chubbs

As long as the Arctic Ocean completely freezes in winter, record melt extent will always produce record re-freeze. With all the open water in the Arctic Ocean this year, we will get a record late Fall/early Winter re-freeze at some point.

Global sea ice extent has moved far outside the historical envelop in the past 3 weeks. Unlikely to get much better in the next week or so with PV splits at both poles.

NSIDC extent for Oct 29 from Mohyu blog. (1000 of square km) Arctic Antarctic Total 2015 8444 17748 26192 2016 7111 16620 23731 2016 has 2461 x 1000 sq km or 9.4% less sea ice than this date last year. This is roughly 0.5% of the earth's surface.

This just out (behind a paywall) . Timely for this fall's unusual arctic circulation. Note positive feedback between sea ice loss and circulation changes leading to increased heat transport to arctic. On the atmospheric response experiment to a Blue Arctic Ocean Tetsu Nakamura1,2,*, Koji Yamazaki1,2, Meiji Honda3, Jinro Ukita3, Ralf Jaiser4, Dörthe Handorf4 and Klaus Dethloff4 Abstract We demonstrated atmospheric responses to a reduction in Arctic sea ice via simulations in which Arctic sea ice decreased stepwise from the present-day range to an ice-free range. In all cases, the tropospheric response exhibited a negative Arctic Oscillation (AO)-like pattern. An intensification of the climatological planetary-scale wave due to the present-day sea ice reduction on the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean induced stratospheric polar vortex weakening and the subsequent negative AO. Conversely, strong Arctic warming due to ice-free conditions across the entire Arctic Ocean induced a weakening of the tropospheric westerlies corresponding to a negative AO without troposphere-stratosphere coupling, for which the planetary-scale wave response to a surface heat source extending to the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean was responsible. Because the resultant negative AO-like response was accompanied by secondary circulation in the meridional plane, atmospheric heat transport into the Arctic increased, accelerating the Arctic amplification. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL070526/abstract

Per Jaxa, looks like antarctic extent is also at a record low. First time ever for both poles at same time?

Saw this Wipneus plot of PIOMASS minimum volume at the ASIF. This year ended up close to 2010 and 2011 and not far below the linear trendline. If we follow the linear trend, 2012 will be a normal year by 2022.

The figure below from a recent paper below shows how glacier discharge (D) has increased and surface mass balance has decreased since 1990 causing an increasingly negative Greenland mass balance (MB). Comparing the SMB estimates in the chart below to the chart posted above, the long term trends are similar but there are some differences in the relative ranking of individual years. http://www.the-cryosphere.net/10/1933/2016/

Here is a summary of the modeled surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet for the 2015/16 melting season. Strong melting was partially compensated for by above average snowfall. http://climato.be/cms/index.php?climato=the-2016-melt-season-over-greenland-as-simulated-by-marv3-5-2

Northern oceans have continued to warm while el-nino fades cooling the tropics. See also: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/clim/sst.anom.anim.year.html

It is surprising how close CT SIA came to 2012. The series of storms in August may also have played a role by enhancing bottom melt.

NSIDC extent dropped 120k on 9/6 to 4083k clinching 2nd place.

Yes, good job flagging 4mil as a reasonable prospect at the start of the year

Would expect above average extent losses to close out the melt season due to the large areas of low concentration ice, good melting momentum, and relatively mild weather to start September particularly over the Laptev.

Here is 70-80N on the Pacific side covering most of the rest of the Arctic Ocean. There are some year-to-year differences, particularly this year, but the overall trend is similar.

Cool season 80-90N has warmed by roughly 4C in the past 20 years, so unless things slow down, 2C is not that far away.

Down 360k in the past 3 days. With this late area drop, looks like 2016 is going to separate from 2011/2007 on CT SIA.

Could also be cloud/precip/ice movement since it reversed last night with a 147k amsr2 area drop. Day-to-day trends have been variable but area is still dropping at a good clip averaged over the past week or so.

Yes dipole would be much worse in June or July. I favor 2 or 3 on area.

You were thinking 4-6'th at the start of the stormy period. Is that still your call?

Big area losses in the CAB the past couple of days. With the stormy pattern forecast to persist for the next week, may get open water close to the pole.

Per the PV pattern, 12z euro/gfs forecasting strengthening low moving from Laptev/ESS to CAB in 4/5 days, euro bottoms out at 966, gfs at 971.

Nevins blog corrected their initial estimate to 12.5km2 down an order of magnitude from the original. Still a very significant event. With the calving, the glacier has retreated roughly 600m since last years max retreat (max retreat is usually in September) indicating that net mass losses continue in the glacier drainage.

2012 - 2019/20, 2013 - not in our lifetime - but I would have taken 2016-2020 if it was offered. Just eyeballing the trend line, looks like 2013 is more likely to occur than 2012 up until roughly 2018.

It doesn't address global methane concentrations only emissions associated with NG production and use and comparison to other fossil fuels.

This is an update of an earlier controversial paper. Paper has a clear discussion of methane emission estimates and does a good job of supporting the factors used. The main takeaway is that there is not much advantage for NG over coal when methane leaks are accounted for.