Check out the “North Pole Camera” on the WUWT “Sea Ice Page.” Both Camera #1 and Camera #2 show lovely summer weather, and patches of melt-water atop the ice.
One problem has been that this melt-water can appear to be open-water, in the radar-eyes of a satellite. Apparently liquid does a great job of absorbing radar, and the radar got no echo even if the water was one inch deep rather than one mile deep. Has this problem been addressed?
Also camera #1 shows a neat pressure ridge on the horizon to the upper left. That little mountain wasn’t there a month ago. Remember that nine tenths of it is under water. Quite a “Volume” of ice is in a small area, there.
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One wonders is that top of the ice meltwater issue is part of the reason why the current Cryosphere Today image looks so different than on 2007:
While there is a lot of cloud cover, breaks in the clouds in the visual satellite imagery from AQUA Arctic composite shows those areas with some open water, note the magenta arrows I added. Greenland is at the bottom left, in bright white:
NSIDC doesn’t seem to be that much different than 2007, but it only shows 15% or greater extent, so the “red soupiness” seen on CT imagery won’t show up:
Or, we may be witnessing the prelude to a very large melt. Only time will tell.
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I suspect we will see a large melt followed by a normal winter.
Note that the ice extent is near the average until the sun rises sufficiently around the start of may. Clearly an albedo/insolation effect.
Melt water pools of any significant size on the ice would quickly drain through cracks into the ocean. If it is big enough to see by satellite at 10’s of meter scale than it is almost certainly open sea water.
It is possible that radar systems could tell the difference too. There would be a height difference, for melt water over ice compared to sea water. A radar system would probably do the best job of assessing the open water extent and ice thickness simply by looking at altitude of the surface. It would see through clouds too.
Not sure if any of the sat sensors are radar, but seems pretty likely given everyone’s interest in assessing ice growth/loss over icecaps and sea.
Notice the exposed land in the sat-photo of northern Greenland. Another statitstic that could be used would be to determine the amount of ice-free/glacier-free land in northern Greenland above a given latitude.
Interestingly, the Northwest Passage does not seem to be too keen on opening up.
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?Lang=En&n=2D414464-1&wsdoc=61BCCE40-2248-11DF-9BC2-B9D43796A02E
What’s the temperature difference between night and day? (Once “night” returns.) If meltwater freezes at night then you could compare daylight and night satellite measurements to calibrate the satellite measurements?
The “occluded fronts” hanging off of the gyres are areas with massive compression and a good deal of verticle relief. The central portions of the gyres themselves are similar. The grand gyre poleward of Greenland looks utterly mountainous. No way that will melt.
Check out the ice thickness:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim365d.gif
What is really interesting is there is less ice but much more thick ice than last year.
Hang on geriatric ice!
Thanks for the update. Would it be fair to say that Arctic Sea Ice is currently tracking around record low levels both in extent and area? A previous commenter points out that there’s an albedo feedback at play. It seems that open waters around summer solstice would absorb more heat from the sun. So, this should add to the total heat content of the oceans. I wonder whether there’s a sort of fingerprint to single out this effect compared to other parameters influencing the ocean’s heat content, such as ENSO, solar radiation and infrared absorption.
Maybe a working scientist can answer the questions raised by the blogger. (Or maybe the blogger could find the answers in the literature?)
If the sun was to set there tonight, I’d bet there would be no melt water by morning! clear sky’s and freezing temperatures at night time are ideal conditions for ice growth.
It makes sense that Ice growth will take a few years to accumulate again after a prolonged warm period the same way that we know that the loss of Arctic ice took years before it began to melt after we entered into a warm period.
Rob L,
I would suspect the satellites in use have resolution better than 10’s of meters. NOAA (not sure why) is the branch of the US government which license’s satellites and what resolution can be utilized. I think most of N. America for US companies is .5 meters and I would expect the government would allow their own satellites to go to that resolution. The US based companies (DigitalGlobe & GeoEye) supply satellite photos to GoogleEarth at pretty respectable resolution.
I guess the point I want to make is, without knowing the resolution, type of imaging (radar or light) and the analysis used, it is hard to tell how anything is interpreted.
My Eyeball Mark I sensor has realized a change in the rhythm of summer-melt vs. winter-freezing in the arctic ice cover insofar as the maximum area covered during winter seems to have returned to average (pre-AGW) levels over the past 3 years, while the ice-cover during the height of the summer-melt seems to keep stuck in the as-low-as-it-can-get mode.
Any explanation for this?
I ‘predict’ that the melting will continue for 8 more weeks, at which time the Ice Age of 2012 will begin, and the Arctic Sea Ice area will more than double by the end of the year.
What are the black and white striped “posts” in the picture of the melt water? Looks to be 8 or 9 of them that I can see.
We seem to have some kind of climatic lag between where we, in more southern locations, are experiencing and what is happening in the arctic and sub arctic. My experience with radar in geophysical applications (although limited) suggests the absorption comment is quite correct.
Yes. but most of what you are seeing is rotten ice. 😉
/snark
“””””……RHS says:
July 20, 2012 at 10:18 am
Rob L,
I would suspect the satellites in use have resolution better than 10′s of meters. NOAA (not sure why) is the branch of the US government which license’s satellites and what resolution can be utilized. I think most of N. America for US companies is .5 meters and I would expect the government would allow their own satellites to go to that resolution. The US based companies (DigitalGlobe & GeoEye) supply satellite photos to GoogleEarth at pretty respectable resolution.
Google earth doesn’t usually show radar images. Image resolution is directly proportional to wavelength, and inversely proportional to antenna diameter (in wavelengths).
I doubt that radar imagery is anywhere near optical in spatial resolution (from satellites).
OK, who put the stars in the background of the Cryospehere today images?
Re: Arctic night
I think sunset at the North Pole is around September 21.
Temperature will drop then and freeze the “melt water.”
Not yet, as you see.
http://www.esa.int/esaLP/SEMO52Z7QQE_LPearthexp_0.html
Tom in indy says:
July 20, 2012 at 9:53 am
What’s the temperature difference between night and day? (Once “night” returns.) If meltwater freezes at night then you could compare daylight and night satellite measurements to calibrate the satellite measurements?
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Having lived fairly far north back when, the terms ‘day’ and ‘night’ are a little ambiguous. Weather forecasts can go a little like, “mostly cloudy today, clear skies and sunny tonight”. 🙂
Let’s remember water reflects radar. That’s how weather radar works. My guess is ice and water are differentiated, through signal processing focused on the differences between the radar returns of water vs ice.
Ice is higher up. it’s shape is static. These sorts of things.
Just like weather radar. It’s all done with software.
Let’s remember ocean currents, not CO2 nor western decadence has caused the ice loss.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/25/nasa-warm-ocean-currents-cause-majority-of-ice-loss-from-antarctica/
Sheesh. the problem with melt ponds is well known.
There is reason why one compares extent and area.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#area_extent.