North
Pole Melting: Ice Camera 2 Swims as Camera 1 Gets its Feet Wet
25
July, 2013
This
summer has seen a great number of extraordinary events resulting from
human caused climate change. These include massive heat dome high
pressure systems setting off record droughts, fires and heat waves,
Arctic
temperatures rocketing into the 80s and 90s,
Europe
and Canada suffering some of their worst flooding events in history
and a crazy
US weather system moving backwards against the prevailing weather
pattern for more than 3,000 miles.
Add to these record events a substantial melting of ice in the
Arctic’s most central regions, and you end up with rather strong
proofs that our greenhouse gas emissions have permanently altered the
word’s weather.
From
late May to early July, a persistent Arctic cylone (PAC 2013) first
fractured ice near the North Pole, then consistently widened and
melted the gap it created. Now a large triangle of very thin ice
extends from the North Pole south and eastward toward the Laptev Sea.
The section of meter or less thickness keeps widening even as gaps
continue opening in the ice and melt ponds form over many of the
remaining flows.
Further
north and on toward the western side of the North Pole, two cameras
supplied by the Applied Physics Lab and funded through a National
Science Foundation grant are performing their own daily recording if
this major melt event. The melting, which from the satellite, appears
to have turned the sea ice near the North Pole into swiss cheese has
had a marked effect on visible surface conditions as well.
Sea
ice swiss chees as seen through the clouds near the North Pole. Image
source: NASA/Lance
Modis
Of
the two ice cameras, #2 so far has seen the most action. On
about July 13th, melt puddles began to form in the region of Camera
#2. By earlier this week, the camera was deep in a growing pool of
ice melt. By today, the water had deepened further covering all the
markers surrounding both the camera and its related sensor buoy.
Water now appears to be about 3 feet deep and the pond just keeps
growing and growing (you
can read more about the saga of Ice Camera #2 here).
But
now, Ice Camera #1 appears to be about to suffer the same fate. Over
the past couple of days, melt ponds have now also been forming in the
vicinity of Camera #1. You can see this new set of melt puddles here:
Puddles
form near North Pole Camera 1. Image source: APL
Note
the melt puddle snaking its way behind the wind vane visible in the
camera’s field of view and on toward Camera #1 itself. If
conditions at this camera are similar to those near Camera #2, then
we can expect Carema #1 to be swimming in about ten days time.
With
temperatures remaining above freezing for much of the Central Arctic,
melt conditions have tended to dominate. Now, most of the remaining
ice is rather weak, with a thickness of about 2 meters or less. And
with so much of this thin ice in areas near the North Pole, a
possibility exists that much of this region will melt out over the
next 6 weeks or so.
As
for the Ice Cams? It appears that #1 may soon join #2 in the drink.
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