Climate Story of the Year/Decade/Century playing out in Real Time....

[Junkdrawer]

Background story for newcomers:

Arctic is melting faster than anyone anticipated. Arctic Storm(s) of great intensity appearing that no one has seen before.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014189506

People are seeing mixing, unexplained methane, ice sheet breakups, etc. etc.

Then this thread occurred:

There is a very good article on NASA's site from 2008 (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic_storm.html) showing the increase in storms coming into the Arctic. The figure shows the paucity of storms during 1950-1972 and a much larger number during just 2000-2006. Sea ice speed increased 300%.

Posted by Tenney Naumer

Posted by: Alais Elena | August 10, 2012 at 19:30

Good find, Tenney (fixed your link). And sea ice speed is one of those things that sea ice models do not reproduce well (see Rampal et al. 2011).

BTW, you were right that 2008 also had a detachment of a swathe of ice floes in the East Siberian Sea, but it doesn't come close to this year's event.

Posted by: Neven | August 10, 2012 at 19:33

Tenney, your find is the find of the century. I already had someone mail me about Hakkinen's work in relation to some other stuff. Unfortunately I'm too busy right now to write more, but I'll try to get to this next week as it shows yet another link between AGW and what we're witnessing in the Arctic right now.

Posted by: Neven | August 10, 2012 at 20:17

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/arctic-summer-storm-open-thread.html?cid=6a0133f03a1e37970b01761725941d970c#comment-6a0133f03a1e37970b01761725941d970c