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cesium62

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3300 on: July 30, 2017, 09:52:37 PM »
Very little in the Beaufort looks safe right now.


Nice 15 m/s wind right now and staying like this for a while (Earth nullschool).

From that view, it looks to me like the ice on the Pacific side will compactify to the northwest and be  kept safer.  Are animations of low pressure systems misleading?

The most unsafe ice looks north of the Barents sea.

The 49km/h, 2.7C southerlies over the Nares strait look interesting...

Thawing Thunder

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3301 on: July 30, 2017, 09:59:09 PM »
Worst case 72 hours (correction: 3 daily images=48 hours, not: 3 x 24 hours  ::)) composite of thin areas, contrast enhanced. If one supposes that in many cases clouds hinder a correct depiction of the ground, this could be an approximation of what's happening there - though certainly an exaggerated one, please have this in mind.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2017, 02:07:34 AM by Thawing Thunder »
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3302 on: July 30, 2017, 11:21:55 PM »
    : NeilT  Today at 07:07:24 PM

        Very little in the Beaufort looks safe right now.


Quote
    Nice 15 m/s wind right now and staying like this for a while (Earth nullschool).

Quote
From that view, it looks to me like the ice on the Pacific side will compactify to the northwest and be  kept safer.  Are animations of low pressure systems misleading?

The most unsafe ice looks north of the Barents sea.

The 49km/h, 2.7C southerlies over the Nares strait look interesting...

Yes they are. Ice drift is considerably to the right of what direction the wind is pushing it. not sure how many degrees, something like 30-60 degrees if memory serves. I think theres formulae based on berg thickness, windspeed etc.
Could be a little compaction as it queues to get thru the CAA channels, but only real compaction possible looks to be against Sev Zem. Which is bad cause it seems to be making the hot Atlantic water build its current through the straight and along the Siberian arctic shelf, and probably freshen it enough to keep it on the wide, shallow shelf mixing zone.
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Hyperion

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3303 on: July 30, 2017, 11:47:05 PM »
<snip; N.>
« Last Edit: July 31, 2017, 12:55:13 AM by Neven »
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3304 on: July 31, 2017, 01:39:24 AM »
Seems like this little LP system that is in the Arctic now will last a minute, but does it really have enough oomph* to it to stir things up?

*Definition 3.   https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oomph



P.S.   
Quote
compactify
That sounds like something W would have come up with. ;) ;) ;) Correctify me if I am wrong.


I stand correctified folks.  cesium62 sent me the link       https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/compactify
« Last Edit: July 31, 2017, 04:11:17 AM by Tigertown »
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Tigertown

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3305 on: July 31, 2017, 06:41:21 AM »
The little storm is having some effect, after all. Some pressure appears to be building (compaction) going into parts of the CAA. We will see now how long that will last, before the ice pushes through.
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3306 on: July 31, 2017, 10:29:49 AM »
Bit of a jam in Lincoln

Bill Fothergill

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3307 on: July 31, 2017, 11:10:33 AM »
It would be better though if you'd actually link to the Greenland 2017 melt season thread so people can read what's being written there and write something themselves if they'd like.  :)
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subgeometer

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3308 on: July 31, 2017, 11:49:48 AM »
The little storm is generating 60kmh winds over the pacific edge of central pack today, according to GFS anyway.

The Windy/ECMWF forecast show it drawing in warm moist air delivering 10-36mm to a broad swathe north of the CAA in a couple of days.  Rain at 2mm an hour for 12 hours on Wednesday at the location pinpointed. I don't think it's snow. I've attached a Precipation map for the next 3 days with the forecast embedded as well surface and 850mb temp as the rain sets in

 It would be great there were more observations to back them forecasts of course. Do vessels like the Healy that was the source for the images of the Beaufort ice publish weather logs?

There will also be intense southerly winds north of the CAA aand out of Nares strai to accompany the rain so I've adde an extra attachment

« Last Edit: July 31, 2017, 12:10:13 PM by subgeometer »

Sterks

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3309 on: July 31, 2017, 12:01:35 PM »
The little storm is having some effect, after all. Some pressure appears to be building (compaction) going into parts of the CAA. We will see now how long that will last, before the ice pushes through.

It is quite confusing to hear of a storm compacting stuff on the ocean. In the movies, castaways finish up expelled from the storm, waking up on a shore, well, the same for ice. 
This storm will spread out a lot of ice. It seems that other storms will follow the same path forming a train, which can end breaking and spreading the pack finishing on a similar shape as of 2016. Just that this is thinner younger ice.
The general circulation adds a small push in the to-Atlantic direction.
Expect sustainable decreases of area, and extent for at least the first half of August. Bottom melt won't stop until well into September or beyond

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3310 on: July 31, 2017, 12:52:10 PM »
Meanwhiles, Colorado says there is some ~10% chance 2017 minimum will be less than 2M km2; mighty nice photo of "swiss cheeze" ice in Victoria Strait, along with the story of earliest-ever completion of NW passage is published here; Nathan Kurtz from Icebridge reports "much more deformed" (than ever, supposedly) ice, after flying the mission; and we have some people in this topic somehow believing that we ain't gonna get no "records" for ASI this year. Huh.
To everyone: before posting in a melting season topic, please be sure to know contents of this moderator's post: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,3017.msg261893.html#msg261893 . Thanks!

subgeometer

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3311 on: July 31, 2017, 01:27:32 PM »
20 days in the Beaufort Sea. The area shown is from about 73-77N, 137-157W.

To my eye concentration increases as melt sets in, before catastrophically collapsing

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3312 on: July 31, 2017, 02:31:13 PM »
 Sterks,
Quote
It is quite confusing to hear of a storm compacting stuff on the ocean


Exactly. At least on the open ocean. I don't expect the ice in the passages to make a very firm backstop for long before the ice pushes through. It is possible that it already has started moving south, and it is a matter of waiting on updated images.
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magnamentis

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3313 on: July 31, 2017, 03:02:04 PM »
Sterks,
Quote
It is quite confusing to hear of a storm compacting stuff on the ocean


Exactly. At least on the open ocean. I don't expect the ice in the passages to make a very firm backstop for long before the ice pushes through. It is possible that it already has started moving south, and it is a matter of waiting on updated images.

check o-buoy-14's gps data that just accelerated it's southward journey, could well stand for the general direction of movement in that area. should the garlic press pick up even more speed there most probably will be a significant impact on the thickness and amount remaining in the CAA at the end of the melting season.

Neven

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3314 on: July 31, 2017, 03:21:58 PM »
I'd actually find it more interesting for things to remain quiet, with only that weak, persistent low hovering over the Arctic Ocean, until the end of the melting season, and then see how much ice melts out anyway. That would be way more educative.

If 2017 would then still end up in the Top 5, or Top 3 even, we can be fairly sure that records will be smashed once a similar year comes along with melt ponding similar to May and June 2012. And that's without considering ocean heat flux.
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3315 on: July 31, 2017, 03:42:07 PM »
The story of earliest-ever completion of NW passage is published here

It's also published in rather more detail here on this very forum:

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,762.msg121973.html#msg121973

Bear in mind that the vessel in question is an icebreaker, and that the opinion of the ice pilot on board was that:

Quote
Less [MYI in Larsen Sound] than charts indicate. More Second Year than old ice but still a challenge. Would stop non icebreakers in their tracks.

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3316 on: July 31, 2017, 04:18:03 PM »
I'd actually find it more interesting for things to remain quiet, with only that weak, persistent low hovering over the Arctic Ocean, until the end of the melting season, and then see how much ice melts out anyway. That would be way more educative.

If 2017 would then still end up in the Top 5, or Top 3 even, we can be fairly sure that records will be smashed once a similar year comes along with melt ponding similar to May and June 2012. And that's without considering ocean heat flux.
That education would be very sterile. You would never know how much melt was due to the sheer thinness of the ice, and how much would have been facilitated by a not-so-innocuous persistent cyclone in August.
Unless you embark in further analyses

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3317 on: July 31, 2017, 05:40:52 PM »
Sterks,
Quote
It is quite confusing to hear of a storm compacting stuff on the ocean


Exactly. At least on the open ocean. I don't expect the ice in the passages to make a very firm backstop for long before the ice pushes through. It is possible that it already has started moving south, and it is a matter of waiting on updated images.

With regards to Nares, we've had southerlies all month long in south baffin.

jdallen

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3318 on: July 31, 2017, 08:13:05 PM »
20 days in the Beaufort Sea. The area shown is from about 73-77N, 137-157W.

To my eye concentration increases as melt sets in, before catastrophically collapsing
Dovetailing with subgeometer.

This is the Beaufort on the 29th, a still, and shows about a quarter million KM2 of extraordinarily weak ice.  I'm doubting it will survive the coming storms/dipole, which at 72 hours out, the first one looks pretty certain.

Generally when Ice looks like that, I give it about a week before most of it is gone.
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romett1

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3319 on: July 31, 2017, 09:35:41 PM »
I compared Jul 30 vs Jul 23. Images: ftp://ftp-projects.cen.uni-hamburg.de/seaice/AMSR2/

Neven

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3320 on: July 31, 2017, 10:00:02 PM »
That education would be very sterile. You would never know how much melt was due to the sheer thinness of the ice, and how much would have been facilitated by a not-so-innocuous persistent cyclone in August.
Unless you embark in further analyses

Well, that persistent cyclone, as long as it doesn't go really low or gets coupled with some serious high pressure on the American side of the Arctic, is actually the best set-up for ice retention.

So, if the ice melts out massively anyway, you know almost for certain it's due to the sheer thinness of the ice (only other suspect would be ocean heat flux which is difficult to measure). That would make it quite unequivocal.

It would show us what is the least you can expect when volume is as low at the melting season as it was this year. You can expect more - records being smashed or even the 'ice-free' state being reached - if there is more build-up of melting momentum during May and June (à la 2010 and 2012), and/or exceptionally sunny and warm weather (à la 2007), and/or a GAC in August (à la 2012 and 2016).

That is what it would teach us if there is no GAC or Mega-Dipole to muddy the waters. You'd basically get a blueprint of how the first 'ice-free' year could come about. IMHO, of course.
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3321 on: July 31, 2017, 10:40:26 PM »
 
but, Neven .. it would no longer seem reasonable to hope that we can avoid storms in August or Sept . The surface melting season could hardly have been kinder to the central pack . Could we have hoped to get here in better condition considering where we started ? I doubt it . And yet ..

just now the second of the triple spiral of lows is deepening rapidly , the first one has possibly unlocked the 'Garlic press' .. this one will certainly muddy the waters off Russia and the third may bite the Laptev .. and then we have forecasts finding ways to a deeper more central cyclone .  .

In the meantime more little moisture laden lows slip in through Bering .. yet another feature I've not noticed before . The next week will see a push toward Fram and the ice-gobbling goblins of the north Atlantic .

sadly we have no 'dummy run'.. yet this world is dummy run ..

 
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3322 on: July 31, 2017, 11:33:44 PM »
Since it's still July (just) here in sun-drenched England (or possibly just "drenched"), I thought I'd have a quick decko at NSIDC's 5-day Charctic can show how many annual minimums (since 1979) have already been beaten this early in the 2017 melt season...

1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983
1986, 1987, 1988, 1989
1992
1994
1996

Those digit counters are going to continue to fall (with apologies to The Who), and, in a few weeks time, it should start to become clear just how bad it's going to get.

Sterks

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3323 on: July 31, 2017, 11:46:12 PM »
That education would be very sterile. You would never know how much melt was due to the sheer thinness of the ice, and how much would have been facilitated by a not-so-innocuous persistent cyclone in August.
Unless you embark in further analyses

Well, that persistent cyclone, as long as it doesn't go really low or gets coupled with some serious high pressure on the American side of the Arctic, is actually the best set-up for ice retention.

Thank you for the detailed response.  :)
Yet, "allow me to retort..." The isobars of this afternoon show this is no GAC, yet there is some come-go pairing with persistent highs in America.
The drift I would not call ice retention, rather ice catapulting to all-around warmer waters.
This will "rinse and repeat" in 120 hours per ECMWF.

Neven

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3324 on: August 01, 2017, 12:00:10 AM »

but, Neven .. it would no longer seem reasonable to hope that we can avoid storms in August or Sept . The surface melting season could hardly have been kinder to the central pack . Could we have hoped to get here in better condition considering where we started ? I doubt it . And yet ..

I didn't say this would happen (ie the weak, persistent low making it all the way to the end of the melting season). As Sterks points out, something Dipole-ish may already be in the works. I just expressed a wish for the sake of analysis.

I mean, imagine how 'cool' it would be to have weather that's fit for a rebound year, but the melting season actually ending really low, like Top 3?

Or maybe I'm just scared of how much a little GAC could amplify that and have 2017 end in striking distance of 2012.  :o

Either way, this is one hell of a melting season (analysis-wise), and I still feel that the Arctic is dodging a cannonball. But if volume stays low in years to come... Well, let's just say, you can't dodge cannonballs forever.

That would be the gist of my story if I were to blog on this (hopefully next year again).
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3325 on: August 01, 2017, 12:18:31 AM »
Since it's still July (just) here in sun-drenched England (or possibly just "drenched"), I thought I'd have a quick decko at NSIDC's 5-day Charctic can show how many annual minimums (since 1979) have already been beaten this early in the 2017 melt season...

1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983
1986, 1987, 1988, 1989
1992
1994
1996

Those digit counters are going to continue to fall (with apologies to The Who), and, in a few weeks time, it should start to become clear just how bad it's going to get.
I've noticed that each of those years had warmer the DMI north of 80 temperatures in summer than 2017. This year it still below average for the entire melting season but was above average for the whole freezing season.

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3326 on: August 01, 2017, 05:41:57 AM »
Call me a pessimist if you want but the Bremen concentration map for the 31st does not look like a top 5. It looks more like a contender for the record or very close.

The pattern appears to be more than expected damage for every weather event. Even if it doesn't resolve into direct stats immediately.

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3327 on: August 01, 2017, 06:30:45 AM »
Yeah, looking stormy... current weather (pressure, wind, waves):
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3328 on: August 01, 2017, 06:32:22 AM »
Forecast 5 days from now:
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3329 on: August 01, 2017, 07:12:39 AM »

Am I crazy to think the weather will probably change for the worse as the season gets closer to changing? I don't necessarily mean huge storms but simply more movement and waves and less calm, and moderate storms at the least.

Well I'll be, Aunt Bee, I guess I am not crazy.
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3330 on: August 01, 2017, 07:42:08 AM »
I think we can all agree that this has so far been an extraordinary melting season, specifically because we don't know which way it is going.

Early in the season, we had these record low PIOMAS numbers that suggested a record low was upcoming, while Schroeder's May melting-pond measure and that almost record high land snow anomaly that suggested a 'rebound' year was in the works.

Then through the melting season, 'extent' was running near record low, while 'area' was in the the middle of the pack, suggesting 7th place or so.

Now it's August, and we still don't know.
A less-used metric, Arctic-Roos, adds to the uncertainty :
Arctic-Roos extent runs with the champions of extent loss :
http://web.nersc.no/WebData/arctic-roos.org/observation/ssmi1_ice_ext.png

while Arctic-Roos 'area' is heading for 2013/2014 levels :
http://web.nersc.no/WebData/arctic-roos.org/observation/ssmi1_ice_area.png

This season is like a good 'suspense' movie, where the outcome is unknown until the very last scene...

[edit] At some point, something has got to give. Either 'extent' loss will start to slow down, or 'area' loss will speed up. Personally, I think that with average weather it will be the first, since 'area' typically is a better indicator of ice melt than 'extent'.
« Last Edit: August 01, 2017, 07:57:17 AM by Rob Dekker »
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3331 on: August 01, 2017, 08:20:59 AM »
I mean, imagine how 'cool' it would be to have weather that's fit for a rebound year, but the melting season actually ending really low, like Top 3?

That would be interesting, but I'm not sure if we would be able to draw any firm conclusions from it.
For example, PIOMAS volume in 2016 was not that much different from 2017, and 2016 NSIDC clocked in at 4.7. So if 2017 would be much lower than that, would you say that that was because of low ice volume ? And what was the cause if 2017 will be higher ?
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3332 on: August 01, 2017, 08:41:09 AM »
while Arctic-Roos 'area' is heading for 2013/2014 levels
NSIDC area has also flattened in the last few weeks, whereas JAXA and Wipneus' high-res home-brew have not.

https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/amsr2/grf/amsr2-area-all-cmpare.png

There certainly is a lot of inconsistent evidence. (But perhaps this is to be expected if old trends are starting to break down.)
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3333 on: August 01, 2017, 08:58:41 AM »
There certainly is a lot of inconsistent evidence. (But perhaps this is to be expected if old trends are starting to break down.)

Sure there is, especially since there are a lot of different measures in that Wipneus' graph.
If we follow AMSR2 3.125 resolution on that graph, it shows that 2017 'area' is currently between 2015/2016 and 2013/2014. Maybe that is where it is heading...
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3334 on: August 01, 2017, 10:30:26 AM »
Since it's still July (just) here in sun-drenched England (or possibly just "drenched"), I thought I'd have a quick decko at NSIDC's 5-day Charctic can show how many annual minimums (since 1979) have already been beaten this early in the 2017 melt season...

1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983
1986, 1987, 1988, 1989
1992
1994
1996

Those digit counters are going to continue to fall (with apologies to The Who), and, in a few weeks time, it should start to become clear just how bad it's going to get.
I've noticed that each of those years had warmer the DMI north of 80 temperatures in summer than 2017. This year it still below average for the entire melting season but was above average for the whole freezing season.


So what exactly caused the high summer temp averages during the 1958-2002 summers? Sea ice was much more extensive back then so where exactly did the warming come from? More sunshine, less clouds?

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3335 on: August 01, 2017, 10:40:58 AM »
Probably the more open water the more clouds, more snow and lower temperatures in summer. But in general this pattern of warm winters and cooler summers leads to reduce ice volume in the arctic as we can see

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3336 on: August 01, 2017, 11:38:56 AM »
And: While in summer the temperature differences are minor, in winter they become really big.

Yeah, looking stormy... current weather (pressure, wind, waves):

Even if that's not a GAC, it hits exactly where we actually find the weakest ice.
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JayW

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3337 on: August 01, 2017, 11:44:11 AM »
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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3338 on: August 01, 2017, 12:56:01 PM »
A recently published academic paper on the findings of the 2014 Beaufort Sea Marginal Ice Zone project:

"Winter-to-summer transition of Arctic sea ice breakup and floe size distribution in the Beaufort Sea"

The authors include familiar names such as Schweiger, Perovich and Wadhams, and the paper may provide additional insight into what's currently going on in the 2017 Beaufort Sea MIZ? A couple of snippets:

Quote
During the winter of 2014, more than 50 autonomous drifting buoys were deployed in four separate clusters on the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea, as part of the Office of Naval Research MIZ program. These systems measured the ocean-ice-atmosphere properties at their location whilst the sea ice parameters in the surrounding area of these buoy clusters were continuously monitored by satellite TerraSAR-X Synthetic Aperture Radar. This approach provided a unique Lagrangian view of the winter-to-summer transition of sea ice breakup and floe size distribution at each cluster between March and August. The results show the critical timings of a) temporary breakup of winter sea ice coinciding with strong wind events and b) spring breakup (during surface melt, melt ponding and drainage) leading to distinctive summer ice floes. Importantly our results suggest that summer sea ice floe distribution is potentially affected by the state of winter sea ice, including the composition and fracturing (caused by deformation events) of winter sea ice, and that substantial mid-summer breakup of sea ice floes is likely linked to the timing of thermodynamic melt of sea ice in the area.

and:

Quote
This study highlights the challenges and promise of future modeling work. The distribution of refrozen leads/flaws within a winter floe is important for predicting the summer floe size distribution (FSD); thus, improving the representation of winter sea ice will be useful for predicting the summer FSD. This study also demonstrates a link between summer floe breakup and sea ice melting. Accurate parameterization of sea ice melting, including the effects of melt ponds is essential for predicting and evolving the summer FSD. Despite significant and fast-evolving efforts, models of the FSD are still at an early stage of development and validation, and evaluating their agreement with observations here and in other FSD studies is an important area of future work.

Finally here's what ice mass balance buoy 2014C revealed during the summer of 2014:
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Daniel B.

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3339 on: August 01, 2017, 02:16:08 PM »
Probably the more open water the more clouds, more snow and lower temperatures in summer. But in general this pattern of warm winters and cooler summers leads to reduce ice volume in the arctic as we can see

If so, could we have entered an era in which the sea ice maxima start falling, but the minima start rising or remain flat?  Afterall, the minima has been flat over the past decade.  Granted the spread has been much greater than previously. 

Thawing Thunder

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3340 on: August 01, 2017, 02:39:42 PM »
Afterall, the minima has been flat over the past decade.

This is a misinterpretation, based on a quite willfully selection of the timeframe. 2007, 2011, 2016 have become an new normal, but 2012 is just waiting to take that place. There isn't anything such like a flat minima. The Arctic is warming and loosing ice constantly, but just not on a straight downward line.
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F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3341 on: August 01, 2017, 03:08:54 PM »
If so, could we have entered an era in which the sea ice maxima start falling, but the minima start rising or remain flat?  Afterall, the minima has been flat over the past decade.  Granted the spread has been much greater than previously.
No. We could have intered an era in which majority of people have their brain surface being minimum and flat, that's true. As for how much ice Arctic has at the summer minimum, - nope, last decade is not flat at all. We have this beautiful picture illustrating what i just said very nicely (if i'm not mistaken, this copy of it is shared for us by Neven himself):



Sigh... By the way, will we have PIOMAS update any time soon? Which day they're rolling it out?
« Last Edit: August 01, 2017, 03:20:30 PM by F.Tnioli »
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3342 on: August 01, 2017, 03:14:12 PM »
The question is a good one by someone who has only posted comments a few times on this site and the responses were unnecessarily harsh. It has been my experience throughout my professional career that sets of "new eyes" asking new questions are the most common source of breakthroughs in understanding.

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3343 on: August 01, 2017, 03:18:49 PM »
I've noticed that each of those years had warmer the DMI north of 80 temperatures in summer than 2017. This year it still below average for the entire melting season but was above average for the whole freezing season.


However, comparing it with 2012...


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Robert A. Heinlein

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3344 on: August 01, 2017, 03:20:37 PM »

If so, could we have entered an era in which the sea ice maxima start falling, but the minima start rising or remain flat?  Afterall, the minima has been flat over the past decade.  Granted the spread has been much greater than previously.
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F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3345 on: August 01, 2017, 03:23:03 PM »
The question is a good one by someone who has only posted comments a few times on this site and the responses were unnecessarily harsh. It has been my experience throughout my professional career that sets of "new eyes" asking new questions are the most common source of breakthroughs in understanding.
I understand your concern, but please do understand why responses were what they were, too: what you call "harsh" is in fact quite natural reaction to a _statement_ which was made. The one about last decade being "flat". We're totally welcome here for all kinds of people, but we do oppose much incorrect statements - in as much as our opinions go, we don't pretend to be always right and never mistake, but still, - with passion. It's kind of... quirk of certain scientific ways. :)
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F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3346 on: August 01, 2017, 03:31:01 PM »
I've noticed that each of those years had warmer the DMI north of 80 temperatures in summer than 2017. This year it still below average for the entire melting season but was above average for the whole freezing season.


However, comparing it with 2012...


Exactly. In fact, this melting season _has_ to have a bit below-average summer SSTs simply because of so much higher fragmentation. This sort of a melting season, which i called a "soup" melting season on a few occasions recently, inevitably leads to much higher total water-ice surface (summed up through the whole Arctic), which means two things: more ice is being melt with everything else being the same, AND more water is being cooled by the melt, too. Natural!
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3347 on: August 01, 2017, 03:50:39 PM »
If so, could we have entered an era in which the sea ice maxima start falling, but the minima start rising or remain flat?  Afterall, the minima has been flat over the past decade.  Granted the spread has been much greater than previously.
Actually, the last decade, since 2007, HAS been rather flat. And there is an underlying physical reason for the phase shift - 2007 saw most of the multi-year ice (MYI) flushed out, and changed the arctic fundamentally. Due to the warming all around, the MYI has never recovered. So since 2007 it has been mostly first-year ice that melts and then refreezes, leading to a more stable pattern.
However, what you see on the surface (minima rather flat) hides other factors. The weather required to reach the "new normal" minimum used to be exceptionally ice-unfriendly. Last year and even more so this year, it required exceptionally ice-friendly weather just to stay within the norm rather than reach a new record. Last year had a lot of MYI in the Beaufort and ESS that helped prevent a new record when the great cyclone came, this year has no MYI in those areas. So I would say the ice fundamentals continue to deteriorate, even as the headline numbers seem to be stable. This won't last, IMHO.

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3348 on: August 01, 2017, 03:57:16 PM »
If so, could we have entered an era in which the sea ice maxima start falling, but the minima start rising or remain flat?  Afterall, the minima has been flat over the past decade.  Granted the spread has been much greater than previously.
Actually, the last decade, since 2007, HAS been rather flat. And there is an underlying physical reason for the phase shift - 2007 saw most of the multi-year ice (MYI) flushed out, and changed the arctic fundamentally. Due to the warming all around, the MYI has never recovered. So since 2007 it has been mostly first-year ice that melts and then refreezes, leading to a more stable pattern.
However, what you see on the surface (minima rather flat) hides other factors. The weather required to reach the "new normal" minimum used to be exceptionally ice-unfriendly. Last year and even more so this year, it required exceptionally ice-friendly weather just to stay within the norm rather than reach a new record. Last year had a lot of MYI in the Beaufort and ESS that helped prevent a new record when the great cyclone came, this year has no MYI in those areas. So I would say the ice fundamentals continue to deteriorate, even as the headline numbers seem to be stable. This won't last, IMHO.
Aaah, so we have simple misunderstanding here, too! Term "past decade" / "last decade" refers to either 2000s (2000 .... 2009), or as you said may also refer to 2007 ... 2016. I'm quite sure "by the book" meaning - is the former. But even if it'd be the latter - look at that volume picture i posted couple messages above. Is it "flat"? Hell no. It's all bumpy, volatile as hell. And volatility is one of main signs of imminent collapse, you know? So, yeah. Better wording would help.
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Re: The 2017 melting season
« Reply #3349 on: August 01, 2017, 03:59:18 PM »
If so, could we have entered an era in which the sea ice maxima start falling, but the minima start rising or remain flat?  Afterall, the minima has been flat over the past decade.  Granted the spread has been much greater than previously.
Actually, the last decade, since 2007, HAS been rather flat. And there is an underlying physical reason for the phase shift - 2007 saw most of the multi-year ice (MYI) flushed out, and changed the arctic fundamentally. Due to the warming all around, the MYI has never recovered. So since 2007 it has been mostly first-year ice that melts and then refreezes, leading to a more stable pattern.
However, what you see on the surface (minima rather flat) hides other factors. The weather required to reach the "new normal" minimum used to be exceptionally ice-unfriendly. Last year and even more so this year, it required exceptionally ice-friendly weather just to stay within the norm rather than reach a new record. Last year had a lot of MYI in the Beaufort and ESS that helped prevent a new record when the great cyclone came, this year has no MYI in those areas. So I would say the ice fundamentals continue to deteriorate, even as the headline numbers seem to be stable. This won't last, IMHO.

Thank you Oren. This is how it is done.