Interesting Times in the Arctic
Well, after what has been a boring melt season, maybe even Neven thinks so, the Northern Hemisphere heat wave appears to have created some interesting times (in the sense of the Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times) at the end.
It may in the long run be nothing, but the ice pack appears to have separated from Greenland and the passage between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, or at least some impressive melt pools have formed and the ice to the west of the separation is not healthy
EH2R has a nasty gif showing this from NASA Worldview, again, interesting in the catastrophic sense with a comparison from 2012 where it was smooth enough to skate on (well not really but not nearly so broken up)
Zack Labe has a really good tweet about this
Arctic sea ice is once again pulling away from the coast of far northern Greenland. You can easily see this reflected in the current drift circulation: https://t.co/BkhAkJipgm. Sea ice extent in the Greenland Sea has been at or near a record low for most of 2018. pic.twitter.com/zvOEyNpHut
—
Zack Labe (@ZLabe) August 6, 2018
And last, but not least, there are, again, interesting things happening on the Pacific side. Neven has that story. Basically WTF?
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9 comments:
It will break up one summer, that seems certain. Looking at the sea ice extent curve for the Arctic, it is down to 2012 levels.
However, the ice mass reported by DMI is above the 2003 to 2017 average.
Well, if you accept DMI ice thickness as a reliable source, you must also accept the vast areas of imaginary 5 m thick ice, that the model piles up in the bays west of Baffin Island. You must also accept that 2016 had a lower minimum ice volume than 2012. Plus other oddities...
"However, the ice mass reported by DMI is above the 2003 to 2017 average."
You might want to give a reference for that. And also explain how it is relevant to the article.
Dear professor, I have posted about this on the ASIB, and linked to your article in the top comment: Circumnavigating Greenland.
Not a really boring melting season, it never is, but not mega-spectacular either. :)
Can we get these Indian crooks off the blog?
The price is that Eli will have to approve all comments. Sorry about that.
Eli
Frank Rosser, look up "Danish Metereological institute Arctic Ice Mass". I don't usually post links because some blogs are coded to consider it spam.
The ice mass should be considered because it implies thicker ice, which survives the summer to become multiyear ice. This type of ice usually has ridges and is harder to navigate through with an icebreaker. Right now the North west passage is closed and if some ice survives through September 15 (more or less) it will make passage more dangerous in the 2019 summer (unless it all melts). I tend to look at this more as a navigation issue because my first exposure to the Arctic was working on a project to transport loads over the Northern Sea Route.
Somewhat belatedly, ultimately things became extremely interesting north of Greenland:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2018/08/could-northabout-circumnavigate-greenland-in-2018/
If images can be embedded in comments here see:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Polarstern-2018-08-25_1300.png
If not then:
The allegedly “oldest, thickest Arctic sea ice” north of Greenland isn’t there any more this summer.
The research icebreaker Polarstern has already inspected the open waters off Kap Morris Jesup, the most northerly tip of Greenland.
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