Ice Dancing

John from CA says:
June 25, 2010 at 12:22 pm
SST anomalies show warmer water appearing out of nowhere into the gap between Greenland and Canada, as well as on the other side. I take that as upwelling, because the waters to the south of those places is well below normal.
As for the rest of the Arctic, nothing doing except the winds.

Julienne,
The WRF forecast for Barrow calls for much less sun than 2007 over the next two weeks.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_breakup

Steve,
Nice graphics, clearly showing ice shearing and flow ice moving along the Barrows edge of the ice sheet. Took me a minute to realize that the polar graphic has the Bering Strait clocked at 8:30 location and the video has it clocked at roughly 12:00 position, though!
Question: How do we know the ice shear and flow is primarily from Beaufort gyre wind effects and not ocean current effects…. or both? Which way are the primary currents running through the Bering Strait now and how does that create eddy and feeder currents off Barrow? What does the sea bottom structure look like along Barrows and how does it amplify or negate ocean currents? How do tidal effects add to/subtract from the primary currents and cyclicly reinforce or mute the currents near Barrow?
Anecdote: I grew up on a large lake in Wisconsin. During spring melt, if the warming spring winds stayed relatively low velocity, we would see significant degrees of ice thinning down to maybe 4 inches of rotten ice and a relatively quiet departure of the remaining ice before whatever breeze was running. If the initial ice thickness was great (3 feet), that could take a long time! Other years, we might see enough melting to open up small leads and start honeycombing the ice, followed by high winds. That would drive the still relatively thick ice from the lake surface, leaving huge heaps of ice 20 feet and more high in the far reach bays and up on their shorelines. Shoreline trees, large boulders, and even occasionally lake shore houses were “bulldozed” by the wind driven ice sheets! It is a sight to behold and the grinding and tinkling noises of the crushing ice sheet cannot be adequately described with words. That occurred with a maximum wind fetch of only 11 miles, providing a study of wind/ice/melt dynamics in microcosm, compared to the macro scale Arctic ice pack dynamics!
Thanks again – Good Stuff!

stevengoddard says:
June 25, 2010 at 1:11 pm
The ice extent graph is running parallel to 2006 and is offset downwards due to deficiencies in regions which are normally ice free in September. There is little reason to pay attention to the ice extent graphs until at least July.
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Except for the fact that you haven’t.
Will Arctic Sea Ice Update #11 rear it’s ugly head before July?

You all have no idea how much I don’t care about arctic sea ice. We know the northwest passage was open as recently as the 1940s and that it has been open at other times in recorded history. We also know that the earth is relatively warm now after its entirely “precedented” warm up following the LIA. The only reason we don’t know if it has been ice free in the recent past is because we have only had the technology in place to look for the last 30 years or so. In light of this, if the arctic is “ice free” sometime in the next ten years, why do we care?

kwik says: wrote
June 25, 2010 at 1:15 pm
I think its the Sun.
“Hot Tip; Sun-Gate coming up?;”
Thanks Kwik. I love this kind of news. Let me post a bit of the article;
“New global warming data fraud scandal seems to show a faked ‘consensus’ of the impact of solar forcing on Earth’s climate based on one finding.
A staggering new finding seems to mire the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in global warming scandal every bit as devastating as Climategate.
The news broke June 24, 2010 on a Czech climate skeptic blog, Klimaskeptik.cz, that calls the latest global warming scandal, “Judithgate.”
Roughly translated into English the site reveals that the The IPCC relied on evidence supplied by just only one Solar Physicist, Judith Lean, to create their “consensus that solar influence upon the climate was minimal.
Judithgate Scandal Goes Viral
The story has going viral on climate skeptic websites and is reported on a leading blog, ‘Climate Realists’ as ,’IPCC “Consensus” on Solar Influence was Only One Solar Physicist who Agreed with Her Own Paper.”
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/behind-the-science/7220-new-global-warming-scandal-consensus-on-sun-is-one-expert

Here is what I see:
I see NOAA talking about temperature anomaly records being broken:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global
The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for May 2010 was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F). This is the warmest such value on record since 1880.
For March–May 2010, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 14.4°C (58.0°F) — the warmest March-May on record. This value is 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th century average.
The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January–May 2010 was the warmest on record. The year-to-date period was 0.68°C (1.22°F) warmer than the 20th century average.
The global land surface temperatures for May and the March–May period were the warmest on record, at 1.04°C (1.87°F) and 1.22°C (2.20°F) above the 20th century average, respectively.
In the Northern Hemisphere, both the May 2010 average temperature for land areas, and the hemisphere as a whole (land and ocean surface combined), represented the warmest May on record. The average combined land and ocean surface temperature for the Northern Hemisphere was also record warmest for the March–May period.
I see Arctic ice area dropping like a rock:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png
along with ice volume:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png
I see the lowest Arctic sea ice extent for this date since satellites began measuring the entire Arctic:
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png
I see large sections of the Western Arctic being softened up for 3 more months of melting:
ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/NEAR_REAL_TIME/Arc_latest_large.png
I see melt ponds north of 88° N:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa1.jpg
I see Steven Goddard desperately trying to play down the connection between “warming” and “Arctic sea ice melting”.
What do you see ?

I think this chart from Cryosphere Today is relevant.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg
This year is like no previous year in terms of ice growth and recession so predicting the September outcome is difficult. If the rate stays constant as it is at the moment, there will be a record year.

Anu,
The sad thing is that, for a while, you were trying to make intelligent posts.

Dave Springer says:
June 25, 2010 at 2:15 pm
“If you are keenly interested in knowing what’s driving the record ice melt given air temperatures are not as warm as this time in 2007 I have conducted an experiment which provides the answer. Maybe you can duplicate it to confirm.”
” There’s the answer to the mystery which keenly interests you.”
Dave, another experiment is done every day by nature itself.
A big icecube in water/air: Arctic.
A big icecube on land/air: Antarctic.
The answer is there for everyone to see. Its the ocean.
And what heats the ocean? The sun.
And whats in between? Clouds.

Normally at this time of year there is a sort of a hold-up in the melt rate – a kink in the graph as the melt kind of slows and hesitates before plunging on down. The `fastest melt rate between blah-de-blah … ‘ that we have seen this year isn’t really because the ice is melting all that fast in absolute terms. It is mostly due to a complete absence of the usual kink. So what usually causes the kink and why is it missing this year?
Another unusual feature of the melt this year has been the early opening up of gaps arising from shear due to the Beaufort gyre. Could the two be related?
The kink usually occurs at the time during the melt when ice has most melted away outside the arctic basin and before it starts to melt much inside the arctic basin.
So why the pause? Perhaps the melt has to hold up and wait for ice to break free at the edges of the arctic basin before it can proceed.
This suggests an explanation for what we are seeing. Perhaps what has happened this year is that the ice broke free at the edges of the arctic basin much much earlier than usual – before the melt even got anywhere near the edges of the arctic basin. Consequently the usual hold-up to wait for the ice to break free isn’t happening this year.
So why did the arctic ice pack break free at the edges so early? Two hypotheses no doubt will be suggested.
1. Perhaps the ice is rotten.
2. Perhaps stronger than usual winds broke it free.
To check the first hypothesis we should look at ice thickness data. However the ice in the arctic basin seems reasonably thick. What does `rotten’ mean anyway? Perhaps those using the term would like to explain what they mean. If the suggestion is that the ice is not as dense or mechanically strong as usual, then is there any core sample data to bear this out?
To check the second hypothesis we should look at the speed of the Beaufort gyre and at wind conditions over the arctic. Does anyone have useful data that would suggest the winds driving the gyre are pushing the pack harder than usual this year?

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Julienne says:
June 25, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Not to further stir the pot, but so far this June has shown the fastest ice loss rate during the satellite era currently at 83,000 sq-km per day. This past May was also the fastest rate of ice loss from 1979-present.
So I am keenly interested in what is driving this rate of loss this year. If you look at the air temperature anomalies, you find that temperatures are anomalously warm, but not as warm as say in 2007 that showed 925 mbar air temperature anomalies that were 7oC above normal in the E. Siberian Seas (1-23 June).
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But didn’t 2007 have as much of a negative AO going into the year ? So temps were warmer come spring this year at high lattitudes than 2007 and all the ice around the edges was very late developed when the AO righted itself come Feb, so they crumbled quickly just after that and are still doing so.
Will it continue? I now think the AO has less of an effect from this time on and it will be due just to weather, clear skies and the temperatures in general.
Did you have a guess on the sea extent minima by the way? What was it?
Andy

another big story for the AGW coffin. THis ones quite devastating although go ol Leif won’t like it LOL
http://co2insanity.com/2010/06/25/judithgate-ipcc-thinks-one-person-is-a-consensus/