I Got the Ice Right Here
Ok, everyone else is taking bets on whether there will be a new ice extent minimum this year. Eli is opening the bidding on three propositions
Will the Arctic be ice free south of 60, 65 and70 north latitude
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
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12 comments:
If your definition of ice free doesn't exclude the Petermann Ice Island, I'm happy to bet on there still being ice south of 60N at the end of September.
I think there's quite a little of arctic below 60th N, but I also think there's a settlement, where there's a fridge so I think this is a safe bet.
Defn of ice free?
I'm happy to bet on there being ice at the flipping Equator at the end of September. Just give me a plane ticket and some ice cubes.
It's a more general point, what we mean by "ice free." Round numbers work for me, let's say <1m km^2 NSIDC extent or <2k km^3 PIOMAS volume.
Obviously you want to count only sea ice (frozen ocean), not bergs from glaciers or cubes in your drink, for a latitude bet. With that restriction, how close to zero will sea ice at 65 or 70N get? East Greenland looks like the crux.
Oh me, oh my.
The contortions we feel we have to put ourselves through (whether ironically or not).
How about if Watts, Montford'n'McInytres were to be planted on Baffin Island at the end of July and instructed to walk to the pole?
Every year.
They could even blog their tripey tropes along the route to reassure their adoring following that it's all am alarmist plot.
Define ice free? That's your job bunnies, Eli does the top level stuff.
OTOH there is a good bet in there, with 65, 70 etc being which year. There is a good shot at 60 north this year, it's hanging on by a thin thread and a tail in the Fram straight. A lot better than watching the sea ice extent flounder.
NE passage already open and maybe not long for NW passage by the look of it.
Am I missing something? 60N is the latitude of the southern tip of Greenland. If there's any ice south of there right now, it's not large enough to show up on the scale of the Uni Bremen map. Between 60 and 65, there's a little ice on the east coast of Greenland, but the point about free floating ice east of Greenland is that its all doomed - that's the biggest exit path for arctic sea ice. So a summer where there's lots of ice extending most of the way down the east coast of Greenland is likely a *bad* year for total ice retention.
More interesting questions are
1. What will be the lowest latitude of ice remaining connected to the main pack between 90W and 90E (i.e. the not-Atlantic side) during September.
2. What will be the highest latitude of open ocean (currently appears to be 81N)
More interesting IMHO is the comparison with 2007. The concentration this year looks much more spread out.
The not-so-witty answers:
"1. What will be the lowest latitude of ice remaining connected to the main pack between 90W and 90E (i.e. the not-Atlantic side) during September."
There is no main pack.
"2. What will be the highest latitude of open ocean (currently appears to be 81N) "
One could boom the area around 90N.
signed,
subarctic bunny
The comparison with 2007 is really interesting. The chief differences, via these eyeballs, seem to be that the area north of the Bering Strait was definitely more clear in 2007 but the entire coast of Siberia is well open this year.
Since this morning's graph at
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
has the two year's tied, it looks to be all about how the winds play out.
Jeffrey Davis
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