Arctic Sea Ice Extent, Area, and Volume

[ORH_wxman]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

Much colder pattern across the Arctic this May than last. We actually have below normal temps for a change at the pole which we haven't seen for a while. It allowed the extent to fall behind the pace of last year at this time. If we can avoid the strong dipole pattern in June, it could let the 2012 record min to stand for another season. We'll see...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has to get going pretty quick if 2012 wants to be in the discussion. We'll want to see a pretty widespread warm pattern sustain over more than just the Chukchi/Beaufort...preferably over the Eurasian side too to get the melt ponding feedback going.

[ORH_wxman]

Looking at the differences between 2016 and 2017 on Cryosat2, we can try and find areas that might be more or less likely to melt out.

 

I think there's a good chance that we have a more intact arm of ice that extends into the ESS this year vs last year. In contrast the ice is thinner in the Laptev this year, so the melt could go further poleward on that side. Keep in mind this is from April as cryosat2 stops taking measurements as meltponding starts in May.

 

[chubbs]

22 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

It has to get going pretty quick if 2012 wants to be in the discussion. We'll want to see a pretty widespread warm pattern sustain over more than just the Chukchi/Beaufort...preferably over the Eurasian side too to get the melt ponding feedback going.

Forecasts are not that reliable currently so we will have to see how it plays out over the next couple of weeks. Currently I'm leaning for somewhere between 2007 and 2012. Volume is low but melting progress has been slow for both sea ice and snow. That would keep my 2018-19 guess for the next min alive.

[skierinvermont]

It looks to me like most of the ice is thicker than last year. It's just the ice north of Greenland and Ellesmere that is much thinner but that ice never melts out anyways. The only important area that looks thinner is the Laptev which looks a little thinner. That could get things going early there.

But the Chuchki, Beaufort, Barents, Kara and East Siberian all look thicker overall. Especially the northern Beaufort and northern Chuchki which look much thicker. And those two areas are critical in August/September.

[csnavywx]

Stable 5-wave pattern showing up on ensembles now for the first week of June. That leaves the door open to ridging over/near the pole but doesn't guarantee it.

[chubbs]

1 hour ago, csnavywx said:

Stable 5-wave pattern showing up on ensembles now for the first week of June. That leaves the door open to ridging over/near the pole but doesn't guarantee it.

This is about the time we saw a pattern flip to lower arctic heights last year. Maybe we will see the reverse this year...or maybe not.

[csnavywx]

Area tanking fast as melt ponding sets up. -157k yesterday and -117k. Now in 2nd place behind 2016. Kara/Barents look to be getting hit, with some contribution from the Beaufort and Hudson Bay.

Model skill scores are still in the tank and generally unreliable past D4 right now, but they do more or less show more widespread warmth continuing through the next 4 days. The EC is suffering less than the GFS is, but still taking significant hits to its scores.

[csnavywx]

2012 cliff started in a few days. It looks like the forecast is pointing towards increasingly hostile conditions in the next week (recent model skill caveat applies here) which might give that 2012 dive a run for its money. 2017 is starting with less ice in the Chukchi, but more in the Kara and Barents. Preconditioning is somewhat less this year, but the ice is notably thinner due to warm winter weather. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out as we head into the most critical period for ponding.

[chubbs]

Wipneus' daily sea ice volume anomaly chart updated through May. The volume gap between 2017 and other years narrowed in May due to a relatively slow start to the melting season vs recent years. Melting accelerated though in the second half of May leaving a record low well within reach this year depending on the weather.

[csnavywx]

On 6/3/2017 at 6:34 AM, chubbs said:

Wipneus' daily sea ice volume anomaly chart updated through May. The volume gap between 2017 and other years narrowed in May due to a relatively slow start to the melting season vs recent years. Melting accelerated though in the second half of May leaving a record low well within reach this year depending on the weather.

Still a pretty decent gap there. Upcoming D3-D5 pattern look conducive to the development of widespread ponding pretty much basin-wide. Pretty similar to the 2012 pattern, just a couple of days later in the calendar, with the addition of the Atlantic side getting hit at the same time. Depending on how long that pattern lasts, we could see a pretty quick swan dive in area/extent/volume figures. The Pacific side is particularly weak and thin with FYI this year and it'll take less to demolish that ice cover than it typically does.

[csnavywx]

12Z EC pretty much goes nuclear.

[WidreMann]

Some run-to-run consistency in the long range would be nice.

[Snow_Miser]

The higher thicknesses relative to normal are getting exported in the Fram, according to the May PIOMAS update. Across the Arctic Basin, lots of thinner than normal ice.

From Zack Labe.

[csnavywx]

[WidreMann]

On 6/5/2017 at 2:48 PM, Snow_Miser said:

The higher thicknesses relative to normal are getting exported in the Fram, according to the May PIOMAS update. Across the Arctic Basin, lots of thinner than normal ice.

From Zack Labe.

That's brutal. Will we even have any ice come late September?

[ORH_wxman]

3 hours ago, WidreMann said:

That's brutal. Will we even have any ice come late September?

Of course there will be ice left in September. May was far too cold to entertain going something like 2.5 million sq km lower than 2012's extent minimum even with the volume starting as low as it did. If the weather's bad enough in June/July/August though, we could still beat 2012.

[Eskimo Joe]

When, if ever, do you think we will have an ice free summer in the arctic?

[CaWx]

8 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

When, if ever, do you think we will have an ice free summer in the arctic?

Sometime between 2022-2028. I think around 2050, we will see ice free conditions from late July to end of September. The added heat from the open waters absorbing all that energy will really start causing weird weather. 

[skierinvermont]

15 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

When, if ever, do you think we will have an ice free summer in the arctic?

With our current very low volume we could get an ice free summer if we got a summer weather pattern similar to or worse than 2007 or 2012. (if you use the commonly used convention that 'ice free' = <1,000,000 km2). 

If we don't see a rebound in volume, ice free could occur any year in the next 10 years with bad enough summer weather.

On the other hand, we might not see an extreme summer weather pattern in the next 10 years. By the 2030s even a modestly bad summer weather pattern would likely put us over the edge. 

To get really statistical about it I'd put the odds like below. I think my odds are pretty consistent with CaWx's estimate above (maybe bumped back 5 years). A lot depends on weather and trends but it will probably be somewhere between 2020-2035.

<1,000,000km2

15% chance before 2020

35% chance before 2025

55% chance before 2030

80% chance before 2040.

 

If you define it more strictly as <200,000km2 (basically a few icebergs and bays that got filled with ice by the wind) I think the odds drop. Because of currents and winds, there's always a pretty good area of thick ice blown near Ellesmere and Greenland and you'd have to melt pretty much all of that (other than some that gets blown into bays) to get below 200,000km2

5% chance before 2020

20% chance before 2025

35% chance before 2030

60% chance before 2040

 

These odds factor in the reality that the earth will very likely warm significantly over the next 25 years (very likely 0.45C+/-0.2C). The arctic will likely warm 1C+/-1C. 

[csnavywx]

A 2007 pattern starting in late May would have done it this year I think. But that's an exceptionally bad pattern -- ergo pretty rare. This year is a bit wierd. We've got record low starting volume, but high adjacent land snowcover and a decent snowpack left on the ice in most areas. There isn't as much blue ponding on Worldview this year as last year or 2012, for instance, but there's a lot more open water in the ESS and Chukchi. I think the warm winter had the effect of dumping more snow on the pack than we saw in previous years. This has a lot higher albedo, retarding initial melt, but once that protective covering is eroded, the underlying thinner ice is melted more quickly.

Not really sure which way to go this year because of the confounding factors. I don't think big domes of high pressure are going to necessarily get the job done in the melting department though. Wind and sun is really needed to take care of the snowpack and weaken the inversion and break the low level cloud cover that sets up as a result.

[ORH_wxman]

5 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

A 2007 pattern starting in late May would have done it this year I think. But that's an exceptionally bad pattern -- ergo pretty rare. This year is a bit wierd. We've got record low starting volume, but high adjacent land snowcover and a decent snowpack left on the ice in most areas. There isn't as much blue ponding on Worldview this year as last year or 2012, for instance, but there's a lot more open water in the ESS and Chukchi. I think the warm winter had the effect of dumping more snow on the pack than we saw in previous years. This has a lot higher albedo, retarding initial melt, but once that protective covering is eroded, the underlying thinner ice is melted more quickly.

Not really sure which way to go this year because of the confounding factors. I don't think big domes of high pressure are going to necessarily get the job done in the melting department though. Wind and sun is really needed to take care of the snowpack and weaken the inversion and break the low level cloud cover that sets up as a result.

We need to get bigger area drops soon to stay competitive with the lower years.

[csnavywx]

1 minute ago, ORH_wxman said:

We need to get bigger area drops soon to stay competitive with the lower years.

I don't really think that's going to happen for a couple of weeks at least. Maybe if the dipole showing up at D5+D6 comes to fruition. One would have figured the "bridge ridge" of the past few days would have done more damage, but that just shows how much snow is still there. Even 2013 had more melt ponds at this point looking at the daily worldview plots, even if it did have a lot less open water.

[csnavywx]

 

Posted on Neven's forum. Definitely fits the bill of high snowfall retarding melt. Going to take a good dipole pattern to reverse that.

[ORH_wxman]

It looks like the high snow cover anomaly on the land in Siberia is maybe having an impact on the melt on that side of the ice pack too....maybe this is just "if there's high snow cover on land there then there's probably also high snow cover on the ice there" type argument too...but I'd think the wind off the land there would be much colder coming off a deeper/anomalous snow cover than when it's bare ground and more melted than usual which has been the norm for the past decade...I think this was the first positive May snow cover anomaly since 2004 and the highest since 1996.

[ORH_wxman]

41 minutes ago, csnavywx said:

I don't really think that's going to happen for a couple of weeks at least. Maybe if the dipole showing up at D5+D6 comes to fruition. One would have figured the "bridge ridge" of the past few days would have done more damage, but that just shows how much snow is still there. Even 2013 had more melt ponds at this point looking at the daily worldview plots, even if it did have a lot less open water.

Do you have a link to the daily plots?

Are those the ones from jaxa?

[csnavywx]

3 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Do you have a link to the daily plots?

Are those the ones from jaxa?

Sorry, should've been more clear, I'm referring to EOSDIS Worldview and scrolling between years on this date:

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2017-06-12&z=3&v=-3714337.5732286554,-1744121.4245445705,4149982.4267713446,2552582.5754554295

 

[csnavywx]

4 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

It looks like the high snow cover anomaly on the land in Siberia is maybe having an impact on the melt on that side of the ice pack too.

Agree here. There's a big visual difference in ponding between years in which that snowcover disappears early and years like this one and 2013 where it takes a while longer. We haven't seen that much snow cover along the Siberian coast this late in over 10 years, maybe since the 90s.

[ORH_wxman]

2 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Agree here. There's a big visual difference in ponding between years in which that snowcover disappears early and years like this one and 2013 where it takes a while longer. We haven't seen that much snow cover along the Siberian coast this late in over 10 years, maybe since the 90s.

I'd say looking at the data that you have to go back to 1996 to get snow cover this widespread on the Siberian coast into mid June.

 

2 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Sorry, should've been more clear, I'm referring to EOSDIS Worldview and scrolling between years on this date:

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2017-06-12&z=3&v=-3714337.5732286554,-1744121.4245445705,4149982.4267713446,2552582.5754554295

 

Thanks for the link...I assume you are talking about the level of "blueish" tint to the ice pack between years? I haven't really used this product before, but it's pretty cool. I've mostly used the false color products from AMSR/AMSR2 over the years with the area data from SSMI/S of course since it's a continuous dataset.

[ORH_wxman]

Out of curiosity, I plotted the May average temperature for the Siberian region....and it definitely is more of a 1990s profile (and 1980s/1970s for that matter)...so the flukish reversion to a cold May explained the big snow cover anomaly there.

 

[csnavywx]

25 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

I'd say looking at the data that you have to go back to 1996 to get snow cover this widespread on the Siberian coast into mid June.

 

Thanks for the link...I assume you are talking about the level of "blueish" tint to the ice pack between years? I haven't really used this product before, but it's pretty cool. I've mostly used the false color products from AMSR/AMSR2 over the years with the area data from SSMI/S of course since it's a continuous dataset.

Yep, this exactly. It's not a quantitative thing by any means, but still useful, imo. It only goes back through 2012 unfortunately, but it's got enough to start making comparisons.

*Edit for typo.