Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Eli will have some ice on that

Eli went up to Philly today and returned with carrot gelato from Capogiro, something you should consider when there, or order some by Email. Ms. Rabett welcomed him home with spoon in hand.

So, constant reader, you ask, what about the ice up north. Perking along thank you, a lot of really thin stuff set to vanish when it warms a bit. You can get an idea of this by looking at the comparison between the low ice at the beginning of September and the ice today from Cryosphere Today. You might also notice that a lot of the "extra" ice from this winter is in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea, up there at the top and especially the Davis Strait between Canada and Greenland. Stuff that will be gone soon, but pay attention to the coloring, the bright purple stuff is only 80% coverage.

Cymraeg llygoden
makes work for bunnies by pointing to an article from the BBC,

discussing how the old ice is flowing out of the Arctic, into the Atlantic, driven by the Arctic oscillation. Lots of figures, photos and the entire NASA news conference are available. Eli has a bet with Stoat, and an in with Santa, the Easter Rabett and St. Nick are in the same line of business.

10 comments:

sod said...

very good post.

most of the sceptics do NOT understand, that one cold winter can NOT produce 6 year old sea ice.....

Anonymous said...

No doubt John will be trolling around oon.

Oh 'eck! I eem to have lost the ue of my "s".

Still, we all know what I mean :-)

Cymraeg llygoden

sgreerpitt said...

Thanks for the link to the NASA briefing -- lots of meat to chew on there.

As to SOD -- do we even have the data yet to know it was a "colder" winter? Is the data available on line? Simply following the weather news would lead to the conclusion that there was certainly more snow, but that is not automatically a colder winter -- temps hovering just below 0 C tend to be correlated with heavier precipitation than temps below -17 C

sgreerpitt said...

Turns out the data is just out from NOAA.

Anonymous said...

Hey cym, I'm back. You've lost the pithy endings, well done, made you look a a bit of a clown, anyway.

As to ice, Rabett, so hard to admit the ice area this winter. Funny you should call it "extra" ice. Old Gaia tries to send it above the mean, really hard going for old Gaia. A comment from cym seems appropriate here.

As to the ice that will disappear through summer, indeed every summer, thats what happens, Rabett. Those edgey bits, like the Sea of Okhotsk, Bearing Sea, Barents Sea, go to none, or very minimal ice coverage each summer. As to the inroads into the Arctic Sea ice, interesting times ahead hey Rabett. Will your losing bet with Connolley take you to the paupers grave.

On you come cym, space now for you here

JohnS

sod said...

here are the relevant links:

this is the topic with the extend discussion:

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/01/penny-for-old-guy-cryosphere-today.html

and here is Cryosphere today:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

does anyone think that max coverage will reach the 2003 level?

Anonymous said...

You need to show this graphic.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/217299main_NSIDC_Fig2_iceage_500.jpg

Anonymous said...

most of the sceptics do NOT understand, that one cold winter can NOT produce 6 year old sea ice....."

Most of them (even John S) probably understand but just will not admit it.

It's really not a very difficult concept. Anyone who has an ice cube tray in their refrigerator is undoubtedly aware that ice takes a certain amount of time to freeze to a certain thickness and that thin ice melts away quickly.

Anonymous said...

If the latest time series plot from the National Snow & Ice Data Center can be believed,http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/, your bet is looking safe. Actually I can't really believe it and hope it's only an error.

Kevin J

Anonymous said...

They have adjusted the graph now and recovered about .5 million km2 so the graph no longer plunges below last years line.

Kevin J