NSIDC: Young MY ice increases. Old still dying off

[The_Global_Warmer]

I figured if we end up in a 100 post debate about this. It's better here than in the main sea ice thread at the moment since AMSRE is gone. we need to keep that thread less clogged for updates and new places for tracking sea ice.

Here is the latest and greatest graph:

As you can see the arctic had a lot of in place melt this season. So this is good and bad.

The good news is that the 2+ year old ice currently has less brine than the first year ice. This means just having this ice around if we can get a cold cold winter and some good compaction we can see some thicker MY ice evolve. Hopefully some 3-5 meter 2-3 year old ice. Again that is no guarantee. But it is a positive. The oldest ice is currently irreverent. but a rather large jump is in order if some of that 3 year old ice can hold on just a little bit longer.

The Bad news is that there is next to no 4+ year old ice left. This was the staple of the arctic...the most brine free frozen dense fresh water ice. That was mostly 5-10 meters thick in the Basin and 10-100 meters in rare cases in the CA Islands which is all gone...all of it...almost none of it is left. Only thin first year ice. Also the Fram is home to mostly MY ice that is currently being flushed out rapidly and this is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The ice right now is extremely vulnerable if we see the Fram open this winter. We have been luckier recently..if we seen another 07-08 flushing...not good at all. On top of that for instance that arm you see reaching towards Russia might be 5 years old, but it's mostly thin as well.

We debated the importance of this ice very thoroughly. And even with it "gaining" we set new records which means it is not putting up much of a defense against the Solar Insolation Feedback Either. Never the less it is a positive to see an increase in 2nd and 3rd year ice. Even if it was pretty small. However overall we lost age on the ice. Which is never good.

NSIDC LINK

and what they had to say:

Ice remains younger, thinner

Why did ice extent fall to a near record low without the sort of extreme weather conditions seen in 2007? One explanation is that the ice cover is thinner than it used to be; the melt season starts with more first-year ice (ice that formed the previous autumn and winter) and less of the generally thicker multi-year ice (ice that has survived at least one summer season). First- and second-year ice made up 80% of the ice cover in the Arctic Basin in March 2011, compared to 55% on average from 1980 to 2000. Over the past few summers, more first-year ice has survived than in 2007, replenishing the younger multi-year ice categories (2- to 3-year-old ice). This multi-year ice appears to have played a key role in preserving the tongue of ice extending from near the North Pole toward the East Siberian Sea. However, the oldest, thickest ice (five or more years old) has continued to decline, particularly in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Continued loss of the oldest, thickest ice has prevented any significant recovery of the summer minimum extent. In essence, what was once a refuge for older ice has become a graveyard.

[skierinvermont]

One thing to remember is that because the minimum extent was so low, even if the % of 2+ increases, the actual amount may not have. 50% of 5 is less than 48% of 5.5.