The 2019 melting season

[Carex]

Will those six or seven lows, forecast for Wednesday, surrounding a polar high be enough to rotate the entire cap now that it seems unattached to shore?  They look like little sprockets surrounding a large central gear.

[Pmt111500]

Will those six or seven lows, forecast for Wednesday, surrounding a polar high be enough to rotate the entire cap now that it seems unattached to shore?  They look like little sprockets surrounding a large central gear.

Likely not, the islands north of Siberia (Severnaja Zemlja and others too) are a permanent stick in that wheel. Maybe later in summer.

[ReverendMilkbone]

So...new poster here trying to orient myself to what's going in the Arctic. So many variables its tough to get a feel.

Looking at uniquorns gif in post # 776, it appears the ice in the entire Arctic is moving as one. Lifting off the Greenland and Canadian coast and rotating in a clockwise direction.

What stops the whole thing from continuing to rotate around to Fram Strait and exiting?

Check out this timelapse;

Good commentary that explains things.

[Rich]

So...new poster here trying to orient myself to what's going in the Arctic. So many variables its tough to get a feel.

Looking at uniquorns gif in post # 776, it appears the ice in the entire Arctic is moving as one. Lifting off the Greenland and Canadian coast and rotating in a clockwise direction.

What stops the whole thing from continuing to rotate around to Fram Strait and exiting?

Check out this timelapse;

Good commentary that explains things.

Thanks for the video clip. A picture paints a thousand words.

[FishOutofWater]

The whole icepack is starting to rotate and it will get going when the forecast high pressure intensifies. However, it never moves that fast and the Siberian islands do cause ice to pile up and distort the pattern of rotation. The recent pull offs of the pack from both the CAA and Greenland are the first steps in the process. Next comes the powerful high pressure and we'll watch it slowly spin clockwise.

[FishOutofWater]

Yes, Frivolous, this is what I was concerned about 2 weeks ago when the end stratospheric warming went crazy. It set up a pattern of spin down from the stratosphere intensifying blocking patterns in the high north. The strong Scandinavian blocking led to very intense upward wave energy transfer that caused the powerful end warming in the stratosphere. Over the next several months the stratospheric spin down will repeatedly couple with blocks in the troposphere which also rotate clockwise. Upward energy transfer into the stratosphere is over for the summer but downward effects are possible when there's high pressure over the Arctic because the clockwise spins may align. You wrote:

For those who are not aware:


Meteorology speaking this setup is essentially the Holy Grail of having a record-setting Arctic sea ice loss during the summer.

Solar energy right now is booming over the arctic.  The best way to set up things for huge loses of sea ice is sprawling upper level atmospheric ridges of high pressure that exist from top down.

This is the path to dry sinking air and wall to wall sunny skies.

We have never had a May 20-30th GARGANTUAN RIDGE that preconditioned the ice for huge June and July loses.


Stay tuned

Over the weekend I reviewed the stratospheric patterns for summers for the past 20 years and found that the stratospheric end warming conditions increase the odds of the Arctic oscillation being positive or negative - in this case high pressure means negative - but there are many other things going on.

What's starting to happen in May looks like the worst case set up for Arctic ice melt. The figures I looked at showed variability that give me very low confidence in a July forecast based on the end warming patterns by themselves. However, we can use the end stratospheric warming information to evaluate the likelihood that a global model such as the CFS model is making a decent forecast. The CFS model struggles with ocean upwelling, melting snow and ice, and the evolution over time of SSTs, but, based on my experience it may have a good handle on large scale stratospheric tropospheric coupling in the summer.

If it does, were going to witness a new record low in sea ice extent, area and volume this year. The latest CFS runs predict the high pressure and subsidence over the pole and Greenland will persist into July. This CFS model forecast makes sense because of the intense late end season stratospheric warming at the end of April.

[Trebuchet]

 Surface melt in the north of fox basin today. Crazy weather. Last year melt started on June 11th...

[epiphyte]

The ironic part is that whilst all those southward-blowing winds will be pushing ice out into the death zone, carrying the fog and clouds that form over warming ice and open water out of the picture, and leaving the midnight sun to do it's thing, half the people on this forum will be watching the temporarily low extent loss (perhaps even increase) and declaring the whole season a nothingburger.

Sea ice extent and area data is - what is. The midnight sun over the central arctic is - what might be, clouds and fog permitting. In 2017 and 2018 the melting season did become to some extent a nothingburger, despite many predictions of sea ice Armageddon. Instead, it was very slow start to the freeze season, in line with some models' predictions, that was more significant.

We will see if the early signs of a new weather pattern picked up by Frivousz21 happens, or does not. Meanwhile JAXA sea ice extent has gone from lowest to third lowest in short order.

@gerontocrat - don't get me wrong - it wasn't my intent to suggest that changes in extent are uninformative (and BTW your sterling work in tracking them is much appreciated, by me as much as everyone else).  Rather I was opining that depending on the circumstances and the time of year, they might indicate something other than what many might think.

Should Friv's prediction come to pass, I'd hazard that it will likely lead to relatively clear skies, increased ice dispersal/more open water/reduced albedo in the CAB, right at the one time of year when the arctic gets more solar energy every day than anywhere else on the planet. That can't be good. Should this happen, however,  it will likely be concomitant with either a slowing of the decrease, or an actual increase, in extent.

[GoSouthYoungins]

Everything in the barents south of the invisible line between the norther tip of severny island and southern tip of svalbard is going POOF.

[Rich]

As someone who has been lurking here for a few months, I just want to offer a general thanks to the people who populate this community and give it life.

My interest as a climate activist is trying to understand the potential inflection points in earth's climate system and distributing an understanding to others to help tip people into action. Sea ice seems like an extremely important variable to follow because of it's impact on weather and the feedback effects associated with lost albedo and the coming phase change when  the energy currently associated with melting ice is more fully allocated to warming the water.

From the perspective of longer term trends, things obviously don't look good for the Arctic sea ice. The curve of 1980's average ice to 90's to 00's to the current decade is obviously steady decline and our understanding of increasing GHG levels leads us to the almost inescapable conclusion that we're heading in the direction of a BOE in coming decades.

From a standpoint of risk management, it's interesting to hear about the potential short-term weather phenomena that could impact the ice. It conveys to a meteorological layperson like myself the vulnerability of the situation.

As a proxy for the layperson struggling to synthesize meaning from what's going on here, I can tell you that it isn't easy to get a feel for the overall health of the ice. I see the objective 2D measures of extent and area which seem redundant and think the 3D measure is probably at least as valuable but more arduous to measure. I see pictures of the quality of the ice and the comments of those of you who have been following this for years which lead me to an impression (admittedly biased) that things are generally degrading even if the generally accepted 2D measure isn't setting a record low.

This is largely a weather thread. I find the predictions and the conversation interesting. there's a lot to learn here.

[Pmt111500]

@Rich yep, the Arctic weather thread, with occasional visits to temperate weather. Interesting developments occasionally create interesting discussion.

Generally, weather on lower latitudes is discussed within threads in the 'consequences'-section, by the headlines, for example:
Weird and not weird weather (weird preferred) : https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,323.0.html
Droughts 2019: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2579.0.html
,Heatwaves: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2352.0.html

Antarctica has little weather variability so weather of southernmost Oceans and Antarctica itself doesn't have a dedicated thread, and may pop up in 'Antarctica', here, or elsewhere if there's some curious things going on. Some antarctic heatwave (weather over melting point) was discussed at least some years back somewhere.

[Aluminium]

May 9-13.

[Sterks]

Watching tropicaltidbits.com
The worse forecast are going to come to fruition, what can I add. Beaufort and CAA especially are going to suffer big for the time of the year.
Coincidentally or not, snow melt has accelerated all around high latitudes of the NH according to Rutgers, not as warm as 2016 but definitely warming up again.
The perfect storm toward June (that could be quenched by the perfectly normal storm in June,...)

[Eco-Author]

Try to keep up daily... What's happening in Nares is shocking...  I know people keep export of frame, do we have a measure of how much goes through Nares?  I'd love to see the frame numbers again.  Cracking speaks to the health of the ice.  If the ice was solid and thick, you'd likely not see so many smaller parallel cracks-Maybe a few big ones.  Seems as soon as the ice cracks smaller chuncks fill in which isn't a good sign of health.  The more cracks--I think--the more the wind has surface to push on, not to mention being thinner, so perhaps the whole spinning movement is all that extra surface area to push against? 

[El Cid]

I am no expert, but the last years have taught me that for every individual season weather is the allimportant thing despite the long term warming trend of the globe. What is the worst possibble combination for ice (the way I understand it)? Persistent low pressure and cloudy skies during winter to keep the Arctic warm; then high pressure/sunny skies during peak insolation (May,June,July), then big storms (low pressure systems) in August/September.

So far, we have had plenty of sunshine (see chart for past 30 days of sea level pressure), and this , coupled with the fairly new trend (past 2 years) of Pacification leading to the early opening of the Bering is probably weakening the ice very much. We probably won't see it in the extent numners tomorrow, or next week, but given the forecast for the rest of the month (described above by others), we could see serious damage, come June.

[iceman]

.... The latest CFS runs predict the high pressure and subsidence over the pole and Greenland will persist ....

That does look serious. Especially if the highs appear where forecast for June, with the Beaufort and Chukchi already in bad shape and absorbing lots of insolation.

[GoSouthYoungins]

The Pechora Sea just had a ROUGH couple days.

[jdallen]

.... The latest CFS runs predict the high pressure and subsidence over the pole and Greenland will persist ....

That does look serious. Especially if the highs appear where forecast for June, with the Beaufort and Chukchi already in bad shape and absorbing lots of insolation.

The "Lift off" in the Chukchi is very concerning.  That's a lot of open water under sunny skies very early in the melt season.

The ice that is keeping this year's extent above 2016/2018 is being pushed into late season "kill zones" in the Greenland and Barents seas.

I'm watching the weather with considerable concern.

[epiphyte]

The "Lift off" in the Chukchi is very concerning.  That's a lot of open water under sunny skies very early in the melt season.
 

Yup. Open water which isn't freezing, and which has passed the point at which fog/clouds are rapidly forming above it - so the surface air is already above the dewpoint. Laptev too.

This is Not Good At All.

[uniquorn]

'On the ice' temperatures from whoi itp buoys. 4 of them reporting above zero temperatures recently. https://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=163197

[GoSouthYoungins]

It also looks like the melt of the Great Slave Lake is early. Watch for an early break up of the Mackenzie

Mackenzie has been flowing into the ocean the last few days. It is not super early, but it has begun.  The fast ice around the delta won't last long.

More interesting will be to watch the ice off the northern tip of alaska and see how it handles the wind over the next few days.

[Bruce Steele]

Uniquorn, I always thought the buoy temperature was an internal temperature for the buoy. Because there is a electric motor that runs the profiler up and down wouldn't there also be some small amount of heat that affects the buoy temperature readings along with insolation during daylight hours?

[Sterks]

'On the ice' temperatures from whoi itp buoys. 4 of them reporting above zero temperatures recently. https://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=163197

Just starting..
The EC shows 7 days of 24/7 warm air injection from the continent into the Arctic, thru Beaufort CAA and Chukchi. Beyond that, the hint is a warm Pacific side... The run below starts May 15, 00h, for 7 days.

[magnamentis]

The "Lift off" in the Chukchi is very concerning.  That's a lot of open water under sunny skies very early in the melt season.
 

Yup. Open water which isn't freezing, and which has passed the point at which fog/clouds are rapidly forming above it - so the surface air is already above the dewpoint. Laptev too.

This is Not Good At All.

glad you mention dew point. it plays a huge role and is missing in most discussions, predictions and discussions about predictions. conditions falling below dew point is one of the negative feedbacks that plays a role in the last 3 years to doge the canonball.

[FishOutofWater]

These high pressure subsidence zones over the Arctic ocean put warm air over the ice and open water resulting in an thin inversion layer above the ocean. This time of year it gets constant light so thick fog or clouds don't form but it's humid. This situation maximizes uptake of solar heat and keeps outgoing longwave radiation low because the heat goes into melting ice and warming ice water. An extraordinary heat trap is developing over the arctic ocean as we speak. And water vapor - dew points near the air temperature - plays a role in reducing outgoing longwave radiation because it's a powerful greenhouse gas.

[anaphylaxia]

Minor correction, the water vapour is always in the air absorbing long wave radiation. At the dew point it condenses, and makes mist, that is absorbent to the visible spectra, insulating against short wave radiation.

[uniquorn]

Uniquorn, I always thought the buoy temperature was an internal temperature for the buoy. Because there is a electric motor that runs the profiler up and down wouldn't there also be some small amount of heat that affects the buoy temperature readings along with insolation during daylight hours?

Good point Bruce Steele. It is internal temperature and there is some insulation in the buoy so likely to be a time lag as it cools and warms. Buoy temperatures of -40C are not uncommon though so I think these can be seen as a reasonable guide to 'on the ice' temperatures at night.
Electric motor: no. That is on the profiler. A wheel runs it up and down the cable.
Insolation: yes. Likely to be warmer than ice surface temperature and/or air temperature during clear(ish) weather if it isn't covered in snow. A better estimate than the models we all use? I don't know. Should I stop posting them?

whoi tech here https://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=20777 but not a lot of detail about the buoy temperature sensor.

[FishOutofWater]

The light fog or thin low cloud situation is something that's in addition to the dewpoint being high. There is always water vapor, but in the Arctic water vapor pressure is often extremely low. Perhaps that's like a greenhouse with a translucent white plastic cover which acts as a light diffuser.

[Frivolousz21]

Both the Euro and the GFS go straight ham on the Arctic.

The process of the pattern changes already underway. 

During the next two to three days temperatures will still be relatively cool over most of the ice. 

however during this time a rigid high pressure will slowly be developing and spreading across the American Pacific side and into the Canadian basin.

By day three to four the ridge will be substantial and the cold air over 1/3 of the Artic will be scoured out completely with a very warm flow coming straight off the North American continent.

After day for this only intensify and slowly pivots to be more parallel with the Canadian basin.


Eventually spreading across Greenland

[Frivolousz21]

These are just random times next week to show the continuity of the major models with this.


That's absolutely filfthy for getting the Arctic melt season in full gear by June 1st over a large part of the basin.

[Neven]

I have some analysis - nothing too spectacular - at the end of PIOMAS May 2019 that I've just posted on the ASIB. Two images below from that blog post, ECMWF weather forecast and Beaufort yesterday vs a week later in 2016:

[Niall Dollard]

Neven is that our old friend "big block" (RIP) I spy at the top of the 2016 Beaufort image ?

 https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1493.msg83825.html#msg83825

[Pavel]

The Beaufort looks awful but I'm afraid to see how the CAB ice will look in 7-10 days if there will be clear skies and above 0C temperatures. I can't imagine a worse weather pattern

[sark]

Fast atmospheric response to a sudden thinning of Arctic sea ice

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-015-2629-7

[GoSouthYoungins]

Should I stop posting them?

No, they are some of the best actual measurements!

conditions falling below dew point is one of the negative feedbacks that plays a role in the last 3 years to doge the canonball.

Indeed! Seems like this year things are starting to deteriorate from below, but the atmosphere is jealous and wants to play the biggest role.

[Aluminium]

May 11-15.

[Jontenoy]

Does anyone know where I can find the extra energy input / day (power) due to albedo change compared with 1900 or before due to reduced sea ice cover ?

[Rich]

Does anyone know where I can find the extra energy input / day (power) due to albedo change compared with 1900 or before due to reduced sea ice cover ?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24550469/

Try this study. I think it concludes that the forcing equivalent associated with all (sea and land) lost Arctic albedo is equivalent to half of all athropogogenic CO2 emissions.

[gerontocrat]

Does anyone know where I can find the extra energy input / day (power) due to albedo change compared with 1900 or before due to reduced sea ice cover ?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24550469/

Try this study. I think it concludes that the forcing equivalent associated with all (sea and land) lost Arctic albedo is equivalent to half of all athropogogenic CO2 emissions.

Quote from the article summary. Change in albedo 1979 to present equivalent to 25% of change in CO2. Also says  cloudiness -ve feedbacks of little importance.

Averaged over the globe, this albedo decrease corresponds to a forcing that is 25% as large as that due to the change in CO2 during this period, considerably larger than expectations from models and other less direct recent estimates.

Changes in cloudiness appear to play a negligible role in observed Arctic darkening, thus reducing the possibility of Arctic cloud albedo feedbacks mitigating future Arctic warming.

BUT.....in this reply the authors say that -ve feedback from increased cloudiness in the tropics outweighs albedo darkening in the Arctic.
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/21/E2157 
Arctic albedo changes are small compared with changes in cloud cover in the tropics
David R. Legates, Willis Eschenbach, and Willie Soon

Our point is that although Arctic changes may be important, they are small compared with the larger picture of changes in cloud cover in the tropics (Fig. 1). Although the change in total solar energy input is large in the Arctic over the 2000–2012 period, global solar energy input actually decreased by (−0.14 Wm−2), with a majority of the decrease resulting from the Southern Hemisphere (−0.26 Wm−2) rather than the Northern Hemisphere (−0.03 Wm−2). Thus, we argue against Pistone et al.’s (1) conclusion that Arctic darkening “is not offset by cloud albedo feedbacks.”

Also note that the Articles are from 2014. 5 years is a long time in climate science.

EDIT :Also data is up to around 2012 - well before the major change in sea ice in Antarctica starting in 2016

[Rich]

Thanks for the clarification gerontocrat. I'm on a phone and reading the report again is difficult.

I would like to point out that we're not exactly pointing out the same metrics. The author points out the loss of albedo due to sea ice only as being 25% of the equivalent of CO2 emissions.

My post indicated an assumption of more lost albedo from land and sea sources. There is land in the Arctic which is also losing considerable albedo. It has been some time since I investigated this, so not sure where I might have gotten the idea that the loss of land based albedo was equivalent to the sea based.

As far as the age of the science...I'm just trying to provide something responsive for discussion. This was published 5 years ago. If you have something more recent, feel free to share. As you say, climate science is evolving...but I'm not aware of any new developments in the way albedo is calculated.

[Archimid]

Arctic albedo changes are small compared with changes in cloud cover in the tropics
David R. Legates, Willis Eschenbach, and Willie Soon

Willie Soon of Heartland institute fame? I would be very careful with anything from that liar. I'm sure this paper is picking cherries or misleading in some significant way.

[Richard Rathbone]

Its only considering the sunlit months (which is a problem with a lot of albedo analyses, not just this one). Open sea emits more radiation to space than ice covered sea in autumn and winter, so the effect on the average planetary energy balance over the entire year is a lot less.

[MA Rodger]

Concerning
'Legates, Eschenbach & Soon (2014) Arctic albedo changes are small compared with changes in cloud cover in the tropics'( https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/21/E2157.full.pdf ):

All three are well-konwn climate denialists. Their paper has been cited just the once, by Plistone et al (2014) ( https://www.pnas.org/content/111/21/E2159 ). The citation is made by the same authors which the denialists criticised and was made purely to allow the debunking the denialist claims.

[Alphabet Hotel]

Willie Soon of Heartland institute fame? I would be very careful with anything from that liar. I'm sure this paper is picking cherries or misleading in some significant way.

David Legates is affiliated with the Heartland Institute as well:

https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/david-legates

[AmbiValent]

By eyeballing, floe size in the Beaufort seems smaller than in 2016, which would be bad for the ice. But is there an official account of this?

[Tor Bejnar]

Rich wrote:

The author points out the loss of albedo due to sea ice only as being 25% of the equivalent of CO2 emissions.

My 'take home' from this is that, within the Arctic, CO2 is going up and albedo is going down, so ice loss will accelerate.

[Tealight]

Now in mid-May, we are just over a month away from peak insulation. The time the northern hemisphere has it's greatest warming potential. Including Greenland, snow cover extent is still around 50% more than sea ice extent. From an overall albedo perspective this makes sea ice look less relevant than snow cover. At this time 2012 dived to record low snow extent in June and attacked the ice from all sides with continental heat to force widespread meltponding and eventual record low sea ice extent.

This year seems to have pretty average snow cover more in line with 2015 and 2016, but below 2017 and 2018.

[Sciguy]

Does anyone know where I can find the extra energy input / day (power) due to albedo change compared with 1900 or before due to reduced sea ice cover ?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24550469/

Try this study. I think it concludes that the forcing equivalent associated with all (sea and land) lost Arctic albedo is equivalent to half of all athropogogenic CO2 emissions.

If you put the title of the study into a search engine, you can find other more recent studies that cite it as a reference.  Here's a 2019 study that looks at how clouds moderate the impact of the loss of sea ice.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/10/1/12

Atmosphere 2019, 10(1), 12; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10010012

How Much Do Clouds Mask the Impacts of Arctic Sea Ice and Snow Cover Variations? Different Perspectives from Observations and Reanalyses

Anne Sledd * and Tristan L’Ecuyer

Decreasing sea ice and snow cover are reducing the surface albedo and changing the Arctic surface energy balance. How these surface albedo changes influence the planetary albedo is a more complex question, though, that depends critically on the modulating effects of the intervening atmosphere. To answer this question, we partition the observed top of atmosphere (TOA) albedo into contributions from the surface and atmosphere, the latter being heavily dependent on clouds. While the surface albedo predictably declines with lower sea ice and snow cover, the TOA albedo decreases approximately half as much. This weaker response can be directly attributed to the fact that the atmosphere contributes more than 70% of the TOA albedo in the annual mean and is less dependent on surface cover. The surface accounts for a maximum of 30% of the TOA albedo in spring and less than 10% by the end of summer. Reanalyses (ASR versions 1 and 2, ERA-Interim, MERRA-2, and NCEP R2) represent the annual means of surface albedo fairly well, but biases are found in magnitudes of the TOA albedo and its contributions, likely due to their representations of clouds. Reanalyses show a wide range of TOA albedo sensitivity to changing sea ice concentration, 0.04–0.18 in September, compared to 0.11 in observations.

The reduced sensitivity of TOA albedo to surface cover is important for the ice-albedo feedback.  Our work supports previous studies that have found reduced ice-albedo feedback parameters due to clouds [17,18]. We have found that clouds mask the surface albedo and damp changes in surface cover at the TOA. When the surface albedo is sensitive to SIC changes in the summer and fall, the surface contribution to the TOA albedo is low, leading to reduced changes at the TOA. There is nuance, though.  Clouds do not simply replace underlying snow and ice. While clouds have higher albedos than open  ocean, there is still a measurable difference (0.15) in TOA albedo between land with and without snow cover and ocean with and without sea ice cover. Clouds may reduce the ice-albedo feedback, but the radiative effects of clouds at the TOA are unlikely to be large enough to prevent the ice-albedo feedback from continuing and contributing to Arctic amplification.

[FishOutofWater]

Willie Soon and Lindzen, both deniers, have been wildly wrong about the effects of tropical clouds and the planetary energy balance. There have been many recent papers on clouds in the tropics and subtropics that debunked their theories.

[binntho]

This year seems to have pretty average snow cover more in line with 2015 and 2016, but below 2017 and 2018.

The graph you included shows this year compared to 2012 - I assume. If that is the case, to me this year does not look significantly different re. snow cover.