* * * ARTIC ICE WATCH * * * . . . . . . . . . . inflecton edition

[skids]

Inflection is late. I was holding off till it happened, but it's time for a new thread:

Extent graphs

...comparative (does not update often)



...more reliably updated chart:



...mutiyear

Weather

Current surface temperature anomolies:



North Poll webcams:

Extent Maps

...current





...historical

[ensho]

1. thank you for posting this

few people realize what the melting will cause to occure.

tick, tick

[st8grad93]

3. What will the metling cause to occur ?

[NickB79]

7. There are a few possible results

The massive injection of fresh water into the thermohaline system could shut down the Gulf Stream and, ironically, trigger a new Ice Age.

Or, the loss of Arctic sea ice (which won't raise world sea levels since it's already floating) could be what's holding back the Greenland ice sheets. If Greenland's ice began to enter the ocean, that WOULD raise sea levels dramatically and flood every coastal city on the planet.

Or, the loss of Arctic sea ice may allow the Arctic to continue to warm up so much that massive deposits of clathrites destabilize and release their methane into the atmosphere. And methane is 20X more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. A global methane release is what is believed to have caused the Permian mass extinction 250 million years ago, in which 90% of all life on this planet died out.

[123ht]

38. thank you for posting this

thank you for posting this

[Doctor Cynic]

2. Hooray! Let's get out our bigass Hummers! Woot!

[123ht]

39. iCBBE2009

center of international activity. You are welcome to participate in our conference

[Canuckistanian]

4. You should give a warning about large pics

That last one was over 6MB. That took at least 1/2 hour for me to load it.

Fascinating picture. You can see that the winter ice cover is getting thinner and thinner,

When it's completely gone in a few years, we'll start to see MAJOR feedback effects.

[skids]

5. Sorry about that...

...Next time I'll move the big stuff into a comment under the main post.

I gave up on the whole quixotic crusade to make the web usable from dialup back in the late 90s when it became apparent that web developers were going to bloat no matter what. I don't know how you dialup users put up with it these days, honestly.

Glad the wait was worth it for you, though.

[Odin2005]

6. That last animation is very interesting

I'm surprised how mobile the sea ice is. It looks like the currents push the ice into the Canadian Arctic Islands and then the ice is "extruded" westward or eastward along the coast until it melts or sent southward by Greenland

[happyslug]

33. Driven by the Currents and the flow of the huge Siberian rivers into the Arctic

Map of Arctic Ocean currents:

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/ocean_currents_and_sea_ice_extent

Arctic River inflows: The report mention both the the Yukon and the Mackenzie from North America, but the Yukon flows South of the Bering Sea narrows, so I can NOT say it flows into the Arctic, and while the Ob, Yenisey and Lena Rivers flows directly into the Arctic from Siberia (Along with other rivers).

Furthermore the Yenisey and Lena Rivers each brings in more water then BOTH the Yukon and the Mackenzie (In the map the number beside the rivers is Cubic Kilometers per year). The Ob does slightly less then BOTH North American rivers, but easily beats out either (403 for the Ob, and only 203 for the Yukon and 281 for the Mackenzie).


http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/land-river.shtml

Arctic Climate impact Report:
http://amap.no/acia/

[Nederland]

8. 2008 looks better than 2007 so far

I know that might change, and in the big picture means nothing, but perhaps we have more time than we thought.

[truebrit71]

9. Kick

n/t

[XemaSab]

10. Pretty day at teh north pole

:D

[123ht]

40. yeah!

yeah!yeah!:)

[skids]

11. So nobody is going to make fun of me...

...for misspelling arctic in the subject? I am so very disappointed in you all. :-)

[Dead_Parrot]

12. I hadn't noticed, but if it helps...

[XemaSab]

13. I thought this thread was about the town in Washington State

:shrug:

[truebrit71]

14. Daily kick...

.n/t

[phantom power]

15. Sure is a truckload of red in the cryosphere map.

I bet we're going to lose all of that red in the near future.

[XemaSab]

16. I'm waiting with bated breath

If we stop melting around the time last year's melt stopped, we've got about 2 more weeks.

But if we're going to talk about systemic inertia, it may go on longer.

Right now we're way behind last year, but if we melt longer, we could catch up.

I would really like to know how deep the puddle on the webcam is, and how thick the ice is there. I'd also like to know how representative that surface melt is of the pole as a whole. I've been keeping an eye on the temperature, and it's gotten down to 0 several times, but it's been mostly above zero for months. I'm surprised that the water isn't percolating through the ice underneath, and is remaining perched there.

Good times.

[phantom power]

17. My recollection is we didn't stop melting until late September last year.

[XemaSab]

19. Check out the ice curve

Parts of the ice were still melting, but the ice as a whole had pretty much stopped changing in volume. :shrug:

[phantom power]

20. Hmm. My reading of that is we hit minimum early Sept...

although I agree we were almost bottomed out by mid Aug.

One thing I had forgotten, was the anomaly kept increasing into late October.

[XemaSab]

21. Here's how I'm reading the graph

Right now we're almost on top of the line that says "August." Accordingly, the graph information begins on last year's "August" line. The space between two lines is about a month. Last year the line stops almost halfway between two lines. Hence, the middle of August.

Or am I confused?

('Cause that damn graph is NOT easy to read and interpret. :( )

[phantom power]

22. Just looking at the dates on the x-axis, it seems slightly lower early sept...

but the difference is small. I could just as easily say that "the ice was near its minimum from august into september."

[XemaSab]

23. .

:thumbsup:

[XemaSab]

24. I think I'm wrong

I've read several articles in the last few days that say we've got 6 more weeks of melt. :shrug:

[skids]

25. Those of us intimate with the sinusiodal function,,,

... are looking at this graph today and wondering if we might get a faster-than-expected record minimum.

The way I read the graph, the melt season lasts a couple of weeks into where it flattened out last year,
but the melt at that point is slow and it hit up against the thick ice where progress is slower.

This year the graph has just refused to inflect, well past when it should have. What could be noise,
but if not that would mean it won't stop before hitting the hard ice pack "floor" again.

[XemaSab]

26. The next month is certainly going to be an education

Most of the season we've been about 1m km3 up from where we were last year, but in the last week or so it's narrowed to a half million.

Looking at the remaining thin ice (and yes, I understand that the ice moves around so you really can't eyeball where the first year ice is), we've got a lot of first-year ice to plow through before we hit the older ice.

[Dead_Parrot]

27. Not sure how hard that floor is, these days

The next week or two will be telling - if it carries on like this we're going to plow through the 3m mark by the end of the month, with September to spare. :(

[XemaSab]

18. I guess it's not really at teh pole anymore

[hatrack]

28. 8/9/08 - Anybody tracking the Environment Canada 50% graphic?

It's showing a very substantial bight (or bite, if you prefer) between Franz Josef Land and the Tamyr Peninsula - putting the >50% melted line well past 80N - looks like 82N at least.

Interesting.

[XemaSab]

29. Have you got a link?

Thanks!

[hatrack]

32. I'm sorry - I was referring to the 50% b&w extent map in the original post above

:hi:

[skids]

30. If the weather does not change...

We'll be passing the 2006 low ice mark at the end of the week or beginning of next. :scared:


When that happens I'll post a new thread.

[XemaSab]

31. We've gone from 1m above last year to 1/4m above last year in the past week

In the "good" news, there's a little ice on the surface of that puddle in the webcam.

[hatrack]

34. 8/13 Inflection Kick

nt

[XemaSab]

35. Have we inflected?

You have a link? :popcorn:

[Dead_Parrot]

36. I hope not...

I got inflected last year, and had to take these big pills twice a day for two weeks.
:hurts:

[XemaSab]

37. .

:scared:

[skids]

41. Inflection is like recession...

...you never know until after the fact. Probably, but the graph keeps honing back to the old slope. Until the noise clears and we see an actual trend it will be hard to figure out where the inflection point is.

[skids]

42. NEW THREAD.

here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=167614&mesg_id=167614