Temperature above 80 degrees north drops below freezing early, and continues to drop.
Many people have been watching the remarkable early drop in air temperature at the DMI plot here:
![meanT_2013[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/meant_20131.png?quality=75)
This drop looks to be about two weeks early. As this next analysis of sea surface temperature shows, much of the area is below freezing. Of course in seawater, ice doesn’t form until temperatures get below 28.4°F (-2°C), so it is close, but not quite there yet. [Note: due to lower salinity in the Arctic seawater freezes at -1.8C according to this essay at NOAA by Peter Wadhams]
National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch (MMAB) – Click the pic to view at sourceThe DMI sea ice plot looks to be slowing significantly, but has not made a turn yet.
![icecover_current_new[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/icecover_current_new11.png?quality=75)
The JAXA plot isn’t quite so different from previous years, but does show some slowing:
- Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) – International Arctic Research Center (IARC) – Click the pic to view at source
With this slowdown becoming evident, and temperature dropping early, the possibility exists that a turn in ice melt may start earlier than usual. If it does, we might see a turn begin in about two to three weeks if there’s any linkage between 80N temperature and sea ice extent. Typically, we see a turn in Arctic sea ice melt around September 15th to the 25th.
Of interest is this plot done by the blog “sunshine hours” which shows the difference between Arctic sea ice in 2012 and 2013.
He writes:
The difference is quite dramatic if you graph the anomaly % from the 30 year mean.
Until day 175 or so, the anomaly was only around -5% or so (note that the anomaly actually went positive for a few days in 2012).
While 2013 was later, both started drifting down. 2013 has stabilized at -15%. At this time last year 2012 was -30%.
Click image to enlarge.
Check out all of the data at the WUWT Sea Ice reference page
UPDATE:
Some commenters have noticed a large drop in today’s most recent plot.
First, regarding this graph:
![icecover_current[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/icecover_current1.png?quality=75)
That’s the old DMI plot, which DMI says we should now use this one on this page:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
They write:
The plot above replaces an earlier sea ice extent plot, that was based on data with the coastal zones masked out. This coastal mask implied that the previous sea ice extent estimates were underestimated. The new plot displays absolute sea ice extent estimates. The old plot can still be viewed here for a while.
And, that could be either an instrument failure or a processing failure. We’ve seen spikes like that before. It might also be real data, we won’t know until the next update.
I tend to favor loss of data, as reader “DJ” points out in comments, see this image:
![satcon.arc.d-00[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/satcon-arc-d-001.png?quality=75)
But yes, this post was edited last night at about 11PM PDT, and DMI updated the graph a few hours later.
The following is from Dr Wadham’s essay on the freezing of water:
“Cooling the water down
Consider a fresh water body being cooled from above, for instance a lake at the end of summer experiencing subzero air temperatures. As the water cools the density increases so the surface water sinks, to be replaced by warmer water from below, which is in its turn cooled. This creates a pattern of convection through which the whole water body gradually cools. When the temperature reaches 4°C, the lake reaches its maximum density. Further cooling results in the colder water becoming less dense and staying at the surface. This thin cold layer can then be rapidly cooled down to the freezing point, and ice can form on the surface even though the temperature of the underlying water may still be close to 4°C. Thus a lake can experience ice formation while considerable heat still remains in the deeper parts.
This does not apply to sea water. The addition of salt to the water lowers the temperature of maximum density, and once the salinity exceeds 24.7 parts per thousand (most Arctic surface water is 30-35), the temperature of maximum density disappears. Cooling of the ocean surface by a cold atmosphere will therefore always make the surface water more dense and will continue to cause convection right down to the freezing point – which itself is depressed by the addition of salt to about -1.8°C for typical sea water. It may seem, then, that the whole water column in an ocean has to be cooled to the freezing point before freezing can begin at the surface, but in fact the Arctic Ocean is composed of layers of water with different properties, and at the base of the surface layer there is a big jump in density (known as a pycnocline), so convection only involves the surface layer down to that level (about 100-150 metres). Even so, it takes some time to cool a heated summer water mass down to the freezing point, and so new sea ice forms on a sea surface later in the autumn than does lake ice in similar climatic conditions.”
The reason that I posted this paragraph is there is a point that Dr Wadham did not make that I feel is significant. Going back to high school chemistry there is an experiment where you have a thermometer in a beaker of water and add salt. The temperature of the solution goes down as seen on the thermometer. When salt, sodium chloride, is dissolved the process is know as hydration and energy is required to make the new bonds. The hydration energy for one mole of sodium chloride is 4 kilojoules. This is not a lot of energy, but it is significant. For salt water to freeze, this energy must be removed to break the bonds between the water molecules and the sodium and chlorine ions. The temperature must be lowered sufficiently to remove all this energy. The ions and their water molecules play a game of musical chairs, moving from one ion to another until all the energy is removed. When all the energy is removed the water can freeze. In salt water the process of removal of the hydration energy starts at 4C and is completed at the freezing temperature. This transition zone is the reason that much of the ocean is at 3-4C. As water temperatures are lowered, additional energy removal is required to pass through the transition zone.
The thing is that the ice is in such a terrible state after the 2012 ice loss and even though the air temperatures have shifted in the arctic (increasing cloud cover due to the abnormally high number of storms) that the temperatures are lower than ever recorded at the COI http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php (I mean, you will not find a curve of historic temperature trends even close to what we are seeing this year)
does that mean that the world is no longer warming? no, it means that the world is changing, air currents are shifting, the jet stream is weakening, more moisture is moving from the mid latitudes into the arctic, the Hadley cell is collapsing into the Ferrell cell and the polar cell is soon to follow. (meaning that storms are moving farther northward and tropical moisture is also moving farther northward as well as desert in the southwest).
This isn’t an end to the warming cycle, it isn’t a “recovery” in sea ice.
after this intensely cold season in the arctic with unprecedented cloud cover, it is still very likely that we will exceed the ice lost in 2007, though beating the 2012 record is now becoming more and more unlikely.
ice melting from below in the late season is simply what happens in the arctic, there is no opinion about it.
What you will all have to reconcile someday is the following:
Why is the ice going away when the warming has stopped?
remember, the warming has stopped since 1998?
then why has the ice gone away???
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=12&fy=1998&sm=09&sd=12&sy=2012
JM, the reason the ice has melted is because the oceans were bringing in warmer water than had happened previously. The PDO had some effect and the AMO the most effect given the open path to the Arctic. The PDO has switched and the AMO will slowly start to fall from it’s likely peak last year. It’s called natural variation.
If GHGs were the cause we should have seen a similar decrease in Antarctica. Instead, we’ve seen a constant increase which just happens to correlate with a cold Southern Ocean.
The bouys are not really showing a decline in ice thickness this year. So the musings about bottom melt etc are just that.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/newdata.htm
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=20781
Swiss Bob says: @ur momisugly August 14, 2013 at 3:23 am
I’ll laugh my head off if Arctic ice rebounds this year and continues into the next, what will they say then?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It’s Climate CHANGE, its caused by CO2 pollution AND IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!
Why do you think they changed names a while a go?
NCEP shows a large plunge in extent today. (8/14)
According to the NPEO website, temperatures (at least around the locations of the floating webcams are alreadt -3deg F and dropping
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/index.html
With the Antarctic sea ice quickly approaching historic highs and the early drop at the Arctic spawning a potentially early refreeze, I wonder how the CAGW croud will try to spin this turn of events in light of still increasing CO2 (DOH, It’s weather not climate (cold = weather & Hot = Climate) what was I thinking)
Richard M, why do you think the AMO peaked last year? Seems to me it could have another 5-10 years before peaking. And is there any evidence linking AMO to sea ice?
Jim Cripwell says:
August 14, 2013 at 4:42 am
Adventure Canada is scheduled to have a cruise ship make two transists of the NW Passage unaccompanied by icebreakers… the last entry is August 12th. From what I can make out, they should be meeting fairly heavy ice conditions around Friday 16th August…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If they are lucky they will meet up with one of the monster Russian Ice breakers and get bailed out of their stupidity.
@jai
This year isn’t going to come close to 2007. We’ll be lucky to finish lower than 2010.
OSISAF reported a Satellite outage.
On 2013-05-22
GOES-East Outage
http://www.osi-saf.org/news/voir_evt.php?eid=81&safosi_session_id=4d0bce43161ae70e1bfe3c7c5e86afdb
“Due to an anomaly which occurred approx. 0340TU on GOES-13 22/05/2013, GOES-East data are unavailable.
GOES SST, DLI and SSI are impacted.
We have been informed by NOAA today (2013-05-25) that GOES-13 will remain in storage mode while the anomaly is being investigated.
NOAA have given no estimate on return to operations at this time.”
Is this the same type of anomaly that happened around that time with the DMI plot?
” Of course in seawater, ice doesn’t form until temperatures get below 28.4°F (-2°C), so it is close, but not quite there yet. ”
Melt ponds freeze a zero. One of the problems for satellites is telling the difference between melt ponds and open sea.
Melt ponds are also “thought” to be a positive feedback to enhance melting, though I think this is model speculation rather than science.
We can see a circa 14d cycle clearly established in the plot it will probably be flat for another week at current levels before temps get serious about dropping.
Looking at the last 12 years with a short filter to remove “weather” and these short term variations, 2013 is looking a lot like 2008/2009 :
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=439
See the link at the bottom of that page for an interactive version where you can click each year on and off to pick you own best match.
In a previous post I referred to the freezing point of sea water being -1.96°C which is the FP in Antarctic waters that I am familiar with. As mentioned above the salinity is lower in the Arctic and consequently the FP will be higher. However, there seems to be some misunderstanding as to how freezing of sea water occurs. Firstly the sea surface temperature must be virtually at freezing for the atmosphere above it to have any effect and once a thin skin of ice has formed the atmospheric temperature has very little effect other than to prevent surface melting. Freezing thereafter (and ice accumulation) occurs from below due to radiation of heat through the ice. Snow falling on new ice reduces this radiation and slows ice formation as does rough weather that smashes the ice up. While the atmospheric temperature is interesting, it is the sea surface temperature just below the ice that is critical to further ice formation.
Irrelevant to the Arctic but perhaps of interest.
In Antarctica, preparations for the ice runway start immediately the sea ice is thick enough to support vehicles. The aim is to keep the ice as transparent as possible to aid the heat loss from the ocean below, so any new snow is immediately brushed away. Their rules state that no more than 25 mm of snow cover is allowed on the runway. Given the length of the runway (3 km by 67m) that is no mean feat. The process continues throughout the winter to get the ice a thick as possible before the flights south. They have this down to a fine art and can now land the Lockhead C5 Galaxy on the ice runway at McMurdo. Ice is about 2.2m thick at that stage.
Brian says:
Richard M, why do you think the AMO peaked last year? Seems to me it could have another 5-10 years before peaking. And is there any evidence linking AMO to sea ice?
===
Judge for yourself:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=123
AMO (sea surface temperature) would more logically be linked to rate of change of ice area: warmer water melts ice _faster_ .
What I’ve plotted there is non-detrended AMO ie actual N. Atl SST.
Bill Illis says:
“The bouys are not really showing a decline in ice thickness this year.”
Facts say otherwise….
L: 5 feet of melt
H: 2 feet of melt
C: 2 feet of melt and started moving down the Narses which could lead to complete melt.
M: 3 feet of melt
B: 3 feet of melt and it is on its way to a total melt once it passes trough the Fram Strait.
J; unknown, the bottom thermistors have not worked since June.
E: unknown, the bottom thermistor have not worked since June and soon to pass through Fram and complete melt out.
If anyone is interested in seeing how bad the ice is at the H buoy is, check out the movie from the webcam. The cam was removed last week after the ice collapsed. The significant melt starts at about 6 minutes in to the video.
http://obuoy.datatransport.org/monitor#buoy8/movie
R,E. John: “In salt water the process of removal of the hydration energy starts at 4C and is completed at the freezing temperature. This transition zone is the reason that much of the ocean is at 3-4C. As water temperatures are lowered, additional energy removal is required to pass through the transition zone.”
Good explanation.
This exchange of latent heat plus that of the phase change in the water itself accounts for the flat top in the headline graph in this post.
Just for a real example, here is the temperature and salinity profile of ice-tethered buoy ITP41 which has survived since 2010 in the western Beaufort Sea. It looks like it has now reached the melt-out point but for whatever reason, the ice it was on has (almost) made it through 3 seasons now.
The surface salinity falls from 29 psu or mg/L throughout the year (lower than the global ocean average) to close to 25 at the height of the melt season and the temp rises to about -1.6C (which wasn’t enough to melt-out the ice). It has warmed now to 0.0C with salinity at 25 so the ice is probably gone.
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=49795
If temperature will continue to fall I will be very worried what will happen to polar bears.
jai mitchell says: Why is the ice going away when the warming has stopped?
remember, the warming has stopped since 1998?
then why has the ice gone away???
Take deep breath, exhale slowly and try to calm down.
Now, let me try to explain. The WARMING stopped around 1998, that leaves us WARM. Warm water melts ice, geddit? That is why there was a dramatic decline in ice coverage from 1997-2007 as seen by looking at the rate of change plot:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=123
Also ‘warming stopped in 1998’ is a global average not arctic or N. Atl SST. As the graph also shows SST continued to rise until around 2005. That almost perfectly matches when then the “catastrophically” increasing rate of change of ice coverage started to back off.
What is interesting is that the water is still WARM but the rate of melting has reduced. That either means something else is driving the melting / lack of melting or that there is a negative feedback in operation.
Rather than all the talk of “tipping points” the observational evidence would suggest open seas in the Arctic act as a NEGATIVE feedback , not a positive one.
The much talked about “albedo” works both ways. Water has a huge emissivity in the IR and emits IR to space 12 months per year. Snow and ice emit little. That is one way in which open water acts as a neg. feedback. Then there is evaporation.
The evidence is that these effects are winning and stabilise ice coverage. UNLESS there is another driver that has not been considered yet.
how bad the ice is at the H buoy is…
says ~60% where the bouy drifted to… ~70% south of it…..and >80% to the north
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicennowcast.gif
salvatore del prete says:
July 13, 2013 at 12:35 PM
I think the start of the temperature decline will commence within six months of the end of solar cycle 24 maximum and should last for at least 30+ years.
My question is how does the decline take shape, is it slow and gradual or in jagged movements as thresholds are met. I think some jagged movements then a leveling off then another jerk etc etc. Will thresholds be met?
I KNOW THEY ARE OUT THERE.
I think the maximum of solar cycle 24 ends within 6 months, and once the sun winds down from this maximum it is going to be extremely quiet.
Solar flux sub 72, although sub 90 is probably low enough.
Solar Wind sub 350 km/sec.
AP INDEX 5.0 or lower 98+ % of the time.
Solar Irradiance off .2% or greater.
UV light off upwards of 50% in the extreme short wavelengths.
This condition was largely acheived in years 2008-2010 but the number of sub- solar years of activity proceeding these readings back then was only 3 or 4 years, this time it will be over 8+ years of sub- solar activity, and no weak solar maximum will be forthcoming.
Lag times come into play mostly due to the oceans.
It is clear that the greenhouse effect ,how effective it is ,is a result of energy coming into and leaving the earth climatic system. The warmer the oceans the more effective the greenhouse effect and vice versa.
With oceans cooling in response to a decrease in solar visible light the amounts of co2/water vapor will be on the decrease thus making the greenhouse effect less effective going forward. At the same time the albedo of earth will be on the increase due to more low clouds,ice and snow cover.
ROUTE CAUSE OF THE CLIMATE TO CHANGE
Very weak solar magnetic fields, and a declining weak unstable geomagnetic field, and all the secondary feedbacks associated with this condition.
SOME SECONDARY EFFECTS WITH WEAK MAGNETIC FIELDS
weaker solar irradiance
weaker solar wind
increase in cosmic rays
increase in volcanic activity
decrease in ocean heat content
a more meridional atmospheric circulation
more La Ninas ,less El Ninos
cold Pdo /Amo
I say the start of a significant cooling period is on our doorstep, it is months away. Once solar cycle 24 maximum ends it starts.
This has happened 18 times in the past 7500 years(little ice ages and or cooling periods ) ,number 19 is going to take place now.
Two of the most recent ones are the Maunder Minimum(1645-1700) and the Dalton Minimum(1790-1830).
I say this one 2014- 2050??
Reply
dr. lurtz I think we our thinking alike.
We’ve had record snow-layer this winter here in Slovenia. Should I be worried? I really hoped that Al Gore was right. He promised us winters without snow in 2013. Why then I destroyed two shovels cleaning snow round my house. Oh. Never trust a socialist 🙁
@Latitude
Did you watch the video?
..did you see where the H bouy was?
@Latitude
Are you implying that the video is not real?