Arctic Sea Ice Extent, Area, and Volume

[nzucker]

13 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Worldview seems to corroborate the satellite data. Lots of soupy/ragged looking ice over there. Typically symptomatic of a reduction of floe size as it thins.

It looked relatively fine up until the 15th or so, but deteriorated quickly after that.

I may have been right...looks dramatically different today, more similar to before. These satellite maps are prone to short-term error due to clouds and other variables. Ice is much higher concentration now:

[ORH_wxman]

9 hours ago, nzucker said:

I may have been right...looks dramatically different today, more similar to before. These satellite maps are prone to short-term error due to clouds and other variables. Ice is much higher concentration now:

I still think the ice there has weakened quite a bit though...there's still some yellows mixed in there. But that area will def be crucial to how low 2018 goes. There isn't going to be much melt in the solid purple areas of the CAB since that region has seen very little melt ponding so it's going to come down to the "ESS arm". The central CAB was actually getting snow fairly recently....unlike 2015 where it was getting crushed by an epic high pressure all July. This is why I think it will be tough to get into a top 5 extent year.

[beavis1729]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread...but the dewpoint at Barrow (Utqiagvik) AK hit 58 yesterday. 

That is shocking to me...at 71.3N, right on the Arctic Ocean.

[roardog]

Must be an offshore wind lol. The current observation is 62/59. I see they had temps in the upper 60s with the dewpoints in the upper 50s yesterday. That must feel so warm to the residents there. It looks like rain and snow showers in the forecast in a couple of days though.

[nzucker]

8 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

I still think the ice there has weakened quite a bit though...there's still some yellows mixed in there. But that area will def be crucial to how low 2018 goes. There isn't going to be much melt in the solid purple areas of the CAB since that region has seen very little melt ponding so it's going to come down to the "ESS arm". The central CAB was actually getting snow fairly recently....unlike 2015 where it was getting crushed by an epic high pressure all July. This is why I think it will be tough to get into a top 5 extent year.

It's weakened somewhat but not NEARLY as much as the 7/27 map showed; that was almost certainly due to satellite error. That image had <75% concentration over a very large area. Seeing the new map, I doubt it melts completely in the East Siberian arm.

[The_Global_Warmer]

3 hours ago, nzucker said:

It's weakened somewhat but not NEARLY as much as the 7/27 map showed; that was almost certainly due to satellite error. That image had <75% concentration over a very large area. Seeing the new map, I doubt it melts completely in the East Siberian arm.

That's because of interference from ice crystals in clouds.

The sensor cant penetrate the interference.

 

This is from the Germans.  They are trying to get the EU, jaxa, nasa, the Indians, the Dutch, and the Chinese to help fund this massive satellite project to bring low frequency with little to no interference at a high resolution. 

It would Be the ultimate game changer.  If you don't wish to take my word for it. Orh will confirm this. 

CIMR: a Game-Changer

LAST UPDATED: JUNE 20, 2018

In February 2018, for an invited post at the EGU Cryospheric Science blog, Thomas Lavergne discussed how the Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer (CIMR) could be a game-changer for operational monitoring of sea-ice.

He wrote: 

Before I tell you what makes CIMR so special, we need a short introduction on what passive microwave instruments are, why we like them for observing sea ice, and how they work:

T. Lavergne (2018) Passive Microwave Remote Sensing of Sea Ice : a crash-course in just four list items, Int. J. of Short Lists

1. The best satellite instruments for measuring sea ice use the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum (from ~1 to ~100 GHz). This type of radiation does not depend on Sun light, and is not blocked by clouds.

2. Passive microwave instruments record a tiny amount of radiation naturally emitted at the surface of the Earth and in the atmosphere. Aboard the satellite, the radiation is reflected by an antenna towards a recording instrument: the radiometer.

3. Radiometers can measure at several frequencies. Once the images are back at the processing centers on Earth, algorithms are applied to compute geophysical products such as sea ice concentration.

4. Radiometers with low frequencies (e.g. 6 GHz) yield best accuracy for sea ice concentration products. The bigger the antenna, the better the final resolution of the product.

One of a kind, the CIMR will focus on the low frequencies (6, 10, and 18 GHz), and fly an antenna big enough to ensure much better resolution than any of the passive microwave instruments we ever used before. This requires the antenna of CIMR to be substantially largerthan that of SSMIS (60cm diameter), MWI (75cm) or even AMSR2 (2.1m)! The AMSR-E instrument and its follower AMSR2 were game-changers 15 years ago, and still offer the best resolution today… but future operational models and polar applications will require better sea ice products all too soon.

An exciting time opens for satellite-based observations of polar sea ice, as the pre-studies for CIMR are started by the European Space Agency this spring! Will industry take-up the challenge and build a big enough antenna for CIMR? Will CIMR be selected as EU’s future polar Copernicus mission? If “yes” to both, Europe will have a game-changer: high-resolution all-weather daily global accurate mapping of sea ice concentration.

[The_Global_Warmer]

Anyways, here is the gfs forecast 24-hrs out and ssta from the Dutch.

The axis of tremendous heat is wheeling towards the Arctic basin and NEGIS.

This has recently dumped a lot of heat into the oceanic near surface layer. 

 

[Vice-Regent]

Death by humidity and fog. The second shortest path (fastest being bottom melt from atlantification) to ice free/blue ocean. The most interesting melt season to date - most people just don't know it yet.

[bluewave]

8 hours ago, Vice-Regent said:

Death by humidity and fog. The second shortest path (fastest being bottom melt from atlantification) to ice free/blue ocean. The most interesting melt season to date - most people just don't know it yet.

Record low sea ice extent for this date on the Atlantic side. Just an amazing heatwave and ridge near Scandinavia. This follows the record Siberian heat back in June.

Sea ice extent has dropped to a record low on the Atlantic side of the #Arctic. In other areas, like the Beaufort Sea, melt has been slower. Each line shows one year from 1979 [purple] to 2017 [white]. 2018 is in red. Daily data over the satellite era is from the @NSIDC. pic.twitter.com/QOqDkNlIXw

8:40 AM - 30 Jul 2018

 

Yesterday's 18z sounding from Sodankylä recorded 500 hPa geopotential height at 5905 m. With the lack of actual sounding climatology, I checked how that reading compares to reanalysis data: 5905 m is the highest Z500 value in the whole N-Scandinavia, in years 1979-2017. #heatwavepic.twitter.com/6i0q4F8Gvi

3:15 AM - 29 Jul 2018

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/07/17/scorching-scandinavia-record-breaking-heat-hits-norway-finland-and-sweden/?utm_term=.0638647fb0be

 

An intense heat dome has swelled over Scandinavia, pushing temperatures more than 20 degrees above normal and spurring some of the region’s hottest weather ever recorded. Even as far north as the Arctic Circle, the mercury has come close to 90 degrees.

 

http://ak-wx.blogspot.com/

 

the central part of Arctic Siberia saw a very large and pronounced warm anomaly, and indeed the Siberian warmth was very extreme by historical standards.  At the town of Saskylakh at 72°N (nearly the same as Utqiaġvik), the June mean temperature of 60.0°F was more than 5°F above any other June, with data back to 1936, and the month was a remarkable 17.5°F above the 1981-2010 normal.

 

[Vice-Regent]

2 hours ago, bluewave said:

Record low sea ice extent for this date on the Atlantic side. Just an amazing heatwave and ridge near Scandinavia. This follows the record Siberian heat back in June.

Sea ice extent has dropped to a record low on the Atlantic side of the #Arctic. In other areas, like the Beaufort Sea, melt has been slower. Each line shows one year from 1979 [purple] to 2017 [white]. 2018 is in red. Daily data over the satellite era is from the @NSIDC. pic.twitter.com/QOqDkNlIXw

8:40 AM - 30 Jul 2018

 

Yesterday's 18z sounding from Sodankylä recorded 500 hPa geopotential height at 5905 m. With the lack of actual sounding climatology, I checked how that reading compares to reanalysis data: 5905 m is the highest Z500 value in the whole N-Scandinavia, in years 1979-2017. #heatwavepic.twitter.com/6i0q4F8Gvi

3:15 AM - 29 Jul 2018

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/07/17/scorching-scandinavia-record-breaking-heat-hits-norway-finland-and-sweden/?utm_term=.0638647fb0be

 

An intense heat dome has swelled over Scandinavia, pushing temperatures more than 20 degrees above normal and spurring some of the region’s hottest weather ever recorded. Even as far north as the Arctic Circle, the mercury has come close to 90 degrees.

 

http://ak-wx.blogspot.com/

 

the central part of Arctic Siberia saw a very large and pronounced warm anomaly, and indeed the Siberian warmth was very extreme by historical standards.  At the town of Saskylakh at 72°N (nearly the same as Utqiaġvik), the June mean temperature of 60.0°F was more than 5°F above any other June, with data back to 1936, and the month was a remarkable 17.5°F above the 1981-2010 normal.

 

 

[snowlover91]

2 hours ago, bluewave said:

Record low sea ice extent for this date on the Atlantic side. Just an amazing heatwave and ridge near Scandinavia. This follows the record Siberian heat back in June.

Sea ice extent has dropped to a record low on the Atlantic side of the #Arctic. In other areas, like the Beaufort Sea, melt has been slower. Each line shows one year from 1979 [purple] to 2017 [white]. 2018 is in red. Daily data over the satellite era is from the @NSIDC. pic.twitter.com/QOqDkNlIXw

8:40 AM - 30 Jul 2018

 

Yesterday's 18z sounding from Sodankylä recorded 500 hPa geopotential height at 5905 m. With the lack of actual sounding climatology, I checked how that reading compares to reanalysis data: 5905 m is the highest Z500 value in the whole N-Scandinavia, in years 1979-2017. #heatwavepic.twitter.com/6i0q4F8Gvi

3:15 AM - 29 Jul 2018

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/07/17/scorching-scandinavia-record-breaking-heat-hits-norway-finland-and-sweden/?utm_term=.0638647fb0be

 

An intense heat dome has swelled over Scandinavia, pushing temperatures more than 20 degrees above normal and spurring some of the region’s hottest weather ever recorded. Even as far north as the Arctic Circle, the mercury has come close to 90 degrees.

 

http://ak-wx.blogspot.com/

 

the central part of Arctic Siberia saw a very large and pronounced warm anomaly, and indeed the Siberian warmth was very extreme by historical standards.  At the town of Saskylakh at 72°N (nearly the same as Utqiaġvik), the June mean temperature of 60.0°F was more than 5°F above any other June, with data back to 1936, and the month was a remarkable 17.5°F above the 1981-2010 normal.

 

And yet the overall mass this year is one of the highest in recent years, neck and neck with 2014 and well above the 2004-2013 average...

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, snowlover91 said:

And yet the overall mass this year is one of the highest in recent years, neck and neck with 2014 and well above the 2004-2013 average...

 

I wouldn't take the DMI volume data too seriously. PIOMAS has a better track record and more data. PIOMAS in mid-July had us neck and neck with 2013/2010/2016...above 2012, 2011, and 2017 and well below 2014. 2016 got destroyed from here on out so I won't be surprised if we are above that year by now since the last PIOMAS update....but I'm pretty sure we won't finish near 2014.

 

[bluewave]

3 hours ago, Vice-Regent said:

 

The dominant summer reverse dipole pattern of the last 6 years is the main thing keeping the September 2012 record out of reach. But even the more favorable summer pressure patterns for retaining sea ice can't get the Arctic back to pre-2007 ice. I continue to believe that scientists in the future will look back on 2007 as the point which the Arctic shifted to a new warmer state. Remember, we didn't need 2012 finishes to set new Arctic high temperature records since then.

[ORH_wxman]

29 minutes ago, bluewave said:

The dominant summer reverse dipole pattern of the last 6 years is the main thing keeping the September 2012 record out of reach. But even the more favorable summer pressure patterns for retaining sea ice can't get the Arctic back to pre 2007 ice. I continue to believe that scientists in the future will look back on 2007 as the point which the Arctic shifted to a new warmer state. Remember, we didn't need 2012 finishes to set new Arctic high temperature records since then.

The winter of 2007-2008 was a big deal too...not just the 2007 melt season. At the end of 2007, the arctic still had a lot of MYI leftover, but a huge portion of it got exported in the winter. If it had been recycled back into the Beaufort gyre, then it's possible we would have reverted a little more to years like 2005. Still low, but not wiping out the pacific side almost every year. It would have eventually been wiped out with some of those years like 2011 and 2012, but who knows how the progression would have looked with more MYI...the temp profiles may have been different. Hard to say for sure. The first year ice doesn't get thick enough now in the Chukchi to protect the beaufort gyre from warmer waters. We started to see a recovery in the gyre with the very cold 2013 and 2014 seasons combined with decent winter patterns of lower export, but then 2015 had an epic July dipole that wiped out the MYI over there. I think the only way we'd get back to anything that looks like a pre-2007 year would be to have an anomalously cold winter up there combined with a cold melt season....but that type of sustained cold is nearly impossible to come by in the arctic...we only seem to be able to get it maybe 1-2 months at a time.

Of course, a big volcanic eruption may do the trick too...the arctic tends to cool more rapidly than anywhere else from aerosols.

[bluewave]

On July 31, 2018 at 1:24 PM, ORH_wxman said:

The winter of 2007-2008 was a big deal too...not just the 2007 melt season. At the end of 2007, the arctic still had a lot of MYI leftover, but a huge portion of it got exported in the winter. If it had been recycled back into the Beaufort gyre, then it's possible we would have reverted a little more to years like 2005. Still low, but not wiping out the pacific side almost every year. It would have eventually been wiped out with some of those years like 2011 and 2012, but who knows how the progression would have looked with more MYI...the temp profiles may have been different. Hard to say for sure. The first year ice doesn't get thick enough now in the Chukchi to protect the beaufort gyre from warmer waters. We started to see a recovery in the gyre with the very cold 2013 and 2014 seasons combined with decent winter patterns of lower export, but then 2015 had an epic July dipole that wiped out the MYI over there. I think the only way we'd get back to anything that looks like a pre-2007 year would be to have an anomalously cold winter up there combined with a cold melt season....but that type of sustained cold is nearly impossible to come by in the arctic...we only seem to be able to get it maybe 1-2 months at a time.

Of course, a big volcanic eruption may do the trick too...the arctic tends to cool more rapidly than anywhere else from aerosols.

Following the big reduction in multiyear ice around 2007, the best the Arctic can do during the melt season is 2009 or 2013. NSIDC September average extents above 6 million sq km were common for 1990's and early 2000's. Arctic amplification really took off when the extents regularly dropped below that level.

[csnavywx]

Full wipeout of the Beaufort is ongoing, per usual, along with all of the cycled MYI there. With the current clear conditions and forecast over the ESS, I doubt much of that ice survives past mid-August. It's already showing negative signs from just the past 2 days on Worldview. The big block will probably thin CAB ice as well, but there's some solid stuff left there, as mentioned earlier.

[The_Global_Warmer]

After day 5 the euro diverges from the gfs and cmc. 

 

The latter two have a scenario where the ESS, Chuchku region, and laptev all see tremendous ice loss for August.

 

Throw the CAB into that as well. 

The euro has a more tamed version. 

 

Likely due to NPAC differences.

[bluewave]

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/08/ice-loss-speeds-up-during-second-half-of-july/

Despite finishing ninth lowest in the monthly average, ice loss was rapid during the month. As a result, by July 31 daily extent tracked fourth lowest in the satellite record, just below the extent seen last year at this time, and also just above that seen in 2007, 2011, and 2012.

[AfewUniversesBelowNormal]

Nothing but positive 500mb in the Arctic for the next 15 days. It's stagnant though, this is weird to me because it seems to be from no ice (no atmosphere). 

[bluewave]

Update for Beaufort and Chukchi and Beaufort:

The combined Chukchi & Beaufort Seas ice extent from the @NSIDC passive microwave data has fallen rapidly in the past two weeks, and is now about at median for the 2010s. Median date for extent min is Sep14. #Arctic #akwx#seaice @Climatologist49 @ZLabe @DaveSnider @CinderBDT907pic.twitter.com/4Z5wdnl2HD

6:53 AM - 7 Aug 2018

 

[ORH_wxman]

We have a very compact ice pack right now. The area numbers are on the higher side at the moment while extent is running lower. I expect this will produce a decent slowdown in extent loss fairly soon.

 

Here's how other years compare to 2018's area right now:

2017: -187k

2016: -528k

2015: -354k

2014: +358k

2013: +314k

2012: -927k

2011: -490k

2010: -67k

2009: +238k

2008: +11k

2007: -612k

 

You can see the in the post-2007 context, the only years noticeably ahead of 2018's area are the lower melt years of 2009, 2013, and 2014. Extent is already low though, so it is likely we will finish at least in the bottom 6 or 7 in extent...it remains to be seen if we can crack the top 5 at the end. I think it will be hard to go lower than 2012, 2016, 2015, 2011, and 2007....but it's possible if we keep the ice pack really compact like we did in 2015.

 

 

[Vice-Regent]

 

[etudiant]

Thank you for this, a lot of work and thought went into it and it is much appreciated.

Any chance of a follow on, maybe towards the end of August?

[raindancewx]

Sea Ice Extent on 8/17/18 was 5.568 million square km. That is above 2017 (5.371), 2016 (5.398), 2012 (4.691), 2011 (5.495), and 2007 (5.322) for the same date (8/17).

Will be curious to see how the annualized AMO v. ice extent on 8/1 plot looks after this year is over. 

[Typhoon Tip]

On 7/31/2018 at 8:24 AM, bluewave said:

Record low sea ice extent for this date on the Atlantic side. Just an amazing heatwave and ridge near Scandinavia. This follows the record Siberian heat back in June.

Sea ice extent has dropped to a record low on the Atlantic side of the #Arctic. In other areas, like the Beaufort Sea, melt has been slower. Each line shows one year from 1979 [purple] to 2017 [white]. 2018 is in red. Daily data over the satellite era is from the @NSIDC. pic.twitter.com/QOqDkNlIXw

8:40 AM - 30 Jul 2018

 

Yesterday's 18z sounding from Sodankylä recorded 500 hPa geopotential height at 5905 m. With the lack of actual sounding climatology, I checked how that reading compares to reanalysis data: 5905 m is the highest Z500 value in the whole N-Scandinavia, in years 1979-2017. #heatwavepic.twitter.com/6i0q4F8Gvi

3:15 AM - 29 Jul 2018

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/07/17/scorching-scandinavia-record-breaking-heat-hits-norway-finland-and-sweden/?utm_term=.0638647fb0be

 

An intense heat dome has swelled over Scandinavia, pushing temperatures more than 20 degrees above normal and spurring some of the region’s hottest weather ever recorded. Even as far north as the Arctic Circle, the mercury has come close to 90 degrees.

 

http://ak-wx.blogspot.com/

 

the central part of Arctic Siberia saw a very large and pronounced warm anomaly, and indeed the Siberian warmth was very extreme by historical standards.  At the town of Saskylakh at 72°N (nearly the same as Utqiaġvik), the June mean temperature of 60.0°F was more than 5°F above any other June, with data back to 1936, and the month was a remarkable 17.5°F above the 1981-2010 normal.

 

It's interesting as we track a mid latitude heat event (plausibility) over the eastern 1/2 to 1/3 of North America, which we similarly did back near the end of June when that took place up near Siberia -

Probably a basic R-wave argument in place there -

[Typhoon Tip]

Fwiw -

 

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/world/arctic-sea-ice-breakup-greenland-trnd-wxc/index.html

[ORH_wxman]

Jaxa extent is currently 7th lowest but the ice pack is pretty compact which is leading to area being only 9th lowest. 

I borrowed the area graph from Neven's Arctic sea ice forum for a better visual. 

 

[Save the itchy algae!]

Has the sea ice started growing again? It looks like its reached its nadir and might be turning up.  Seems a little early for that, but the times are changing!

[ORH_wxman]

2 hours ago, Save the itchy algae! said:

Has the sea ice started growing again? It looks like its reached its nadir and might be turning up.  Seems a little early for that, but the times are changing!

Still falling for both area and extent but it's been very slow recently. We're around 3.4 million sq km on area and about 4.74 million sq km on jaxa for extent (prob about 200k higher than that on NSIDC).  We are likely looking at a final extent somewhere in the 4.4-4.5 million range for jaxa (4.5-4.7 for NSIDC) and an area minimum of 3.1-3.3 million is my guess at this point. But there is still some time for a few minor surprises. 

The final outcome of this season though looks like it is going to be in line with what we thought in late June once it became apparent that melt ponding was not strong early in the season. I'll bump my predictions based on the melt ponding/area numbers once the minimums actually occur and compare the results. 

[bluewave]

20 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

Still falling for both area and extent but it's been very slow recently. We're around 3.4 million sq km on area and about 4.74 million sq km on jaxa for extent (prob about 200k higher than that on NSIDC).  We are likely looking at a final extent somewhere in the 4.4-4.5 million range for jaxa (4.5-4.7 for NSIDC) and an area minimum of 3.1-3.3 million is my guess at this point. But there is still some time for a few minor surprises. 

The final outcome of this season though looks like it is going to be in line with what we thought in late June once it became apparent that melt ponding was not strong early in the season. I'll bump my predictions based on the melt ponding/area numbers once the minimums actually occur and compare the results. 

Each melt season seems to confirm that an important shift occurred around 2007. NSIDC is currently at 4.992million sq km for extent and slowly falling. Most of the seasons since 2007 had a daily low minimum extent between 4 and 5 million sq km. Only 2009, 2013, and 2014 managed to stay a little above 5 million sq km. But even those 3 highest years couldn't get back to pre 2007 ice levels near or above 6 million sq km when the Arctic was colder.