From the Alfred Wegener Institute:
North-East Passage soon free from ice again? Winter measurements show thin sea ice in the Laptev Sea, pointing to early and large scale summer melt
Bremerhaven, 8 June 2012, The North-East Passage, the sea route along the North coast of Russia, is expected to be free of ice early again this summer. The forecast was made by sea ice physicists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association based on a series of measurement flights over the Laptev Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. Amongs experts the shelf sea is known as an “ice factory” of Arctic sea ice. At the end of last winter the researchers discovered large areas of thin ice not being thick enough to withstand the summer melt.
“These results were a great surprise to us“, says expedition member Dr. Thomas Krumpen. In previous measurements in the winter of 2007/2008 the ice in the same area had been up to one metre thicker. In his opinion these clear differences are primarily attributable to the wind: “It behaves differently from year to year. If, as last winter, the wind blows from the mainland to the sea, it pushes the pack ice from the Laptev Sea towards the North. Open water areas, so-called polynyas, develop in this way before the coast. Their surface water naturally cools very quickly at an air temperature of minus 40 degrees. New thin ice forms and is then immediately swept away again by the wind. In view of this cycle, differently sized areas of thin ice then develop on the Laptev Sea depending on wind strength and continuity“, explains Thomas Krumpen. (See info charts)
However, the expedition team was unaware of just how large these areas can actually become until they made the measurement flights in March and April of this year. In places the researchers flew over thin ice for around 400 kilometres. The “EM Bird”, the torpedo-shaped, electromagnetic ice thickness sensor of the Alfred Wegener Institute, was hung on a cable beneath the helicopter. It constantly recorded the thickness of the floating ice. “We now have a unique data set which we primarily want to use to check the measurements of the earth investigation satellite SMOS“, says Thomas Krumpen.
The abbreviation SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) is actually a satellite mission to determine the soil moisture of the mainland and salinity of the oceans. However, the satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) can also be used to survey the Arctic sea ice. “The satellite can be used above all to detect thin ice areas, as we have seen them, from space“, explains Thomas Krumpen.
The SMOS satellite measurements from March and April of this year confirm that the thin ice areas discovered by the expedition team were no locally restricted phenomenon: “A large part of the North-East Passage was characterised by surprisingly thin ice at the end of the winter“, says Thomas Krumpen.
The new findings of the successful winter expedition give cause for concern to the scientists: “These huge new areas of thin ice will be the first to disappear when the ice melts in summer. And if the thin ice melts as quickly as we presume, the Laptev Sea and with it a part of the North-East Passage will be free from ice comparatively early this summer“, explains the sea ice physicist.
In the past the Laptev Sea was always covered with sea ice from October to the end of the following July and was navigable for a maximum of two summer months. In 2011 the ice had retracted so far by the third week of July that during the course of the summer 33 ships were able to navigate the Arctic waters of Russia for the first time. The North-East Passage is viewed by shipping companies to be a time and fuel saving alternative to the conventional Europe-Asia route. The connection from Rotterdam to Japanese Yokohama via the Nord-East Passage is some 3800 sea miles shorter than taking the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean route.
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General information on the SMOS satellites may be found on the ESA website at http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMB4L4AD1G_Germany_0.html and on the sea ice thickness measurements of the satellite at http://www.esa.int/esaLP/SEM361BX9WG_index_0.html
The Alfred Wegener Institute conducts research in the Arctic and Antarctic and in the high and mid-latitude oceans. The Institute coordinates German polar research and provides important infrastructure such as the research ice breaker Polarstern and research stations in the Arctic and Antarctic to the national and international scientific world. The Alfred Wegener Institute is one of the 18 research centres of the Helmholtz Association, the largest scientific organisation in Germany.
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Eli Rabett says: June 15, 2012 at 3:32 am
Firstly, it’s not a “hole”, “
Depends on how you look at it. In the vertical profile the ozone does pretty much go to zero at what normally was the maximum of the concentration. That is a hole in the mid-stratosphere ozone distribution,
I am not going to argue the definition of a hole with you, the graphic below shows the ozone distribution and the likely result of the coalescing of a stratospheric polar vortex on ozone concentrations:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/polar/gif_files/sp_profile.gif
but you might prefer mountain top removal as a simile. It is significant.
When I’m hiking, and I come across others litter, especially those mylar balloons that find themselves to the most pristine of spots, I pick them up and walk them out. How about you?
More later perhaps
We await it with bated breath…
You may unbait your breath. As Eli said, this has an effect on the circulation in the Southern Hemisphere, and there is quite a bit of literature on that including
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Polvani, L. M., D. W. Waugh, et al. (2011). “Stratospheric Ozone Depletion: The Main Driver of Twentieth-Century Atmospheric Circulation Changes in the Southern Hemisphere.” Journal of Climate 24(3): 795-812.
The importance of stratospheric ozone depletion on the atmospheric circulation of the troposphere is studied with an atmospheric general circulation model, the Community Atmospheric Model, version 3 (CAM3), for the second half of the twentieth century. In particular, the relative importance of ozone depletion is contrasted with that of increased greenhouse gases and accompanying sea surface temperature changes. By specifying ozone and greenhouse gas forcings independently, and performing long, time-slice integrations, it is shown that the impacts of ozone depletion are roughly 2-3 times larger than those associated with increased greenhouse gases, for the Southern Hemisphere tropospheric summer circulation. The formation of the ozone hole is shown to affect not only the polar tropopause and the latitudinal position of the midlatitude jet; it extends to the entire hemisphere, resulting in a broadening of the Hadley cell and a poleward extension of the subtropical dry zones. The CAM3 results are compared to and found to be in excellent agreement with those of the multimodel means of the recent Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) and Chemistry-Climate Model Validation (CCMVal2) simulations. This study, therefore, strongly suggests that most Southern Hemisphere tropospheric circulation changes, in austral summer over the second half of the twentieth century, have been caused by polar stratospheric ozone depletion.
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but also others.
Now some, not Eli to be sure, might point out that you pretty much made his case. In that figure there is a hole in the vertical distribution between 20 and 15 km altitude where the concentration pretty much goes to zero.
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University
Eli Rabett says: June 15, 2012 at 1:26 pm
“studied with an atmospheric general circulation model, the Community Atmospheric Model, version 3 (CAM3)" "The CAM3 results are compared to and found to be in excellent agreement with those of the multimodel means of the recent Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) and Chemistry-Climate Model Validation (CCMVal2) simulations.”
That doesn’t count, it’s just a bunch of models, i.e. all guesses no facts. Current general circulation models cannot accurately duplicate or reproduce observations of polar voticity and the polar stratosphere, i.e.:
“Many atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) and chemistry–climate models (CCMs) are not able to reproduce the observed polar stratospheric winds in simulations of the late 20th century. Specifically, the polar vortices break down too late and peak wind speeds are higher than in the ERA-40 reanalysis. Insufficient planetary wave driving during the October–November period delays the breakup of the southern hemisphere (SH) polar vortex in versions 1 (V1) and 2 (V2) of the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) chemistry–climate model, and is likely the cause of the delayed breakup in other CCMs with similarly weak October-November wave driving.”
“In the V1 model, the delayed breakup of the Antarctic vortex biases temperature, circulation and trace gas concentrations in the polar stratosphere in spring. The V2 model behaves similarly (despite major model upgrades from V1), though the magnitudes of the anomalous effects on springtime dynamics are smaller.”
“Clearly, if CCMs cannot duplicate the observed response of the polar stratosphere to late 20th century climate forcings, their ability to simulate the polar vortices in future may be poor.”
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2009/EGU2009-651.pdf
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010JGRD..11507105H
“It is unclear how much confidence can be put into the model projections of the vortices given that the models typically only have moderate resolution and that the climatological structure of the vortices in the models depends on the tuning of gravity wave parameterizations.
Given the above outstanding issues, there is need for continued research in the dynamics of the vortices and their representation in global models.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/waugh+polvani-PlumbFestVolume-2010.pdf
Now some, not Eli to be sure, might point out that you pretty much made his case. In that figure there is a hole in the vertical distribution between 20 and 15 km altitude where the concentration pretty much goes to zero.
I am sure some would, but I think most would see your statement, that “ozone depletion” “blows a hole in the belly of the ozone column.”, as uninformed alarmist rhetoric…
Why is their open water, NNE of Alaska and North of Canada, on the west side of all the islands that make the east part of the Northwest Passage interesting.
I know this post is about the Northeast Passage, but that open water baffles me.
Caleb says: June 15, 2012 at 7:43 pm
Why is their open water, NNE of Alaska and North of Canada, on the west side of all the islands that make the east part of the Northwest Passage interesting.
I know this post is about the Northeast Passage, but that open water baffles me.
Hmmmm, if you zoom in on the area on this satellite image;
http://www.arctic.io/observations/
there do seem to be some odd green areas, that don’t seem to appear anywhere else in the Arctic.
The green is also viable in this satellite image, even though it is mostly obscured with clouds;
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r05c02.2011212.terra
it is a zoom from this Arctic satellite image;
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2011212.terra.4km
The 3-6-7 band shows the ice more clearly;
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2011212.terra.367.4km
but the zoom doesn’t appear unusual:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r05c02.2011212.terra.367
Recently “a group of U.S. scientists has discovered enormous blooms of algae growing in an area of the Arctic Ocean that they never thought could support the phytoplankton: below the sea ice.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/06/07/sci-phytoplankton-blooms-arctic.html
Thus is is possible that this is the cause of the coloration, but it certainly bears watching…
Beaufort Sea Ice Area has been anomalously low every summer since 2007:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.11.html
and this year is currently the lowest:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r01_Beaufort_Sea_ts.png
Also of note;
“Shell plans to drill new wells in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in 2012 and 2013. The company has invested billions in Arctic leases since 2005 but ran into opposition from environmentalists and native Alaskan groups. Last August, however, Shell received a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management conditional permit to explore for oil in the Beaufort Sea, east of the Chukchi. In October, the EPA issued a final air-discharge permit sought by Shell to drill in the Beaufort Sea. With that air permit, Shell can use its Kulluk rig for 120 days a year in Arctic waters, the agency said. In mid-December, BOEM conditionally approved a revised, Shell plan to drill six, oil-exploration wells in the Chukchi Sea next year.
Together, the Beaufort and Chukchi seas could hold 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In comparison, 17 billion barrels of oil have flowed out of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay fields in the past 30 years. ”
http://www.marinelink.com/news/exploration-arctic-awaits342119.aspx
“The Nordica is one of two Shell-contracted icebreakers owned by the Finnish government. It is heading to Alaska to join its sister ship, the Fennica, to support the Kulluk and Noble Discoverer, the two drilling vessels en route to the north coast of Alaska to drill five exploratory wells for Shell in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas later this summer.
Shell has said it intends to begin drilling in the two neighboring seas on or about July 10 and continue until just before ice forms this autumn. ”
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2012/2012-05-01-01.html
“Icebreaker, support
Good ice management is necessary to enhance station-keeping performance of arctic drilling units, Shell stressed to OGJ. The company has contracted two Russian icebreakers and two Finnish and Swedish-flagged anchor handling-ice management vessels to accompany the two drilling units.
The I/B Kapitan Dranitsyn, owned by the Russian Federation and operated by Murmansk Shipping Co., is the primary icebreaker assigned to the Discoverer drillship. The conventionally propelled ship was built in 1982 at the Wartsila Shipyard in Helsinki, Finland. It was remodeled in 1994, upgraded in 1999 and received a passenger vessel certificate.
The anchor-handling vessel and secondary icebreaker for the Discoverer drillship is the Finnish-flagged Fennica, owned and operated by Finstaship. Built in 1993, the Fennica is 116 m long, 26 m wide, and draws 8.4 m. This vessel has reamers on the hull, which improve turning in ice, break a wider channel, and reduce rolling and midship friction.2
The anchor-handling tug supply (AHTS) M/V Vladimir Ignatjuk is the primary icebreaker assigned to the Kulluk platform. The ship is owned by the Russian Federation and operated by Murmansk Shipping Co.
Gulf Canada built this Canadian-designed vessel in 1982 at the Victoria Yard of the Burrard Yarrrows Corp. in British Columbia. It was originally named the Arctic Kalvik when it worked in the Beaufort for Gulf Canada. It has an overall length of 88 m, breadth of 17.5 m, draft of 8.3 m, and accommodates 23 crew members. The Vladimir Ignatjuk is classified by Lloyd’s Register of Shipping as a 100 A1 icebreaker tug and LMC ice- breaking tow, ice class 1A super.
The anchor-handling vessel and secondary icebreaker for the Kulluk is the Norwegian-built AHTS M/V Tor Viking. This KMAR 808 vessel was built in 2001 and is owned and operated by Viking Supply Ships AS, based in Kristiansand, Norway, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kistefos AS. The Tor Viking is 83.7 m long, with a breadth of 18 m, and draft of 6 m.
In addition to the redundant icebreakers that protect the two drilling units, Shell has committed to three other vessels as part of its oil spill response (OSR) system, including the Affinity, an ice strengthened arctic oil tanker; the Arctic Endeavor barge with Point Barrow tug; and the Chouest Nanuq, a new, ice-strengthened resupply vessel.”
http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-105/issue-37/drilling-production/shell-alaska-readies-ice-class-drilling-units-for-beaufort-sea.html
Jut the Facts said
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That doesn’t count, it’s just a bunch of models, i.e. all guesses no facts. Current general circulation models cannot accurately duplicate or reproduce observations of polar voticity and the polar stratosphere, i.e.:
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which kinda of reminds Eli of what Box said about models, all models are wrong, some are useful.
There are two uses of models, one, IEHO the least useful part, is to predict, the other, the more useful part, again IEHO, is to provide understanding of underlying causes, which is what the reference that Eli provided up above does. In that particular case the second use of models was actually the driving force because if you don’t use models how are you going to understand how changes in the thermal structure of the atmosphere change wind patterns.
FWIW there are a large number of papers using different models which come to essentially the same conclusion about how global warming has changed wind patterns
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University
Eli Rabett says: June 16, 2012 at 3:23 am
which kinda of reminds Eli of what Box said about models, all models are wrong, some are useful.
There are two uses of models, one, IEHO the least useful part, is to predict, the other, the more useful part, again IEHO, is to provide understanding of underlying causes, which is what the reference that Eli provided up above does. In that particular case the second use of models was actually the driving force because if you don’t use models how are you going to understand how changes in the thermal structure of the atmosphere change wind patterns.
FWIW there are a large number of papers using different models which come to essentially the same conclusion.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t model, I am saying that models that cannot reproduce observations are erroneous. Furthermore, regardless of how many papers, based on how many different erroneous models, all arrive at the same erroneous conclusions, they provide no support for the assertions you’ve put forth.
FWIW there are a large number of papers using different models which come to essentially the same conclusion about how global warming has changed wind patterns
First you were attributing changed wind patterns to “ozone depletion over Antarctica blows a hole in the belly of the ozone column” and now to “global warming”. What’s next “pollution” or maybe “climate wierding”? How about you admit that you’ve lost this argument and we move on with our lives…