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FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1400 on: March 16, 2018, 09:27:40 PM »
The big deal about snow in the sunny months is its albedo. Last June the snow held out on the shores of the Kara and Laptev seas, cooling the Arctic.

This year's big snows in eastern Canada wont do that. The snow fell too far south and will melt out along with the ice in the Labrador sea. Cool conditions in eastern Canada will increase the pressure gradient with western Canada and will pump heat from the Canadian prairies towards the Yukon. In other words, the cold in eastern Canada will be balanced out by warmth in western Canada if the snow sticks around. Its a pattern we see every spring that could be amplified. On the other hand, the snow could just plain melt out pretty early because there's excess ocean heat off of New England.

Albedo is very important to NH temperatures in April May and June and will be a key to Arctic sea ice extent at the end of this summer.

gerontocrat

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1401 on: March 16, 2018, 10:33:37 PM »
The big deal about snow in the sunny months is its albedo. Last June the snow held out on the shores of the Kara and Laptev seas, cooling the Arctic.

Albedo is very important to NH temperatures in April May and June and will be a key to Arctic sea ice extent at the end of this summer.

Who can dispute the Albedo effect on the land? No-one. But; he said, clinging to his point, "late snow on the shores of the Kara and Laptev cooled the Arctic" ? How do we know the importance of snow compared with, say, clouds, winds, currents, sst anomalies? How longer than normal did the snow cover the land and how big an area ? Local effect or Arctic wide?

Is there a nice readable abstract that could put the sense of it all before a reasonably intelligent person who has at least some experience in analysis ?
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oren

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1402 on: March 16, 2018, 11:00:27 PM »
If deeper snow means longer lasting snow, there are albedo effects, though of course difficult to quantify compared to all other effects. But the question I am interested in is whether deeper snow (esp. In famed Quebec) actually means longer-lasting snow. A database is hard to come by, but I plan to have some small result of my "research" next week.

Neven

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1403 on: March 16, 2018, 11:21:16 PM »
Rob Dekker has done, and is still doing, interesting stuff on the correlation between snow cover on land and the minimum. I believe Andrew Slater was also looking into that, before he passed away.
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bbr2314

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1404 on: March 17, 2018, 12:04:48 AM »
If deeper snow means longer lasting snow, there are albedo effects, though of course difficult to quantify compared to all other effects. But the question I am interested in is whether deeper snow (esp. In famed Quebec) actually means longer-lasting snow. A database is hard to come by, but I plan to have some small result of my "research" next week.
Fantastic!

Also, I disagree re: SE Canada.

I think Quebec is unique among Northern Hemisphere landmasses as it is most proximate to Greenland. When sea ice collapses (as has been the case most recent summers), the worse it gets, the more often the winds switch to easterly, allowing plumes of Atlantic moisture to drift over the ice sheet and exit the lee side, spilling over Quebec and Baffin Bay.

This unique geographic situation mitigates the relative middling latitudinal situation by anchoring Quebec with a cold source second only to Antarctica in capabilities. More importantly, the less sea ice there is in the Greenland Sea/near Svalbard, the more prone Greenland is to unloading its heat-bearing capabilities onto Quebec/Baffin (i.e. "-NAO").

I think this mechanism is separate from the heat-loading in the NW NATL, which (IMO) is chiefly responsible for the wintertime snowfall + anomalies.

While ridging into Greenland can also force residual resolution of the heat (i.e., cold) into Europe, the Atlantic modifies these airmasses significantly. Quebec sees no such modification, especially when Baffin is fully iced.

The ice has taken a massive beating across St. Lawrence/near Newfoundland as many others have noted, but I believe Baffin Bay is in the midst of importing the thickest first year and multi-year ice it has seen in many years. It is possible that this acts in tandem with the anomalies in Quebec to delay melt by many weeks, possibly even a month or two.



The 12z EURO shows why Quebec's persistence will have impacts into April and May. The above map shows COLD over all of Eastern North America even though the absolute anomalies are very warm in Quebec and very cold in the Northeast.



The substantive & extensive snowpack across the Northeast/Ontario should serve to buffer Quebec from any heat for the foreseeable future, well into April. It is quite possible in my opinion that we see North American SWE anomalies extend upward once more (historically speaking, there are two maxes). The late & continual unloading of SWE into the NATL may have a very substantive effect of buffering Baffin further against melt.



The question is how long they sustain into spring. My guess is we don't fall below 1,000 KM^3 until 5/1 or later. If that is the case, the differential re: albedo becomes.... VERY major, especially if we extend into June. Not only is this substantial because of how irregular it is vs. normal, but because the background state elsewhere is so much warmer (if Quebec is as cold or colder than normal into early summer, and the NW NATL is warmer than ever, heat resolution is going to result in more powerful LPs than ever before as well).

This perhaps explains why Hansen's storms of yesteryear are borne into fruition and also would be reasonable cause for the rather unprecedented March cold/snow across large portions of the populated NHEM (Northeast US, Europe particularly). This could also have major implications for Greenland and Arctic melt as we move forward (in snyc with what is occurring across Siberia and Okhotsk).

I anticipate we will see the formation of three persistent and dramatic cyclone engines in the vicinity of Newfoundland's eastern waters, the gap between Iceland & Scandinavia, and Kamchatka, as we move forward in the year. The overwhelming SSTA in the mid-latitudes in sync with these ridiculous snowfall anomalies (i.e., capable of supporting cold!) should make for a substantially more efficient resolution of atmospheric heat, and in the absence of a regular jet stream due to the worsening land/ocean gradient, this will take the form of massive cyclonic transport.

Fun times await!

bbr2314

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1405 on: March 17, 2018, 03:05:51 AM »
One more point to add.

If increased snowfall is tied to both warming oceans and wintertime sea ice declines and we are at about 10% less than 10-15 years ago in terms of sea ice while accumulated NHEM snowfall is up 30-40%...

It stands to reason that another 10% decline could easily produce additional accumulated SWE of another 30-40% on TOP of our existing gains.

By the time you get to declines of 30-40% beyond current levels... things are going to be looking increasingly bleak for populated regions.

With an April maximum this year increasingly plausible, I wonder if 2018 is a plateau in the cycle as we hurtle towards Nino in the Pacific? By that, I mean we see a slow melt this year, and probably a record-late minimum, since the snow is still going to melt out and once it does, large parts of the NHEM turn into a furnace. That means that while we could see some protective shielding in May and June, once the heat becomes sustained due to a lack of residual albedo, August, September, October, and possibly even November could be the months of 2018 where large drops occur relative to normal.










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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1406 on: March 17, 2018, 02:46:03 PM »
No doubt we will see more NH snowfall as sea ice coverage declines. Weather systems will have large expanses of open water to pick up moisture and dump it, Having said this, despite the heavy snowfall which resulted in large positive extent anomalies in the fall and early winter, these positive anomalies have all but disappeared, replaced by negative anomalies on the southern peripheries. The earth is warming and this increased snowfall will continue to melt out completely with, perhaps, the exception of Greenland and other sections of the NH which sport year round ice.

I'll stop now because this topic belongs on another thread.

LRC1962

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1407 on: March 17, 2018, 02:55:01 PM »
If deeper snow means longer lasting snow, there are albedo effects, though of course difficult to quantify compared to all other effects. But the question I am interested in is whether deeper snow (esp. In famed Quebec) actually means longer-lasting snow. A database is hard to come by, but I plan to have some small result of my "research" next week.
Not all snow is equal. Get 6' of light powder snow and it can all go in days. On the otherhand you can have 6' of dense wet snow with icy layers and that can stick around for a very long time even in very warm temps.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1408 on: March 17, 2018, 03:05:58 PM »
It is interesting that heavy export of sea ice from the Kara into the Barents has caused SIE in the Barents to approach the maxes achieved in 2013 and 2015. This will result in increased albedo early in this melt season which would seem to be a positive but I am actually quite concerned by the migration of this ice. If you look at the animation provide by A-Team, as the meter plus thick ice exits the Kara and enters the warm waters in the Barents, it immediately begins to thin. This mobility, I fear, is a volume destruction machine that has been in operation much of the winter. Yes the Kara continues to freeze over so that extent there remains at 100% but this ice is thin as well as it has not had enough time to thicken.

Archimid

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1409 on: March 17, 2018, 03:21:16 PM »
Seems like the Bering will be under attack in 5 days from today.

I'm glad the snow is high. It should help in terms of cold storage for use in spring and summer. However I worry about the albedo implications for it. The highest positive anomalies concentrate north, where albedo is less relevant for now. The periphery of snow extent seems to be mostly normal or with a negative anomaly and not particularly large compared to the 60's. So it is a fight of lower albedo in the periphery earlier on vs more cold "stored" in the north. I'm not sure who wins.

Can we have a rule for posting NH snow anomaly related discussion in the Melting/Freezing threads?  To my understanding, the snow anomaly and extent are very relevant to how much heat will be available to melt ice for the summer. But I have heard others that prefer to keep the snow talk out of here. I think they have a good argument for that too. So I'm not really sure.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1410 on: March 17, 2018, 03:39:53 PM »
IMHO, it is perfectly appropriate to talk about current snow anomalies on both the freezing and melting season threads. It is not appropriate to speculate about the implications of trends decades from now.

Archimid

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1411 on: March 17, 2018, 05:25:20 PM »
I like that.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1412 on: March 17, 2018, 06:14:13 PM »
It is interesting that heavy export of sea ice from the Kara into the Barents has caused SIE in the Barents to approach the maxes achieved in 2013 and 2015. This will result in increased albedo early in this melt season which would seem to be a positive but I am actually quite concerned by the migration of this ice. If you look at the animation provide by A-Team, as the meter plus thick ice exits the Kara and enters the warm waters in the Barents, it immediately begins to thin. This mobility, I fear, is a volume destruction machine that has been in operation much of the winter. Yes the Kara continues to freeze over so that extent there remains at 100% but this ice is thin as well as it has not had enough time to thicken.
To underscore and amplify your point, the problem with increased extent in the Barents is this:

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FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1413 on: March 17, 2018, 08:47:13 PM »
It looks to me like melt season will start next week on Weds 21March or Thurs 22March. Until then there will be cold air flowing over multiple peripheral seas expanding the extent, likely overcoming the ice extent loss caused by southerly winds in the Bering sea.

The map below shows the advection of warm air over the icy seas that will likely begin the melt season.

uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1414 on: March 17, 2018, 10:05:03 PM »
An update on the area of thickest ice identified previously by wipneus piomas map and cryosat.

Cryosat Feb15-Mar14
Worldview brightness temperature band15 night Mar2-17 (thickest ice to the right)

numerobis

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1415 on: March 17, 2018, 11:13:42 PM »
Who can dispute the Albedo effect on the land?

Some details to complicate the obvious answer that yes snow has an albedo effect on land:
- Below tree line, you can get meters of snow on the ground with only muted albedo impact because the (coniferous) trees are soaking up heat. Treeline gets up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean in places.
- Above tree line, snow depth points an imperfect picture because it's an average over a relatively large area. Snow depth outside my window is probably 30cm or so on average. There's a snow drift about 2m deep against the house, and there's bare rocks.

As the sun gets warmer and the snow starts to melt, the albedo impact of the remaining snow diminishes: the snow that remains is exactly that snow which is in the shade, where its albedo effect is rather muted.

While the albedo effect is muted, it is a lot colder near the snow. There's a lot fewer bugs when you sit on a snow patch in summer. In terms of what matter for the ice, I assume the snow patches cool off the air, indirectly soaking up the sun -- and limiting the excursions of hot air out onto the sea ice.

jdallen

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1416 on: March 17, 2018, 11:38:57 PM »
An update on the area of thickest ice identified previously by wipneus piomas map and cryosat.

Cryosat Feb15-Mar14
Worldview brightness temperature band15 night Mar2-17 (thickest ice to the right)
That's an awful lot of sub 2.25M ice there....

 Apply an average melt of 1.85M and that's not a lot of margin to depend on.
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oren

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1417 on: March 17, 2018, 11:39:24 PM »
I posted some (hard-to-read) results of my snow depth "research", which proved to be a difficult endeavor in terms of data availability. But the bottom line is quite clear, thick winter snow in Quebec doesn't last much longer on the ground, perhaps delaying melt-out by an extra week in early May. I therefore think too much focus is given to this issue in terms of its potential effect on sea ice (not to mention glaciation). This isn't the final word as Siberia hasn't been examined.
Please click the link to the NH snow cover thread.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,103.msg146189.html#msg146189

jdallen

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1418 on: March 17, 2018, 11:46:20 PM »
Who can dispute the Albedo effect on the land?

Some details to complicate the obvious answer that yes snow has an albedo effect on land:
- Below tree line, you can get meters of snow on the ground with only muted albedo impact because the (coniferous) trees are soaking up heat. Treeline gets up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean in places.
- Above tree line, snow depth points an imperfect picture because it's an average over a relatively large area. Snow depth outside my window is probably 30cm or so on average. There's a snow drift about 2m deep against the house, and there's bare rocks.

As the sun gets warmer and the snow starts to melt, the albedo impact of the remaining snow diminishes: the snow that remains is exactly that snow which is in the shade, where its albedo effect is rather muted.

While the albedo effect is muted, it is a lot colder near the snow. There's a lot fewer bugs when you sit on a snow patch in summer. In terms of what matter for the ice, I assume the snow patches cool off the air, indirectly soaking up the sun -- and limiting the excursions of hot air out onto the sea ice.
Direct transfer of heat from air to ice is minimal, almost inconsequential compared to other forces.

Transfer from sea water and direct insolation are the primary drivers of melt. 

Ocean temperatures will also help buffer the relative air temperature.

Snow albedo is far more important on ice than it is on land.  I look at increased snow load on land as increased opportunity for heat outside of the arctic to be transferred north via melt water.
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uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1419 on: March 18, 2018, 12:35:46 AM »
Snow on the Kara Sea;)
I picked the clearest days between 14-16th March going back to 2014.

uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1420 on: March 18, 2018, 01:21:31 AM »
That's an awful lot of sub 2.25M ice there....

The DMI model has a slightly different view of it.
http://polarportal.dk/en/sea-ice-and-icebergs/sea-ice-thickness-and-volume/ (for those unfamilar with it)

LRC1962

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1421 on: March 18, 2018, 02:45:53 AM »
There is one point of snow on land. It tends to have a large amount of pollutants in it. As snow melts out pollutants then show up at the surface. Then that heats up and as the surface melts it than spreads the heat trough the lower levels causing faster melt.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1422 on: March 18, 2018, 04:27:52 AM »
That's an awful lot of sub 2.25M ice there....

The DMI model has a slightly different view of it.
http://polarportal.dk/en/sea-ice-and-icebergs/sea-ice-thickness-and-volume/ (for those unfamilar with it)
A flip between the 28 and 14 day view from Cryosat also shows some more thickening. Especially above 80°N.

Edit; adding available frames from the ECMWF 00z run now. 850mb temp deviations showing warmer air entering that part around the 22:nd.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2018, 07:40:22 AM by Sleepy »
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1423 on: March 18, 2018, 08:58:02 AM »
Haven't seen this for a long time. Below average temps across the arctic ocean.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/5day/


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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1424 on: March 18, 2018, 12:55:15 PM »
Haven't seen this for a long time. Below average temps across the arctic ocean.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/5day/

1979- 2000 Baseline... Still waaaaay warmer than 1750 pre- industrial (ca + 0,8- 1,4C).

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1425 on: March 18, 2018, 01:59:32 PM »
Haven't seen this for a long time. Below average temps across the arctic ocean.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/5day/

1979- 2000 Baseline... Still waaaaay warmer than 1750 pre- industrial (ca + 0,8- 1,4C).

Really hope we won't go back to 1750 baseline. Nobody really needs that in northern hemisphere. That was little ice age in Europe.

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1426 on: March 18, 2018, 03:28:34 PM »
Haven't seen this for a long time. Below average temps across the arctic ocean.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/5day/

1979- 2000 Baseline... Still waaaaay warmer than 1750 pre- industrial (ca + 0,8- 1,4C).

Really hope we won't go back to 1750 baseline. Nobody really needs that in northern hemisphere. That was little ice age in Europe.

That is not his point. The map suggests that temps are just barely below average when compared to a 1979-2000 baseline which means they are actually well above recent historical average. Don't worry about ever going back to 1750 baseline in the next thousand years.

FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1427 on: March 18, 2018, 04:49:36 PM »
The weather pattern with warm temperatures in temperate Asia and cold weather in the Eurasian Arctic is the result of the sudden stratospheric warming. It is speeding up the spring season in Eurasia and is warming the north Pacific ocean rapidly.

The heat building up in the far north Pacific will impact the Arctic ice later this spring and summer by supplying atmospheric warmth and water vapor which will be advected by storms into the Arctic. Expect the ice on the Pacific side of the Arctic to melt out very early this year.






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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1428 on: March 18, 2018, 06:28:26 PM »
Some interesting developments: the Beaufort lift-off continues with 23,000 sq km of ice from the Northwest Passage about to join the Arctic Ocean (unusual import) and a strong shear line developing along the boundary with the Chukchi and ESS.

The GFS forecast depicted at nullschool sees the current cold clear weather pattern continuing through March 23rd.

The Kara sea ice will continue its spectacular wind-driven disintegration shown in WorldView VIIRS. Oceanographic conditions from Mercator Ocean show the Kara to be almost entirely shallow continental shelf (30m and 100m contours) strongly influenced in salinity and temperature by inflows from the Ob and Yenisev rivers (whose surfaces are still frozen).

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1429 on: March 18, 2018, 06:39:06 PM »
Ascat radar scattering captures ice motion quite well in the Kara and Barents area; it is shown in conjunction with WorldView infrared in the first mp4. Ice flowing past Vize and Ushakov islands leaves lee streamers that conveniently record net transport; Ushakov is 445 km from Novaya Zemlya according to Google Earth WGS84.

DMI ice surface temperatures, not to be confused with 2m or 950 mB air temperatures, have gotten colder (lighter grays) under a weak but persistent high pressure driftingabout the central Arctic.

Ice thickness in the Kara will maintain meagre values however as new ice replaces the large areas of opening leads. Recall a 1000 km long tongue of Kara Sea ice was imported into the Arctic Ocean between 28 Nov 2017 and 09 Jan 2018 -- the new ice forming behind it lost those 42 days of mid-winter for thickening. Ice entering the Barents will prove short-lived as elevated surface water temperatures there have more than adequate energy to melt out incoming ice.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2018, 07:58:05 PM by A-Team »

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1430 on: March 18, 2018, 07:42:24 PM »
The main links I have been using recently are below. It's fairly easy to set up a web browser to refresh them each morning but a bit more to refresh a dozen 30-day time series as some need a passage through Panoply or enhancement and cross-silo multiplexing in ImageJ.

However Dryland et al are closing in on an interactive web page that will automate all of this for anyone that wants it, no graphics or computer skills needed as the code will be all under the hood.

The basic idea is to first generate context for the latest images and to have multiple takes on ice condition (evidentiary consilience) and only then go on to interpret developments. Right now, the main concern is freeze season pre-conditioning of melt season. (There are zero prospects for predicting melt season outcomes as the weather is too important yet largely unknowable.)

Ascat ice roughness daily 2018 075.gif
https://manati.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/ascat_images/ice_image/msfa-NHe-a-2018075.sir.gif

AMSR2 Hamburg sea ice concentration daily png
ftp://ftp-projects.cen.uni-hamburg.de/seaice/AMSR2/3.125km/Arc_20180316_res3.125.png
ftp://ftp-projects.cen.uni-hamburg.de/seaice/AMSR2/3.125km/Arc_20180316_res3.125_LARGE.png

OsiSaf ice drift daily 2018 03 14-03 16.png
http://osisaf.met.no/p/osisaf_hlprod_qlook.php?year=2018&month=03&day=15&action=d%2B&prod=LR-Drift&area=NH&size=100%25

Hamburg SMOS ice thinness daily nc
https://icdc.cen.uni-hamburg.de/thredds/catalog/ftpthredds/smos_sea_ice_thickness/v3/catalog.html

Bremen SMOS ice thinness daily png
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/smos/png/
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/smos/png/20180316_hvnorth_rfi_l1c.png

DMI_SST ice thickness daily 2018 03 11.png
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/sea/CICE_map_thick_LA_EN_20180316.png

DMI_SST ice surface temperature daily 2018 03 11.png
http://polarportal.dk/en/sea-ice-and-icebergs/sea-ice-temperature/#c8099

GFS/Nullschool wind/temperature/pressure 8x daily 5 days out 40 frames
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2018/03/15/1500Z/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-45.00,83.00,1008/loc=0.100,83.690

Mercator Ocean dail + 9-day forecast
http://bulletin.mercator-ocean.fr/en/PSY4#2/62.6/-85.3

WorldView ice visible/infrared daily png
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=Coastlines,VIIRS_SNPP_Brightness_Temp_BandI5_Night

RASM-ESRL ice forecasts daily nc and gif
ftp://ftp1.esrl.noaa.gov/RASM-ESRL/ModelOutput
ftp://ftp1.esrl.noaa.gov/RASM-ESRL/ModelOutput/RASM-ESRL_4UAF_ICE_2018-03-16.nc
ftp://ftp1.esrl.noaa.gov/RASM-ESRL/ModelOutput/REB2.2018-03-16.nc
ftp://ftp1.esrl.noaa.gov/RASM-ESRL/ModelOutput/REB2_plots.2018-03-16.tar.gz

Cryosat ice thickness monthly
ftp://data.meereisportal.de/altim/sea_ice/product/north/cryosat2/cs2awi-v2.0/Latest/l3c_monthly/2018/
ftp://altim:altim@data.meereisportal.de/altim/sea_ice/product/north/cryosat2/cs2awi-v2.0/Latest/l3c_monthly/2018/l3c-awi-seaice-cryosat2-nrt-nh25kmEASE2-201802-fv2.0.nc

https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
« Last Edit: March 21, 2018, 08:14:58 AM by A-Team »

Neven

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1431 on: March 18, 2018, 08:41:50 PM »
Thanks for grouping all those links, A-Team.

Here are DMI sea surface temperature anomalies for March 8th of the past three years. You can almost see the heat shift from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific (not implying that such a shift is actually happening):
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E. Smith

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1432 on: March 18, 2018, 09:32:42 PM »
Haven't seen this for a long time. Below average temps across the arctic ocean.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/wx/5day/

1979- 2000 Baseline... Still waaaaay warmer than 1750 pre- industrial (ca + 0,8- 1,4C).

Really hope we won't go back to 1750 baseline. Nobody really needs that in northern hemisphere. That was little ice age in Europe.

That is not his point. The map suggests that temps are just barely below average when compared to a 1979-2000 baseline which means they are actually well above recent historical average. Don't worry about ever going back to 1750 baseline in the next thousand years.

Almost everything will be above average compared to the 1750 baseline. That was one of the coldest periods in the last 5000 years. Using it as a baseline is extremely misleading.

Dharma Rupa

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1433 on: March 18, 2018, 10:11:55 PM »
Almost everything will be above average compared to the 1750 baseline. That was one of the coldest periods in the last 5000 years. Using it as a baseline is extremely misleading.
So is a baseline starting after the beginning of the industrial revolution...so I guess a baseline from 1750 to now is about the best we are going to find.

uniquorn

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1434 on: March 18, 2018, 11:00:47 PM »
Bering/Chukchi today as another warm wind is forecast for Mar22.

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FishOutofWater

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1435 on: March 19, 2018, 02:54:43 AM »
Right now, there's a persistent atmospheric wave no. 1 that's warming central Asia and the western Pacific. La Niña plus climate change has driven the storm track from the west Pacific into the Arctic ocean many times this year. The warming of the far north Pacific is very real and it's driven by the atmosphere. It's likely to have a large impact on this summer's melt season.

Michael Hauber

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1436 on: March 19, 2018, 03:08:00 AM »
Quote
Kara business as usual
Quote
the bigger the cracks, the thicker the ice
Why do you two post wild personal speculation about Kara sea ice thickness when carefully calibrated daily online satellite data is just a click away? This forum is not a chat room, we try to link to supporting data rather than just opine and share primitive idées fixes.



You posted the visual evidence and stated that it was evidence that the Kara ice was disintegrating.  I simply commented that 'the bigger the cracks, the thicker the ice'.  The thickness charts you post clearly show that areas of thicker ice correspond to areas with bigger cracks.
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jdallen

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1437 on: March 19, 2018, 04:09:59 AM »
Quote
Kara business as usual
Quote
the bigger the cracks, the thicker the ice
Why do you two post wild personal speculation about Kara sea ice thickness when carefully calibrated daily online satellite data is just a click away? This forum is not a chat room, we try to link to supporting data rather than just opine and share primitive idées fixes.



You posted the visual evidence and stated that it was evidence that the Kara ice was disintegrating.  I simply commented that 'the bigger the cracks, the thicker the ice'.  The thickness charts you post clearly show that areas of thicker ice correspond to areas with bigger cracks.
Actually, from what I can see, virtually none of the ice from the Kara is more than 2.25M thick, and far and away most of it is under 1M. 

I'm not sure what you are getting at here.

It will vanish rapidly, especially that which has been shoved unceremoniously into the Barents.
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numerobis

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1438 on: March 19, 2018, 01:30:40 PM »
There is one point of snow on land. It tends to have a large amount of pollutants in it. As snow melts out pollutants then show up at the surface. Then that heats up and as the surface melts it than spreads the heat trough the lower levels causing faster melt.

That’s helpful when skiing: a darker patch of snow will definitely be hard, whereas pure white snow is probably soft (unless it’s windswept — but then it’ll look carved).

LRC1962

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1439 on: March 19, 2018, 03:52:07 PM »
Thanks for grouping all those links, A-Team.

Here are DMI sea surface temperature anomalies for March 8th of the past three years. You can almost see the heat shift from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific (not implying that such a shift is actually happening):
Would it be possible to infer that we can be seeing the inpact of changing currents?
In the case of the Atlanic side the Gulf Stream is moving farther south because of the cold blob and therefore less of its heat is getting into the Arctic.
On the Pacific side the current more or less has staid the same it is just that it is much warmer farther north than it used to be.
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Dharma Rupa

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1440 on: March 19, 2018, 05:21:51 PM »
Would it be possible to infer that we can be seeing the inpact of changing currents?
In the case of the Atlanic side the Gulf Stream is moving farther south because of the cold blob and therefore less of its heat is getting into the Arctic.
On the Pacific side the current more or less has staid the same it is just that it is much warmer farther north than it used to be.

The Gulf Stream is not moving further south, all the western boundary currents are trending poleward.  There does seem to be some pooling of the Gulf Stream in the western Atlantic over the last year or two (and the obvious growing cold spot in the middle North Atlantic), but the current off New England has gotten noticeably closer to the coast -- moving the Lobsters north.

The Atlantic Drift is a bit harder to read, but it is clear that in the far north the Atlantic has gotten hotter above Scandinavia.

Alexander555

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1441 on: March 19, 2018, 07:57:10 PM »
He Gerontocrat, do you have a minute ? Do you maybe know where i can find a pic like this. But only from the last 10 years.

Neven

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1442 on: March 19, 2018, 08:08:30 PM »
He Gerontocrat, do you have a minute ? Do you maybe know where i can find a pic like this. But only from the last 10 years.

I don't know that particular image, but you can try here. And here's an example of how to fill in the various fields.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1443 on: March 19, 2018, 08:10:53 PM »

A-Team

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1444 on: March 19, 2018, 08:19:11 PM »
Here is an update on the Beaufort-Chukchi shear, pop-up of NW Passage cork and wind leveraging of the whole CAA icepack about midway, open up parallel leads.

Neven

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1445 on: March 19, 2018, 08:25:19 PM »
That's a big cork.
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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1446 on: March 19, 2018, 08:35:38 PM »
Here is an update on the Beaufort-Chukchi shear, pop-up of NW Passage cork and wind leveraging of the whole CAA icepack about midway, open up parallel leads.
The cork "popping" may have ominous implications for later in the season.

That the entire Beafort/Chukchi pack is broken up and in such full motion this early is also ominous. That whole region is much further south than the Atlantic side and any open water formed will have very little chance to form more than a few 10s of CM's of ice, if that.
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Dharma Rupa

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1447 on: March 19, 2018, 09:20:43 PM »
Methinks Neven is teasing us on the thaw.

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1448 on: March 19, 2018, 09:21:05 PM »
He Gerontocrat, do you have a minute ? Do you maybe know where i can find a pic like this. But only from the last 10 years.
Hullo Alex,

Just as well Neven and El Cid know what to do - 'cos I ain't got a clue. I'm still struggling with the basics. - such as this. The DMI 80+ North temperature graph has gone below the green line for the first time since 2014. Not only that, but it is a magnificent temperature drop of about 18 degrees kelvin in about two weeks almost without any pause and liable to persist at least until Thursday or Friday.

Now I do know, that melting, when it occurs, will be confined to South of 80 for some time yet and that there is a big debate on the relevance of 2m air temperatures vs. cloudiness (insolation effect), sst anomalies and ocean temps at greater depths and wind, waves, snow on depth on the arctic fringe ....... etc etc. 

I have also read that it is hypothesised that due to weakening of the jet stream large slow moving Rossby waves are liable to form locking in unusual weather patterns for unusual lengths of time. So perhaps this unusual event is a sign of the melting season to come (i.e. long periods of unusual weather )?
« Last Edit: March 19, 2018, 09:39:56 PM by gerontocrat »
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Dharma Rupa

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Re: The 2017/2018 freezing season
« Reply #1449 on: March 19, 2018, 09:34:48 PM »
I believe this is the first time DMI 80N has touched climatology while the temperature was below 245K since late 2015.  I will note that the climate curve has left the bottom and is heading toward Summer melt in the High Arctic.  (The temp did go below 245 once, but it was in the dead of winter, and did not reach to climatologic average.)