While I’ve sent this to Helen Wiggins at ARCUS (and have confirmation of receipt), I’m also posting it here for the record.
PAN-ARCTIC OUTLOOK FROM WUWT (acronym for WattsUpWithThat.com)
- Extent Projection: 4.5 million square kilometers, which is down from 5.1 million square kilometers predicted by WUWT readers in July. Readers polled responded with 23.21% of responses in the range of 4.4 to 4.6 million square kilometers. It is the opinion of the website owner (Watts) that the NSIDC September average will be lower than 4.5 million sq kilometers chosen by reader poll, possibly meeting or exceeding the 2007 minimum.
- Techniques: web poll of readers
- Rationale: Composite of projections by readers, projection bracket with the highest response is the one submitted.
- Executive Summary: Website devoted to climate and weather polled its readers for the best estimate of 2011 sea ice extent minimum by choosing bracketed values from a web poll which can be seen at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/31/final-arctic-sea-ice-forecast-poll/
- Estimate of Forecast Skill: none
submitted by Anthony Watts to ARCUS on September 1st
See the WUWT Sea Ice Page for the most current status of sea ice
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Pole cam is depicting yet another storm. Near white out. This is perfect timing, getting the dump just as the sun is setting and temps are dropping. Volume, baby!
There seems to be a new ice volume minimum this year http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/09/piomas-august-2011.html
Anyone care to comment as to what may be causing this?
“Let me stress that these volume numbers aren’t observed data, but are calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System”
The algore-ithm did it.
Pole cam shows this latest dump continuing. Soon the instruments you can see a few yards away will be buried. That’s a pretty healthy rate of accumulation and a massive early season pack for those upper latitudes. Usually only see things like this in the mid latitudes.
New image now on the Pole Cam. The second major storm has ended, leaving a really nice looking pack with a wind sculpted top. Looks like there is still blowing snow. The polyana I noted a few days ago a few miles out is gone. Looks like there is a pressure ridge there now. Obvious what happened there, the opening froze over with thin ice then the older ice on either side closed, pushing all the new ice up and thickening things up. The weeks long sunset has begun, and it’s beautiful.
Another storm, dumping again. This is a cold storm, internal temp of the camera is -0.5 deg C (temps usually come up a bit while it’s snowing up in the High Arctic).
Maybe start taking bets on when the equipment will get buried and go off line forever.
Steve –
I’m no expert, but to me all this snow is a bad thing. Snow is typically a good insulator, and thus it might be “protecting” the ice below from the cold air above. I’d rather see a snowless winter followed by a massive dump of snow right before winter’s end (the snow at the end would then protect the ice by a combination of albedo and insulation changes).
-Scott
The snow is falling near the pole, it is of no consequence vis a vis general ice formation from below from sea water. In that area the ice is very old. If anything, top accumulation will add to overall volume.
I respectfully disagree. The net heat transfer in winter is from the sea water to the atmosphere. Adding a layer of insulation in that system will slow the heat transfer. And while I don’t think the ice near the pole is in nearly as bad a shape as some people do, I don’t know if I consider it to be “very old” and would rather see it losing ocean heat as much as possible.
-Scott
Scott you are referring to the areas where new ice is forming after having either melted or sloughed off to other regions. The pole cam is no where near such an area. The ocean there is probably not transferring much heat upward.
I commented this on Steve Goddard’s site, but thought it would go nicely here too:
JAXA showed its first day-to-day net gain for September 2011 between 09/09 and 09/10. This of course doesn’t mean that 09/09 was the minimum, though it is a possibility. My spreadsheet predicts we’ll see another 43680 km^2 of loss, so actually being at the minimum would be a welcome difference. CT’s area metric still hasn’t set another minimum since a few days ago, but it’s so close that there’s a good chance of it, and my spreadsheet says >50% likelihood.
The differences in the metrics is surprising:
Bremen extent already has 2011 as a record low.
CT area has a record low, but just barely and it’s more of a tie.
JAXA area seems to be tying for a record low, though it could end up above.
NSIDC extent was near 2007 but is diverging upward and will likely not approach the record.
JAXA extent is about halfway between the 2007 and 2008 values, very unlikely for a record.
DMI 30% extent minimum is looking to be closer to 2008 than 2007.
NANSEN area is much closer to 2008 than 2007…just barely under 2008.
NANSEN extent is higher for 2008 than 2007…good chance of being above it for the minimum.
Combining all the above on both a daily and monthly basis and I’ll think we’ll end up seeing 2011 as in between 2007 and 2008 overall. Considering the warm winter last winter and the poor weather up through mid July this year, I don’t think that’s unexpected. Arguably, the only good weather we saw the whole time was the end of July/start of August and then maybe the last week or two. However, if the CAGW believers are right, I see no way we won’t crush the record next year.
-Scott
Steve, have you studied heat transfer? The atmosphere above the ice and pole cam is colder than the sea water below, so there has to be a net heat transfer that way – that’s basic thermodynamics. And for a cooling of the Arctic, that is what we want to happen. Any extra insulation will slow that cooling, and that’s exactly the reason why thicker ice adds thickness more slowly than thin ice – the ice itself is extra insulation.
Personally, I’d rather add several more inches of good, solid ice on the bottom of the ice pack in exchange for some snow on top early in the season. I’m all for the maximum transfer of ocean heat to the atmosphere during new ice formation. That’s just my opinion, feel free to have your own.
-Scott
Looking at all the chartsengrafs today, I’m calling the minimum. Anyone want to join me?
The Germans state that the Arctic Sea Ice Extent is now a new historic minimum (4.240M sq.km) as of September 8, 2011:
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/seaice/amsr/minimum2011-en.pdf
NSIDC is a bit more circumspect:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/