SNOW & ICE coverage in the Northern Hemisphere 2016/17

[Derbyshire_snow]

45 minutes ago, BREIFMAN11 said:

2010 killed my palm tree, missing you marmalade

2010 was epic here we had 2ft of snow i posted the pictures on here too.

[Craig Cameron]

likewise 2009/10 was pretty epic across all of Scotland, living in Glasgow at the time and it was the first i'd ever seen folk walking across the clyde, sub zero by day and shockingly by night for the town.  Driving up to the Island around late December was quite a trip especially heading towards Loch Glascarnoch.  Would be nice to have another 'proper' winter.

[March]

14 hours ago, Turnedoutniceagain said:

I had 14inches of snow in my back paddock. No amount of grit was ever going to shift that

Well they kept the A roads passable!

[Polar Maritime]

Not on the A515 up the road here..

 

[Turnedoutniceagain]

On ‎03‎/‎09‎/‎2016 at 21:18, March said:

Well they kept the A roads passable!

No doubt. A roads are ploughed, grit is an after thought

 

 

 

[Turnedoutniceagain]

Today's offering

Building up slowly down the Canadian West Coast/Rockies and Eastern Siberia.

[BornFromTheVoid]

6th lowest August snow cover on record http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/table_rankings.php?ui_set=1

 

[Turnedoutniceagain]

Not much change in a week.

[Gavin Hannah]

Looks like the suns activity is back on the way down? 20 spotless days this year. 260 in 2009 and 51 in 2010. A weak correlation i know, but every little helps?

http://www.spaceweather.com/

[Midlands Ice Age]

30 minutes ago, Gavin Hannah said:

Looks like the suns activity is back on the way down? 20 spotless days this year. 260 in 2009 and 51 in 2010. A weak correlation i know, but every little helps?

http://www.spaceweather.com/

Gavin..

Took your link.         In addition to the sunspot numbers, there is  interesting reported  info from their balloon flights checking the suns radiation.

Apparently, we are only at the start of the suns quiet period, but already a noticeable increase in solar radiation is occurring. They measured a more than 10% increase in the last year at their latitude. The point being that this will be magnified greatly at the poles.

Since it appears to interact with the atmosphere in terms of seeding clouds, lightening, etc, could this be at least enhancing any changes  for an apparent change in Arctic weather conditions?

A very interesting period ahead, it would seem for researchers.

[Midlands Ice Age]

2 hours ago, Turnedoutniceagain said:

Not much change in a week.

This week is normally the 'change' week for the Arctic. It will be interesting to see if it materializes at a normal time or whether the reported warmer waters and temps early on in the season (?), have had an impact.   

[BornFromTheVoid]

Looks like the sea ice extent minimum has been reached. Using the most common version, the NSIDC 5 day average extent, the minimum was reached on September 10th with a value of 4.137 million km2, the 2nd lowest minimum on record, beaten only by 2012.
This is mainly due to the milder than average conditions that lasted from last winter through to the end of spring, as the Arctic summer this year was both cooler and cloudier than average over large parts of the Arctic.

[Gavin Hannah]

Why is there a feature to post a link when the forum replaces it with null?? Just realised what was happening to the link I posted earlier.

[mb018538]

Error 

Edited September 13, 2016 by mb018538
Error

[jonboy]

4 hours ago, BornFromTheVoid said:

Looks like the sea ice extent minimum has been reached. Using the most common version, the NSIDC 5 day average extent, the minimum was reached on September 10th with a value of 4.137 million km2, the 2nd lowest minimum on record, beaten only by 2012.
This is mainly due to the milder than average conditions that lasted from last winter through to the end of spring, as the Arctic summer this year was both cooler and cloudier than average over large parts of the Arctic.

I wonder if the 'and cloudier' is down to the increase in cosmic ray levels we have been seeing over the last 6 months and if so what impact we will see coming into this winter

[BornFromTheVoid]

1 hour ago, jonboy said:

I wonder if the 'and cloudier' is down to the increase in cosmic ray levels we have been seeing over the last 6 months and if so what impact we will see coming into this winter

I think with cosmic rays, you're looking at fraction of a percent changes over years. What we had in the Arctic this summer was lots of low pressure and the associated clouds. Perhaps it had some influence, but I don't think it would be detectable over a single season.

[jonboy]

44 minutes ago, BornFromTheVoid said:

I think with cosmic rays, you're looking at fraction of a percent changes over years. What we had in the Arctic this summer was lots of low pressure and the associated clouds. Perhaps it had some influence, but I don't think it would be detectable over a single season.

The latest research would indicate a increase of 13% since 2015 in cosmic rays and is probably due to the sharp fall we have seen in that time in sun activity. There are 4 papers available over on spaceweather.com looking at this area which may well lead to some new thinking.

[jonboy]

and a  link http://phys.org/news/2016-08-solar-impact-earth-cloud.html

[BornFromTheVoid]

4 minutes ago, jonboy said:

The latest research would indicate a increase of 13% since 2015 in cosmic rays and is probably due to the sharp fall we have seen in that time in sun activity. There are 4 papers available over on spaceweather.com looking at this area which may well lead to some new thinking.

Those 4 papers aren't about cloud cover, but they're interesting nontheless!

6 minutes ago, jonboy said:

and a  link http://phys.org/news/2016-08-solar-impact-earth-cloud.html

That suggests that the biggest solar eruptions that reduce cosmic rays, "Forbush Decreases", produced something close to a 2% change in cloud cover. It took decades of data and the biggest solar events to detect that signal.

With that in mind, I don't think the recent increase in cosmic rays would produce a detectable change in Arctic cloud cover this summer, especially in one dominated by low pressure and cloud anyway.

[Turnedoutniceagain]

Further accumulations in Eastern Siberia

[Midlands Ice Age]

1 hour ago, Turnedoutniceagain said:

Further accumulations in Eastern Siberia

Also worthy of mention is the increase in general across Canada. It looks noticeable now in Alaska and just north of the Hudson Bay.. The Rockies are also now showing themselves. It is always nice at this time of year,to remind oneself (for me at least) that any changes in climate are very slow and do not seem to change the date for any start of  ice increase  and also snowfall.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Midlands Ice Age

[beng]

I guess if you're looking for factors that might favour a colder winter, then the lack of snow across Siberia during September is bizarrely a good sign since it should guarantee (very strange if not) a rapid increase there during October - and obviously there are studies out there linking the increase in October snow cover with the state of the AO later on in winter.

[damianslaw]

10 hours ago, beng said:

I guess if you're looking for factors that might favour a colder winter, then the lack of snow across Siberia during September is bizarrely a good sign since it should guarantee (very strange if not) a rapid increase there during October - and obviously there are studies out there linking the increase in October snow cover with the state of the AO later on in winter.

Yes its one factor, but as we saw I think last year or was it 2014 my memory is very poor on this, it didn't have an impact whatsoever. 

[Frost HoIIow]

Been quite a few times there has been an early start to the snow cover and we ended up with a mild or very mild Winter. I think in the next couple of months high pressure to our West, NW, North and NE over Scandi is more important rather than getting excited about snow cover in September 3,500 miles east of here. You can have an excellent snow coverage over Siberia and as far west as Berlin but if we get no blocking high pressure over the areas I said then we can wave goodbye to any notable cold or snow in western Europe. It just ain't gonna happen regardless of what is happening out east.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Frost HoIIow

[Gael_Force]

47 minutes ago, Frost HoIIow said:

Been quite a few times there has been an early start to the snow cover and we ended up with a mild or very mild Winter. I think in the next couple of months high pressure to our West, NW, North and NE over Scandi is more important rather than getting excited about snow cover in September 3,500 miles east of here. You can have an excellent snow coverage over Siberia and as far west as Berlin but if we get no blocking high pressure over the areas I said then we can wave goodbye to any notable cold or snow in western Europe. It just ain't gonna happen regardless of what is happening out east.

I seem to associate this research with Cohen's blog and if I recall correctly he had a very short period this was based on. Some of it seems to have been based on the solar minimum recent winters and extrapolated. Certainly didn't produce for the last two winters when coverage and westward spread seemed to fit the ideal criteria.