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.
Philip Bradley says:
July 20, 2012 at 6:48 pm
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.
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Considering that the date of the soviet’s industry faltering coincides well with the starting point of the baseline for the graph indicating the annual melting/re-freezing cycle – understanding that there’s some years of ag between the faltering of an outdated industry’s spewing aerosols and the de-facto reduction in said aerosols hovering in the air – I understand that TODAY, the Arctic’s melting/re-freezing cycle is, in fact, not the NEW NORMAL, but IS, IN FACT, THE NORMAL – because Arctic ice cover may have been artificially inflated by the highly polluting Soviet era industries throught their abundand mass of aerosols they produced and which served as condensation nuclei providing an increased rate of snowfall over the Arctic pre-1997, when the reduction in aerosols finally made itself felt.
Could I be up to something here?
Oopsie –
ag = lag
My fault. Too few coffee…
Alert, which not far away gets 173 cm of snow per annum.
Perhaps, if the arctic gets more ice free, this region will get more snow fall.
NH snowfall in winter has increased substantially over the last 10 years, but so has snow melt particularly in spring and summer. Another insolation effect (the melt that is).
There is a theory that increased snowfall from an ice free Arctic ocean triggers glacial phases (ice ages to most people).
RobL comments that liquid water on the ice will drain through the ice. I doubt it since the water could infiltrate the ice but then hit a solid surface of higher density seawater with which it will not mix unless winds start to break the ice up leaving the sea surface clear of ice with which the water will then mix. The water pools will be first to freeze come autumn/winter.
Philip Bradley says:
July 21, 2012 at 1:33 am
Alert, which not far away gets 173 cm of snow per annum.
Perhaps, if the arctic gets more ice free, this region will get more snow fall.
NH snowfall in winter has increased substantially over the last 10 years, but so has snow melt particularly in spring and summer. Another insolation effect (the melt that is).
There is a theory that increased snowfall from an ice free Arctic ocean triggers glacial phases (ice ages to most people).
Yesterday evening I had a very pleasant dinner of freshly caught brook trout at a roadside restaurant in a mountainous region near Malatya in southern Turkey. While air temperatures during the day reached 46 C, and the sky was cloudless, the stream and waterfall running past the family-run restaurant were in full flow and at a high level (and very cold). This, they explained, was due to the very heavy snowfall last winter.
Satellite coverage of the Arctic and Antarctic depends on the inclination and “altitude” of the satellite’s orbit. And the inclination is determined by the needs of the on board instruments/experiments. Many satellites have poor coverage of the far North and South. For example, I think there is currently no Radar Altimeter coverage of the high latitudes because the current high resolution RA satellite — Topex-Poseidon (inclination 66 degrees) — doesn’t fly over areas poleward of the Arctic/Antarctic circles. ERS2 had coverage up to about 81 degrees, but it is defunct. I believe that there is good optical coverage of much of the Arctic, but I’m not sure how much and it’d take quite a few hours to research it. Maybe someone here knows offhand.
I thank Steven Mosher for the link he gave at 11:28 and the NSIDC quote he gave at 11:41 am .
The important NSIDC sentence is: “To the sensor, surface melt appears to be open water rather than water on top of sea ice.”
I don’t see this as much of an issue when we are speaking of a graph that focuses on areas of over-15%-extent. After all, once you get down to 15% extent you are talking about slabs of ice floating about in water that is 85% open, and it is easy for melt-water to flow off such bobbing chunks of ice.
It only gets to be an issue when we are looking at maps which attempt to show the difference between 100% extent and 90% extent and 80% extent and 70% extent with shading that shifts from deep purple to alarming red.
The “North Pole Camera” is wonderful because it allows us to go up there and see things for ourselves. It cools my temper to escape the 95 degree summer heat, (where I live,) and wander about (mentally) in a place that is far cooler. I’ve gone on such jaunts on a regular basis for five years now.
It gets very slushy up there, between now and when things start to refreeze in September, and sometimes the camera tilts as its stand gets less stable in the slush. However I have yet to see open water, such as shown from the sub-pictures from the 1950’s.
Last year there may have been an open lead in the far distance, but I couldn’t be sure, because the picture got too grainy when I “zoomed” using magnification.
Noone has commented on the mini-mountain of ice to the upper left. I was taken to task, on another site, for suggesting nine-tenths of it thrust downwards under water, as is usually the case with ice in water. Is it possible for a pressure ridge to bulge up without bulging down?
In a manner of speaking a pressure ridge contains such a volume of ice, all crunched together, that it represents an “extent” above 100%. But saying so will really get people hopping. So forget I said that.
I really like the “North Pole Camera,” and think it would be a great pity if it was ever discontinued, due to budget cuts. If budgets must be cut, cut other things first.
Don there is optical coverage. some ice products use this data but not in daily data. couple of issues: clouds and requires a human counter on cloud free.. as I recall. IMSI I think uses a multi sensor approach combining all data sources.. hmm working from memory so check the web pages of al the maps and dril down into the supporting info.
more concentration stuff
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/arctic_SSMIS_nic.png
Regarding the N Pole web cam it’s important to remember that it was near the Pole in April but now is at 84 N and sailing towards the Fram, which I expect it to reach in a month or so. All that ice, mountains and all is destined to melt in the Atlantic this fall.
RE: “In a manner of speaking a pressure ridge contains such a volume of ice, all crunched together, that it represents an “extent” above 100%. But saying so will really get people hopping. So forget I said that.”
It’s amazing to me with all the experts around the globe in Plate Tectonics that at least some of that skill set has not been more thoroughly applied to the issues of sea ice behavior. And yet, to even hint at it is to incur any and all manner of brick bats. Ah, the Scientific Method at work … or not!
Thanks for writing this post. This was golden for me as I have been wondering
Really the Ice melt every year with great percentage .this causes global warming problems…….
Thank you
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