ORH_wxman

Actually I just found it: http://www.city-data.com/forum/city-vs-city/668385-dry-heat-vs-humid-heat.html

I think someone posted a city data forum poll about it years ago and it showed about 70% prefer dry heat over humid heat.

Oppressive heat and humidity for mid afternoon on July 9th

This one is for powderfreak for BTV....you have to go back to the pre-2010 days or so when they didn't run warm....but the really noticeable furnace there started around 2013 or so...and seems to just get slowly worse each year.

Haha....that's what I remember...it was like on a local swamp within the airport grounds.

BED def has a step increase around 2016 though...something noticeable changed there in the analysis. The more recent increase is sloped...but the initial degree or two was a step change.

Yeah some local construction on the airfield could do it too...an extreme case of that was SEA a few years back. It's prob either construction or a movement of the ASOS station on the grounds. The gradual slope might point more toward construction or perhaps some newer mesonet sites included in the analysis that are running pretty cold. For a site movement, I'd expect a sharp step increase or decrease.

Anecdotally I had noticed OWD wasn't putting up some of the really good lows that they usually do the past winter or two. Wonder if they moved the ASOS location slightly on the airport ground? That may have affected it. I remember years ago seeing where the ASOS station was there and it almost looked like a local ditch on the airport itself.

I thought it was most obvious in winter time. But yeah, the onshore flow is pretty telling too in the warm season. They should be running colder than a lot of stations in months like June.

I don't know where Brian gets multiple years worth of the output, but here's the last 52 weeks. This matches with the BOS nosedive later last summer and it has basically stayed there since late autumn edit" See Brian just posted the multiple years above

I don't hope for catastrophic warming. But a record low extent makes it a more interesting season to track. I don't think there is some massive catastrophe that happens either if we break a record min. It didn't happen in 2012. We actually ended up rebounding in a big way the following season. Anyways, 2019 is off to a strong start in July so if we can build a couple hundred thousand lead on 2012, then we may have a chance. 2012's losses are so breathtaking later in the month and early August that we'll need to build up some more momentum. June didn't quite do the trick but if early July is hostile enough, maybe it can make up for it.

He's not wrong that there were probably some pretty low ice extents in the late 1930s or 1940s akin to perhaps the late 1990s or early 2000s but that definitely doesn't matter in the larger picture. The best data starts in 1979 so that is the natural starting point for most ice related graphs. It's not some conspiracy.

Final June NSIDC-adjusted area numbers are in, and we're currently 2nd lowest on record behind 2012 though 2007 and 2010 were very close to 2019 as well. What this means is that this year has an excellent chance to finish in the top 3 lowest extent/areas on record. Here are the top 5 lowest: 2012 (6.53 million sq km) 2019 (6.76 million) 2010 (6.77 million) 2007 (6.81 million) 2016 (6.94 million) Does this year have enough of a good start to set a new record? Most likely not. The numbers do not support it. That doesn't mean 0 chance though like more recent years. But we will have to set a new record for area loss between now and the minimum to get there...however, we don't have to set it by much....only about 40k. If we melt 40k more area than 2016 from here on out, we'll set a new minimum area record. The average 2007-2018 loss from July 1st onward was 4.13 million sq km. That would leave 2019 at 2.63 million sq km of ice at the minimum for area. The 2012 record sits at 2.22 million sq km of ice which means in order to set a new recrod, we need to lose 4.56 million sq km of ice area. 2016 is the current record of ice area loss from this point forward losing 4.52 million sq km. So as stated above, we will need to beat this by about 40k or more to pass 2012 at the minimum. That is going to be about 2 standard deviations or even a little more for losses. So I'd put the chances of setting a new record at about 5%. Again, this is for area only. Not extent. Extent is a little tougher since things like compaction can occur that affect extent a lot more than it affects area. Still, it will be hard to set the extent record as well. We might have a slightly greater than 5% chance at setting the extent record since 2012 wasn't extremely compacted. Getting back to area, below is a histogram of what would happen to 2019 if we followed all area losses from previous years....so for example, if we followed 2018 area losses from this point forward, we would finish with an area minimum of just over 2.50 million sqkm: So given the information above, I am going to predict a minimum area of 2.60 million sq km +/- 200k (2.4-2.8 for a range). I will set a minimum NSIDC extent of 3.8 million sq km +/- 200k (3.6-4.0 as a range). Neither of these ranges include the 2012 record...I don't believe we will quite make it. But this year at least has an outside shot unlike previous recent years, so at least there is a reason to track closely.

2010 (not listed on the graph) was actually the leader right now....but then it stalled starting tomorrow. But I think this year def has a better chance than 2010 since the weather forecast remains favorable for big ice losses over the next week.

I think "ice-free" has been defined as less than a million sq km of ice extent. I'm not sure if blue ocean event is the same thing but I'd assume it is. 100% ice free will never happen in this century because there will always be some residual ice clinging to northern Greenland or chunks of ice breaking off the Greenland glaciers.

The chance of a blue ocean event this year is 0%.

2019 is still in the running, but will need a strong finish to June: 2016: +70k 2012: -190k 2010: -300k 2007: +5k You can see how 2010 was actually running ahead of 2012 here for melting, but it then stalled near the end of the month and it continued into early July....putting an end to any chance of a nuclear finish like 2012 had. The guidance this year has a very impressive dipole to finish the month of June...so we might have a legit shot here. The big question will be if we can turn that into a big blocking high over the CAB or if it retreats more to the Asian side and becomes a reverse dipole, which would probably put an end to our chances at a record....the guidance is kind of split on that idea for the longer term. This melt season might finally have some drama after the colder early summers we've seen in recent years.

Area already takes into account lower concentration. So if the pack is very fragmented, we will get lower area readings. I don't see any clear evidence why we should treat area as different than we normally do. This year is already quite low on area, so it isn't like area is showing something drastically different than what we'd expect given the very warm conditions thus far. If we get very hostile weather from here on out, we could still see a new record low this year. Right now, I'd bet against it, and settle on something in the top 3 or 4 instead. But there is still time for things to change.

The thing is....NSIDC area is measured by SSMI/S and that particular satellite gets "tricked" by melt ponds into thinking it is water. It's been measuring like this for decades so we have a consistent database. So if we are a few hundred thousand sq km behind 2012 on this measurement, it's likely because we have less melt ponding than that year. Since melt ponding in June is the best predictor of final extent/area, we closely monitor the SSMI/S area numbers.

Area is basically in a dead heat with 2016 right now. We'll see if it can pull ahead before the end of the month. Extent is harder to predict. It's a lot easier to predict final area. Extent obviously has the nuances of compaction...take 2015 vs 2010 for example. 2015 finished with greater area but far less extent since 2015 had an epic compaction occur in August/early September. That's probably why they missed the extent prediction the most of any of their forecasts. They correctly saw that there would likely be more ice area than some other years at the minimum but had no way of knowing how compacted it would be.

This is in line with area numbers...which is a proxy for melt ponds.

Here's the current breakdown of how other years compare to 2019 right now......i.e, 2018 had 370k sq km more ice than 2019 at this point. 2018: +370k 2017: +300k 2016: -20k 2015: +170k 2014: +390k 2013: +350k 2012: -280k 2011: +70k 2010: +50k 2009: +1.1 million 2008: +450k 2007: -20k What sticks out here is how closely bunched 2019 is with 2016, 2011, 2010, and 2007 (and how much more ice 2009 had at this point than the others). Those are big melt years, so this one is on track for a big year. But we're still clearly lagging 2012 and that gap probably will need to be closed significantly before the end of the month to have a chance at a new record. 2012 loses about 1.2 million sq km of area between now and 6/30, so we're gonna need to lose more than that....which is hard to do. Only 2010 and 2007 lost more between 6/19 and the end of the month than 2012 did. The pattern beyond D6-7 on the euro shows a very hostile setup for the ice....I think we'll need this to verify in order to keep within striking distance of 2012.

Area is currently about 300k behind 2012 right now. Still within striking distance but it needs to close the gap soon as 2012 goes cliff-diving again soon. We're running about 100k ahead of 2007 and nearly tied with 2016. So this year is definitely in that top 3-ish zone right now. I'm a bit skeptical of it keeping pace with 2012 looking at the medium range forecast...but the long range euro tries to go nuclear, so if that happened, then we'd have a chance. But I try and not get sucked into anything beyond D5-6 in the Arctic.

Need to see the arctic basin as a whole if we want data that predicts the future this summer...so include ESS/Laptev/Beaufort and Chukchi in those numbers....you'll see that 2019 is 3rd lowest if we do that, But there's been a recent slowdown in area loss that has seen it fall behind 2012...and it needs breathtaking losses to keep up with 2012 over the next 7-10 days. I don;'t see it happening. Today did see an acceleration again, so we'll see if that is the start of a June Cliff or not. The weather pattern doesn't look very conductive for monster losses. It looks like the Laptev and ESS could take a beating for several days, but then a vortex overtakes the arctic basin again.

Area is beginning to stall quite noticeably the last 3-4 days. 2012 was starting to go absolutely nuclear at this point. Starting to become skeptical of a record. We'll need that trend to reverse sharply in the second half of the month.