by Steven Goddard
Looking at the June 14 satellite photo above, you see the view which the Sun sees of the North Pole.
Well not exactly, because the elevation of the Sun at its peak (mid-June) is actually fairly low in the sky. At the Pole, it is only 23.5º above the horizon. The video below shows what the earth would look like now, viewed from perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Note that the region north of 66.5º is in perpetual light. The image of the Sun is from the days when it used to have sunspots.
Now, looking at the satellite photo again, we see three different shades of white. Snow is the brightest white (highest albedo) and can be seen in Greenland. Clouds are next brightest white, and at least partially cover almost the entire Arctic. In a few locations, you can see dirty white sea ice peeking out through the clouds.
We often hear that sea ice controls Arctic albedo. There is some truth to this statement, but the real story is that the albedo of clouds actually controls the area of sea ice. When it is cloudy, little melting occurs. When it is sunny, the ice is more prone to melt.
Consider this chart from the University of Alaska.
They forecast the breakup of sea ice based on the total amount of sunshine received. When accumulated sunshine reaches 700 MJ/m², the ice breaks up. In a cloudy year (like 2009) this occurs later. In a sunny year (like 2007) it occurs earlier. 2010 is right in the middle. On a cloudy day, most of the sunshine reflects back into space from the top of the white clouds. That is why we see the bright white clouds in the satellite image.
The real key to Arctic albedo, and melt – is clouds. Can climate models effectively forecast cloudiness? Short answer – no. Clouds are one of the Achilles Heels of climate models. So next time you hear about a climate model forecasting an ice free Arctic, ask if they have the cloud problem under control.
It is cloudy at Santa’s Workshop right now.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/webphotos/noaa2.jpg
Steve, I do think it’s important to state that the Barrow study is looking at landfast ice, which you an see in the MODIS images still remains attached to shore, whereas the ice around it has retreated. Landfast ice contributes very little to the total sea ice area.
Thanks for posting the link to the Barrow study though, I hadn’t seen their web page and it’s very informative. And yes you are correct that clouds are important and climate models currently have a lot of uncertainties when it comes to modeling and forecasting cloudiness.
I’ve been told that floating ice melts from the bottum up. Not from the top down.
Heat capacity of water >> heat capacity of air. D’oh!
Arctic Ocean circulation is the dominant mode of Arctic ice melt during the melt season.
Mass transport of warmer waters into the Arctic Ocean from lower latitudes. D’oh!
So there goes your albedo and air temperature arguments, right out the window, as it were.
Enneagram says:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm
Vuk: How does this relate with the solar activity/solar wind?
Relationship between the GMF and solar activity/solar wind is a mystery to me,
maybe someone from NASA could help out.
TonyB: … ” I am inclined to think that whilst there are many factors involved in ice melt-of which the sun, clouds, surface and sea temperatures, wind, storms etc are all highly relevant-that soot is also significant.”
Over the millenia, how much of this soot is due to large forest/grass fires?
noaaprogrammer said in reply to my comment at June 16, 2010 at 12:32 pm
“I am inclined to think that whilst there are many factors involved in ice melt-of which the sun, clouds, surface and sea temperatures, wind, storms etc are all highly relevant-that soot is also significant.”
Over the millenia, how much of this soot is due to large forest/grass fires?
****
Good point-it’s a measure that must wax and wane over the years and may certainly have had an effect on past meltings. Other natural activity must also play a part.
Human caused soot deposition must also be a significant factor though, and whatever your personal beliefs in the magical properties of CO2, combating soot by better emission controls is surely a win win situation.
Tonyb
vukcevic says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:31 pm
That would be like asking to the Church, in Galileo times, why does the earth orbit the sun. You have to become an open apostate of the Post-Normal Church, to know it.
This would help you:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=ah63dzac
Julienne
Do you believe that the open water west of Barrow is due to melt, or due to wind transport of the ice out of the region?
EFS_Junior says:
June 16, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I’ve been told that floating ice melts from the bottum up. Not from the top down.
Mostly perhaps but the existence of melt ponds indicates that it also melts from above.
For evidence of ice melting from below check this out: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/3149268.bin
George E. Smith says:
June 16, 2010 at 11:36 am
Well they say one picture is worth 1000 words; and your polar picture sure fits the model. Unfortunately, Steve, your one picture also conjures up 1000 questions.
Question #1 would be; Is this Photograph (satellite) Photoshopped; or is it REALLY RAW ALA MOTHER GAIA DATA ?
One thing to remember George is that you can’t take everything Steve says at face value. He loves showing the Arctic composites at low magnification and making sweeping generalizations about them. E.g. “Snow is the brightest white (highest albedo) and can be seen in Greenland. Clouds are next brightest white, and at least partially cover almost the entire Arctic. In a few locations, you can see dirty white sea ice peeking out through the clouds.”
Well there’s a lot more sea ice there than he implies, take a look at a single component of that composite: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010167/crefl1_143.A2010167014500-2010167015000.2km.jpg
Difficult to tell what’s snow, ice or clouds isn’t it, well if instead of the true color image you look at bands 3-6-7 you’ll be able to tell what are clouds (white and pale yellow) as opposed to ice/snow (red):
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010167/crefl1_367.A2010167014500-2010167015000.2km.jpg
Of course the black is the open water.
Why is everyone leaving out the submersed active volanic range at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean? Or is hot water from this no longer a factor?
stevengoddard says:
June 16, 2010 at 10:38 am
I must be confused about the lack of sunspots. NASA says otherwise, and I was warned yesterday how important it is to trust the judgement of experts.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/
Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,”
_____________________________________________________________________
Steve, That was from 2006. Here is the new improved version:
“End of the world: Will 2013 space storm kill us all off?
Solar flares could cause power grids to overheat, causing our electricity dependent lives to go into meltdown, according to Nasa.
A ‘once-in-a-generation’ space storm is forecast to stretch from late 2012 into 2013 when the Sun’s 22- year magnetic energy cycle coincides with its 11-year peak in superpowered sun spot activity.
‘We know it’s coming but we don’t know how bad it’s going to be,’ said Dr Richard Fisher, head of Nasa’s Heliophysics division….
Prof Richard Harrison from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire told Metro: ‘The sun is now waking up. It’s been very inactive but there’s a lot of debate about how dramatic its waking up will be.’
And it was not scaremongering, he said, … – with power cuts in the city and broadcasting disruption as satellites were knocked out of action.
Or, as Private Fraser would concisely conclude: ‘We’re doomed.’ “
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/830946-end-of-the-world-will-2013-space-storm-kill-us-all-off
another version
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7819201/Nasa-warns-solar-flares-from-huge-space-storm-will-cause-devastation.html
(hat tip to Roger and Neil Jones)
I just wonder how they are going to blame this “huge space storm” on CO2 or how they are going to spin it so “more taxes, less freedom” are needed to save us all.
The paranoia level is increasing around here.
Of course the image is not Photoshopped, and it is very easy to tell the difference between clouds and ice. Please find something intelligent to argue about, if you must.
http://ice-map.appspot.com/
stevengoddard says:
June 16, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Julienne
Do you believe that the open water west of Barrow is due to melt, or due to wind transport of the ice out of the region?
————————————
Both wind and melt (from top and below). Right now the Arctic Dipole pattern has set up and there is meridional transport of ice away from the coast of Alaska and Siberia. Air temperatures are also above freezing off-shore of Alaska, and skies have been relatively clear in that region (todays MODIS image from that region nicely shows surface melt). I don’t know what the ocean temperatures are, but melt from below would be happening as well. Basically, all factors contribute to formation of open water during summer. It would take some time to quantify which factor is dominating in that region at the moment, but certainly having off-shore winds is helping…
It will be interesting to see if the Dipole pattern persists through summer. We believe that pattern was largely responsible for the 2007 minimum (especially given the thinning of the ice in the years leading up to 2007).
Thanks Phil,
That is really interesting; slowly I am jamming my “favorites” folder with snippets of links you have fed me.
False color imagery is a Godsend. I use a lot of false color representations when I am doing lens designs. Not immediately quantitative necessarily; but amazingly quick to grasp what’s what. Sometimes I wish my beach sand stick could do false color drawings too.
Thanks again for that high res. Amazing how black the sea really is. Which is one reason why I don’t feel too uncomforable doing back of envelope BB radiation calculations; knowing that 70+ % of the surface ain’t too far off reality.
George
stevengoddard says:
June 16, 2010 at 2:13 pm
The paranoia level is increasing around here.
Of course the image is not Photoshopped, and it is very easy to tell the difference between clouds and ice. Please find something intelligent to argue about, if you must.
http://ice-map.appspot.com/
—————————————-
Steve, no offense…but it’s not very easy to distinguish clouds from snow/ice in the visible 😉 Yes our eyes can see it, but trying to develop an algorithm to discriminate clouds/snow/ice using visible imagery is very difficult. Luckily MODIS carries a band at 1.6 microns that helps (though it still has problems).
Also, the Arctic MODIS composites are just that, composites obtained at different times of the day. I do not believe these images have been corrected for the dependence of the reflectance on the solar zenith angle (you can see that when you zoom in on a section of the composite that contains data from two different swaths since the reflectance changes). So this composite image will contain differences in “brightness” that are not always a result of a change in surface type, but also a change in time of acquisition. I would expect reflectance over the high elevations of Greenland and at the Pole to be the brightest though, since those regions are clearly not experiencing any melt at the moment and you can see that in the image you linked to.
I love visible imagery, too bad the Arctic is cloudy so much of the time.
Julienne,
The U of Alaska monitor shows no evidence of melt from below prior to a few days ago.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_overview_complete.png
The area of open water west of Barrow opened up very quickly several weeks ago, most likely due to wind.
“”” stevengoddard says:
June 16, 2010 at 2:13 pm
The paranoia level is increasing around here.
Of course the image is not Photoshopped, and it is very easy to tell the difference between clouds and ice. Please find something intelligent to argue about, if you must. “””
Well Steve; assuming your comment was meant for me; I thought it would be obvious that “photoshopped” was simply a figure of speech; merely questioning whether the picture was a raw out of the camera photo or whether NASA or whoever took it had to do any data reduction to arrive at the picture you posted.
There was never any intent to imply that YOU had messed with it; never crossed my mind; I was merely asking if it was afe to assume that it was about human eye equivalent. And no argument was intended; I simply wondered if it was possible to find actual real photometric (or radiometric) “emittance” numbers to put the whiteness contrast on a quantitative basis.
If you got the impression, I was questioning your veracity; then I apologise; there was never any such intent. And I believe I did say those were serious questions. Your higher res picture shows a bit more detail; but I was not unhappy with the original; just wanted to know that what my eyes perceived was real.
stevengoddard says:
June 16, 2010 at 2:47 pm
That video is strange. Looks like earth stops rotating, but the ice keeps going.
Steve, I agree that winds are playing a role for sure. Interestingly, the meridional winds have been stronger off the shores of Siberia than Alaska and yet considerable ice remains attached to the shore (though the development of the polynya in that region is likely being forced by the winds). Air temperature anomalies from May 1 to June 13 have also been higher on the Siberian side.
So it may also be that the ice off the coast of Alaska was thinner than off the coast of Siberia and that SSTs are also warmer in that region. I suppose a look at buoy temperatures would help shed some light on the contribution of the ocean to melt in that region. You also have high pressure in the Beaufort Sea (well-developed Beaufort Sea High), and since the skies tend to be clearer under high pressures, solar input is likely also playing a role. Certainly when you look at high-res MODIS imagery from the Beaufort Sea you can see surface melt occurring and it does “appear” to be more advanced than on the Siberian side (just by looking at the MODIS data).
I like the animation though, we might have to consider putting one together for one of our news stories. It does nicely show the development of the open water areas.
Julienne
If you want some assistance generating animations, I’d be glad to help out.
thanks for the offer of help Steve.
And, spot the outlier……..
06/14/0308Z 89.401°N 46.681°W -2.1°C 1014.1mb 14.0° 3.0m/s
06/14/0008Z 89.406°N 46.685°W 2.5°C 1014.0mb -999.0° 0.0m/s
06/13/2108Z 89.409°N 46.801°W -0.7°C 1013.7mb -999.0°
Congrats Steve.
I’m the one who brought up Piomas, Predicts DOOM THIS YEAR, etc.
As my DIRE FEARS are from the current El Nino mimicing 2007 but MORE SO.
And as 2007 did 3 things, 2 of which are worse this year.
And I have often given my ODDs of this happenning as 1-in-4 with roughly 1 of the 2 50-50 chances being IF the Cloudiness is LOW like 2007 —
— You made my day, week & Year so far.
Not do you give a source adressing this but 2010 is NOT as bad as 2007 — in Cloudiness.
I really prefer not to die.
This is a Good site & good news !
“”Juraj V. says:
June 16, 2010 at 9:12 am
I say it is the sea temperature, which affects the ice melt/freeze the most””
Since most of the Arctic is floating sea ice, and almost all of an ice berg in under water – about 90% underwater –
I’m with you. I would say that something that affects 90% of floating ice will have a much larger effect than something that can only affect the top 10%.
Antarctica’s ice is mostly up in the air, on land, and it’s doing fine. It’s only having problems with floating ice too.
George E. Smith (1:36am):
Do you really mean to claim that there’s more land in the Arctic than in the Antarctic?