Short to Medium Term Arctic Sea Ice Conditions Discussion

[Frivolousz21]

The models have backed off quite a bit on the range of this warmth.

Keeping the central arctic cold and cloudy with cold and clouds returning towards the Laptev and ESB much sooner than they forecasted before.

No doubt the Beaufort will get totally smoked.


I know people's intentions are not bad or necessarily agenda driven.

I was hoping many would up there vote from May.  The guy predicting a complete melt is fanatical and is no different than what Watt's represents.

I don't want to just sit here and lambast people for there opinions.  I think that is not right. 

But when it comes September and the Sept mean is 4.5 mil km2 or higher.  Watts will organize his followers and other denier blogs and will completely shred any credibility Neven's blog has.

You will have no defense when he has the evidence of most of the voters posting epically failed predictions.  I wouldn't be surprised to see him pick out a few and totally trash them like the ones with near ice melt completely or total melt.

His reach is unfortunately massive and as bad as his open blog predictions have been.  This could end up even worse.  He will also likely play up that he submits his entry to the SIO and Neven's blog didn't to say the fanatical alarmists were scared to.

I am saying that after this month it's to late to pull up.  If we are a month from now in the same situation.  It will be to late for corrections.

I don't want to see the "fair" moniker get destroyed.  But it's been trending towards this for a little while.  I hope my word's are not seen as missiles but constructive criticism that if you want to make a difference in educating folks on global warming you have to truly be fair.


If this blog community fails on this harder than Watt's ever has on top of that fail would be Watt's blog nailing it from May onward.  If I were neven I would be throwing out major red flags about a potential major jump from the record back to 2008-2011 levels. 

Perception is always reality when you're selling an idea to the ignorant masses.

[Buddy]

<<If this blog community fails on this harder than Watt's ever has on top of that fail would be Watt's blog nailing it from May onward.>>

The chance of Watt's "nailing" anything is about the same chance as Joe Bastardi nailing the long term trend (ie 3 years or more) of ANYTHING related to climate:  ZERO.  If you don't utilize facts and science.....which both Joe & Anthony avoid like the plague.....then you have no chance of getting it right.

I actually appreciate your intentions (which I assume are for people to not get "too far over their skis" when making predictions of the future of the ice......and to base those predictions on sound science.

After all.....EVERYONE should always be looking for the truth.  The basic science is clear......and it will remain so.  And there will continue to be VARIABILITY over the short term from time-to-time, but the intermediate and long-term trends, unfortunately for mother earth, remain intact (those trends being (1) more CO2, (2) less ice (3) more heat in the atmosphere (4) more heat in the oceans (5) more forest fires, etc.

So while I applaud you "calling out" a few folks for being "too aggressive" in their predictions......then chance of Watts/Bastardi/Monkton/etc of getting anything right in the intermediate term or long term....without using basic science....is nil.

[sofouuk]

never mind the trolls. if we are facing an ice free end of summer arctic later this decade or early the next, their remaining time is short (and if we aren't then we can all breathe easier for another decade or so). yes this group are quite likely to undershoot this years september extent, but not by as much as you seem to think. as long as neven maintains his credibility how does it matter if a few 'enthusiasts' post errant nonsense? he runs an open blog, not a scientific journal. right now we are clearly in a moment of some uncertainty and the past is not a great guide to the future; the fact that current guesstimates have a wide spread reflects the fact that the closer a thin pack gets to 'melting away suddenly' the more sensitive end of summer area will be to that years' specific conditions, so prediction becomes much more of a lottery. so what?

[Frivolousz21]

Watt's site so far:

2011:
June: 5.5 mil km2
July: 5.1 mil km2
Aug: 5.0 mil km2
Sept actual: 4.6 mil km2

2012:
June: 4.9 mil km2
July: 4.6 mil km2
Aug: 4.5 mil km2
Sept actual: 3.6 mil km2.

2013:
June: Watts: 4.8 mil  ASIB: 3.0 mil


Nevin has trashed Watt's for his unscientific ways.  If this fall into Watt's lap.  He is going to be ruthless about this.  So far there hasn't been anything of substance for a guy like Watt's to use against this blog.  You avoid Watt's drama by being "conservative yet strong" when it comes to the Science of Global Warming. 

I have read since this blog started that the goal was to help inform the person on the fence before the "dark" side can get them.

For two years it ran that way.  Since last Fall it's been slowly tipping towards this Wild Wild West crap.  We have no idea how long it's going to take for the ice to melt out or if it will stabilize for a couple decades.

Watt's doesn't have to be right or even close or have good reason. His site is about propaganda.  You beat his BS and grow by being a voice of reason. 

Not by pimping the ice Apocalypse on June 15th when it's obvious it's ain't happening. 

I won't post about this anymore.  I have voiced my concerns on this.  I just know that this could be a huge blow to this blog's credibility.

If the Sept Sea Ice is 4.8 mil km2 or higher.  It won't be pretty when Joe Bastardi is on Fox News with a graph that tens of millions of American's will see showing Watt's nailing it and of course he will piss all over this blog.

This is it.  This is the number 1 blog on "this side" of the fence.

If this is just about entertainment forget what I have said.  If it's about taking climate change serious.  Well then.

[wanderer]

First of all, i think Watts should be ignored.

Second, I'm glad that Neven's Blog is so open.
But what would you do to get a more "scientific" vote"?
You would have to make the Blog private, with only some certified scientists allowed to post.

As far as I know, even Watts could send some trolls to post crazy low prediction numbers.

But as we all know, the arctic will melt out before 2020, so "zero" predictions will become more often, and the mentioned Paul Beckwith is at least posting his real name and is a "certified" scientist.

I for myself am just more of hobby-arctic enthusiastic and would of course step back with my prediction (3.0.), if it would harm the credibility of the ASIBlog. I actually wanted to go with 4. or 3.5, but then I saw the weak condition of ice so close to the Pole, that I thought it still could be a game changer to the trend.

I hope Neven will post his opinion to your concerns, but I think a big open blog is still better to reach many people, than a very small, certified blog, that is a little bit more accurate.

[Peter Ellis]

While researching this evening I ran across the NAIS June 3 Seasonal Ice Forecast. I thought it might be an interesting benchmark for future comparison. The report pdf can be found here:

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/special/nais_forecasts/2013/graphics/outlook/nais_seasonal_outlook_2013.pdf

What interests me most is that it does not forecast major ice pack elimination in the Beaufort north of 120 miles from the coast nor in the CAB above 75 N.

I think you're misreading it.  Are you sure you're looking at the September section of the forecast rather than June/July/August?

Beaufort Sea south of 75°N.

Outlook for September…Open water within 120 miles north of the mainland coast. Beyond 120
miles north of the coast close pack ice except open drift or less ice west of 145°W.

Page 11:  Arctic Ocean north of 75°N.

Outlook for September…East of 140°W close to very close pack ice. West of 140°W open drift
or less ice.

Yes, they say there will be close pack ice (70%+) in the easternmost Beaufort sea, up against Banks island.  This is hardly unexpected.  West of 140/145W it's expected to be "open drift" (30%) or less, for as far north as the forecast covers.  This is an almost identical distribution to 2007 & 2009, i.e. a narrow strip of MYI plastered up against Banks island and the exit of the NWP.  Not quite as much loss in the northeastern Beaufort as other recent years, but still pretty catastrophic overall.

[werther]

I think what is going on is a tightening of the Polar cell as the remaining geopotential and temperature difference between the Tropics and the Arctic has been getting smaller.
When you take a close look at the animated jet stream loops at squall sfsu, you’ll see that the situation of the jet isn’t following the climatic mean. And that isn’t just weather through the last few days.

This is evolving since the beginning of spring. Or, maybe more appropriate, since the last StratoSpheric Warming. The persistent low is like an atmospheric sink, reaching from the top of the troposphere, at 300Mb, all the way down to the surface level. At its periphery, it attracts the tips of the 500Mb ridges, consuming the energy they deliver. On the squall map, a constant penetration of jet stream branches illustrates that.
The sinking air in the cyclonic system should be warming, but because it is coming from cold altitude, it still arrives at surface level depressing the +80dN temps (DMI). And flowing out South under the troughs. Giving below average temps FI around Minnesota, Labrador, Gulf of Biscay, Kazakhstan.

I still hold the opinion that the climate system is going through a profound reorganisation. That provides a temporary illusion of ‘rebounce’ over the Arctic. It isn’t. For the year, the Arctic is coming out in a very different way than what we were used to see since ’07.

Another interesting question is: …’when there is a strong flow of air going through the top of the NH Ferrell cell, where is the rising source?’…

[werther]

Oh and about credibility… I see no reason at all to change my own expectations on mean September SIE at 3,28 Mkm2. SIE is a volatile number now, whereas my estimate was made based on my attention for the Arctic since ’03 and the best effort I could do since February, as I distinguished between a ‘normal’ (2,5 Mkm2 SIA/4,0 Mkm2 SIE) and a ‘dipole’ (1,7/2,6) summer.
Mind, the numbers between brackets representing the daily minimum!

Now when SIE stays within these limits, I will feel comfortable (at 400 ppmCO2 that is meant as tongue in cheek…). Nothing wrong with my own sense of credibility. I’ll be much more disturbed when at minimum, volume as presented by PIOMASS would be above 3200 km3.

That’s not going to happen.

Through the peculiarity of this season, there’s still the grinding winds over weak, thin ice.

[jdallen]

Check out the temps in Siberia. They are just nuts.

http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWarctis.gif

[Neven]

Watts will organize his followers and other denier blogs and will completely shred any credibility Neven's blog has.

Thanks for your concern, Friv. I agree up to a certain point and from a certain perspective.

I have no credibility to protect, as I don't feel like I have any. All I can do, is be transparent about what I do, why I do it and what I stand for. People can judge for themselves what they think of me, and whether they think I'm making any sense. If people like Beckwith want to go crazy every melting season, that's up to them.

I'm not going to tire myself too much with what Watts and his band of merry liars think or do. I'm sure Watts' hands are itching to get at me and the Arctic sea ice, but I'm not interested in trying to control the narrative like he is. I will probably be the first to report a 'recovery', and why wouldn't I? If the masses prefer to remain ignorant, that's their choice. Nothing I can do about that.

I'm more interested in what the ice is going to do, and try to understand why. This year is looking more and more like an amazing test case of 'weather vs thin ice, who is dominating'? What if this melting season still gets close to 2012 after a worst-case start? What if volume stays around the same level, and in one of the next meting seasons we get a flying start like 2012? What if there is a recovery in volume? Have we reached a plateau? Are negative feedbacks kicking in? Are they tied to changes in hemispheric circulation? Etc, etc, etc...

I admit I'm also curious what Watts and other fake skeptics will do if this melting season turns out to be a 'recovery'. They've been hurt very bad by the ice in the past couple of years. Arctic sea ice is a huge problem for them, so on the one hand they will be happy to announce a 'recovery', on the other hand they might hesitate, because they've screwed up a couple of times already.

We'll see.

But don't worry about me or the Arctic Sea Ice Blog. I'm irrelevant and like all things the ASIB shows a classic bell curve. It starts out great, reaches a peak, but then slowly fades away. From my perspective we're still working towards the peak.

Back to business: What's the ice doing?

[ChrisReynolds]

Since WUWT is the internet's largest congregation of village idiots, I care no more for their opinion than I would for the opinion of any village idiot.

Meanwhile back in the real word: CT Area drop of 192.98k km^2 for 15/6/13. Interesting darkening of the Siberian fast ice near Bering (Bremen plot). It's worth doing a blink comparison between 1 June and 15 June for Bremen, things are definitely getting started even if slowly.

[SATire]

Back to business: What's the ice doing?

Nice clarification of a straight mission, Neven. I think the ice is doing consequently other things than CICE/hycom predicts or even shows as "nowcast". If I compare their latest "nowcast" for concentration (June 15): http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicen/nowcast/icen2013061418_2013061500_035_arcticicen.001.gif
with attached AMSR2-map (.jpg in attachment) from yesterday (source again from Wipneus/U-Hamburg: https://sites.google.com/site/apamsr2/home/pngcby32/) you can easily identify differences e.g. in the bluish shaded regions:
In east Siberian sea (some risk for "smear-effects" here) and near Svalbard CICE gives to high concentration and in the CAB CICE gives still way to low concentration.
I marked some areas with redish shade, where I assume "water vapour"/weather "smearing" effects are present - maybe some concentration loss may happen there in the next days, but often this kind of smear-features either disappear or move some 100 km in a day...

And some of you may answer again that thickness prediction of CICE is much nicer - I understand that colorful moving pictures are nice, but if you can not observe them and they differ from PIOMAS (which is at least a bit approved by cryosat), than I would consider them not as appropriate for determining the sea ice state and even less as basis for any predictions. Those things can fool us towards ludicrous predictions, since a lot of poeple allready warned us here not to take the obviously wrong Navy maps as "scientific basis". Just my 2 cents.

So - ice's attitude keeps being strange, it is disappearing differently this year, I guess ;-)

[Shared Humanity]

When things start behaving in very odd ways, we are in a place where a lot can be learned. My lurking has been fun for the last month because of this.

Why are we seeing what we are seeing?

1. SIA seeming to drop in a fairly conventional way (large drops recently).
2. SIE looking as if AGW isn't happening. (Just joking but why is there such a disparity between SIA and SIE trends?)
3. Based on comments here, an unprecedented deterioration in the center of the CAB while the peripheral seas seem to be holding their own?
4. Fracturing during the freeze season in the thickest portion of the MYI?

I am sure there are other things the veterans here are seeing which seem odd. Figuring out why will help us get a handle on variables we don't yet understand.

Oh, by the way, don't expect any help from me.

Back to lurking.

[Neven]

This season so far reminds me most of 2010 where there also was a lot of divergence, with holes showing up in the CAB, and you could just feel how the cavalry (low temps and winds blowing the wrong way early in September) came just in time to prevent the 2007 records from being threatened or even getting broken.

But that was in August...

Last year had a good start, but kept dropping steadily when the weather turned, which to me was a sign that the ice is thin. I don't see how this year should be any different in this respect, unless the start to the melting season is all-important. If the weather stays bad (and it won't), I'm still expecting steady drops - just like last year - that will take 2013 close or past 2007/2011.  With just a couple of weeks of ice melting weather, I'm pretty certain this will happen. With a lot of weeks of ice melting weather, 2013 could come close to last year's records.

And who knows what else the Arctic has up its sleeve? Another GAC? Ice-free North Pole?

BTW, I also wished people would start looking a bit less at ACNFS. The people from the NRL themselves sent in a SEARCH prediction of 4.9 (±0.7) million km2.

[SATire]

SATire,

I think there may be some misunderstanding here.

Yes Chris Reynolds - there was some misunderstanding. I was refering to the effect of clouds while you were refering to the melt ponds - clearly to different things.

To be more precise: The effect of water vapour as Lars did explain is the effect I was talking about. Probably the same thing, that makes Neven repeating that you should wait ~3 days for any area with significant SIA-drop not to move in U-Bremens maps.

I am not really sure yet, but I think the smear-like structures, which can easily disappear or move far away within a day, are correlated with the thick orange clouds in Modis/Terra 3-6-7. This smear-like structures give a SIA of only 60-80% but that loss may not be true. But sometimes there is some loss after the clouds moved away - if there is some correlation ("rain-ponds"?) I do not know. I am only an interested amateur with a lot of questions but no answers to the field... 

[ClimateChange]

Looks like that Alaska Arctic heat wave is still on tap. At Fairbanks, the high was 86 yesterday and 82 Friday. The low this morning there was just 61. According to Wunderground, the next ten days are forecast to be anomalously hot for there:

6/16 90/64
6/17 88/63
6/18 91/63
6/19 90/61
6/20 90/64
6/21 86/63
6/22 84/61
6/23 84/63
6/24 86/61
6/25 84/61

I imagine if this forecast verifies, it would have to be one of the hottest months on record up there.

[ChrisReynolds]

Neven,

BTW, I also wished people would start looking a bit less at ACNFS. The people from the NRL themselves sent in a SEARCH prediction of 4.9 (±0.7) million km2.

I know there's an element of 'when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail', but ACNFS (HYCOM) is the only indicator of what thickness is doing that we have between the occasions PIOMAS release gridded data. I still think the ice in HYCOM is too strong under tension, but can accommodate that in how I read their plots. That issue allowed for, I still think it's done a good job of predicting the low concentration region from Laptev to the Pole.

As for any SEARCH prediction, I'm less interested in that than using HYCOM as a part of the evidence available.

SATire,

Bremen AMSR-E processing is described in this paper:
http://login.iup.uni-bremen.de/iuppage/psa/documents/spreen07.pdf
I don't think the AMSR-2 algorithm is formally published as yet. See section 3.1 for the relevant subsection. The issue within low pressure systems isn't rain, but water vapour in the atmosphere.

[Apocalypse4Real]

Check out the temps in Siberia. They are just nuts.

http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWarctis.gif

I think this is partly due to the snow drought that has enabled lower atmospheric warming. The impacts are seen, I think, in the Arctic low. Another impact is what is happening to methane release in Siberia, there are pockets of permafrost release and high concentrations.

While the Russians have been quiet in the media, their forest fire season has been picking up as well, thus conributing soot to the sea ice.

[Neven]

Indeed, I first noticed the smoke plumes on LANCE-MODIS yesterday (but were probably already there).

[ChrisReynolds]

I've decided not to do a Mid June Status report on my blog, so here's a bit about atmospheric state. All NCEP/NCAR reanalysis plots 1 to 13 June.

2012 Surface Temperature


2013 Surface Temperature


So during the first two weeks of June 2012 was much warmer (1-3degC above average), compared to 2013 (0 to 1 degC below average, but much colder over Beaufort) This makes a big difference when temperatures are near zero. To see the cause of this here are pressure plots for 2012 and 2013.

2012 Sea Level Pressure


2013 Sea Level Pressure


2012 was dominated by higher pressure, while 2013 has been low pressure dominated.

In early July I'll be able to produce timeseries of temperature and pressure, but for now June so far seems to below the 1981-2010 average for temperature, and substantially below the average for pressure.

Here is a timeseries of temperature for June up to 2012.


This shows how unusually warm June 2012 was and could be interpreted as suggesting that this was a player in preconditioning for melt and the massive June crash (melt ponding?) of that year.

For completeness June pressure is here:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7318/9061180002_2b1b85bfd4_o.png

Note comparing a two week period and monthly data isn't ideal, there would be more variability in a time series of two week data than four weeks (a month). However two weeks is probably long enough to be closer to four week variance than (at the other extreme) daily variance.

[icebgone]

That is a wonderful visual Chris.  Well done.  High pressure tends to clear the atmosphere and let the sun shine through while low pressure tends toward cloudiness which actually could warm the atmosphere during the long arctic night but could help cool during sunlight hours.  But I have a question about the timing of convergence/divergence once an atmospheric pressure gradient forms.  Does someone keep information about the gradient strength vs. amount and duration of ice movement?  And I also have a question about whether sunlight can be focused by atmospheric lensing under high pressure regimes.  Is the size of a gradient anomaly enough to align light so that the temperature under the lens is warmer than the fringe?

[Apocalypse4Real]

Chris,

Thanks for that very telling update, it portrays the differences clearly.

A4R.

[Apocalypse4Real]

It seems the CAB SLP is continuing for a while despite warming and some record temps around the Arctic.

Attached is the OSU Arctic temp/wind and SLP forecast for 20 June, 2013, 0000 UTC, which sees the low redeveloping, deepening and recentering as a 979 mb storm.

I am speculatng that the coastal high pressures will have to melt the sea ice, increase the SST's and then we will see a break in this pattern, perhaps in mid-July. Time will tell if this is close to reality.

A4R

[pikaia]

The weather map for Monday 24th June onwards is showing a large area of high pressure over the Arctic. Things should start to get interesting!

http://www.weather-forecast.com/maps/Arctic?symbols=none&type=prec

[SATire]

they probably confused "L" and "H" again, pikaia.

[pikaia]

they probably confused "L" and "H" again, pikaia.

They did on some of the maps, but I looked at the isobars, which show that the centre is over 1024mB, so definitely a high.

[werther]

I had a comprehensive look into the difference between ’12 and ’13 on the CT map comparison for 15 June.
Eyeballing/cadding, I get these regions/differences:
1.   Kara Sea               + 400 K
2.   Beaufort Sea      + 300 K
3.   Baffin Bay              + 200 K
4.   Chukchi Sea      +   75 K
5.   Barentsz Sea      +   50 K
6.   East Greenland Sea   -    75 K
        Total                 + 950 K

MODIS indicates the ice quality in fragmentation/melt ponding:
1.   Kara Sea               about 24 days behind / 10 days to go
2.   Beaufort Sea      no comparison / heavy melt next 5 days
3.   Baffin Bay              about 12 days behind / 15-20 days to go
4.   Chukchi Sea      like 2.
5.   Barentsz Sea      10 days to go, SW flow next week

This overview combined with CT/SIA reporting the start of the “cliff” gives me an indication that SIA/SIE could be back near ’12 levels first week of July. Let's not forget 100's of K's to melt in Hudson Bay soon.
More so, because, the CAB might be showing much lower concentration within 20 days than ’12 did at that time.

Last year 1866 K was lost in the coming 20 days. We could be in for a breathtaking range of -150 K a day…

[SATire]

Today there is a big drop of Sea Ice Area in East Siberian Sea - just inside the ellipse I have coloured bluish yesterday. Melting is a gear higher now. Same also for some regions near Chukchi and Barents - but quite "smear effected".

Most "smear" moved - and appears somewhere else - please ignore features similar to the ones I have coloured redish in the attached map yesterday.

[Neven]

[deep octopus]

That heatwave in Alaska is impressive, but hardly limited to that region. It seems essentially the whole Mackenzie River watershed is about to be bathed in a wave of heat reaching the 80s and low 90s (up to 95 in Norman Wells, near Great Bear Lake!) How much this will alter the dynamics of the Mackenzie River's discharge into the Arctic Ocean will be very fascinating to me, given the otherwise warming conditions on the Pacific side.

[ChrisReynolds]

That is a wonderful visual Chris.  Well done.  High pressure tends to clear the atmosphere and let the sun shine through while low pressure tends toward cloudiness which actually could warm the atmosphere during the long arctic night but could help cool during sunlight hours.  But I have a question about the timing of convergence/divergence once an atmospheric pressure gradient forms.  Does someone keep information about the gradient strength vs. amount and duration of ice movement?  And I also have a question about whether sunlight can be focused by atmospheric lensing under high pressure regimes.  Is the size of a gradient anomaly enough to align light so that the temperature under the lens is warmer than the fringe?

I don't know of any index of convergence/.divergence index. The net movement this year is divergent, (low circulates anti-clockwise, Ekman transport is to the right of air movement. Whereas in June 2010 the net movement was convergent (towards the pole). So in 2012 any low concentration within the pack would be expected to be 'squeezed out' as air movement packed ice into the pack. This year the opposite applies, and may be part of the reason for the lack of area decline see in comparing Bremen plots for 2013 and 2012.

Lensing, highly doubtful I'd say. It would imply dimmer area at the periphery of the high.

[ChrisReynolds]

SATire, Neven,

Bremen today shows a large drop of concentration and opening of open water off ESS coast.

14/6/13
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2data/asi_daygrid_swath/n6250/2013/jun/asi-AMSR2-n6250-20130614-v5_visual.png
16/6/13
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2data/asi_daygrid_swath/n6250/2013/jun/asi-AMSR2-n6250-20130616-v5_visual.png

However MODIS doesn't show such an opening.
Day 166
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r05c04.2013166.terra
Day 168 (latest)
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r05c04.2013168.terra

Note that the blueness of the fast ice in both of the above images seems to increase in the latest image. So is this melt ponding masquerading as an opening? Note that land temperatures along the coast there are now +20degC, within days this is projected to drop to zero and remain cold due to airflow off the pole (GFS).

[ChrisReynolds]

Thanks Werther,

I originally did this for my May blog post, but at the last minute decided the post was too long to include it (evolved into three long posts anyway).



It's CT Area anomaly difference between 2013 and 2012 worked out from CT region graphs, put on their map, and compared to actual overall anomaly difference, for 1/6/13 and 1/6/12.

Might be worth updating at the end of the month.

[SATire]

SATire, Neven,

Bremen today shows a large drop of concentration and opening of open water off ESS coast.

Chris, I am sure that you have realized, that the U-Bremen maps are from the same sensor as the U-Hamburg maps I was refering to above. The later are with higher resolution and it is much easier to recognize the "smear" (I coloured it redish) in U-Hamburg pictures. And from Wipneus transformation we gain the simple possibility to measure SIA on our own - that is the %-number I gave in above picture. So we can be aware of U-Bremens "errors" exploiting the higher resolution. And since Wipneus also gave a map of CT-regions, we can also check CT's numbers, if we like. We could even get that SIA numbers some hours earlier, since Hamburg is several hours east 

[ChrisReynolds]

Satire, not quite sure how this helps resolve the matter.

As an aside, here are losses from 6/6/XX to 16/6/XX, from the typical start of the June Cliff to the latest CT Area data date. Note that 2007, 2012, and 2013 stand apart from the rest.

2013   -1.231
2012   -1.687
2011   -0.847
2010   -0.883
2009   -0.538
2008   -0.901
2007   -1.113
2006   -0.875
2005   -0.582
2004   -0.613
 

[Tor Bejnar]

The last year the Arctic Sea Ice Area (ASIA - per Jim Pettit’s CT table showing Days for each Million km2 drop) was larger on this (or yesterday's?) day-of-the-year than 2013 was 2009.  In 2009, the next 3 million km2 melted out in only 26 days (a record fast melt of this much area).  Given the extent of ice in lower latitudes (that has melted out every recent year) and the probable new melting front in the central Arctic at the time of peak insolation, I rather expect this 26 day record to be matched or broken.  A new record of 24 days would tie 2013 with 2012 for CT ASIA in mid-July.

[Chuck Yokota]

ChrisReynolds,
Regarding the opening off the ESS coast: the NASA Worldview visible view shows the area largely filled on June 12, then after a couple of cloudy days, shows several thousand square kilometers of area opened up on the 15th, continuing to open through today.
Chuck

[ChrisReynolds]

Chuck,

Perhaps I should have been more specific. There's still a good deal of shoreline fast ice, where Bremen shows open coast. And comparing Bremen and MODIS suggests to me that Bremen is reading ice as open water. Which is what makes me suspect melt ponding may be at play. I don't doubt that there has been a break up in the ESS over the last few days.

[Neven]

It's CT Area anomaly difference between 2013 and 2012 worked out from CT region graphs, put on their map, and compared to actual overall anomaly difference, for 1/6/13 and 1/6/12.

Might be worth updating at the end of the month.

Very nice, Chris!

[anonymous]

Can't remember having seen this shade of dark blue on any of the 721 bands maps before. Looks like the thicker-than-last-year-ice PIOMAS modeled off the Siberian coast is history soon.

[ivica]

Uh - not good for ice, ponded area is more translucent (how much?) than unponded areas as shown in "Under Ice Optics" video below.

...July 20, 2011 in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska...
The ice itself was approximately 1.5 m thick, with the melt pond approximately 20 cm deep. At the bottom of the cast, the camera itself was approximately ~20 m below the underside of the ice and shows that the melt ponds transmit significantly more light than unponded areas (and hence, act like "skylights" through the otherwise shading effect of the sea ice cover).

[ivica]

Reading more about melt pond effect:

...the transmission of light through ponded ice was generally an order of magnitude greater than through bare, unponded ice. Further-more, while many sites exhibited a consistent, exponential decay in light transmission through both ponded and bare ice surfaces, light transmission under bare ice was also observed to increase with depth (reaching maximum values 5 – 10 m below the bottom of the ice).

Effect on albedo is of course additional one:

Melt ponds form on Arctic sea ice during the melting season and their presence affects the heat and mass balances of the ice cover, mainly by decreasing the value of the surface albedo by up to 20%.

[wanderer]

Temperatures remain unusually low:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01b.fnl.html

[Apocalypse4Real]

Given the OSU 5 day model we will not see alot of surface melt in the CAB, temps below -2 C flow back and forth with the lows.

http://polarmet.osu.edu/nwp/animation.php?model=arctic_wrf&run=00&var=plot001

[ktonine]

A4R - have you considered what an average temp of -2C implies?

The ice should have a temperature of roughly -2C.  The ocean should have a temperature of -2C.  In other words - until there is significant fresh water around, the temp is pretty much constrained to -2C (or colder).

The sea ice reached its equilibrium thickness/temperature during the arctic night with surface temperatures dozens of degrees below freezing.  With the surface ice temperature at or near these well-below freezing air temps. Ever since then the ice has been warming and/or melting.  We have an ocean of "warm" water under the ice.  The warmth from that is permeating the ice.  Any ocean warmth that escapes the ice has likely been reflected back down by the water vapor and clouds above the CAB.  If the ice isn't melting it must be approaching an almost uniform -2C temperature (given that most of it is FYI).

Thicker MYI will still have a thermal gradient with the middle of the ice at a lower temperature than -2C, but as we all know there's not a lot of that left.  Wayne Davidson's research highlights many of these ideas and is especially good at showing some counter-intuitive effects of sun vs clouds. http://eh2r.blogspot.com/

[slow wing]

It's CT Area anomaly difference between 2013 and 2012 worked out from CT region graphs, put on their map, and compared to actual overall anomaly difference, for 1/6/13 and 1/6/12.

Might be worth updating at the end of the month.

Very nice, Chris!

Agree, it's an informative plot, beautifully presented!

Chris, would you happen to have the plot for either 2012 or 2013 area (i.e. not the difference plot) at this date? (And perhaps even the same plot for the 2012 minimum area?)

[ghoti]

O-buoy 7 and 8 webcams are both showing melt ponds.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2012L.htm

Clicking through to the various other co-located monitoring systems shows the bottom of the ice has started to see an increase in heat flux from the water to the ice - now up to around 25 Wm-2. ( it is amazing what a tenth of a degree rise in water temp translates to)

http://www.oc.nps.edu/~stanton/fluxbuoy/deploy/buoy24_deltaT.html

[AartBluestoke]

25 w/m2 isn't that much when you're melting ice
25 w/m2 * 3600s/hr*24hr/day / 1000j/kj
=2,160 kj/day/m2

ice :
density - 0.917 g/cm3   
 =917 kg/m3
heat of fusion - 334 kj/kg
 = 306,178 kj/m3

Dividing the heat of fusion by the energy flow = 7.05 mm/day melted.

A surface at about 88.5' inclination to a heat source of 1000 w/m2 will recieve 25 w/m2. (or 87' if you wish to take into account a day/night cycle)

[Peter Ellis]

25 w/m2 isn't that much when you're melting ice

[...]

Dividing the heat of fusion by the energy flow = 7.05 mm/day melted.

With 90 or so days to go before the September minimum, that gives 60cm of melt.  Perhaps not quite so insignificant after all?

[werther]

CT is in day 167 / 16 June; another century...minus 127 K. first of a 20-day range?