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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #550 on: May 12, 2014, 05:09:41 PM »
Inuvik (located on the east channel of the Mackenzie Delta) is forecast to be +18 °C later today, and +21 °C tomorrow:

http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nt-30_metric_e.html
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jdallen

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #551 on: May 12, 2014, 06:17:09 PM »
Inuvik (located on the east channel of the Mackenzie Delta) is forecast to be +18 °C later today, and +21 °C tomorrow:

http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/nt-30_metric_e.html
Good Grief!

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Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #552 on: May 12, 2014, 07:38:22 PM »
Seems like really warm weather will blow over Chukchi and East siberian Sea sea in about 5 days.. Think we'll see a quick melt soon... Tomorrow, 13/5 marks the eariest day as the SIE according to JAXA have been below 12 million km2.. We''l probably not be able to do that this year. Next day to keep an eye at is 3/6 which is the earliest date the SIE have been below 11 million km2.. With warm weather during the second half of may it might be possible to make it...

//LMV

ChrisReynolds

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #553 on: May 12, 2014, 08:16:42 PM »
Thanks Jim, that is promising.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #554 on: May 12, 2014, 09:12:01 PM »
The Kimmirut webcam shows 4.8C right now in bright sun. The road looks muddy.

Blizzard_of_Oz

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #555 on: May 13, 2014, 01:22:21 AM »
This may be of amusement to some.
I have a sub-seasonal forecast going. Verified over the pas 18yrs, it beats an extent anomaly persistence forecast during the melt period, though not by a huge amount.
http://cires.colorado.edu/~aslater/SEAICE/
It is a statistical method (not a coupled ice-ocean model) and makes a direct forecast for 50-days in advance (no intermediate days are forecast). The images are updated around 9:30am (MDT). This is not an "official" forecast in any sense - it is my own side project.



Neven

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #556 on: May 13, 2014, 01:57:23 AM »
Very nicely made, Andrew. Your website looked familiar to me, and then I recognized your NH snow cover graph that I put on the Arctic Sea Ice Graphs page.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #557 on: May 13, 2014, 02:09:46 AM »
Very interesting forecast. I'm curious about the 50 day forecast. Would it be possible to do longer forecasts (say, 75 days)? I could see the skill level falling as the forecast duration increases. Or was 50 just a convenient stopping point?

Blizzard_of_Oz

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #558 on: May 13, 2014, 04:30:44 AM »
Very interesting forecast. I'm curious about the 50 day forecast. Would it be possible to do longer forecasts (say, 75 days)? I could see the skill level falling as the forecast duration increases. Or was 50 just a convenient stopping point?

Yes, skill level should decrease with lead time. I haven't worked over those runs yet... as with everything, I need more time.
I originally made a forecast about 50 days before going on a ship into the Arctic - and 50 days is the lead time on the last of the "SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook" for the year. 

icefest

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #559 on: May 13, 2014, 09:41:53 AM »
That second chart is simply stunning!

I'm not sure about the validity of the forecast about Nares Straight though, :S
Open other end.

werther

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #560 on: May 13, 2014, 10:31:14 AM »
Rivalling the process near the Siberian side, it looks like the first melt ponds this season are appearing on floes in front of the Mackenzie Delta:



Zooming in on my CAD, I see hues of blue and grey appearing on the smallest pixel size of 250x250 m. Tuktoyaktuk and Shingle Point airstrip show 10-15 dC temps for yesterday.

Neven

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #561 on: May 13, 2014, 10:58:00 AM »
The American side of the Arctic is where the high pressure areas are, so it would make sense that the melt ponds are showing up there.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #562 on: May 13, 2014, 11:21:51 AM »
The river water melt spots in the fast ice in front of the McKenzie delta are appearing a week earlier than in 2012 and nearly two weeks earlier than in 2013.

I think we are headed towards an early melt in Beaufort and Chukchi, though a change in weather could still change that.

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #563 on: May 13, 2014, 12:35:30 PM »
This may be of amusement to some.

"Interesting" rather then "amusing" Andrew, thanks. I followed your recent presentation at the 2014 Sea Ice Prediction Workshop with much interest too. Thanks to Larry Hamilton I even received a mention there myself!

How effective do you suppose your methodology would be at predicting the September 2014 minimum this far out?!
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #564 on: May 13, 2014, 02:16:07 PM »
Rivalling the process near the Siberian side, it looks like the first melt ponds this season are appearing on floes in front of the Mackenzie Delta:



Zooming in on my CAD, I see hues of blue and grey appearing on the smallest pixel size of 250x250 m. Tuktoyaktuk and Shingle Point airstrip show 10-15 dC temps for yesterday.

These are not the first melt ponds of the season. The fast ice just off Tiksi, Russia started to get soggy on April 22:

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2014112.terra.4km

Closeup (area appears in bottom center of image):

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r05c05.2014112.terra

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #565 on: May 13, 2014, 02:49:48 PM »
"The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening" - Rosa Luxemburg

werther

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #566 on: May 13, 2014, 03:16:12 PM »
On melt ponds... Nightvid, hi,

You're right if every body of melt water on the ice is comprised. On 22 April Siberian rivers began dumping their run-off on and under the fast ice. It perfectly outlines the coastline where none is visible during the snowcover months.
Best seen on the rim of the Lena river.
On 12 May the same is happening at the mouth of the Mackenzie.

What I've been looking for is in situ melt on the ice floes within the pack ice. On that 'front', the first signs in the Beaufort Sea occur IIRC around the earliest dates in the record.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #567 on: May 13, 2014, 03:51:18 PM »
BFTV, thanks for the forecast maps, polar vortex is still somewhat present at higher altitudes though. http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/05/12/1200Zwind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-337.75,82.08,264

But increasingly weather up there looks like dominated by polar or high latitude extratropical cyclones, much like last year. Once those get warm enough it's bye-bye arctic summer ice.

The strong stormy weather last year seemed to contribute to a  lower melt than in previous years? Shouldn't we expect a similar response from the ice if this year is also cold and stormy?

Yes, maybe I should've said 'if those get warm enough..', I don't know how far 2013 was from melt, but add some degrees more warmth to these systems and they might drop rain instead of sleet. But there was also the 2012 GAC which destroyed some ice but that was late in the season. Might I add that here is a good example, where a slight error in forecast temperature may change the outlook for a large area indeed.

Got it. I misread you. If increasing storminess is the new norm and these storms get progressively warmer in nature, it would seem they would eventually cause more melt, not less.

Thanks for the clarification.

Lord M Vader

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #568 on: May 13, 2014, 07:34:36 PM »
The DMI is for only the second time this year showing temperatures somewhat below normal around 80-90N . Interestingly, this time is virtually exactly the same time at year as the weather made a major swung last year bringing persistently cold weather during the rest of the melting season... The big question is whether this pattern will repeat this year. The GFS latest run  (12z) forecast a pattern dominated by low pressures the next 5 days. In the end of the period, about 6 days ahead there are some hints of a stabilizing weather pattern...

In the short term the area that will get the biggest blow is the Berings sea and Chukchi sea..

In the real long term, around 228-288 hours there is a possibility of a heat dome to be pushed the whole way to Svalbard given that a major high pressure area would be established in the northern part of Europe.. Such long range forecasts always need to be taken very carefully.. But it's interesting to speculate  ;D

Finally, the archipelago of Hudson Bay seems to may be start to melt quickly next week if the forecast for about 10C stands..

That's all folks! ;)

Blizzard_of_Oz

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #569 on: May 13, 2014, 07:43:09 PM »
How effective do you suppose your methodology would be at predicting the September 2014 minimum this far out?!

I expect it would give a rather poor forecast as there is not enough distinguishing signal in the concentration data. I am in the process of making the skill vs lead time plot.

Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #570 on: May 13, 2014, 08:04:23 PM »
I am in the process of making the skill vs lead time plot.

That sounds very interesting too. Would you mind if I reposted one or more of your graphs over on the GWC "unusual Arctic graphs" page?

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/arctic-sea-ice-graphs/#Extent
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BornFromTheVoid

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #571 on: May 13, 2014, 11:00:01 PM »
It's a little way off (8-10 days), but given the agreement between the GFS and the ECM, the pattern below is worth keeping an eye on.



Moscow is forecast to have record high temperatures next week, so there will be an awful lot of surface heat in western Russia. The pattern above has a high risk of directing that heat into the Barents, Kara and/or Central Arctic as the upper ridge (in red/orange) pushes into Scandinavia and the Barents sea.
Several of the GFS ensemble memebers show this happening around day 8-10 to various degrees.




I recently joined the twitter thing, where I post more analysis, pics and animations: @Icy_Samuel

Neven

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #572 on: May 13, 2014, 11:07:01 PM »
I'm seeing a bit of a dipole on the ECMWF weather forecast maps, and because it's May, I'm a bit obsessed now with thinking about what it all means for melt ponds. One would think they will develop a lot over the Beaufort and Chukchi in the coming 10 days. That's where a lot of the thick ice has been pushed to this winter...

But temps are low, just like last year, like Lord M Vader remarked.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #573 on: May 14, 2014, 12:09:20 AM »
I'm seeing a bit of a dipole on the ECMWF weather forecast maps, and because it's May, I'm a bit obsessed now with thinking about what it all means for melt ponds. One would think they will develop a lot over the Beaufort and Chukchi in the coming 10 days. That's where a lot of the thick ice has been pushed to this winter...

But temps are low, just like last year, like Lord M Vader remarked.

The anomalies of 2m (surface) temperature seem to be dominated by positive values over at Climate Reanalyzer for the next 7 days in the Arctic:   http://cci-reanalyzer.org/Forecasts/

which I would think is more relavent than 850 mb temperatures which have very little direct effect on the snow or ice.

 

Neven

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #574 on: May 14, 2014, 08:48:27 AM »
Fair enough, Nightvid, but do the anomalies exceed the 0 °C mark?

If I look at the latest DMI 2m SAT map...



...I don't see temps go above 0 °C anywhere but Beaufort, Barentsz and Chukchi. This will probably change in the second half of May, and maybe that's when most of that crucial melt ponding occurs.

If there is any melt ponding right now, it must be happening in the areas where skies are clear.

Here are average SLP patterns for the last week (edit: woops, no, that's the latest SLP patterns map for the 11th of May, I can generate the average map for 7th-12th tomorrow):



Compare it to previous years here.

ECMWF has highs starting to dominate big time in a week or so. Forecast is a bit far out, so too early to tell, but could be important.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2014, 08:54:58 AM by Neven »
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Jim Hunt

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #575 on: May 14, 2014, 11:35:12 AM »
I have a sub-seasonal forecast going. Verified over the pas 18yrs, it beats an extent anomaly persistence forecast during the melt period, though not by a huge amount.

Thanks for the PM Drew. Here's what I've come up with:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/arctic-sea-ice-graphs/#SPIE

Please let me know if you'd like any changes made.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #576 on: May 14, 2014, 12:13:04 PM »
This may be of amusement to some.
I have a sub-seasonal forecast going. Verified over the pas 18yrs, it beats an extent anomaly persistence forecast during the melt period, though not by a huge amount.
http://cires.colorado.edu/~aslater/SEAICE/
It is a statistical method (not a coupled ice-ocean model) and makes a direct forecast for 50-days in advance (no intermediate days are forecast). The images are updated around 9:30am (MDT). This is not an "official" forecast in any sense - it is my own side project.

I think using Cryosphere Today area is better than extent persistence.

See
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/07/problematic-predictions-2.html

where Rob Dekker uses 3 factors: land snow extent, extent and (extent-area)
if you apply factors as follows:
0.25 * Snow + 0.5 * Extent - 1.0 * (Extent - Area)

then this formula expressed in simple factors is:
0.25 * Snow - 0.50 * Extent + 1.0 * Area

so extent ends with a negative correlation whereas area has a positive correlation (and is given a larger factor).

I think this does quite a bit better than extent persistence for predicting the minimum. While I don't know about 50 days ahead I could imagine that the same might apply.

I don't know if this does anything to persuade you to use CT area and perhaps land snow extent more and extent less?

idunno

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #577 on: May 14, 2014, 12:48:58 PM »
Eh?

At 70HPa and at 10HPa, the circumpolar vortex, which is well above the polar vortex at 250HPa has either disappeared completely, or is flowing very faintly in the wrong direction...

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-325.33,92.33,270

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-325.33,92.33,270

I presume that this is not a sign that the earth's rotation has reversed, but it surprises me.

F.Tnioli

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #578 on: May 14, 2014, 02:45:39 PM »
...
I presume that this is not a sign that the earth's rotation has reversed, but it surprises me.
Reversing Earth's rotation in any short (in terms of human life) amount of time - would result in complete melt of the Earth's crust, among other things... Vortexes would be gone. Oceans too. Surface temps possibly several thousands kelvins at the peak. Angular momentum preservation law, you know... %)
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!

jdallen

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #579 on: May 14, 2014, 06:33:14 PM »
Eh?

At 70HPa and at 10HPa, the circumpolar vortex, which is well above the polar vortex at 250HPa has either disappeared completely, or is flowing very faintly in the wrong direction...

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-325.33,92.33,270

http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-325.33,92.33,270

I presume that this is not a sign that the earth's rotation has reversed, but it surprises me.

It surprises me to, and suggests consistent temperatures at altitude, and as a result, the altitude the pressure gradient rests on is similarly consistent.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #580 on: May 14, 2014, 07:47:43 PM »
"These cold-core low-pressure areas strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer due to their reliance upon the temperature differential between the equator and the poles"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #581 on: May 14, 2014, 10:03:08 PM »
"These cold-core low-pressure areas strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer due to their reliance upon the temperature differential between the equator and the poles"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex

Weaken yes, but disappear entirely?
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ChrisReynolds

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #582 on: May 14, 2014, 10:57:03 PM »
Blizzard of Oz,

Thanks, very useful.

I really must pull my finger out and have another look at prediction....

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #583 on: May 14, 2014, 11:42:42 PM »
"These cold-core low-pressure areas strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer due to their reliance upon the temperature differential between the equator and the poles"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex

Weaken yes, but disappear entirely?

The stratospheric vortex disappears, yes.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #584 on: May 14, 2014, 11:45:10 PM »
The Euro is brutal.  Just brutal to the arctic the rest of May.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #585 on: May 14, 2014, 11:46:16 PM »
Fair enough, Nightvid, but do the anomalies exceed the 0 °C mark?

If I look at the latest DMI 2m SAT map...



...I don't see temps go above 0 °C anywhere but Beaufort, Barentsz and Chukchi. This will probably change in the second half of May, and maybe that's when most of that crucial melt ponding occurs.

If there is any melt ponding right now, it must be happening in the areas where skies are clear.

Here are average SLP patterns for the last week (edit: woops, no, that's the latest SLP patterns map for the 11th of May, I can generate the average map for 7th-12th tomorrow):



Compare it to previous years here.

ECMWF has highs starting to dominate big time in a week or so. Forecast is a bit far out, so too early to tell, but could be important.

Those temperatures are near average if not slightly above on the Pacific side of the North Pole, despite being below freezing. The long range forecasts at this point are anything but a repeat of 2013. Almost all the models now seem to point to a building "heat wave" over the Arctic by the 23rd or 24th. Serious melt ponds should form in the central Arctic in the last week of the month, so the average for the month can be expected to come out like non-2013 recent years, I think.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #586 on: May 15, 2014, 12:47:04 AM »
OK, so here's the average SLP map for May 7th-12th:



Compare to other years here.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2014, 08:33:38 AM by Neven »
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #587 on: May 15, 2014, 03:43:42 AM »
OK, so here's the average SLP map for May 7th-12th:

Compare to other years here.

I'll be blessed... if I can see any sort of pattern which reliably relates to the state of the ice at the end of the season, or even one that ties back reliably to temperatures north of 75 degrees.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #588 on: May 15, 2014, 04:37:09 AM »
The 7th thru 12th was a dipole.

It's been a dipole pattern for about 2 months which is why extent is already so low.

I think we are 100 percent surely going to stay above 2013.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #589 on: May 15, 2014, 06:26:44 AM »
The 7th thru 12th was a dipole.

It's been a dipole pattern for about 2 months which is why extent is already so low.

I think we are 100 percent surely going to stay above 2013.

Higher extent and area than 2013?
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Frivolousz21

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #590 on: May 15, 2014, 06:38:40 AM »
The 7th thru 12th was a dipole.

It's been a dipole pattern for about 2 months which is why extent is already so low.

I think we are 100 percent surely going to stay above 2013.

Higher extent and area than 2013?

I worded that wrong.  Obviously I meant below 2013.

In fact I am seeing a large region of open water about to open up over the ESB region.

Winds are terrible thru at least day 3-4.

If the Euro is right.  We are going to see record low extent and area the last part of May.  Could be unreal honestly with the pack mobility and euro pattern there would be open water on May 25th from the Mackenzie Delta to the Laptev around the shoreline.



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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #591 on: May 15, 2014, 08:40:39 AM »
OK, so here's the average SLP map for May 7th-12th:

Compare to other years here.

I'll be blessed... if I can see any sort of pattern which reliably relates to the state of the ice at the end of the season, or even one that ties back reliably to temperatures north of 75 degrees.

Well, the idea is that the melt pond cover fraction in May correlates strongly with the minimum. We unfortunately don't have near real-time data that can be compared to previous years. My assumption is that most melt ponding during May occurs under high pressure areas, because that's where most of the insolation and high(er) temperatures are.

It's difficult to make out the differences when you look at the SLP Patterns page for May, but take a look for instance at 2010. That's the year of the volume crash. 2011 and 2012 also show splotches of red, as does 2013, with the difference that the latter has the first persistent cyclone rolling in right towards the end of the month.

If you then click to the SLP Patterns page for June and look at the first two weeks, you might start to see the pattern.

But you have to want to see it, like I do.  :P ;D
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #592 on: May 15, 2014, 08:44:28 AM »
If the Euro is right.  We are going to see record low extent and area the last part of May.  Could be unreal honestly with the pack mobility and euro pattern there would be open water on May 25th from the Mackenzie Delta to the Laptev around the shoreline.



Yes, according to ECMWF/Euro the Dipole will restrengthen. Still, the lows are a bit more dominant, pushing the highs back towards the North-American coast (I'm looking at things right now, with melt ponds in mind only). Either way, extent and area are probably going to keep falling steadily and be amongst the lowest trend lines for the date of year.
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #593 on: May 15, 2014, 08:55:14 AM »
Ah, you mean this, Friv:



It is ECMWF prognosis Wednesday 1405 for next Monday. The most pronounced of a typical set-up within the 10-day forecast. I drew the ridges and troughs roughly; the ridge over Bering really pushes deep into the Arctic.
It could be called ‘a dipole’ as the basic lower atmosphere steering is Bering-Fram. As it has been for weeks. Still, it is a long route and the sun hasn’t warmed the Arctic strong enough yet. Thus, it becomes anomalous cold for the time of the year above 80dN, especially near Svalbard/Frantsa Yosefa.

As it is, there’s enough potential on the Bering side for major ice loss during the summer months.

I don’t see a major anomalous opening Mackenzie-Laptev within the next 10 days. Though on some days, when strong S winds are projected NW of Wrangel Island, there may be strong extent loss in the Chukchi Sea. The Bering Strait might open up early this season.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #594 on: May 15, 2014, 09:13:49 AM »
The winds are still more important then say a bit more insolation because this continuous wind field

Here is the Euro on day 10.  Way out there but the arctic is being totally torched hardcore.  And that is on day 10 with heavy climo bias having temps colder than reality would then.


Since early March it's been literally a perfect storm of ice loss for the arctic setting up for a potentially monstrous ice loss Summer.





About two months ago the dipole pattern took over.  The damage to the ice pack isn't done justice below.








1.  The ice moving from the lower salinity Pacific towards the Atlantic causes the entire pack to naturally thin.

2.  MYI has been flushed big time.  Not just the last two months but overall it was a bad Oct-May for MYI even with a couple good wind months.

3.  And most importantly:


There is hardly any open water right now.  But the ice pack has moved tremendously the last two months.

Obviously up until the last week or so new ice has formed to fill in those gaps.  But that ice is thinner than the older FYI. 

On top of that quite a bit was during April when the new ice wouldn't grow very fast.  And the new ice wouldn't have snow on it or very little since it doesn't snow that much this time of year up there.



What is worse is that this wind pattern shows no signs of leaving.  Now there is no new ice made and large regions of open water are about to open up.  The first big one appears to be the ESB region.  Models show off shore winds for a while.  Long fetch winds and eventually in 4 days are so a big warm up.  Even tho the current warm up there is plenty to prevent any new ice and even start some surface snow melt with the powerful sun.

Because of this if we keep a solid dipole into June I have zero doubts we will see 2014 plummet into unprecedented territory in terms of extent/area.







Here is SLP anomalies back to March 10th:  That is very bad news going forward.  That shows flushing has been very anomalously high.

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #595 on: May 15, 2014, 09:23:50 AM »
Ah, you mean this, Friv:

It is ECMWF prognosis Wednesday 1405 for next Monday. The most pronounced of a typical set-up within the 10-day forecast. I drew the ridges and troughs roughly; the ridge over Bering really pushes deep into the Arctic.
It could be called ‘a dipole’ as the basic lower atmosphere steering is Bering-Fram. As it has been for weeks. Still, it is a long route and the sun hasn’t warmed the Arctic strong enough yet. Thus, it becomes anomalous cold for the time of the year above 80dN, especially near Svalbard/Frantsa Yosefa.

As it is, there’s enough potential on the Bering side for major ice loss during the summer months.

I don’t see a major anomalous opening Mackenzie-Laptev within the next 10 days. Though on some days, when strong S winds are projected NW of Wrangel Island, there may be strong extent loss in the Chukchi Sea. The Bering Strait might open up early this season.

The difference between now and the last few months is new ice formation to mask the thicker ice loss.

The winds now will just push the MYI towards oblivion and the open water on the other side of the wind field where the winds blow off shore can't freeze back up now without a major cold and cloudy pattern which isn't the case.

The wind field orientation has slide so that the ESB will experience the off shore winds and not the Beaufort or Laptev.

There is a lot of room for the ice to move away from the ESB fast ice and towards the pole/Atlantic.

This is the new 00z euro from hour 48 to hour 240.  It is atrocious.

The next two days not seen below are bad as well wind wise, I will get to that.

But the animation shows the winds being bad.  Then a powerful large cyclone sliding  into the central arctic sorounded by strong HPs causing a big wind gradient.  This is not cold core so warm air will wrap thru the arctic with no cold pool forming.  In fact the cold pool collapses as the SLP weakens and a new one reforms over the Kara while a huge ridge takes over and starts the baking.


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and a dirty pistol that love to crew hop
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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #596 on: May 15, 2014, 09:33:24 AM »
The 7th thru 12th was a dipole.

It's been a dipole pattern for about 2 months which is why extent is already so low.

I think we are 100 percent surely going to stay above 2013.

A dipole in Spring usually helps keep extent higher by increasing export thus bolstering ice in the peripheral areas around the Atlantic side.
It's when things really begin to warm up and the exported ice can no longer be replaced by thin nilas, as well as heat from the nearby continents getting dragged in, that it begins to have a strong, negative affect on extent.
I recently joined the twitter thing, where I post more analysis, pics and animations: @Icy_Samuel

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #597 on: May 15, 2014, 09:39:58 AM »

Here are wind streamlines from the GFS for 00z tonight then 24hrs, 48hrs, and 72hrs.

I know they are rough on the eyes but I like using a model up to date as the source versus the products out there that do not come from the GFS or Euro.




Right now we can see winds are blowing off shore over parts of the ESB region. Signs of this are already showing up on Jaxa and this is just the start.  I haven't seen direct off shore winds in the ESB like this before.  At least not in Mid to late May.






Day 1 we can see it's still blowing off shore quite well and wide and there is another SLP moving East over the Laptev that is stronger then the first one.  It also reinforces the wind field with not only stronger winds but much warmer air.





By day 2 there is a what a 1000 mile wide area of off shore winds from Tiksi to the Bering?  Even the Alaskan side has a big of off shore and that area has already been bombarded.  That is a huge windfield.




By day 3 the winds are veering in the Laptev region heading towards the ESB because the SLP is ejecting towards the central arctic.

Even so the entire ESB has a very long fetch of off shore winds originating in the North Pacific.  with winds veering around the SLP and getting stronger it will even help clear out more ice between the Laptev and ESB.





That is just the next 72 hours.





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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #598 on: May 15, 2014, 09:45:57 AM »
The 7th thru 12th was a dipole.

It's been a dipole pattern for about 2 months which is why extent is already so low.

I think we are 100 percent surely going to stay above 2013.

A dipole in Spring usually helps keep extent higher by increasing export thus bolstering ice in the peripheral areas around the Atlantic side.
It's when things really begin to warm up and the exported ice can no longer be replaced by thin nilas, as well as heat from the nearby continents getting dragged in, that it begins to have a strong, negative affect on extent.

I agree.  That is how it would normally be.  However in this case the Barents is still way below normal.  And the Bering is already just about ice free.

The Chukchi already has a large area of open water which is the largest there on record passing 2010 at this point.  There is no sign of that area freezing up or getting smaller only slowly getting bigger.

But as seen in the model runs above and wind charts the ESB side is going to really get the smack down with it's pack ice pushed off shore potentially a lot over a large region.

We can see the first signs with a relatively big area of open water. 

I think we are going to see unprecedented ice loss by June 1st if the euro is right.

There will be an amazingly large area of open water on the ESB/Chukchi side.

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a two shot that I call Tupac
and a dirty pistol that love to crew hop
my TEC 9 Imma call T-Pain
my 3-8 snub Imma call Lil Wayne
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it go e-e-e-e-ow e-e-e-e-e-e-blaow

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Re: The 2014 Melting Season
« Reply #599 on: May 15, 2014, 10:26:47 AM »
...
The Chukchi already has a large area of open water which is the largest there on record passing 2010 at this point.  There is no sign of that area freezing up or getting smaller only slowly getting bigger. ...
What about cloud cover there? Non-existent, or?

By the way, there is one thing i was always thinking about how Arctic ocean absorbs sunlight, which might be relevant here and now. See, at this time of the year, the Sun is quite very low over horizon there, for most of every 24-hours period. Thus, sunlight approaches the water surface having very small angle to it. The water surface would reflect most (all?) of it IF it'd be 100% plain - in reality this is not the case, because there are waves. And then, much depends on how big waves are, and what  their form is. If it's low, "long", not any steep waves - then much of sunlight would still be reflected at the air/water boundary. But if it's high, steep, "short" waves - then most of sunlight would get through into water, and much of sunlight won't have its angle changed any much. Which means, photons will keep going underwater having rather small angle - i.e. almost horizontally. And this seems important to me, because this means most of those photons will end up absorbed by near-surface layer of water, thus warming it up (as opposed to near-equator areas, where much (most?) of photons which get into water - would in fact travel dozens meters deep before being absorbed, thus heating near-surface layer (few meters) much more slowly.

It's all from basic geometry and optics, nothing extraordinaire, but i wonder if we have such very basic considerations actually accounted for in all the models... I have a lurking suspicion we do not, - instead, quite a number of models using numerical "tweaks" to adjust for observed in past years dynamics. If so, then such models will grow progressively incorrect as we get more and more cases of large-enough open water areas insolated by mostly-very-low-over-horizon sun.
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