*** ARCTIC ICE WATCH ***

[skids]

Current arctic ice area:



...more reliably updated chart:

As requested, this is a replacement thread for our old thread moving some of the graphs and resources from the comments into the main body for fast access. Also, an easier to spot thread title.

As of this posting the ice area has more or less caught back up with 2007's level after we had a "recovery" over the winter, but one made of thin ice. Also we have new disturbing headlines (LBN thread).

Multi-year graph:



Current surface temperature anomolies:



Current Ice Area Maps:

...current



...maps for individual seas and basins are in this thread and here's a direct link to Cryosphere Today's Main Page

...historical minimums


...newsworthy ice cracks May 08.

...and more on that here

...enjoy ... sorta...

[skids]

1. For a thread that only got 3 recs...

...that last one sure held it's own!

[Zachstar]

2. Thanks for getting a new topic started!

My prediction!

This year we will lose more ice than we did last year. Yet unless I am missing something important I feel that the ice is going to last until 2009.

It is thin ice.. But it is not melting fast enough.

What tells me time is running out however, is the cracks...

[bananas]

3. No webcam?

[Zachstar]

4. Data topic

The webcam image just eats bandwidth.

[Festivito]

5. Thanks. Needed that Ice Area chart for an argument. /nt

[Zachstar]

6. Look at all that noise in the graph. Have we seen that before?

[Dead_Parrot]

7. If you mean the 365-day cover, yes

Edit: Grrr. Try this...

http :// web.archive.org/web/*/http :// arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg

...but with the spaces removed. Buggered if I can figure out how to make a working link of it...
:(

[Systematic Chaos]

8. Thank you for setting this up!

I would have done it, but to my embarrassment I don't know how to post the images. :blush:

:yourock:

[tom_paine]

9. K & R

:toast:

[XemaSab]

10. The slope this week is... steep

According to my back-of-the-envelope calculation, if the current loss trends continue the arctic will be ice-free in August.

[Systematic Chaos]

11. It's hard to get it pixel-perfect, but what I come up with today is about 150,000km^2 short

of what it was last year. Maybe even 200,000.

We may just do it this year, kids!

:cry:

[tom_paine]

12. Normally, I would say that perhaps it is not so bleak.

There is always the chance, however small, that is the case.

However, with all of the ancillary data regarding the thickness, "sturdiness", and overall nature of the Arctic ice, which cannot be defined by a mere graph, it seems highly unlikely that there is anything to stop the fall.

The Arctic, as I have heard it said here before, is most likely undergoing a phase shift from solid to liquid. Somehow I doubt that the summer Arctic Ice will drop to zero this year, though anyone who has been observing knows that "faster than expected" is the chief mantra of our age.

Soon, but not this year, I think. The September minimum will tell us everything we need to know about trend and direction. If there should be a "rebound" this summer/fall and we get 3.5 million km2 or more, it changes nothing, really, but tells us that perhaps the Earth's few "negative feedback" processes like ice melting leading to cooler N. Hemisphere springs/summers are functioning to retard the slide.

How they can continue to do so in the face of massive increases in energy and CO2 output by the Big Three Tyrannies, Amerika, Russia, and China, along with burgeoning countries that are not quite BushPutinist Inverted Totalitarianisms (though they may be and we just haven't heard - how would we know otherwise, by watching CNN? :rofl: ), is a topic for another thread.

What is more likely that we will have an Arctic summer ice minimum that is less than or equal to last years'. Given the larger climatological situation, if this year's minimum is even equal to last years, it is an amazing "victory" that means we might have a few years more left than previosuly thought.

Most likely is that the Arctic summer ice minimum will be 2.7 million km2 or less (I myself have gone on record here at DU by preicting 2.2 million km2) and that probably means the Artic will be summer-ice-free in a decade.

Less than 2 million km2 and we may be headed for something that is not only faster than expected, but faster than expected after the LAST time we said "faster than expected" and adjusted our collective estimates, from climatologist Ph.D.'s to autodidacts.

Now we shall see, for the time is now nearly upon us.

Come September, bring your news.

[XemaSab]

14. I don't think the ice, year-to-year, is likely to approach zero asymptotically

(which would give us a few decades before there is no ice left.)

I'm predicting it's likely to just plain nosedive towards zero, given the surface/volume factors at work.

Oh, and on edit: Hudson Bay's still frozen over. It's early days as far as this season goes.

[XemaSab]

13. .

[Nihil]

15. Antartica is looking a little warm at 45W ...

... "splish splash" goes the ice ...?
:shrug:

[Systematic Chaos]

16. Since it's nearly the deepest part of winter down there, it's not *quite* so bad.

Most of Antarctica will be safely below freezing by now, even if not nearly as much as normal.

Still, it's not a pleasant harbinger. :(

[Systematic Chaos]

17. I just did a cursory check on the wunderground website.

All stations are at +30 degrees Fahrenheit or less, and Vostok is a nice toasty -78. :scared:

[Nihil]

18. Ah ... OK ....

I was just concerned about the way the "plume" was extending so far
into the sea. Thanks!

:hi:

[tom_paine]

19. K & R - back to the top with you! n/t

[Systematic Chaos]

20. I was just coming here to do the same.

Looks like we're really on track now to have a worse year than 2007. Eyeballing the graph, it looks like we're about 100-150k km^2 shy of where we were last year. :(

[XemaSab]

21. The two areas that really worry me on the current ice image

The hot spot off Banks Island (sort of directly east-northeast of Alaska), and the hot spot off the northeast coast of Greenland.



Those are areas that are virtually surrounding the areas of (supposed) old pack ice. Here's September first of last year compared with today. Note that the hole near Banks Island today is already near where the line of the minimum was last year. Also note that even in the trough of last year's melt there was still a finger of ice going past Greenland.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=01&fy=2007&sm=06&sd=01&sy=2008

I know the ice shifts around and that the location of last year's old pack ice isn't necessarily where it would be today, but if it's the first area under assault this summer, we could see the loss of ice as functional habitat this year. Is it too early for a beer? :shrug:

(And on edit: that red spot near the pole has been there about a week. What's up with THAT? :shrug:)

[skids]

22. Don't know what the diference with the upper graph is...

...maybe smoothed with a running average? By the lower one though it looks like we nicked well below last year, but we'll be back above shortly unless we get a downward spike at the same time as last year.

:kick:

[emmadoggy]

23. Kick for 6/5.

Not looking good. Looks like we are pretty much caught up to last year (more or less). And there is a lot of red on that Cryosphere image.

Damn.

[Systematic Chaos]

24. Pretty much staying a bit ahead of last year, I'm afraid.

I just hope the trend doesn't multiply over the summer. :(

[XemaSab]

25. Last year it was putzing along calmly

and then WHAM! it just went right downhill quickly.

[MashupPublius]

26. Scary stuff

Scary stuff

[Systematic Chaos]

27. Kick for 6/10

:kick:

[hatrack]

28. And a Cryosphere Today kick added for good measure - it's getting interesting up there

[XemaSab]

29. Just for teh chuckles: today and a week ago

[Nihil]

30. Goodie! I love "spot the difference" games, especially easy ones like this ...

... oh ... wait ...
:scared:

[skids]

31. Wow. Look just above (beside) the great lakes...

...that whole area went from deap purple to gone. That probably won't be around next week.

Though it did thicken a bit nearby there.

[truebrit71]

32. Wow... you're right...

...this is going to be an interesting year methinks..

[Systematic Chaos]

33. Friday the 13th kick

:kick:

[Zachstar]

34. With a trend of closing the gap it seems now we have passed last year.

Any more drop and we will have a serious loss this year.

[XemaSab]

35. :whines:

The ice is melting slower than expected.

:bored:

[Systematic Chaos]

36. Well, if it means that much to you...

...I suppose we could always arrange a clathrate-igniting expedition.

Mmmmmm! BBQ polar bear!

:evilgrin:

[emmadoggy]

37. Kick for 6/17.

[hatrack]

38. 6/18 Kick

Getting right rotten up in the Beaufort. Franz Josef Land clearing pretty quickly.

[XemaSab]

39. One, two, three, four, five, SIX polynya!

:hahahaha:

Looks like we're tracking about a week behind last year.

[XemaSab]

40. Thursday kick

:patriot:

[proud patriot]

41. lots of info , Thanks

[XemaSab]

42. .

:popcorn:

[Dead_Parrot]

43. Seems to be slower than expected...

We're doing better than last year.

[XemaSab]

44. I'm reserving judgement...

We're lagging about a week behind last year's melt (which was far more aggressive in the Chukchi Sea than we're seeing yet this year) but those persisting red bogeys north of Banks Island make me think that the whole sheet there could collapse into the sea overnight, easily catching us up with last year's melt. Things didn't get truly dramatic until late July, so we've got weeks more before we know what's going to happen.

It's ominous that the areas of melt (such as near Banks Island and near Svalbard) this year are already very close to the limit of melting last year. There's a huge sheet of first-year ice (which is notoriously weak) north of Siberia and Alaska. This doesn't leave a lot of old ice in the Sea. What old ice there is tends to get pushed down past the coast of Greenland, where things have been very warm. That polynya off Nord closed in the last couple days, but things are still flaky out there. In addition, the whole northern edge of the Canadian Archipelago has been looking warm, and that's an area that didn't even begin to melt last year.

I'd be very interested to see a map of the "after-hatch-year" ice as it currently stands. This will tell us a lot about the real danger of a basin-wide collapse.

But of course you already knew all this. ;)

Edit: somehow my knowledge of Arctic geography isn't up to snuff. :P

[Dead_Parrot]

45. 50-60% cover is pretty much collapsed anyway...

...and what's the hell's happening at ~160°? Looks like it going to start from the inside out. Fun.

Still, it's not often we get to say "slower than expected", so I'm making the most of it. :D

[XemaSab]

46. At 160? That's what I've been terming a "bogey."

This is a highly scientific term used only in teh mind of XemaSab. :P

I'm not sure how accurate the ice-cam is, so it might just be noise, but we've been seeing those bogeys for a couple months. :shrug:

Most of them go away in a day or two, but all that happy crap between 120 and 150 (or so) has been there for a while, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. :scared:

My dark fantasy is that that red mess is going to shoot out from Banks Island, cross the basin, and hit near Severnaya Zemlya, bisecting the basin. A lingering question I have is whether the new ice and the old ice, when they meet, form a zone of weakness between them, which could produce a rapid collapse. :shrug:

At any rate, yeah, maybe it'll be "slower than expected." But given that sudden downtick in the line today, I'm thinking not. :P

[Dead_Parrot]

47. I wouldn't worry about a bisection from GB

There's now a line running from Harrison Bay to the Khatanga. Oops.

Actually, I'm wondering what the definition of "sea ice" is for the 365-day chart - If they're including the Canadian Crumble, we're about on target.

[XemaSab]

48. I've wondered before if it includes Hudson Bay

:shrug:

That damn Cryosphere Today site is really lax with providing interpretations for some of their stuff. They leave you to draw your own conclusions, which can't be good. :P

[Systematic Chaos]

49. "Canadian Crumble"... hmm....

It kinda sounds to me like there should be a coffee cake named that.

[XemaSab]

50. With a FAT white dusting of sugar on top

:9

[XemaSab]

51. Here's a nifty graph showing multi-year ice concentrations

It's a little hard to get oriented on it, but it's not all where I would have guessed based on last year's melt and the general drift trend. :shrug:

As you can see, some of the melt is happening right in zones of supposed older ice.

[Dead_Parrot]

52. Good find

:yourock:
well, in a "what genius came up with that colour scheme and OFHWAD" way.

That's a stunningly small amount of 81-100. :(

[XemaSab]

53. And that warm area is shooting up through some of the oldest ice

The small amount of 80-100 is under direct assault.

Interesting how the center of last year's "triangle" popped out and rotated down towards the Canadian coast. The band of 60-80 percent ice is pretty close to the edges, but there's a lot of older ice floating around in areas that melted last year. :shrug:

[Systematic Chaos]

54. 6/25 - Back to page 1 with ye!

:kick: and stuff

[XemaSab]

55. .

:patriot:

[Craigwilcox]

56. The ice from the Arctic Ocean could be gone by 2012 !!!!

Time is running really short!! Check this vid out. youtube.com/watch?v=JUtVQ7QbCNU

[XemaSab]

57. I'm seeing red!

:o

[Zachstar]

58. Time for a clean topic! And my view

Because it is only flirting with last years number and not diving effectively under it. I do not think we are going to lose it all this year.

Because of that sharp dip around July I think we will know by end of next month for sure if we are in serious trouble for this year or not.

So my big worry now is how much remaining multiyear ice is going to be destroyed this year. As there is only so far that can be lost before we are literally on thin ice.

[XemaSab]

59. Looks like it could still happen...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3370882

[Zachstar]

60. I disagree with them. I think the chances are about 20 percent at best.

Things just seem to not be looking towards a complete loss. But more damage to multiyear ice will mean that we are just getting a small breather.

By late 2010 I expect the ice to be gone.

[Dead_Parrot]

61. ...and Zachstar wins the prize...

...for the most interesting use of the word "Best" in a serious thread.

;)

[Zachstar]

62. Winn0r!!

[jimlup]

63. bump!

[XemaSab]

64. Why is the middle of Greenland looking melty?

:shrug:

[jimlup]

65. bump!

:kick: