Arctic Sea ice the refreeze 2017/18

[Blessed Weather]

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) made a preliminary announcement yesterday (19th Sep) that they believe:

"On September 13, Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its seasonal minimum extent....".

NSIDC site: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

While I have the opportunity, my I thank @BornFromTheVoid for the excellent weekly updates on this topic.

[stewfox]

Cant find a thread for this ? given the min was called 13 Sept. 

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Scary

At the minimum this year, ice older than 4 years constituted only ~150,000 square kilometers (~58,000 square miles), compared to over 2 million square kilometers (~770,000 square miles) during the mid-1980s.

 

[knocker]

Arctic sea ice thickness processed at UCL from CryoSat's SAR mode data:

http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/seaice.html

[stewfox]

What a difference a year makes re DMI High Arctic holding on to its cold this year.

[Geordiesnow]

4 hours ago, stewfox said:

What a difference a year makes re DMI High Arctic holding on to its cold this year.

Well technically speaking, its still above average and large swathes of the Pacific is well above average aswell as parts of the Atlantic side. Models are hinting the PV may move out of the Canadian Archipelago and into parts of the Pacific side so the large area of open water in Chukchi should freeze over somewhat although the models also still hint southerly winds could still dominate around the Bering stright. Its an interesting Autumn season because there does not appear to be much fram export but temps are still very warm though.

[stewfox]

2 hours ago, Geordiesnow said:

Well technically speaking, its still above average and large swathes of the Pacific is well above average aswell as parts of the Atlantic side. Models are hinting the PV may move out of the Canadian Archipelago and into parts of the Pacific side so the large area of open water in Chukchi should freeze over somewhat although the models also still hint southerly winds could still dominate around the Bering stright. Its an interesting Autumn season because there does not appear to be much fram export but temps are still very warm though.

These were observations of what the DMI temps (average temp 80N and above)  for 2016 to cf 2017 and the contrast is self evident with average temps being 15/20c lower then this time last year.

 Although i cant add the latest 2017 which shows a upward path  'technically' all above the long term average.

 

 

 

 

[Snipper]

Not sure if I should plonk this here. Nasa forecast: Which cities will flood as ice melts? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41986163

hopefully there are some experienced views. 

[The PIT]

Interesting nobodies posting any refreeze figures. They were interesting to look at.

[Geordiesnow]

1 hour ago, The PIT said:

Interesting nobodies posting any refreeze figures. They were interesting to look at.

In what way? currently 3rd lowest with 2012 and 2016 lower than that and on the fringes of the rest of the years, I suspect in the 5 to 7 days or so the pacific side of the Arctic will see some stronger re-freezing and ice thickening as a PV lobe heads out from the Candian Arctic islands into the Beaufort and eventually the Chuckchi although what the models do after that is a bit unclear although the trend does seem to be the pacific side of the Arctic will be colder than the Atlantic side for the foreseeable future. Favourable winds could help ice expand southwards in the Kara Sea also although according to the anomolies charts, SST's in the Kara are fairly high but the set up looks persistent so I'll be surprised if there is not more refreezing there. More ice in the Kara is a complete contrast to last year and is the reason why we are not near 2016 levels.

I find the weather pattern across the Arctic quite interesting at the moment with a strong negative NAO developing and quite a strong Arctic high over the pole, hopefully this will help thicken the ice up across the pole and fram export does not look too severe either.

[stewfox]

2 hours ago, The PIT said:

Interesting nobodies posting any refreeze figures. They were interesting to look at.

You can down load IJIS figures from here . Weekly updates were nice but I guess takes time and as no step changes on the cards, i fear interest in the Arctic has and will wain

https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent

[Geordiesnow]

3 hours ago, stewfox said:

You can down load IJIS figures from here . Weekly updates were nice but I guess takes time and as no step changes on the cards, i fear interest in the Arctic has and will wain

https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent

Unfortunately I mis-read The Pit's post and assume he was aware of the current figures and found them interesting so apologies for that.

Its always more quiet in the winter season anyways regarding the sea ice but its interesting to observe temperatures and how quickly the ice is growing and what thicknesses it gets along with the volume figures. The Arctic sea ice forum by Neven is probably the best place to go to get up to date stuff on the ice especially during the summer if albeit there is a bias in most members posts of hoping all the ice vanishes in the summer so you have to bear that in mind when you read some OTT posts in there.

Edited November 17, 2017 by Geordiesnow

[Daniel*]

 

[Geordiesnow]

1 hour ago, Daniel* said:

 

Hudson Bay ice is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, put it another way, 2016 is ahead of 2017 in the Chukchi sea and infact this area is probably the lowest on record in this region. Thankfully conditions look like they will turn significantly colder and there is not much hints of any Pacific ridge coming into play either!

November sea ice volume will be interesting as its been so warm in the Pacific regions yet cold in the centre of the basin so despite extent not going as fast it should be during November, volume may fare a bit better and hopefully there be no signs of last winter's shocker volume increase.

[knocker]

 

[Gray-Wolf]

I do not know what to expect of this re-freeze but would draw folks attention to the areas we have been seeing becoming seasonal ice areas ( Barentsz/Kara/Beaufort/East Siberian/Greenland) and just how late they re-freeze and how thick the ice becomes over this winter.

We cannot continue to see the degradation of the pack even if the 'new' weathers over summer in the Arctic do not appear to include a 'perfect melt storm'

The ice will end up no resistance to the 'average' melt season and so will increasingly trend toward 'ice free' . If we see an average summer produce a blue ocean then we can all but call the basin seasonal for good with only the most perfect retention summer keeping ice by late aug.

 

[Geordiesnow]

On 11/19/2017 at 18:21, Gray-Wolf said:

I do not know what to expect of this re-freeze but would draw folks attention to the areas we have been seeing becoming seasonal ice areas ( Barentsz/Kara/Beaufort/East Siberian/Greenland) and just how late they re-freeze and how thick the ice becomes over this winter.

We cannot continue to see the degradation of the pack even if the 'new' weathers over summer in the Arctic do not appear to include a 'perfect melt storm'

The ice will end up no resistance to the 'average' melt season and so will increasingly trend toward 'ice free' . If we see an average summer produce a blue ocean then we can all but call the basin seasonal for good with only the most perfect retention summer keeping ice by late aug.

 

I do believe if the Bering stright does not refreeze during the winter then we are in real danger of getting the lowest on record and you got to say at this moment in time that does look a possibility giving the vast amounts of open water there is there, frequent southerly winds by attempted Pacific ridges is the main cause for that, the huge PV blob i mentioned in my last post in here of course avoided the Chukchi sea in a large part and headed stright towards Laptev and the Arctic is yet again going to look very warm for the time of year.

One positive I suppose to note is that despite how mild it is, the fram export does look minimal because of the negative AO.

[masheeuk]

On 16/11/2017 at 17:42, Snipper said:

Not sure if I should plonk this here. Nasa forecast: Which cities will flood as ice melts? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41986163

hopefully there are some experienced views. 

What does this have to do with Arctic ice?

[Snipper]

Bit of a stupid response if you read the question

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi Snipper! Maybe the Greenland thread or the Antarctic thread would have been a better spot as it will be their ice that swamps us but , then again, maybe it will be the changes to the Arctic that precipitate the changes that drive the collapses around Greenland/East Antarctica?

The russian teams looking at the submerged permafrosts under the East Siberian Sea have warned us that we are not needing of a 'clathrate gun' event as there is massive amounts of pressurised CH4 in those reserves protected only by a capping of ice. Events on Yamal ( the exploding 'funnels'?) show us this 'cap' is failing allowing for rapid release of methane which , we know is a 'super GHG.

Should we see the ice capping fail offshore then Shakhova ,et al, calculate that  a 6% release would double our current GHG forcings over the first 20 years.

Plenty of time to rinse and repeat with more of the reserves as global temps shoot up over a short period.?

Such a warming spurt will surely lead to both Pine Island glacier and Thwaites glacier, on east Antarctica, retreating further up stream taking them both off their current resting points and 'floating off' the glacier from its ever deepening valley ( the channel that separates east from west antarctica when ice free?). This will lead to the rapid collapse of the glaciers as 'ice cliff fracturing' causes constant , year round, collapse of any ice standing over 100m above the water ( as we see now in some of the the Greenland glaciers)

This glacial retreat runs under gravity and so is not temp related. The channel deepens from the ridge that both grounding lines are now sat on and so the ice is able to be floated off from the base as the ocean floods in. with ever deeper ice comes ever higher cliff faces and we know anything over 100m is unstable so will enter into constant collapse. this is a massive change and will bring metres of sea level changes over mere decades.

When you look at global trade the flooding of our major ports/oil terminals over a matter of years will be a big challenge for humanity to face.

Edited December 11, 2017 by Gray-Wolf

[The PIT]

Lack of posts on the refreeze is interesting considering it's doesn't look like it's going very well.

[Gray-Wolf]

I think there are two reasons Pit?

1/ Fatigue of those celebrating their first decade logging the destruction of the Arctic.

2/ The undeniable trend for the Sea ice in the Basin.

With both entrance areas into the basin struggling to put on ice due to long periods ice free over the last melt season will now begin to impact the refreeze trajectory compared to the pre 2012 plots .The basin by now is around 70% refrozen so only the difficult peripheral ice to go such as Bering/Okhotsk/Barentsz/Baffin/Greenland? 

The great Lakes saw a rapid refreeze this year but this has now stalled out and they slipped down to 6th in the ranking??

[Geordiesnow]

7 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

I think there are two reasons Pit?

1/ Fatigue of those celebrating their first decade logging the destruction of the Arctic.

2/ The undeniable trend for the Sea ice in the Basin.

With both entrance areas into the basin struggling to put on ice due to long periods ice free over the last melt season will now begin to impact the refreeze trajectory compared to the pre 2012 plots .The basin by now is around 70% refrozen so only the difficult peripheral ice to go such as Bering/Okhotsk/Barentsz/Baffin/Greenland? 

The great Lakes saw a rapid refreeze this year but this has now stalled out and they slipped down to 6th in the ranking??

I think the main talking point regarding this refreeze season so far is the Chukchi sea region and the Bering straight with the anomalies continuing to be way above normal and I do feel there is the real possibility occuring of the Bering Sea being largely ice free come the Spring time which will no doubt mean an early retreat in the Chukchi sea which will put pressure on the ice on the Pacfic side of the Arctic. Its one to watch but the weather patterns I'm seeing do look concerning too me with the upcoming WAA ridge heading into the Beaufort with perhaps another one shortly following on behind coming from Bering sea.although that is quite a way off at the moment.

The only region I can see that is doing "well" is parts of the East Siberian sea and the laptev as a very persistant area of high pressure(think the same high has been around for most of the 2nd half of the Autumn season and for the first 2-3 weeks of this month!) has been dominating which allowed a lot of the ice to compact against the landmasses. 

[mountain shadow]

I found the Admirality charts from circa 1940.  They show the Winter and Summer ice extent. As you can see, the sea ice in Winter completely froze the ice between Iceland and Greenland as well as half way down Iceland's East coast. I'

[karyo]

16 minutes ago, mountain shadow said:

I found the Admirality charts from circa 1940.  They show the Winter and Summer ice extent. As you can see, the sea ice in Winter completely froze the ice between Iceland and Greenland as well as half way down Iceland's East coast. I'

Wow, this is huge difference to the current situation! No wonder our winters suck!

[Gray-Wolf]

JAXA dropped to lowest on record yesterday???

We were doing so well at sea ice minimum ( at least 5th lowest?) so what happened?

I guess this will also mean volume is dropping relative to the average for this time of year?

I do hope that AGW has well changed the summer patterns as the old 'perfect melt storm used to come around every 10 to 20 years and it will be 11 years since the last one this summer....... there is no way the recent max volumes of sea ice, especially now most of it is weak first year ice, could withstand a summer like 2007.

Next will be the fragmentation of the ice from Late Jan onward further pummelling the ice into floe sizes so small that side melt overtakes losses to bottom melt making rapid melt out possible.