The 2017 melting season

[solartim27]

Too soon?   

[DrTskoul]

  

[Pmt111500]

 

[Neven]

Too late! Couldn't you have opened it 8 hours sooner? 

[magnamentis]

Just in time LOL, the high was at around 1.6 Celsius / 36F

( and there is still water to see for weeks now and most of the time it was much more open water than right now )

[Istari]

Too soon?   

Too real ...

[Tigertown]

I don't know if this will do any damage, but it kind of sneaked in over East Siberia.
Probably just a little light snow.

[Shared Humanity]

Nice to see the Arctic not completely dominated by lows. The North Atlantic cyclone cannon has finally stopped. Lets hope for a polar high dominated rest of the freeze season.

[Tigertown]

I hate to say it, but I think it just had to re-load.

[Shared Humanity]

As long as those highs remain over Greenland and Siberia, those lows could go spinning out of the North Atlantic into the Arctic forever.

[Neven]

There's no sense in posting actual images here, as the melting season hasn't started yet.

Come back in March/April, everyone. 

[Iceismylife]

Extent down two days in a row go figure.

[Adam Ash]

Those lows north of Franz Josef Land will sure shove the ice out Fram pretty efficiently. 

I imagine the severely broken ice pack will respond much faster to wind effects than extensive packed-solid ice would - behaving more like debris on the ocean surface than the former comparatively cohesive pack did during winter. 

Thus the effects of prolonged wind on the night-time Arctic will begin to entail conventional open-ocean dynamics arising from fetch length, wind strength and duration resulting in potentially higher waves and thus further stress on and break up of ice floes even under freezing conditions.

[Paddy]

Extent down two days in a row go figure.

Four days now (although only by a total of about 94000)

[mmghosh]

Indeed.  A century break (even if spread out over a few days)...

[bbr2314]

00z EURO ups ante and moves 945mb storm up to hr192. Wow.

[budmantis]

Impressive! Have Arctic Ocean low pressure systems ever been known to fall below 945 millibars?

[Tigertown]

Look at the one on the other side of Alaska. It's no joke.

[psymmo7]

945 mbar
Storm?
More like a category 3 Hurricane
Here the definition (for non-meteorologists like me) from globalresourcesnews.com
Category 3 - An extensive Hurricane:
Winds 111-130 mph 178-209 km/hr
Minimum Surface Pressure: 964-945 mbar
Storm Surge: 2.7 - 3.8 m!

[peterlvmeng]

945 mbar
Storm?
More like a category 3 Hurricane
Here the definition (for non-meteorologists like me) from globalresourcesnews.com
Category 3 - An extensive Hurricane:
Winds 111-130 mph 178-209 km/hr
Minimum Surface Pressure: 964-945 mbar
Storm Surge: 2.7 - 3.8 m!

extratropical cyclone is quite usual at this minimum surface pressure in high latitude.

[Mark Tough]

945 mbar
Storm?
More like a category 3 Hurricane
Here the definition (for non-meteorologists like me) from globalresourcesnews.com
Category 3 - An extensive Hurricane:
Winds 111-130 mph 178-209 km/hr
Minimum Surface Pressure: 964-945 mbar
Storm Surge: 2.7 - 3.8 m!

extratropical cyclone is quite usual at this minimum surface pressure in high latitude.

Well yes peterlvmeng but the North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones end in November according to NOAA (well at least in the pre- anthropological days)

It's all new now and this is a mind blowing freeze season/melt season... Crazy really.

Funnily enough I predict a really late Max but not a big one - and then boom to MYI and a clear pole in Aug, the latter definition of which will be up for world wide debate !

No models or referenced science just MYL (Multi Year Lurking)

[Buddy]

Just what we need....more warmth on the Atlantic side....

[DrTskoul]

Just what we need....more warmth on the Atlantic side....

Once started it is difficult to abruptly stop the trend. The lows will keep coming with their warmth thought the wimter... Until the sun start rising above the northern lands, as to stop it we need a large external forcing.

[Gray-Wolf]

I wonder if you can see a 'cold core' Hurricane?

 I mean if the sea ice is smashed up and the 'relatively' warm, moist, air flowing out of those leads fueling convection in the arctic air above? As the storm grew it would smash more ice /wash up more heat to the surface and so on as it sat over the pole........

A bit 'day after Tomorrow' really but if it's all about the relative sea surface temp to air above a wide enough disrupted ice zone might provide enough heat/moisture to set up unfettered convection?

[peterlvmeng]

945 mbar
Storm?
More like a category 3 Hurricane
Here the definition (for non-meteorologists like me) from globalresourcesnews.com
Category 3 - An extensive Hurricane:
Winds 111-130 mph 178-209 km/hr
Minimum Surface Pressure: 964-945 mbar
Storm Surge: 2.7 - 3.8 m!

extratropical cyclone is quite usual at this minimum surface pressure in high latitude.

Well yes peterlvmeng but the North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones end in November according to NOAA (well at least in the pre- anthropological days)

It's all new now and this is a mind blowing freeze season/melt season... Crazy really.

Funnily enough I predict a really late Max but not a big one - and then boom to MYI and a clear pole in Aug, the latter definition of which will be up for world wide debate !

No models or referenced science just MYL (Multi Year Lurking)

Thanks Mark! I remember a strong and large cyclone with minimum pressure lower than 920hpa pervailed the north pacific outside the Bering strait in Jan of 2011. I tend to think it is quite usual inside the arctic.

[peterlvmeng]

I wonder if you can see a 'cold core' Hurricane?

 I mean if the sea ice is smashed up and the 'relatively' warm, moist, air flowing out of those leads fueling convection in the arctic air above? As the storm grew it would smash more ice /wash up more heat to the surface and so on as it sat over the pole........

A bit 'day after Tomorrow' really but if it's all about the relative sea surface temp to air above a wide enough disrupted ice zone might provide enough heat/moisture to set up unfettered convection?

You mean the theory which is similar to the mechanism of CISK in the formation of tropical cyclones?

[Gray-Wolf]

Yup! but with the aid of the planets revolution at its centre linking P.V. to ocean surface?

[bbr2314]

Yup! but with the aid of the planets revolution at its centre linking P.V. to ocean surface?

I think you are onto something --

It should also be noted while high-latitude cyclones often attain very low pressures, I do not believe that ever happens *this* far north. It has become increasingly common in the southern areas of the Bering & Barents/Kara but in the actual Arctic Ocean we did not see events like ^ in any of the recent summers or winters from what I can recall.

[Iceismylife]

I wonder if you can see a 'cold core' Hurricane?

 I mean if the sea ice is smashed up and the 'relatively' warm, moist, air flowing out of those leads fueling convection in the arctic air above? As the storm grew it would smash more ice /wash up more heat to the surface and so on as it sat over the pole........

A bit 'day after Tomorrow' really but if it's all about the relative sea surface temp to air above a wide enough disrupted ice zone might provide enough heat/moisture to set up unfettered convection?

I started a thread asking just about this question this fall. Any answers?

[Neven]

People, seriously, the melting season has not started. All your comments belong in this thread. I'm locking this one until March/April.

[Neven]

Kick.

[Gray-Wolf]

I wondered ,once Mr Hunt had ummed and arred about whether we could be seeing max being reached, how long before we got the thread!

[5to10]

If it goes ice free this year and there's nothing stopping all that water from absorbing heat... what next? This is worrisome.. Is this, for all intents and purposes, the final/one of the final melt seasons?

[DoomInTheUK]

Well if re-opening a melting thread in Feb ends up as being the weirdest thing about this melt season then I think we'll get off quite lightly.

Personally I still blame Neven. He took a few weeks off and it's never been the same since. 

[oren]

If it goes ice free this year and there's nothing stopping all that water from absorbing heat... what next? This is worrisome.. Is this, for all intents and purposes, the final/one of the final melt seasons?

Please remember that if it does go ice free this year, it will do so with two caveats:
Ice free will not mean totally ice free, not this year. A lot of ice will still remain north of the CAA and Greenland. So 1 million km² of ice still stops a lot of water from absorbing heat.
In addition, ice free will not mean at peak insolation time, but most probably in early September. At that period it is mostly the heat in the water, and the storms, that finish the job. So the temps in central CAB will not have time to rise very much given the expected season trajectory as I see it.

On the other hand, peripheral CAB-adjacent seas such as the Chukchi, Barents with its nearby CAB sector, and Beaufort (assuming it does open up early and has a total meltout as I expect) could see big temp spikes in late summer, with dire consequences for the CAB ice.

As to whether this is the final melting season, have no fear. Ice in midwinter in the CAB will still freeze, even if very late and much thinner than in the past. Disclosure: some on the forum expect otherwise.

[Tigertown]

I don't think everything has to be in such absolutes. More open water earlier in the season simply means more problems for later this season, which carry over into the freezing season. Those carry over into the following year. Ironically, it is called a snowball effect. At some point the least of our worries will be SIE.

P.S. I guess that I should have posted this here instead of the freezing season thread.

I am not trying to start a conversation about it here, as we have a thread for it, but just so everyone knows; the PV has split and will soon start to weaken. The positive temp. anomalies will start to creep back into the Arctic, just as the forecast shows.

[Archimid]

I think that 20 years ago the distinction of the melting season and the freezing season was obvious and easy to make out. During the freezing season ice would almost monotonically grow and during the melting season ice will monotonically melt. As the Arctic warms this distinction is becoming less obvious. I think it is almost to a point that a season between the freezing and melting season can be justified.

[gerontocrat]

I am having an argument with myself -

It is NOT the melting season, dumbo. Sea ice volume is increasing.
It IS the melting season, you fool. Look at the flood of beaten up ice coming down the Fram, the PV giving up the ghost etc etc etc.

But it is a fruitless argument, since both melting and freezing are happening. Surely what matters are how rapid the periphery will melt (insolation) and the timing and km3 000 of the sea ice volume maximum ? This additional data will inform the debate on what happens next and when.

[Archimid]

It is NOT the melting season, dumbo. Sea ice volume is increasing.

Great point. Volume is increasing and historically it increases until April. So by volume the melting season starts in April but by extent the melting season starts in early March.

[magnamentis]

If it goes ice free this year and there's nothing stopping all that water from absorbing heat... what next? This is worrisome.. Is this, for all intents and purposes, the final/one of the final melt seasons?

please keep in mind that even once it goes ice-free (for me ice-free is around zero and not around 1M km²) that will not get us rid of a melting season because ice free refers to summer and not to "all year round"

if a an all year ice free arctic will ever happen which i doubt for a few centuries or more, discussion will long have moved to Sea Level Rise and other more important things than SIE & SIE.

generally it's always recommended to not overshoot in wording so not to feed the trolls and the deniers with easily deniable "fodder"

[Gray-Wolf]

Looking at the ice now visible from the MODIS sats you can see just how poor the ice is! Where two leads meet the ice between is shattered rubble, no clean edges of yesteryear this ice just collapses back into the rubble we last saw in Sept. I just do not know how this will act under full sun? I imagine any late formed FY ice 'glue' that holds the pack together would be the first thing to go but how solid is the older ice? How many times have the larger floes already been fragmented and 'glued ' back together?

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2017-02-23&z=3&v=-1650176,1150848,-1475328,1232512

above are a couple of leads in the west of Beaufort ( toward Bering) showing this rubble zone where they meet/join.

[5to10]

I don't see how ice can reform anywhere near even the last freeze season once it's open ocean. Too much warming too quickly over the months following, no? I don't understand the physics of it. Shouldn't that be a huge tipping point? How does it jump back out of "essentially ice free" once it gets there?

I really don't understand this, but I'm not educated enough to. Where exactly do the cold temperatures required to refreeze substantially come from after all the ice is gone? Isn't all that ice floating there an inherent necessity to reach and maintain such temperatures? Doesn't it directly influence air/water surface temps and such?

So how does it have any chance of refreezing after essentially total melt, to anywhere near "where it should" (where we desperately want it to)?

[5to10]

I suppose I'm viewing the ice as sort of a buffer.. I see it as kind of a chicken/egg scenario. To some extent, to put it roughly, it's cold because there's ice, there's ice because it's cold, this system was well maintained for quite some time.

Now what? Is that just a faulty perspective?

I guess a better question would be.. Is the arctic in general warming at the same rate or a faster rate than the global average? If it's warming at a faster rate, isn't that directly correlated to the amount of receding ice (and all the positive feedbacks that creates)? As in, it would be warming a little bit faster because the ice itself helps regulate temperature.. Does the possibility of hitting such low temperatures heavily decrease or disappear with the ice?

Sorry in advance if this is all nonsense or common knowledge. I just can't fathom how, once the ice is more or less gone, it reforms to any great degree.

[Tigertown]

The idea is that it gets so cold in the Arctic when the sun is not up, that nothing else matters. There are starting to appear to be more and more reasons for that not to be true. One thing being the breakdown of the inversion layer.              http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1885.msg104326/topicseen.html#msg104326
Personally, I think there is enough ice now and that it will take long enough to melt this year so as to have one more screwed up freezing season. However, by next year, when the melt out comes so early in the year, the waters will simply absorb too much energy for there to be a freezing season.


There may be a better thread for this line of thought if it continues to be the focus. Better some of us move it than to burden Neven.

[P-maker]

Gents,

Allow me to intervene in your discussion. The way to define abrupt climate change is not clear at all, but I sense that you will all appreciate that these statements have been made recently in various threads here:

1)   “1C increase a year for 5 straight years, then it levels off for a few years only to rise later by another series of 1C a year for 5 years for a total of 10C!”
2) “some on the forum expect otherwise.”
3)  “A cliff is the right analogy for a range of reasons. Perhaps most starkly it’s climate change…”
4) ” I guess that I should have posted this here instead of the freezing season thread.”
5) " There may be a better thread for this line of thought..."

Having such difficulties defining whether we are falling off a cliff, whether we are in the freezing or melting season and whether poor freezing may lead to rapid melting, I think it is time to get our act together,

By getting our act together, I mean that we should all accept that we are here trying to make a coherent and collaborative risk assessment regarding the ultimate loss of Arctic sea ice. Should we lose it this autumn, we all know that it could potentially be gone forever. Permanent. Full stop. Lost!

Hence I would suggest a new unifying thread under the label: Towards an ice-free 2017. In case we do not reach this state before Christmas, there will be an opportunity to open up a similar 2018 thread.

Such a thread could unite both the various freezing and melting threads. It could include the somewhat speculative “Ice-free Arctic” thread as well as the “Arctic temperature layers and inversions” thread. Sometimes it helps to bring thoughts together.

I would like to see a slower pace here, deeper thoughts, fewer and better links and more reflection. Keeping up with all the valid contributions to this forum is a nearly 24/7 job. No wonder Neven is getting tired. So are the rest of us trying to catch up on North American and Australian contributions, when we wake up in the morning.

It is time to focus, communicate clearly and not get lost in details.

[5to10]

Gents,

Allow me to intervene in your discussion. The way to define abrupt climate change is not clear at all, but I sense that you will all appreciate that these statements have been made recently in various threads here:

1)   “1C increase a year for 5 straight years, then it levels off for a few years only to rise later by another series of 1C a year for 5 years for a total of 10C!”
2) “some on the forum expect otherwise.”
3)  “A cliff is the right analogy for a range of reasons. Perhaps most starkly it’s climate change…”
4) ” I guess that I should have posted this here instead of the freezing season thread.”
5) " There may be a better thread for this line of thought..."

Having such difficulties defining whether we are falling off a cliff, whether we are in the freezing or melting season and whether poor freezing may lead to rapid melting, I think it is time to get our act together,

By getting our act together, I mean that we should all accept that we are here trying to make a coherent and collaborative risk assessment regarding the ultimate loss of Arctic sea ice. Should we lose it this autumn, we all know that it could potentially be gone forever. Permanent. Full stop. Lost!

Hence I would suggest a new unifying thread under the label: Towards an ice-free 2017. In case we do not reach this state before Christmas, there will be an opportunity to open up a similar 2018 thread.

Such a thread could unite both the various freezing and melting threads. It could include the somewhat speculative “Ice-free Arctic” thread as well as the “Arctic temperature layers and inversions” thread. Sometimes it helps to bring thoughts together.

I would like to see a slower pace here, deeper thoughts, fewer and better links and more reflection. Keeping up with all the valid contributions to this forum is a nearly 24/7 job. No wonder Neven is getting tired. So are the rest of us trying to catch up on North American and Australian contributions, when we wake up in the morning.

It is time to focus, communicate clearly and not get lost in details.

I agree, sorry for contributing to bogging this thread up but I can't seem to find anywhere existing to discuss these ideas without being offtopic. It seems like you say that the sooner the better.

From a laymans perspective, I feel like there are a lot of great minds on this forum discussing the fine details and a ton of great information is here regarding them, but I have yet to see something like a concerted work towards a more accurate model of what's going on - incorporating as many known feedbacks above a certain threshold of influence as we know of. Surely it would give a better indicator than published models which fail to account for all of them.

Even if you all started ballparking a timeframe together, or what will happen this melt season, how it will re-freeze.. But I think there is a bit of a fear to do that not just because it doesn't precisely follow scientific method (But there are kind of too many variables to do that accurately, so perhaps throwing that out the window to a degree, i.e. submission for peer review, is in order given the circumstances..), but of a gut feeling of how bad the results will be...

[Tigertown]

There is a thread for this topic that has a lot of leeway in it.
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1886.msg104343/topicseen.html#msg104343

[georged]

What's the evidence that we've reached an annual peak? This thread seems about three or four weeks too early.

[magnamentis]

I don't see how ice can reform anywhere near even the last freeze season once it's open ocean. Too much warming too quickly over the months following, no? I don't understand the physics of it. Shouldn't that be a huge tipping point? How does it jump back out of "essentially ice free" once it gets there?

I really don't understand this, but I'm not educated enough to. Where exactly do the cold temperatures required to refreeze substantially come from after all the ice is gone? Isn't all that ice floating there an inherent necessity to reach and maintain such temperatures? Doesn't it directly influence air/water surface temps and such?

So how does it have any chance of refreezing after essentially total melt, to anywhere near "where it should" (where we desperately want it to)?

in cold winters where temps are between -10 to -20C for a week or two ice forms even very far south.

even though temps are nowadays very high for arctic standards, they are still mostly between -10 and -30C and hence the ocean will freeze over like any other waters, in parts much farther south do, once it's getting long enough cold enough, which both will be the case for many many years to come in the central arctic. keep in mind that we see frozen ocean where the water in summer is often around 5C in places up to 15C like i.e. "ostsee" and still they can freeze over if temps and time span are bouth favourable.

in short, IMO your assumption is wrong, simple as that.

[5to10]

I don't see how ice can reform anywhere near even the last freeze season once it's open ocean. Too much warming too quickly over the months following, no? I don't understand the physics of it. Shouldn't that be a huge tipping point? How does it jump back out of "essentially ice free" once it gets there?

I really don't understand this, but I'm not educated enough to. Where exactly do the cold temperatures required to refreeze substantially come from after all the ice is gone? Isn't all that ice floating there an inherent necessity to reach and maintain such temperatures? Doesn't it directly influence air/water surface temps and such?

So how does it have any chance of refreezing after essentially total melt, to anywhere near "where it should" (where we desperately want it to)?

in cold winters where temps are between -10 to -20C for a week or two ice forms even very far south.

even though temps are nowadays very high for arctic standards, they are still mostly between -10 and -30C and hence the ocean will freeze over like any other waters, in parts much farther south do, once it's getting long enough cold enough, which both will be the case for many many years to come in the central arctic. keep in mind that we see frozen ocean where the water in summer is often around 5C in places up to 15C like i.e. "ostsee" and still they can freeze over if temps and time span are bouth favourable.

in short, IMO your assumption is wrong, simple as that.

I really hope it is, thank you.