Arctic Sea Ice Update - Large Holes In Baffin Bay, Franz Josef Land - 60% Coverage N. Beaufort Sea

[hatrack]

Interesting - detailed NOAA updates also show substantial breakup in Kane Basin, Kennedy Channel - more than 80N between Greenland & Ellesmere Island. West side of Svalbard now clear as well. Click on PDF links for more details.

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/East_Arctic/Baffin_Bay/Baffin_Bay/2007/currentcolor.pdf

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/East_Arctic/Barents_Sea/Barents_Sea_North/2007/Northwest/currentcolor.pdf

[Systematic Chaos]

1. And the overall concentration in many areas is just crap.

Ugh. :(

[hatrack]

2. Generally, seasonal lows don't come until around Labor Day or slightly later . . .

Though that's been pushed back to around mid-September in the past few years.

So, still nearly three months to go, give or take.

With memories of the gigantic hole in the ice north of Alaska last summer and an all-time March 2006 firmly in mind, time to boldly go where no man has gone before, it seems.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. It still looks normal-ish

But the melt season is still young.

My concern is starting to be with the thickness of the ice. The truly cold weather got a late start last autumn. While the ice extent didn't seem too bad, I wonder if the ice became as thick or as dense as it used to get. This will become more apparent later in the season. If we start to see an unusually rapid melt in the next few weeks, we can tentatively assume that the ice didn't form as well as it used to.

In which case, this year could see the greatest melt extent ever ... until next year, or maybe 2009.

And why the North Atlantic isn't filled with advanced hydrological monitoring buoys by now, I'll never know.

--p!

[hatrack]

4. That's why thickness in the N. Beaufort is so intriguing at the moment

Maybe 300 - 400 miles from the Pole proper, and it's still at only 60% during the first week in June.

Some of the more substantial losses, IIRC, have been in winter sea ice formation, at least for the past few years, so I think you're on to something with thickness as opposed to extent.

[Systematic Chaos]

5. The bouys hate us for our freedoms.

Didn't you get the memo? :puke:

[phantom power]

6. For the same reason that we're defunding weather satellites, the NOAA, etc.

We're led by cretins.