Arctic Sea Ice Volume at record low.

[aleCcowaN]

Yes, effective area seems to be growing. By processing pixels from the NSDIC images I had the effective area estimation in 2,980,000 Km² by September 10 and 3,100,000 Km² for September 19.

Also, Antarctic and Arctic combined anomaly has evolved from about +200,000 Km² to -2,400,000 Km² in the last 110 days.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

This season is anything except normal.

Normal, as to ?

 

[CapelDodger]

Normal, as to ?

Indeed, what is normal these days?

 

[aleCcowaN]

Update: 15sep2010

It looks like just some 4,500 km³ of ice are left. The long term trend is corrected from -3,400 km³/decade to -3,500 km³/decade.

 

[CapelDodger]

If extent really has bottomed out now it'll be interesting to see how the re-freeze progresses. The 2010 line could still drop below 2007 before October's out.

(Odd change in Antarctica, what the heck is that about?)

 

[aleCcowaN]

If extent really has bottomed out now it'll be interesting to see how the re-freeze progresses. The 2010 line could still drop below 2007 before October's out.

(Odd change in Antarctica, what the heck is that about?)

We are now almost tied up with 2007 in total ice-extent anomaly. Look this graphic and how abnormal are this year's anomalies.

About Antarctica I'm "used" to this every time La Niña applies for a change of gender. Some heat (or less cold) is building in the circumpolar region and Humboldt current (look sst anomalies). The relatively warm ocean south of Australia and Patagonia may be preventing the formation of ice -and now melting it-.

 

[Trakar]

...About Antarctica I'm "used" to this every time La Niña applies for a change of gender...

"El travestismo" just doesn't roll out as smoothly in the nightly weather forecast.

 

[aleCcowaN]

"El travestismo" just doesn't roll out as smoothly in the nightly weather forecast.

Though something is camping deep in the southern oceans, as this paper may explain much of "Trenberth's travesty" and the burst of heat I mentioned at the end of a Niña event.

 

[BenBurch]

Though something is camping deep in the southern oceans, as this paper may explain much of "Trenberth's travesty" and the burst of heat I mentioned at the end of a Niña event.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

 

[aleCcowaN]

Yes, they bivouac south of R'lyeh and then they start to roll out.

 

[Trakar]

Though something is camping deep in the southern oceans, as this paper may explain much of "Trenberth's travesty" and the burst of heat I mentioned at the end of a Niña event.

Seems to be an area of increasing interest. There's also a team of japanese researchers who have published several recent papers in Nature referring to similar studies and deep heat anomalies, not a specialty of mine but I have noticed several papers pointing in this direction for the last couple of years at least.

 

[macdoc]

It's one more element of"excursions" when large scale energies disrupt the radiative budget....it ain't all gonna disperse evenly.

I really do wonder tho about more frequent convective turn over as the oceans heat.....gotta be some consequences in that.....

More frequent NSO shifts? NAO or PDO changes in duration, frequency or range of anomaly...

 

[Trakar]

It's one more element of"excursions" when large scale energies disrupt the radiative budget....it ain't all gonna disperse evenly.

I really do wonder tho about more frequent convective turn over as the oceans heat.....gotta be some consequences in that.....

More frequent NSO shifts? NAO or PDO changes in duration, frequency or range of anomaly...

Main problem for us would probably be de-gassing, most models assume a long slow transition from sink, to reservoir, to source. A change-state that induces more rapid turnover, and equilibrium shift, could be very problematic.

 

[macdoc]

Yes for sure - warm = less capacity - anyone have a curve for a switch to source?

Is methane ( clathrate ) release a much earlier threat?

 

[BenBurch]

At some point as the ocean acidifies, turnover seems likely slow in a dramatic fashion.

This is because we have learned that much mixing is actually caused by the diurnal migrations of zooplankton.

 

[CapelDodger]

We are now almost tied up with 2007 in total ice-extent anomaly. Look this graphic and how abnormal are this year's anomalies.

About Antarctica I'm "used" to this every time La Niña applies for a change of gender. Some heat (or less cold) is building in the circumpolar region and Humboldt current (look sst anomalies). The relatively warm ocean south of Australia and Patagonia may be preventing the formation of ice -and now melting it-.

Thanks for that info.

Normally at this time of year the usual suspects are trying to deflect attention to Antarctica, but this year not so much. They retreated from Greenland (once a favourite of theirs) a while back, and now it seems their penultimate redoubt is looking vulnerable. Soon they'll have nothing left to fall back on except the US Senate.

Oh well, Humboldt was famously gay and quite possiby a drug-user, so that raises serious questions about your theory .

 

[CapelDodger]

It's one more element of"excursions" when large scale energies disrupt the radiative budget....it ain't all gonna disperse evenly.

I really do wonder tho about more frequent convective turn over as the oceans heat.....gotta be some consequences in that.....

More frequent NSO shifts? NAO or PDO changes in duration, frequency or range of anomaly...

I imagine there's a huge amount of supercomputer time going into getting a handle on that. Our oceans have been a sadly neglected subject of research until quite recently. The southern ocean (where the submarines don't go) was particularly mysterious; I blame the Panama Canal for that.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Thanks for that info.

Normally at this time of year the usual suspects are trying to deflect attention to Antarctica, but this year not so much. They retreated from Greenland (once a favourite of theirs) a while back, and now it seems their penultimate redoubt is looking vulnerable. Soon they'll have nothing left to fall back on except the US Senate.

I was checking temperatures in Argentine bases in Antarctica and found sort of a heat wave with temperatures up to 7°C that are exceptional even in Summer.

Here you have some temperatures quasi real time (when there's a storm near Buenos Aires the site is snail slow because of thousands of users asking last radar animations each minute). Belgrano II Base is about 78°S and on East Antarctica -at the time of writing this is -13°C, what is pretty hot, and wind 111 km/h from South; really nice place to walk the dog-. The rest of the bases are on Antarctica Peninsula and I found constantly 2 or 3 being with temperatures over freezing point the last few days, although a typical day of September use to be -5°C/-15°C for those places.

My script to count pixels in this image tells me that compared to an image downloaded last year in a similar date, the ice shelf area is about 1 million square kilometers less once estimated the effective ice area. During this year's peak only half the area reached 100% or near 100% of ice, what is very unusual.

So, this could be a year with 'Antarctic ice volume to a record low' unless our joyful babies decide to change places. I expect that by the end of the year we'll start to suffer El Niño conditions (not accidentally it's called "El Niño"), so I also expect the seas around Antarctica to become colder and the ice shelf to slow down the melting process. In a few weeks we'll know better.

Oh well, Humboldt was famously gay and quite possiby a drug-user, so that raises serious questions about your theory .

But he was also very good friend to Gay-Loussac, wasn't he?

 

[aleCcowaN]

Recent update:



They informed an average Arctic ice volume of 4,000 cubic kilometers for September 2010, some 1,900 cubic kilometers less than September's last year (some 6 x 10²⁰ J, about 4.5% of yearly imbalance, for those interested)

 

[BenBurch]

delete

 

[BenBurch]

We are still setting records;