts.csv
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 03:25:13 AM by DavidR »
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2010 on: January 18, 2017, 10:36:30 PM »
Whoa, now that is a slick site. It allows animation of base period, data source, trend, interval mapped etc etc.

Arctic amplification in a nutshell: the lower image is just from 2010 on.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2017, 10:46:42 PM by A-Team »

logicmanPatrick

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2011 on: January 18, 2017, 11:53:11 PM »

For the record:  Anything I post here is in the public domain ...

Nice one!   As for me, Neven is at liberty to use anything I post here or in my blog as he sees fit.
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Global Sea Ice Extent is heading off Wipneus' chart -

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gregcharles

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2012 on: January 19, 2017, 01:55:04 AM »
Global Sea Ice Extent is heading off Wipneus' chart -

I don't think it will actually go below the axis, but tomorrow it may hit the caption.

ETA: now that I think about it, it could easily go below the axis over the next month or so. Yikes.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 02:05:58 AM by gregcharles »

jdallen

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2013 on: January 19, 2017, 02:47:48 AM »
It will be interesting to see if it continues down.

GFS has that low squatting off the northern tip of Greenland for another 2 day.  2 more days of 60+KPH "Shove" of the thickest ice towards the Fram.

http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs&region=nhem&pkg=mslpaNorm&runtime=2017011612&fh=108&xpos=0&ypos=225
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2014 on: January 19, 2017, 03:45:21 AM »
ECMWF shows pressure getting down to 957 mb later on the 19th. GFS bottoms out at 961 mb.
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epiphyte

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2015 on: January 19, 2017, 05:51:36 AM »
The use of a long-term climate mean has the effect of dramatizing the anomaly. Relative to say 2010-2015, the numbers would presumably be less dramatic (see above 80+N similarities to last year). Either way, the 2 m air has been way too warm so far this refreeze season.

On a related note, one wonders if the combination of new technical resources (viz: Sentinel) and extraordinarily expositive graphics (courtesy of A-Team et al) might of themselves be serving to cast the anomalies of the current freezing season in a more than usually dramatic light?

Not to suggest that temps this year aren't a frightening departure from the past - objectively, they are. But anomalies or no, over much of ESS, the pacific side of CAB, CAA, etc it's f...ing cold right now, and who knows? - high winds and airborne moisture might even increase the rate of ice creation in those regions, over what they otherwise would have been...

And on the Atlantic side, we've been granted an unprecedented grandstand view of vanishing ice in January in the vicinity of Svalbard - but whether the behavior itself, as opposed to just our observation of it, is unprecedented, seems far from clear. Anecdotally, IIRC it hasn't of late been too unusual for the first EOSDIS/Worldview pictures of the year to show open water north of Svalbard, to be replaced by April with ice reaching considerably further south.

To reiterate, objectively this looks very bad. Don't be surprised though if by mid-June everyone has forgotten it happened. Probably they will remember again around the second or third week of August :-/

logicmanPatrick

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2016 on: January 19, 2017, 06:08:04 AM »
epiphyte: definitely unprecedented in recorded history.

From one of my articles - http://www.science20.com/chatter_box/arctic_ice_july_2010_update_3_0


The map shows what was considered to be an average minimum, i.e. summer  ice extent in 1939.
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kiwichick16

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2017 on: January 19, 2017, 07:59:15 AM »
great map logicman........interesting to see ice blocking Hudson Bay!!

budmantis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2018 on: January 19, 2017, 11:26:39 AM »
Incredible! Ice remains along the Labrador coast as far south as 50 degrees north and along the entire east coast of Greenland. Also, only the south coast of Svalbard is ice free.

meddoc

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2019 on: January 19, 2017, 01:13:27 PM »
And not to mention Thicknes and Structural Integrity:
Probably fat, thick 3- 4 m ice on the Periphery and 8- 12 m in the CAB.
We've emitted a fractal of GHGs since then...

epiphyte

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2020 on: January 19, 2017, 02:58:41 PM »
Just to clarify, my comment was intended to be couched in the short-term (i.e. post 2000) context.

The implication wasn't intended to be that nothing dramatic is happening, rather that its effects might be temporarily obfuscated for most of the coming melt season by the fact that there will be solid-looking cover for much of it, that we don't usually get to look at this much real-time detail in January, and that we have a paucity of past observations to compare it against.

Buddy

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2021 on: January 19, 2017, 03:16:09 PM »
Quote
....obfuscated for most of the coming melt season by the fact that there will be solid-looking cover for much of it, that we don't usually get to look at this much real-time detail in January, and that we have a paucity....

For those of you that have English as a second or third language like me.. ;)

Obfuscated:  to render obscure, unclear


Paucity:  the presence of something only in small or insufficient quantities or amounts; scarcity
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2022 on: January 19, 2017, 05:30:55 PM »
The strong, well established subtropical jet is typical of La Niña.

Sorry, proof reading me a bit late... Typical of El Nino, or more exactly of the warm pacific (positive PDO). Cali floods are not typical of La Nina but here the Pacific is behaving according to positive PDO more probably than according to La Nina wich is barely alive. So to sum up forcings are more likely warm Pacific, heavily disrupted baroclinical zone (and so the possible positive feedback Neven speaking about) and tropical convection in Indonesia and N. Amazonia. For the strat it is more likely that the heavily disturbed baroclinic zone is weakening PV, and not the other way round (weak PV disrupting baroclinic zone).

jai mitchell

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2023 on: January 19, 2017, 05:47:10 PM »
The strong, well established subtropical jet is typical of La Niña.

Sorry, proof reading me a bit late... Typical of El Nino, or more exactly of the warm pacific (positive PDO). Cali floods are not typical of La Nina but here the Pacific is behaving according to positive PDO more probably than according to La Nina wich is barely alive. So to sum up forcings are more likely warm Pacific, heavily disrupted baroclinical zone (and so the possible positive feedback Neven speaking about) and tropical convection in Indonesia and N. Amazonia. For the strat it is more likely that the heavily disturbed baroclinic zone is weakening PV, and not the other way round (weak PV disrupting baroclinic zone).

I am not sure how we translate past PDO behaviour with today's anomalies.

see: 


compare with today



While I do not disagree that the PDO is + and warm, the persistence of tropical water vapor is a much stronger signal than a normal El Nino year today.  Last year's El Nino was not acting like an El Nino.  Our current Atmospheric river in California has tropical water vapor translation stretching all the way to the pacific warm pool!  I have never observed this before, not during El Nino, NEVER.

We used to call atmospheric rivers 'pineapple express' because they originated from the region around hawaii.  This event is more accurately called a 'palm oil express'. 

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/01/17/1500Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/equirectangular=-162.35,18.54,519

I am not disagreeing with you, but we must recognize that the earth systems are changing so rapidly now that our previous patterns/metrics are no longer communicating current system operations accurately.
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A-Team

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2024 on: January 19, 2017, 05:55:37 PM »
The storm is spreading out the ice so the issue becomes tracking changes in thickness. The images below overlay two thickness products over an image of the ice provided by Sentinel radar (which is only providing half-Arctic coverage at this time, with a significant pole hole).

In theory, these images could be replicated at say two week intervals. However the mismatch in resolutions, timestamps and lack of precise alignability would result in an unusably inaccurate outcome. This might be overcome in narrow swaths using full resolution PolarView with individual Cryosat pixel overlays on trackable flows, which would get at net ice growth (bottom thickening - top losses).

There are 5-6 years of CryoSat data for the rate of ice growth, apparently averaged over portion of the Arctic Ocean for which they have data. The attached chart shows only a meter of growth between October and April. Furthermore, the rate of growth is linear. These are at odds with understanding here and may just be a problem with Cryosat data which is quite difficult to work with.

There has been very little motion along the CAA. The last frame of the animation shows widespread thinning possibly attributable to the storm but another week of frames are needed to support that.
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 06:08:12 PM by A-Team »

Ice Shieldz

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2025 on: January 20, 2017, 02:18:32 AM »
Following is gif animation of images from "Cape Morris Jesup" - northern tip of Greenland:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/morrisjessup.uk.php

The gif covers from 1/16 to 1/19 (edit: with no image for 1/17).  I'm roughly guessing *by eyeballing* around a max of 35km of ice movement a day?  Perhaps someone else with more experience than I would like to comment on the distance of movement or the nature of the mechanical damage and compaction (highlighted roughly in blue for first two days).  - needs click to animate
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 04:39:20 AM by Ice Shieldz »

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2026 on: January 20, 2017, 03:56:36 AM »
Hot day tomorrow for the Arctic. The anomaly has not been this high above normal in a while.
I should say the average anomaly, that is.
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2027 on: January 20, 2017, 04:23:33 AM »
Heat being borrowed from the warm water around Svalbard, and probably put to work melting ice.
Note: Watch the hottest (Red) in the center. Jan. 16th-20th
CLICK IMAGE (bottom image is GIF)
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 04:38:00 AM by Tigertown »
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pccp82

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2028 on: January 20, 2017, 05:43:21 AM »
I normally don't comment......but I would like to take a moment to recognize A Team.

I hope i speak for many lurkers when I say; his/her contributions are invaluable to this. A Team, I want to thank you for your dedication.

budmantis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2029 on: January 20, 2017, 06:33:53 AM »
I normally don't comment......but I would like to take a moment to recognize A Team.

I hope i speak for many lurkers when I say; his/her contributions are invaluable to this. A Team, I want to thank you for your dedication.

Lurkers and other members as well. Kudos, A-Team!

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2030 on: January 20, 2017, 06:38:49 AM »
JAXA updated to the 19th and were nice enough to provide these images to bring us up to date.
This is for thickness, as I left out the concentration, not being able to see much difference in it. That is probably because of dispersion. If the imagery for thickness is accurate at all, it's mind-blowing to think what a few days of stormy weather can do.
Edit: I have just got to add one more thought; OUCH!
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budmantis

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2031 on: January 20, 2017, 06:47:16 AM »
TT: I noticed what appears to be open water in Lakes Manitoba and Great Slave. Are those for real, or just artifacts? By the way, I wanted to thank you for the images you've posted, as well as some very interesting posts.

Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2032 on: January 20, 2017, 07:08:00 AM »
TT: I noticed what appears to be open water in Lakes Manitoba and Great Slave. Are those for real, or just artifacts? By the way, I wanted to thank you for the images you've posted, as well as some very interesting posts.

My first instinct is that it is really open water. I wouldn't want to say for certain, as the resolution is so low that I can't really blow up the image that much. Worldview has been cloudy the last few days in that area. Maybe someone else has an idea of how to verify?
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 07:14:47 AM by Tigertown »
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2033 on: January 20, 2017, 07:41:15 AM »
Just for the record, as A-Team pointed out. There currently are 3 and 4 meter waves working away at the expelled ice in the Bering Sea. Also, 6 meter waves persist in the Barents, with 9 meter waves forecast for 12 hours from now.

Edit: Monster waves forecast starting to peak late on the 22th in the Pacific just off the Bering Sea. Apparently this will be a multi-day event. All due to a low developing a short time from now in that location.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 07:53:26 AM by Tigertown »
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PSJ

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2034 on: January 20, 2017, 10:32:28 AM »
JAXA updated to the 19th and were nice enough to provide these images to bring us up to date.
This is for thickness, as I left out the concentration, not being able to see much difference in it. That is probably because of dispersion. If the imagery for thickness is accurate at all, it's mind-blowing to think what a few days of stormy weather can do.
Edit: I have just got to add one more thought; OUCH!


Hi there, first post, fantastic forum, thanks everyone. Just wanted to point out that Wipneus' JAXA volume visual indicates this storm associated drop in thickness very neatly.

/Peter

From:

https://14adebb0-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/jaxa-amsr2-volume.png?attachauth=ANoY7cqZD5WrSmUtintc3wzo_Qr4RTXetb5fFPPum59DRTAPbVKcz4NTbw3XXV3Ob78a8k6tmtxXJLtgB_ma_OnaN9FDpJQxaRaFM8QuyxJSerSvGg6qqsuz7CI-VylSAm2-LpT52SDtUlPF6TaepFujw4qCnnt7gVnZGeFKiaSqLy9PcxWu-X7_3hVzCEmBaZRs_jX2n8SNkKvzQ0hVLKBrVhmlHYX7myCToNMvayJHGHnbKbMIA5s_czXsDJ2pye2lhgk8_dbxWUeWl9n5Ck5ietM93UTi1Q%3D%3D&attredirects=0

Buddy

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2035 on: January 20, 2017, 12:38:37 PM »
Quote
Hi there, first post, fantastic forum, thanks everyone. Just wanted to point out that Wipneus' JAXA volume visual indicates this storm associated drop in thickness very neatly./quote]

That IS a nice step DOWN in volume.

And it is interesting to note....that the volume usually peaks in April, while the extent usually peaks in March.  That is a bit of a head scratcher for me.
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Paddy

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2036 on: January 20, 2017, 12:54:23 PM »
Buddy,

I think the main explanation lies in the centre being considerably further north than the edges at the time of peak extent, and the melting starts / freezing stops at a later date further north.  I'm not sure how fast it progresses, although I do remember from a study of flower opening in the UK that spring moves north at approximately walking pace at our latitude.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 01:08:50 PM by Paddy »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2037 on: January 20, 2017, 01:07:39 PM »
Budmantis:

US Snow and ice center show Winnipeg and Great Slave to be ice covered.  Which I would believe as they have been frequently -20  to -30C for extended periods. Warmth has reached to James Bay but has stayed east of the Canadian Great Lakes.  Superior, however, has ice only in it's quiet bays, and not all of them.  The northern embayments of Lake Huron, North Channel and Georgian Bay have open water, especially Georgian Bay.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2038 on: January 20, 2017, 01:09:49 PM »
Volume drop is the main melt season preconditioning story, but with export and wind/wave churning of ice also important but with significance harder to quantitate. The first animation shows wipneus' chart at a larger scale with the large percentage loss (at a time when volume historically has been growing) calculated from the diagram. The ADS-Jaxa inset shows where thinning is most pronounced.

Five days of Ttown's -0.5m SST is embedded in the upper left. These water temperatures make sense given what we know of Atlantic Water, currents and routes into the Arctic Ocean. This model captures the expected cooler water of the St. Anna bathymetric trough east of FJI which is supported in AMRSR2 lower concentration sea ice and SMOS thinner ice imagery (shown earlier).

Where is the volume drop distributed? Probably where ice thickness is most rapidly changing (2nd animation, which slows a bit for the final few days). Here each day is differenced from the day before; this turns out to be fairly effective with the default ADS-Jaxa palette.

Rapid change is not surprising in the Chukchi-Bering Strait nor along the Svalbard-FJI-SZ front but the thickest CAA ice also appears to have gotten hit by the storm. Slices from the last five days are stacked below for static comparison.

The ten days of Sentinel-1AB imagery ending 19 Jan 17 provided at DMI Nord shows rapid export out the Fram, indeed changes in features (yellow boxed floe) are too pervasive to track them confidently over the whole time interval.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 01:54:56 PM by A-Team »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2039 on: January 20, 2017, 01:42:16 PM »
Quote
Hi there, first post, fantastic forum, thanks everyone. Just wanted to point out that Wipneus' JAXA volume visual indicates this storm associated drop in thickness very neatly./quote]

That IS a nice step DOWN in volume.

And it is interesting to note....that the volume usually peaks in April, while the extent usually peaks in March.  That is a bit of a head scratcher for me.

possibly you included your reply in the quote but however, volume is still growing in the center while the periphery's thinner ice is starting to melt, as it seems the growth over a larger area outweighs the extent loss over a much smaller are and a very slow one at that time of the season. sorry if got that wrong but there was not reply part in that post so i hopefully correctly assumed that the difference was your reply including the head scratcher LOL

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2040 on: January 20, 2017, 02:13:41 PM »
Quote
possibly you included your reply in the quote

Yes....my bad.

Quote
... but however, volume is still growing in the center while the periphery's thinner ice is starting to melt, as it seems the growth over a larger area outweighs the extent loss over a much smaller are and a very slow one at that time of the season

Yes....I assumed as much.  Just having a hard time "thinking it through".  Still cold enough to add volume in the "middle of the ice sheet"....while the edges are being slowly nibbled away.


Quote
...sorry if got that wrong but there was not reply part in that post so i hopefully correctly assumed that the difference was your reply including the head scratcher LOL

You got it right.  It's early....maybe I need that 3rd cup of java to get me going.... ;D
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2041 on: January 20, 2017, 02:19:48 PM »
Budmantis:

US Snow and ice center show Winnipeg and Great Slave to be ice covered.  Which I would believe as they have been frequently -20  to -30C for extended periods. Warmth has reached to James Bay but has stayed east of the Canadian Great Lakes.  Superior, however, has ice only in it's quiet bays, and not all of them.  The northern embayments of Lake Huron, North Channel and Georgian Bay have open water, especially Georgian Bay.

Thanks Carex for the info!

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2042 on: January 20, 2017, 02:29:59 PM »
Reading the IJIS thread somebody mentioned the Beaufort being very cold, colder than last year right now. And I remembered that the other day I pulled these two snapshots from Worldview of Brightness Temperature.
These images do not reflect that Alaska or the Beaufort sea are (or are not) colder by any means. Their interpretation is very difficult without additional data: is the ice thicker? do atmospheric temperatures of recent days play any role? Is there more snow? ...

Topaz4 modelled snow thickness maps  in fact show a lack of snow over easternmost part of Beaufort sea in Jan 14 2016 whereas in the same day of 2017 a band of relatively thin snow cover is present. However, Chukchi sea ice is not covered by snow this year which is also consistent with the higher brightness temperatures there especially north of Wrangel island, which all makes sense given that this ice formed very recently.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 04:02:59 PM by seaicesailor »

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2043 on: January 20, 2017, 03:38:02 PM »
So, if I am looking at this correctly, we are about even with the volume(JAXA) of today as that of the last day of 2016, three weeks ago. Also, what did not get melted of the thickest ice, is probably so busted up into smaller floes that the ice will now flow down the Fram like Gravy. It is just a matter of the wind blowing the right direction.

Edit: It appears that winds for about the next week or so favor Fram export.

« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 04:13:55 PM by Tigertown »
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2044 on: January 20, 2017, 04:22:52 PM »
Today (or tomorrow?) both Barrow, Alaska and Nordkapp (North Cape), Norway will briefly have the sun over the horizon. This means that all continental landmasses will now have some sunshine except a part of Siberia.

Of course, the sun will be so low it will have no effect yet, but this marks the beginning of increasing insolation in the Arctic.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2045 on: January 20, 2017, 06:05:18 PM »
Today (or tomorrow?) both Barrow, Alaska and Nordkapp (North Cape), Norway will briefly have the sun over the horizon. This means that all continental landmasses will now have some sunshine except a part of Siberia.

Of course, the sun will be so low it will have no effect yet, but this marks the beginning of increasing insolation in the Arctic.
The thermal tipping point for that sunshine I recon will be when it reaches about 4KWH/M2/Day, assuming 50% loss to albedo.  Once you get to that, you've balanced the radiative loss out of the atmosphere.  If your albedo is lower - clear skies and open water - then it could be as low as 2.5KWH/M2/Day.  For the Bering and Beaufort, that will start happening in just a couple of weeks.

This of course does not consider other heat contributions imported from warm moist air masses pushed north over the region.
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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2046 on: January 20, 2017, 06:12:13 PM »
Today (or tomorrow?) both Barrow, Alaska and Nordkapp (North Cape), Norway will briefly have the sun over the horizon. This means that all continental landmasses will now have some sunshine except a part of Siberia.

Of course, the sun will be so low it will have no effect yet, but this marks the beginning of increasing insolation in the Arctic.
The thermal tipping point for that sunshine I recon will be when it reaches about 4KWH/M2/Day, assuming 50% loss to albedo.  Once you get to that, you've balanced the radiative loss out of the atmosphere.  If your albedo is lower - clear skies and open water - then it could be as low as 2.5KWH/M2/Day.  For the Bering and Beaufort, that will start happening in just a couple of weeks.

This of course does not consider other heat contributions imported from warm moist air masses pushed north over the region.

As another way of putting it, if we look at the DMI 80N the eyeball says the green line starts turning up about day 70, or maybe a bit before.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2047 on: January 20, 2017, 06:39:31 PM »
A-Team,  I was looking at some very distorted by enlargement graphs (other people), and thinking about error bars and standard deviations.  Any chance you can turn out some gradient delineated graphs of things like temperature that provide visual clues to the error in our understanding?  I know enough on the subject to know I cannot do it.  Obviously, the data tends to be sparse enough for there to be "unknown unknowns."

I just find that people tend to think we know more than we know.

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Re: The 2016/2017 freezing season
« Reply #2048 on: January 20, 2017, 08:00:22 PM »
The GFS now has the Pacific "Monster" storm at 48 hrs out with MSLP as low as 947hpa, causing 15 meter/ 49 ft waves in the Pacific and 9 meter/ 29 ft waves in the Bering Sea. Winds in the Bering are expected to be 70 km/hr with higher winds in the Pacific. A milder wind of about 35 km/hr will be coming out of the Arctic through the Strait.
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Arctic Cyclone Trends
« Reply #2049 on: January 20, 2017, 09:18:10 PM »
Hello All,

Log time lurker on Neven's blog, but new here. I commend you all for the high signal/noise ratio of this forum.

I'm looking for some background information on Arctic weather. I know storms are not uncommon in the Arctic but is there a trend change in frequency, duration or intensity?

Storms are basically heat engines, so the increase in water temperatures and influx of heat due to much larger Rossby wave amplitudes should all have an effect, but has this been seen in the data?

I first became aware during the GAC 2012 how damaging they can be, but I am trying to tease out whether the impact on sea ice is due to a much weaker and thinner ice, or if the storms are simply a bigger force. I suspect it is both, but I look forward to some insight from those much more experienced.

Thank you.