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Arctic Melt Season 2020


Gray-Wolf

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

I thought I'd set this up esp. after looking at the Feb GISS temps!!!

 

Surely such a huge anom will have impacts on snow cover and so on to the Sea ice (loss of snow cover impacts temps up to 1,500km away?)

Will these anoms continue into Spring proper and so dry the warming land ahead of 'Wildfire Season'?

'Black soot' is another thing we do not need draped across the Sea ice!!!

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe
1 hour ago, Gray-Wolf said:

I thought I'd set this up esp. after looking at the Feb GISS temps!!!

 

Surely such a huge anom will have impacts on snow cover and so on to the Sea ice (loss of snow cover impacts temps up to 1,500km away?)

Will these anoms continue into Spring proper and so dry the warming land ahead of 'Wildfire Season'?

'Black soot' is another thing we do not need draped across the Sea ice!!!

How much does soot actually affect sea ice melting? The theory is there but in practice it seems to have limited affect from what I can see. Even the negative affect of limiting sunlight must be small I would say. 

It will be interesting how the lack of snow cover over Europe affects the Eurasian snow cover which along with the Alaskan snow cover is more important for the sea ice imo. 

I'm probably more concerned about how much ice we lost through the fram Stright, yes temperatures anaomolies at times has been more normal but this is always the catch 22 situation with the Arctic. The best winter conditions for the Arctic is surely a true Arctic high to be more dominant with pieces of PV circulating it so you get the low temperatures and less export. A high ridging in frrom the Atlantic or Pacific is not good for the ice as it brings huge amounts of warmth in. 

Looking at the ice at the moment, the interest has to be the ESS, the fast ice or the lack of it compared to other years could play a part as we head into summer, and it's already breaking up in parts and seperating from the ice pack(although refreezing behind it as its still well cold enough). 

Still as ever weather conditions during the summer will play their part on how much ice we do lose, I can't see an ice free pole or BOE happening this year, I think winter ice has to be less than it is now and for it to take longer to form during the Autumn months before that happens. 

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

According to JAXA we have gone from 10th lowest right to 4th lowest on record all ready with a huge century drop all ready in the melting season. Will we go on a similar path to 2019 in terms of the extent line in the next few days and be amongst the lowest on record or will we remain within the pack? Weather patterns still continue tto suggest alot of fram export and the ice does not look too great across the Laptev with signs of thin ice in a large amount of areas and give it a month or two, I'm sure we will see true open water appearing. 

Also keep an eye on the Siberian coastline, strong southerly winds are forecast after day 3 and this coulld result in ice being moved away from the coastline there. 

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

Thundery Wintry Showers fantastic April fools joke(it fooled me admittedly) in the other thread about a much higher minimum of sea ice because of the COVID-19 situation which is resulting in air pollution being much less, I just want to hear peoples opinions whether less pollution will lead to potentially less heat entering the Arctic or will it lead to an opposite affect or it will have no influence at all? 

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
21 hours ago, Geordiesnow said:

Thundery Wintry Showers fantastic April fools joke(it fooled me admittedly) in the other thread about a much higher minimum of sea ice because of the COVID-19 situation which is resulting in air pollution being much less, I just want to hear peoples opinions whether less pollution will lead to potentially less heat entering the Arctic or will it lead to an opposite affect or it will have no influence at all? 

I think we will get to see our own '9/11' impact from the drop off in air travel before we even look at the impacts industrial Nations locking down production will have in 'Global Dimming'? Remember .back in the mid noughties NASA put the impacts of 'Global Dimming' as halving the temp rises we were due from the GHG forcing..... that would be quite a 'bump' to see on our temps?

Sadly the USA have dropped all EPA 'measuring' of industrial pollution and are allowing 'in house' measuring of dangerous outputs to also lapse....... I expect many communities there to relive the blight of heavy industry/oil production we were accustomed to in the 70's with river pollution wiping out fish numbers and ocean contamination from rigs no longer 'dealt with'......

Back to the Arctic, low solar and low pollution warns me of high losses and a permafrost on fire (as we saw in 2012?)

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

Well we shall see if low pollution is actually more harmful than not in the coming months but it seems no matter what we do, it's too late to save the planet from the constant warming trends. 

Even if low pollution does help with any cool down, I think it could be irrelevant this year the ice in the ESS looks ****, it really does, its just lots of ice cubes floating around with very little fast ice(probaably the least fast ice ever?) for any sort of protection and resilience. There is no solid ice with leads in at all and too me if the weather patterns favour compaction then there could be alot of early open water here like it was in 2017. 

The Beaufort gyre as usual kicks into gear when the winds blows from the Alaskan landmass and the ice just moves away from the coastlines as a result, again showing just how thin the ice is here although it probably looks on worldview it may be more resilient than last year when we saw the extraordinary conditions where there was huge amounts of open water in place by the start of June. 

We see how this year goes, if I start seeing loads of holes appearing during the ice pack in June then alarm bells should ring, 2019s ice pack actually was quite compact, the warmth of June which set up rapid melt in July over the ESS is probably what caused the ice to go so low in the end. I dread to think what a repeat this year will do. 

Still all the good ice is around the Barants sea so at least we may not see much Atlantification during the melt season unless we get constant southerlies. 

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Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

Some unseasonably warm air looks set to move into the high Arctic over the coming few days, with attacks from the Atlantic side and from southern Eurasia:

image.thumb.png.faea46596a49fc655903d78f3bf4d2c0.png

image.thumb.png.48e66723c028c89035492ed82dcc033f.png

The Barents/Kara Sea area has been seeing near to slightly below-average temperatures recently (and unusually low temperatures for recent years) which has been keeping the sea ice levels high in this area, but a combination of warmth and southerly winds will probably result in significant sea ice retreat in the next week.  The lack of snow cover over Eurasia could prove significant here also.  It also looks like being warmer than average over the Beaufort/Chuckhi Sea area though not as exceptionally so.

Thus I think in the next fortnight or so we could well see the Arctic sea ice extent drop towards near-record lows for the first time since November 2019.

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Posted
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
  • Location: Longden, Shropshire
On 06/04/2020 at 11:39, Geordiesnow said:

Well we shall see if low pollution is actually more harmful than not in the coming months but it seems no matter what we do, it's too late to save the planet from the constant warming trends. 

I think no matter what we do, it will be many years at least before we see any signs of the warming trends leveling off?

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
34 minutes ago, Don said:

I think no matter what we do, it will be many years at least before we see any signs of the warming trends leveling off?

Agreed!

Not just the arrival of any 'hidden warming' that we should be seeing but has been 'masked' by the flip side of our polluting but also due to the impacts 'warming ' has across the pole?

If we think of the flip from reflecting over 90% of incoming energy to 'accepting' over 90% of that energy means every square meter opened up this way has a 'thermal impact'?

Then there's the GHG's being increasingly measured being released as permafrost melts and we see CH4 and CO2 enter the atmosphere for the first time there in millenia.....

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe
16 hours ago, Thundery wintry showers said:

Some unseasonably warm air looks set to move into the high Arctic over the coming few days, with attacks from the Atlantic side and from southern Eurasia:

image.thumb.png.faea46596a49fc655903d78f3bf4d2c0.png

image.thumb.png.48e66723c028c89035492ed82dcc033f.png

The Barents/Kara Sea area has been seeing near to slightly below-average temperatures recently (and unusually low temperatures for recent years) which has been keeping the sea ice levels high in this area, but a combination of warmth and southerly winds will probably result in significant sea ice retreat in the next week.  The lack of snow cover over Eurasia could prove significant here also.  It also looks like being warmer than average over the Beaufort/Chuckhi Sea area though not as exceptionally so.

Thus I think in the next fortnight or so we could well see the Arctic sea ice extent drop towards near-record lows for the first time since November 2019.

The air coming in is 'warm' relatively speaking but it will be a drop in the ocean compare to what the Arctic is likely too see in the next 4 to 5 months. 

Its not unheard of to get plus 0 air coming in from Russia in April, i think it happened in 2009 and 2011 and maybe other years too but its more signs of the ever warming trend unfortunately. 

Not sure about extent, one reason its so low at the moment is because of the low ice in Baffin Bay at the moment but that is counteracted by the higher extent in the Barants although as you say we could see a retreat here(hopefully by compaction rather than melting). 

Keep an eye on the ESS(and Laptev) area in the coming daya, big Siberian high with winds coming in from the land , temperatures are probably not low enough for refreeze so we may see some early open water here? I think this year's big shock could be that region just like the Beaufort sea was last year. 

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

Just an update on where we are at the moment.

Currently 3rd lowest and only just above 2016 and 2019 but perhaps more interestingly the areas of melt is different this year compared to those years. For example the reasons why 2016 was so low was because of the drop in extent in the Beaufort sea and the constant low ice in the Barants sea. In 2019 the low extent was down to the lack of ice in the Bering Sea and to a smaller extent in the Chukchi and Baffin Bay. The main culprit why this year is low so far is down to the retreat of ice in Baffin Bay with perhaps the lowest on record I would bet(the Arctic sea ice graphs that is online only go as far back as 2012). At this moment in time, there has been no significant open water in the basin itself with the exception of Laptev due to ice drifting away from the Arctic islands but forecasts would suggest this hole will fill back in. There's been a noticeable decrease in the Kara sea also largely due to the quite deep low that hit here in the last 2 days, be interesting too see if any holes fill back in here in the coming days.

Imo, I expect extent to remain on the low side for a while, if another Arctic region(the Kara sea for example)starts to lose ice rapidly we could well see record lows for the time of year because of the situation in Baffin Bay at the moment but my focus is watching the ice extents in Beaufort, Chukchi and the ESS regions. At least at this stage, 2020 is faring better than 2019 in the first 2 areas. There is hints the Beaufort high could come into play in the medium term however that is always subject to change at this stage but one to watch. 

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

I'm not liking the recent increases in Arctic Sea Ice.

To me it speaks of 'Collapse & Spread' of the pack and , if correct, will signal a rapid reduction in ice as the season progresses?

The massive temp anoms around areas of the basin must be impacting the coastal ice and so hasten its loss leading to further 'collapse & spread' very early in the melt season

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe
12 hours ago, Gray-Wolf said:

I'm not liking the recent increases in Arctic Sea Ice.

To me it speaks of 'Collapse & Spread' of the pack and , if correct, will signal a rapid reduction in ice as the season progresses?

The massive temp anoms around areas of the basin must be impacting the coastal ice and so hasten its loss leading to further 'collapse & spread' very early in the melt season

Not totally unusual seeing increases at this time of year although an 51K increase was a surprise especially as you look at current weather conditions over the basin and it does not suggest it favours ice spreading. See what the next update shows, could be a larger drop if today's large increase was down to any type of error? 

The Beaufort high hints are still showing on the models, potential for a strong dipole is there also but by no means a certainty. Before that, the weather looks favourable enough for ice, no real dramas from what I can see. 

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

Hi GS!

With the current predictions of a high end Global temp year, even in the absence of an El Nino, I have concerns of the impacts such might have on the melt season but also the distribution of N.H. heat over the season that will allow for such a high global Temp?

As you know I firmly believe that the post 2012 years (summer/winter) have been a continuation of the conditioning of the ice toward us arriving at a 'season oce pack' across the basin

As we have seen the 'drops' in sea ice min record years are not a linear event but 'steps' and so I'm always open to the next year we see such a drop with Nino years hastening such?

They spectre of 'non Nino' years challenging global temp records broadens my concerns. Couple that with the impacts Covid-19 is having on our atmosphere & I think it wise to keep a weather eye on development across the basin?

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

Of course even if we have a record hot year, the Arctic may escape it and still have a coolish summer which may help the ice to be preserved somewhat but you do worry if one of those hot pools hits the sea ice in the ESS like last year. 

We are seeing things heating up in Western Russia now and the heat looks like it could head very close to the Kara Sea area. Also the models are now hinting at an Alaskan ridge perhaps coming into play, still a bit far out and maybe a little too early for any real heat but it's not a set up you want too see during the summer months especially. 

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Posted
  • Location: New Forest (Western)
  • Weather Preferences: Fascinated by extreme weather. Despise drizzle.
  • Location: New Forest (Western)

Well, this isn't going to help matters. I wonder whether reduced atmospheric pollutants - particularly sulphur dioxide - are having a warming effect via increased radiation reaching the oceans and seas?


That was some good analysis from @Geordiesnowlate last month on the regional differences between 2020 and other recent years.

Here's an update on that with data from the end of April:


The thickness here is based on if the PIOMAS modelled sea ice volume was spread out evenly across the whole sea. So it's not how thick the ice that's present is - but it does allow for clear comparison between years, which is the main purpose of it.

The record low ESS + Laptev + Kara Sea averaged thickness may be of some concern given that of the 5 closest-matching past years, 3 had strong melting seasons: 2019, 2011 & 2007. On the other hand, the other two are 2017 and 2014 which both had very tame melting seasons in terms of the proportion of ice lost between max and min. 

2019, 2011 and 2007 are also strong matches for Baffin Bay - the 'back door' to the CAA. They differ markedly in the Barents, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, though.

2014 is similar in Chukchi and Beaufort, while 2017 has no further similarities.


The strongest two matching years are in fact 2019 and 2009. Yes, 2009 - it's similar in all the listed seas outside of that first group (i.e. all but ESS + Laptev + Kara Sea).

One with a very strong melting season and the other very tame. Which way it goes this year may say a lot about the importance of the Asia-adjacent seas relative to the others, though weather patterns will also be a big deal as usual - 2007 would not have been record-breaking (at the time), had it not featured an exceptional frequency of the 'Arctic dipole' pattern.

 

In my view, the single strongest match of all is 2019, despite the large differences in the Bering Sea - I don't see a lot of importance to that when it's still lower than most years.

The very strongest melting seasons tend to have that effect, for no matter the weather patterns, there's only so much a region can recover from an extreme low.

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

The lack of thickness in the ice in the ESS could play a huge part in the melt season this year, the lack is of fast ice could be a player also. 

BTW this dipole that is now hitting the basin could signal a huge change in how the ice looks in the Beaufort sea, Beaufort Gyre is going to be in action for a good number of days that is for sure. We should also see some ice retreat in the Chukchi sea also and perhaps some retreat on the North coast of Siberia also. 

The ECM tonight BTW is just extraordinary, a huge 1040MB(with high thicknesses)high sat right on top of the basin, I have not see anything like it in May. Not only we got high upper air temperatures heading into the pacfic side of the basin, we got some heading into the Atlantic side potentially too although this is less certain at this stage. This may has started cold but talk about destroying the PV in just a few days! 

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Posted
  • Location: King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
  • Weather Preferences: Hot and Thundery, Cold and Snowy
  • Location: King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

Agreed. About as tragic as charts can get so early in the season, a solid high dragging in warm uppers from all directions. With it being only early May, and with all of June and July to get through, a repeat pattern does not bear thinking about. 

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Posted
  • Location: New Forest (Western)
  • Weather Preferences: Fascinated by extreme weather. Despise drizzle.
  • Location: New Forest (Western)

I concur. Until yesterday’s runs it appeared the Arctic heights were going to lower again pretty soon after the major HLB spell, but now it looks like the blocking highs will simply re-orientate.

When a blocking pattern does this, shifting every 3-5 days, that can be most dangerous to the sea ice, as warm air is drawn from new sources, leading to higher temps than if the same broad scale flow was maintained for a week or more.

Of course, if it shifts about any faster, reduced poleward warm air transport counters the new sources effect... at which point you don’t have blocking anyway.

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe
3 hours ago, East_England_Stormchaser91 said:

Agreed. About as tragic as charts can get so early in the season, a solid high dragging in warm uppers from all directions. With it being only early May, and with all of June and July to get through, a repeat pattern does not bear thinking about. 

Yep that is the only saving grace for the ice, if this was July, the uppers would be even warmer, there be more dark ocean and of course no snow cover either. 

I will say though, I do think it's a little to simplistic in thinking low pressure is good for sea ice and high pressure is bad. You get increased compaction in the CAB with more high pressure and if this high does settle over the CAB in the next 5 days or so, despite the uppers, it might be better for the ice in the long run. That said, what the higher upper air temps do is having more areas around the freezing point and coupled with sunshine then more melt pounds could occur? 

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Posted
  • Location: New Forest (Western)
  • Weather Preferences: Fascinated by extreme weather. Despise drizzle.
  • Location: New Forest (Western)

I've seen research mentioned on the ASI forum which suggests cloudy conditions actually encourage the onset of melt pond development in May, via humid air high dewpoints.

That must surely depend on the air being warm enough though, which generally means a post-polar vortex situation.


Large low pressure systems still tend to contain subzero air in May, so I expect that the dangerous combination of moisture and temps very near or a little above zero is usually confined to large influxes of relatively warm air between areas of high and low pressure. 

Much as is expected to an extreme degree across the Pacific side in the coming week. 

 

True what GS says regarding highs and compaction.

Not only that, but in May, it the surface albedo also tends to be too high for melt ponds to get going via solar input. If there's unusually warm air in the circulation, that may do the trick but once snow and ice starts melting in light winds, that lowers the near-surface air temperature and tends to result in a freeze-thaw sequence. It'll get there but not as efficiently as when the unusually warm air is relatively moist and being continually resupplied by brisk winds.

In winter, I've seen modest (4-6 cm) snow cover last here (in the far south of the UK) through 5 sunny days with maximums 5-7°C but low humidity. Yet I've also seen it only a few hours of 1-2°C with cloudy skies and high humidity to melt through that much.

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

Wow 1050MB high is being forecast by the UKMO! That has to be a record for May if that comes off!

Some staggering charts really, there are hints things may perhaps turn more favourable perhaps for the ice but I have a feeling the high may hang on for longer and linger around near the Beaufort, we shall see. 

We also seeing temps hovering around the melting point also so be interesting if we see any signs of melt ponding occuring.

Andd if that's not enough, we got a very deep low heading for Svalbard and hitting the ice in the Barants, its mainly a one day wonder but we could see some impacts from this system. 

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Posted
  • Location: New Forest (Western)
  • Weather Preferences: Fascinated by extreme weather. Despise drizzle.
  • Location: New Forest (Western)

Yeah... I gotta say, it’s the most ‘pre-conditioning’ pattern I’ve ever seen in mid-May.

It could well be enough to melt through the protective snow cover a week or two earlier than has ever been observed before, significantly lowering albedo to the point that the sun is able to start working at the ice like it can in late July (comparable strength) where & when clear skies (of which there looks to be an abundance) combine with temps at or not far below freezing (which look unusually widespread for at least the next week).

We’ll see. A lot of blocking highs featured in May 2019 too but decent snow cover prevented more than localised preconditioning (that only really got going in June). That was under a much slacker pattern than we look to have this time, though. We also have some more pronounced warmth and moisture intrusions.

So much energy being persistently driven into the snow may make for a more severe impact this time. I don’t like this situation one bit.

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Posted
  • Location: Morecambe
  • Location: Morecambe

There is gradual hints this high pressure block may break down and be on the Siberian side of the basin so potentially a reverse dipole kind of set up but it is a slow old process to get there. I'm just amazed at how high the temperatures are, just over a week ago, they were around - 15 to -20 and now we are at freezing and coupled with sunshine, It could result in quite a bit of melt ponding. Of course the only cavet will be when the sun is lower in the sky or even setting, temperatures do drop a little bit but even so, onn today's worldview image, there is signs of melt ponds in the basin. 

On another note, that deep low that hit Svalbard, apparently the winds speeds down fram straight was at hurricane force strength of just under 100mph and the Barants ice that it left behind looks quite a bit battered. Incredible weather across the Arctic, a very deep 960MB low around Svalbard and a 1045MB high around Wrangel Island and its May!

It will be interesting if the NSIDC make any mention of these two weather system and whether they are record breakers for May. 

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