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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OOPs wrong pole. try this one.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/03/nh-sea-ice-loss-its-the-wind-says-nasa/
Any more news on the ships stuck in ice in Frobisher Bay?
I have not heard anything since last week.
http://news.ca.msn.com/local/north/resupply-ships-stuck-in-frobisher-bay-due-to-ice-conditions
“Scientists at NSIDC report extent because they are cautious about summertime values of ice concentration and area taken from satellite sensors. To the sensor, surface melt appears to be open water rather than water on top of sea ice. So, while reliable for measuring area most of the year, the microwave sensor is prone to underestimating the actual ice concentration and area when the surface is melting. To account for that potential inaccuracy, NSIDC scientists rely primarily on extent when analyzing melt-season conditions and reporting them to the public. That said, analyzing ice area is still quite valuable. Given the right circumstances, background knowledge, and scientific information on current conditions, it can provide an excellent sense of how much ice there really is “on the ground.””
Gimme another 1,000,000,000 years of polar ice satellite data observations, and then we’ll talk.
Until then – it melts, well, it melts.
From here:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/arctic.html
Select “Movies and snapshots of the 1/12° Arctic Cap HYCOM with NIC frontal analysis overlayed”, Ice Thickness, last 30 days:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticict_nowcast_anim30d.gif
(Anyone got an archive link for the animations and not just the static snapshots?)
Looks like the whole mass suddenly softened up in the last few weeks, started turning, and the forecast part up to July 25 looks like it’s all getting set up to be flushed right out of the Arctic Ocean, if the “obstruction” of Greenland and those Canadian islands doesn’t provide enough resistance to hold at least some of it in.
Yep, it’ll be interesting to see how this year pans out.
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You know, if they’d open up the Nares Strait to the left of Greenland, maybe shave down some of those islands around there, they could get that annoying ice out of there sooner. It’d be a real boost for shipping between New England-New Brunswick-Nova Scotia and Alaska-Western Canada.
This is a bit OT, but anyone can tell me why Greenland’s north coast is so ice-free for so far inland?
The thought it engenders is about how ice ages start – how the ice accumulates to such great thinckness over such wide areas. Cold creates desert conditions, which retards snowing and ice accumulation. As I understand it the genesis of ice ages/ice sheets is very porrly known, even if one’s common sense and the common wisdom (wrongly) tell us that cold itself can create ice sheets miles thick.
So, why isn’t that coastline covered in ice when more southerly Greenland coastline has ice much closer to the shore?
Anybody?
(I am leaving shortly and on’t be able to respond to replies, but would appreciate any feedback.)
Steve Garcia
Nunavut (northern Canada) is still pretty warm, but about 3C – 5C colder than parts of 2010.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/nunavut-monthly-anomalies-2005-to-june-2012/
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/nunavut-yes-it-was-warming-but-1930-and-1931-were-warm-too/
about melt ponds, see here:
http://www.seaice.de/Roesel_JGR_2012.pdf
I’d say the melt is going to slow down now, as a thick rump remains. Only melting above Siberia should continue apace. The Franz Josef islands (east of Svalbard) are like a bulwark of iciness, beyond this point they shall not go.
Also, at the risk of repeating myself, I think calibration is playing a big role in the day-to-day ice charts, and the calibrators are tweaking the charts to match eachother — so crowd psychology comes into play. Wiggle room is large. When the calibrators realize they have adjusted too far down they will pull it back up. I reckon this sort of interplay is much of the reason for the wiggliness of the lines on the ice chart.
Fascinating stuff all the same. I see Shell has opted out of drilling in the Beaufort this year.
Its melting. Going. Declining. Disappearing. Shrinking. Whatever word you want to use.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
shows that the ice edge is well behind the median line around most of the arctic basin, especially north of Russia.
There may be issues around detection of meltwater within the cap, but its largely open water beyond the edge of the cap, which on a large scale is a fairly coherent mass.
The refreeze in winter to near average could continue for many years as winter temperatures are easily low enough even with a warming arctic. Since the record melt of 2007 there have been large swings in extent between summer and winter.
Assuming the melt trend continues, because it is in open sea, the north pole may well be ice free in late summer for years while the oldest, thickest ice north of Greenland holds on.
Steven Mosher says:
Sheesh. the problem with melt ponds is well known.
And it is a problem of exactly the sort the OP politely asked about. Hardly deserving of your condescension.
Sensors are always so difficult to keep calibrated. I wonder how much sensor calibration could affect the annual curve shape. Does anyone know of any papers on this topic?
dmi is now showing a sharp turn to the right so no we are not witnessing anything abnormal lol
mkelly said:
July 20, 2012 at 10:27 am
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.
————————————–
Those are traffic markers for the myriad expected “row-to-the-pole” folks.
Aren’t we talking about the North Pole in summer, where the sun never sinks below the horizon and therefore there is no “night”?
I suspect that open water will lose far more energy through evaporation and radiation than energy gained through insolation given the angle of incidence. Another negative feedback. 🙁
I really was hoping for warmer! Warm is good, cold is BAD!
DaveE.
“Also, at the risk of repeating myself, I think calibration is playing a big role in the day-to-day ice charts, and the calibrators are tweaking the charts to match eachother — so crowd psychology comes into play. Wiggle room is large. When the calibrators realize they have adjusted too far down they will pull it back up. I reckon this sort of interplay is much of the reason for the wiggliness of the lines on the ice chart.”
NZW, I’m curious about your source for this accusation. Do you suppose the “calibrators” confer before they publish each day, or is the first publisher a leader that others soon follow? Or does the proof of later readjustments lie in the wiggliness of graph lines, because the true changes would be smooth?
James Abbott says:
July 20, 2012 at 1:59 pm
“Assuming the melt trend continues, because it is in open sea, the north pole may well be ice free in late summer for years while the oldest, thickest ice north of Greenland holds on.”
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Care to explain the “because it is in open sea” portion of your comment, or shall winds and currents need to be invoked.
“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,”
mogam, I’ve seen this stated many times. We all know there has been a downward trend in September ice area. Does anyone here have the statistical skills to prove there has been no statistically significant trend in January ice area, or February, or March?
mogamboguru says:
July 20, 2012 at 10:25 am
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?
Reduced clouds causing increased insolation and increased outgoing LWR.
Humidity in the Arctic has increased since around 2000. Reductions in cloud seeding aerosols/particulates would cause reduced clouds (even while humidity increases) and contribute to increased humidity, along with more evaporation from more open water.
Cause = closing of highly polluting Soviet era industries after the fall of the Soviet Union and in particular after the 1998 Russian financial crisis.
This is a bit OT, but anyone can tell me why Greenland’s north coast is so ice-free for so far inland?
Greenland is an ice filled basin mostly below sea level surrounded by mountains. Its the elevation of the ice and the mountains that causes it to be cold enough for annual ice accumulation. Even in northern Greenland, low elevations don’t have annual ice accumulation. And the further north you go the less snow falls.
In answer to you question. The north coast is ice free because of low elevation and low annual snowfall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Topographic_map_of_Greenland_bedrock.jpg
Much better concentration numbers from the Canadian Ice Service.
Beaufort and Archipelago regions
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS56CT/20120716180000_WIS56CT_0006545030.gif
“In answer to you question. The north coast is ice free because of low elevation and low annual snowfall.”
Perhaps, if the arctic gets more ice free, this region will get more snow fall. And a glacier could built over decades of time.
I don’t know how snowfall it gets now, say it’s foot or so , and it melts every year, so say got increase 5′ to 10′ of snow in fall to winter time period.