While the lala crowd over at Tony's has been going on about how its all right folks, the Arctic has been melting at an accelerating pace, and the melt has been pretty much all melt and little circulation. The ice is broken to pieces and floating out there ready for the hammer.
Neven has a nice way of showing this by ratioing the sea ice area to the extent to the sea ice extent. 100% would be a compact ice mass with no little bits floating alone out there.
and, as he points out,
a cyclone is passing through and wiping out a mess of what is left. Readers of Rabett Run can get an idea of how fast things are happening by comparing the
SSMIS maps from Uni Bremen yesterday and today shown above. The Siberia-Alaska edge is simply vanishing.
Better hurry and
get your bets in on when it reaches a new minimum
I was doubtful earlier about a new record, but... http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html shows that if ice area stopped dropping today, it would still have the 6th lowest minimum of all time. With a full month of melting still to go.
ReplyDeleteSo, I'm still going 50/50 on a new record in extent (see IJIS/NSIDC where we're running neck and neck with 2007), but maybe 75/25 on a new record in area?
-MMM
It's the steepness of the slope that strikes me. I don't see such anywhere else in the interactive plot MMM links to.
ReplyDeleteI like the fact that melting Arctic ice is coincident with reduced oceanic heat content:
ReplyDeletehttp://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Figures/oco_heat_2012_web.pdf
Eunice
Eunice means there being less multiyear ice after last year, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteMeltfactor.org's blog is worth following (possibly one for the blogroll?). For example (and especially for Eunice)...
ReplyDeleteGreenland ice sheet summer surface air temperatures: 1840-2011
Greenland ice sheet summer temperature increased by 1.6C since 1840.
P.S.
ReplyDeleteEarly-August 2012 Greenland ice reflectivity dips again below 2 standard deviations
By tomorrow cryosphere today ice area will probably have cemented 5th lowest sea ice area in the record. With almost a month of melting to go.
ReplyDelete(and almost 400,000 square km ahead of number two for this date)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
-MMM
Eunice means there being less multiyear ice after last year, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteThat is what I'm thinking: similar to the build up of heat beneath land based ice sheets, reduced MYI allows heat to escape from the Arctic Ocean at a greater rate.
Eunice
It is interesting to note, that like most denier links, Eunice's does not appear to support her point.
ReplyDelete"Death of the Arctic". Is that some kind of politically inspired description of the process of ice melting?
ReplyDeleteBill
""Death of the Arctic". Is that some kind of politically inspired description of the process of ice melting?"
ReplyDeleteNo.
It's an appropriate description to convey to lay (and scientific...) folk the fact that the rate of Arctic ice melting is such that there is serious trouble brewing.
Bernard J. Hyphen-Anonymous XVII, Esq.
You can be sure that Tony will look at this image and point out that there is more ice than normal along the far northeastern coast of Siberia. He's gotten really good at denying the reality. He's got to with all the news pouring in.
ReplyDelete"such that there is serious trouble brewing."
ReplyDeleteSeems to me trouble is always brewing but far less than usually predicted. Taking a more practical stance is to look at the current brew.
Is it net benefit, or is it net cost?
As I understand it Arctic tourism is up, resource exploration is up, research opportunity is up, transportation is up, arctic communications is up.
I am not sure what to put on the other side of the ledger.
Bill
Your graphics at the top of the page are interesting.
ReplyDeleteIts interesting to note that while the ice extent is reducing the ice appears to be getting much denser as demonstrated by the large increases over the 3 days of the dark purple regions.
The Capie area to extent graphic ends on the 215th day. It does not cover the 217th, 218th, and 219th days, which are the days of the year (Aug 4-6) you posted for the ice extent change.
This may lead to great misunderstanding of what is going on up there.
Bill
Other side and oh yes, there are consequences down here which are not so pleasant
ReplyDeleteI put some trends on the positive side of the ledger.
ReplyDeleteYour link (the other did not work) took me to a discussion of houses suffering from land erosion.
Depreciation, erosion, adaptation are normal processes within both positive and negative trends. Ask the Vikings when the glaciers creeped over their farms.
It seems fairly straightforward to assume that if all the money making opportunities are on the rise so is construction.
What is happening to the larger indicators, population, housing, schools, etc?
Your photo of the collapsing house made me think. . . .its not an igloo! Must have the industrial age to thank for that.
Bill
Your link to what is happening down here seems a bit beyond the topic here of Death of the Arctic.
ReplyDeleteBut thanks for the link it was an interesting presentation.
I did note the comment at the end that it was preliminary with a lot more work to do.
Persistence can certainly be associated with extremes.
However, at the beginning it was also noted that gradients were reduced.
It will first become informative for us laymen once a full analysis is completed and trends noted.
Again it seems the important metric is the bigger picture. Are living conditions improving? This is simpler stuff to absorb and lots of information is available. We have oscillations in this also but when taken in chunks of 30 years or more the trends are clear and positive.