The disappearing Arctic ice - 108/11.2017

I am feeling quite overwhemed by the rate of changes in Arctic and I feel it quite viscerally when I get the following message from Kevin Hester

"My mate and Truthout Staff reporter Dahr Jamail emailed me this morning and said he was back from Barrow in Alaska and he has blockbuster data . Dahr found out it is worse than he thought and Dahr knows what we know.

"Brace for bad news".

We will have to wait a little longer to see what this data is.

The news is all bad. None of it is good and it is deeply shocking to see how quickly things are changing.

In the meantime expect more push-back, more denial, even in the face of facts. Someone I known sent me this 2015(!) article, Updated NASA Data: Global WarmingNot Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat which was supposed to persuade me that it is all made-up.

Here is a random collection, much of it from Arctic Sea Ice blog

Many thanks to all those who have posted information. I hope this can increase clarity.

The disappearing Arctic sea ice – update 08/11/2017

This is what Barrow, Alaska is looking like.

I am not sure where this is but it illustrates the rapid break-up of ice

These are sea temperature anomalies in the Arctic basin

And temperatures in the Canadian Arctic

Below is a reality check on ice conditions from FJL (far right) up and over the pole into the Chukchi, a piece of the most recent DTU/Saldo mosaic from Sentinel-1AB active radar. It takes a click to see as it is rather wide because of its vastly higher resolution. The north pole is along the bottom centered in the black 'pole hole' that the satellite cannot image. You can view these mosaics at http://www.seaice.dk/latest/

AMSR2 sea ice concentration from UH does quite a good job on the same area (click again), though ultimately 3125 m resolution won't stack up to the ~100x higher resolution (30 m) of Sentinel. The latter though has fairly narrow swaths so the ice can move or change -- especially during storms -- over the 3 days needed to compile these mosaics.

August 8-11 high speed, 78 hours to cover the cyclone, I find I can see the ice better.

Wrangel in the lower left.

Edit: added the "normal speed" I make them

Looks like three is a fair amount of ice being forced up against the Canadian archipelago and down into the M'Clure Strait.http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/npp-gina-alaska-truecolor-images

Because it's going to be pounding the pack like this, in the exact same place, for two days in a row, one can imagine a much bigger effect than its already low 972 HPa imply.

Not much on volume, but much on area and eventually on extent

The next pulse of swell is currently forecast to be somewhat bigger and longer period than the last one. This one is also taking aim at the Beaufort Sea marginal ice zone:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2017/08/facts-about-the-arctic-in-august-2017/#Aug-8

1 day change in Bremen concentration. 3 versions attached: Original, last under 90 filter, median filter (5 day period). Choose your poison.

Pacific continues to erode and contract towards the CAA, with anti-clockwise motion in the direction of storm winds apparent throughout the Arctic, as anticipated by Sterks' post above. Such large scale coordinated motion cannot be good for the halocline.

Finally here is explanation from Paul Beckwith