From NSIDC: A rapid freeze-up
Arctic sea ice extent increased rapidly through October, as is typical this time of year. Large areas of open water were still present in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas at the end of the month. The open water contributed to unusually warm conditions along the coast of Siberia and in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent for October 2011 was 7.10 million square kilometers (2.74 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. —Credit: National Snow and Ice Data CenterHigh-resolution image
Overview of conditions
Average ice extent for October 2011 was 7.10 million square kilometers (2.74 million square miles), 2.19 million square kilometers (846,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average. This was 330,000 square kilometers (127,000 square miles) above the average for October 2007, the lowest extent in the satellite record for that month. By the end of October, ice extent remained below the 1979 to 2000 average in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and in the Barents and Kara seas. Extent was near average in the East Greenland Sea. New ice growth has closed both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route.
Figure 2. The graph above shows daily Arctic sea ice extent as of October 31, 2011, along with the lowest ice extents in the preceding decades, 1984 and 1999. 2011 is shown in light blue. 2007, the year with the record low minimum, is dashed green. Purple indicates 1999 and light green shows 1984. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data. —Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Conditions in context
Arctic sea ice extent increased rapidly through October. Ice extent during October 2011 increased at an average rate of 114,900 square kilometers (44,360 square miles) per day, about 40% faster than the average growth rate for October 1979 to 2000. On October 30, Arctic sea ice extent was 8.41 million square kilometers (3.25 million square miles), 226,000 square kilometers (87,300 square miles) more than the ice extent on October 30, 2007, the lowest extent on that date in the satellite record.
During the month of October, the freeze-up that begins in September kicks into high gear. The rate of freeze-up depends on several factors including the atmospheric conditions and the amount of heat in the ocean that was accumulated during the summer. However, each decade, the October extent has started from a lower and lower point, with the record low extent during the 1980s (1984) substantially higher than the record low extent during the 1990s (1999), which in turn is substantially higher than the record low extent during the 2000s (2007).
Figure 3. Monthly October ice extent for 1979 to 2011 shows a decline of 6.6% per decade.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center
October 2011 compared to past years
Ice extent for October 2011 was the second lowest in the satellite record for the month, behind 2007. The linear rate of decline for October over the satellite record is now -61,700 square kilometers (-23,800 square miles) per year, or -6.6% per decade relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.
Figure 4. This map of air temperature anomalies at the 925 hPa level (approximately 3000 feet) for October 2011 shows unusually high temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean (yellow shading) and unusually low temperatures over the eastern Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Greenland (blue shading).
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Atmospheric conditions
In recent years, low sea ice extent in the summer has been linked to unusually warm temperatures at the surface of the Arctic Ocean in the fall. This pattern appeared yet again this fall.
Air temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean for October 2011 ranged from 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, measured at the 925 millibar level, about 1,000 meters or 3,000 feet above the surface. However, over the eastern Canadian Arctic and Greenland, temperatures were as much as 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) below average.
These temperature anomalies in part reflect a pattern of above-average sea level pressure centered over the northern Beaufort Sea, and lower than average sea level pressure extending across northern Eurasia. This pattern is linked to persistence of the positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation through most of the month. These pressure and temperature anomalies tend to bring in heat from the south, warming the Eurasian coast, but they also lead to cold northerly winds over the eastern Canadian Arctic Archipelago. However, along the Siberian coast and in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, warmer temperatures came primarily from the remaining areas of open water in the region, as heat escaped from the water. These effects are more strongly apparent in the surface air temperatures: average October temperatures in the region were 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9.0 to 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.
Figure 5. The top panel of this figure shows the number of open water days for the approximate 75 kilometer (46.6 mi) coastal zone along the Beaufort Sea (data for each year and linear trend). The bottom panel shows the average annual coastal erosion rate for three periods, 1979-1999, 2000-2007 and 2008-2009.
—Credit: NSIDC courtesy Irina Overeem, CU Boulder
High-resolution image
Sea ice loss and coastal erosion
Declining sea ice in the Arctic has led to increasing erosion rates along the coast of the Beaufort Sea over the past fifty years, according to a new study led by Irina Overeem of the University of Colorado Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). Their study used a wave model driven by sea ice position and wind data.As the period of open water on the coast of the Beaufort Sea has increased, so has the mean annual erosion rate, the study showed. From 1979 to 1999, the average erosion rate was 8.5 meters (27.9 feet) per year. The average rate over the period 2000 to 2007 was 13.6 meters (44.6 feet) per year, while the rate for the last two years of the record, 2008 to 2009, was 14.4 meters (47.2 feet) per year.
With a longer open water season, ocean water warms more and waves eat away at the coastline. The sediments comprising the coastal bluffs are locked together by permafrost—hard frozen ground with a concrete-like consistency. As the waves lap at the permafrost, they also help to thaw it, making the ground much more vulnerable to erosion.
Further Reading
Overeem, I., R.S. Anderson, C.W. Wobus, G.D. Clow, F.E. Urban, and N. Matell. 2011: Sea ice loss enhances wave action at the Arctic coast. Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L17503, doi:10.1029/2011GL048681.
Serreze, M.C., and R.G. Barry. 2011: Processes and impacts of Arctic Amplification: A research synthesis. Global and Planetary Change, 77,85-96.
Walter Dnes says:
November 7, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Hi Walter,
To my knowledge, there’s no other daily extend data available. You have monthly options from NSIDC and NANSEN. Obviously, you can get good estimates from digital analysis of the produced daily plots from a variety of sources.
However, there is one other daily ice data set readily available, though it is area and not extent. And that is Cryosphere Today’s data. You can get it here:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.anom.1979-2008
Note the columns are date, anomaly relative to 1979-2008, area, and average area for 1979-2008. Generally, I’ve found this daily data to be quite useful.
Hope that helps,
-Scott
Getting Warm says:
November 7, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Only in a select few places until CryoSat2 really gets humming. Otherwise, ice thickness is modeled. And while I think the model is getting it qualitatively right, I’m cognizant enough of the difference to be wary of any claims and trends.
-Scott
Is the northern waters sea ice extent a leading or lagging indicator of the various climatic conditions in the immediate vicinity of the polar region?
I expect that the answer is “a little both ways” but that broadly ice extent laggs the changing climate by a considerable period of time.
Any counter views?
Actually the Ice is getting thicker and multi year ice is growing according to rwo metrics. Only PIOMAS says this is not so. http://www.real-science.com/metre-thick-ice-area-doubled-year
Getting Warm says:
November 7, 2011 at 6:15 pm
What threat does science pose to your political views?
Well…since Climate Science’s CO2 = CAGW hypotheses have not managed to generate even one relevant empirically correct/confirmed prediction, I assume you must be a conservative? In other words a pre-Postmodern individual who employs real scientific method and principle science?
1979 to 2011 shows a decline of 6.6% per decade…… soon there will be no ice.
Temperature outside shows a cooling trend from 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm…… soon it will be absolute zero outside.
Getting Warm says:
November 7, 2011 at 6:15 pm
‘I glad that you are smarter than all of the honorable scientist that have devoted their life to studying the Arctic.
What threat does science pose to your political views?’
Ah, the good old appeal to autority, good place to start although I’m guessing Anthony and others like to check facts for themselves rather than blindly repeat the sermon.
Death spiral, OAP ice, thickness. ad boredom.
I clicked on the link:
http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/words/word.pl?standard%20deviation
that caused me to browse through the NSIDC glossary and I came upon the “yedoma” term and found this statement: “Thawing yedoma is a significant source of atmospheric methane.”
I just find this to be warmist alarmism junk science and it causes me to not trust statements made by NSIDC.
And while I am here:
“Latest News At Cypress Mountain
CYPRESS MOUNTAIN OPENS TOMORROW – Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
We are absolutely stoked to have the EARLIEST OPENING DAY IN OUR HISTORY and to be the FIRST SKI AREA IN BRITISH COLUMBIA TO OPEN for the 2011/12 Snow Season! ”
This is the same mountain that had some snow brought in to cover some areas for the 2010 Olympics. The same mountain that David Suzuki was alarmed about.
I propose a “simple cause” for the melting and baseline problems. We are measuring at the peak of the “1650 until now” warming cycle. A look at
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
shows the Pacific Ocean heat [east of Japan]. This heat is the result of the last El Nino driven by the peak Sun in 2001. As this heat dissipates into the Arctic, the Arctic will grow colder. The La Nina that is in process will then produce less heat for the next cycle.
Only something as big as the Sun and the Pacific Ocean could drive the giga-watts required to freeze/unfreeze the Arctic. Look to obvious data, not to the model driven CO2 pseudo data.
As good a place as any for this I suppose.
The 30-day arctic sea surface temperature chart from NRL in the Sea Ice reference pages – http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticsst_nowcast_anim30d.gif – contains a forecast for the next week. Clearly this uses some sort of model to, one would imagine, extrapolate based on recent changes and weather forecasts. Thing is, something rather odd happens:
Currently, the coldest waters in the analysed area are about -2.5C and the warmest waters are about 22.9C. When the model kicks in to forecast the next week, this minimum and maximum change to -1.9C and 27C respectively, with a warm band suddenly appearing in the Atlantic.
Now I don’t have any buoys in the Atlantic myself, but if I did I would be surprised if they showed an instantaneous and sustained 4C rise across the full longitude of the Atlantic in November (or any other time). Does anyone know what model is used by the NRL? Whatever it is, it seems to give less weight to current temps and sensible natural bounds, and more weight to some hypothesised norm which is clearly warm-biased. If the model used has broader application, what other products or analyses are similarly biased?
The downward trend of the last 30 years or so is being maintained.
The problem for Neven and his ilk is that their null hypothesis started in 1979, maybe age will bring him some wisdom and humility…
The rapid re-freeze from sub-normal Summer Sea Ice just means that the conditions that make the ice are alive and well.
The sub-normal ice in Summer/Fall means that precious heat energy is travelling North to the Arctic, where it doesn’t do hapless Earthlings any good. It’s wasted escaping into space.
Getting Warm said “This too provides data that, as many ice researchers have stated, that Arctic ice is in a death spiral.” “Death spiral” does not sound very “scientific”. Would care to predict when the lower asymptote will kick in, or do you simply believe that summer ice extent will go to zero? IOW, how much steeper will the downward slope get? It looks to me like the steepest part is in the past and the rate of decline is starting to slow.
@Eric (skeptic)
I dunno. I’ve been thinking it over and maybe an Arctic ice death spiral might not be such a bad thing. For example,
http://www.earth.rochester.edu/news/fossil.html
if it gets to that point again, perhaps Disney will put in a resort there. I think I’ll start rooting for the death spiral.
Along with Julienne (at 11:52 am) I’m curious about the omission of the coastal erosion paper especially given the Alaskan coast along the northern Bearing and southern Chukchi Seas has a forecast of force 12 winds and 30+ foot waves Tuesday night. Kivalina, the “poster child” for coastal erosion due to lack of shore ice during early winter storms is squarely in the path.
To be fair, this storm is earlier enough in the year that the protective ice that adsorbs wave energy may not have formed yet several decades ago. But you can see from the chart that ice is far, far away despite the “rapid re-refreeze”.
REPLY:Some sort of cut and paste error is all I can figure, fixed now -Anthony
H.R. I’m thinking it might be fun to watch the crocs duking it out with the polar bears.
Anthony,
Thanks.
Also, I meant to leave a link on the storm.
http://www.adn.com/2011/11/08/2160346/powerful-storm-aims-at-western.html
The paper that NSIDC references deals with the coast somewhere within the boundaries of NRPA, west of Barrow, on the Beaufort Sea and not where this storm is occurring though it looks to be heading northeast after smacking the central west coast of Alaska. It’s forecast to provide some “action” in the papers study area on Thursday, but winds will be onshore and the storm’s low won’t be at ~950 as it is now, and into Wednesday.