The break-up of Pine Glacier

Pine Island Glacier - the iceberg has broken off and is broken up.

NASA Worldview

A brief report on the Arctic - 10/31/2018

The Arctic today

Colourful but Arctic ice is a complete mess as the sun sets over the North Pole. I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly where this is but it is somewhere to the north of Canada or Alaska

Temperature anomalies

Absolute temperature levels

Still very warm in the Arctic. Temperatures I have read off Nullschool are -5.1 C, - 7.0 C, and - 18.6 C

The lowest temperature I can find is -20.3 C (near the Pole)

 

 Methane levels - not the very highest but very high levels in Northern Siberia.

First signs of melting near the North Pole

We really do need to be watching this almost every day now.

A brief note on melting at the North Pole

This is just a quick note to show that there are signs of some break-up of ice close to the North Pole.

This is the whole picture

The photo of the central plateau below provides some orienteering.



We are talking about the area where it gives the longitude just 'up' (in the picture) from the Pole. I estimate the latitude to be approx. 86 deg N.

You can clearly see some cracks emerge on this enlarged photo.

At the 80 deg N point the ice is not just breaking up but you're getting blue water.

 

This is an alternative view

AIRS Ave Daytime Air temperature at the Surface -08-05-2018 to 8-05-2018

Inside the blue line in the Arctic Ocean, the temperatures are below freezing Outside of the blue line the temperatures are above freezing. I held the cursor on the light green inside the blue line and it read 29 degrees F . (-1.66667 degrees C)

NASA's Eyes on the Earth

There is a link to NASA's Eyes on the Earth on NASA's Global Climate Change site. Need to download the ap there. https://climate.nasa.gov/

***

This is how the concentration looks (from NSIDC)

Margo will be discussing this on her Campfire Chat on Thursday, 8/9/18 @ 5pm Pacific time

Update on Arctic sea ice melt - 07/17/2018

Arctic Sea Ice Hole from July 7 shown in NASA Satellite Imagery (July 17, 2018)

Climate Cast : Update to Hole In the Arctic Sea Ice Video (July 15, 2018)

Margo’s Healing Corner

This video is my 2nd follow-up report on the hole in the Arctic Sea Ice from July 7, 2018: "Did Anyone Else See This Hole in the Arctic Sea Ice Today? (July 7, 2018)"

The destruction of Arctic ice - 07/02/2017

The effects of a windy day in the Arctic

This shows what the effects of wind on the Arctic ice can be.

First is the area around Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska, I like watching the swirls

Second is the southwest Beaufort. The effects of a windy day can be seen.

Image courtesy of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

http://feeder.gina.alaska.edu/npp-gina-alaska-truecolor-ima…

What did the landscape of Greenland look like in the past?

The absence of historical photos raises questions about changes in the landscape of Greenland since rapid climate change. What we do have gives a clue.

I would appreciate any information people can bring to bear on this.

The disappearance of snow and ice from Greenland

The footage of the landslide in Western Grennland that produced the tsunami the other day has brought up questions in my mind as to what this landscape would have looked like back in 1979.

I have learned that the altitude of the cliffs in this video is about 1000 feet and yet there seems to be less snow about than I would see on the Southern Alp in NZ in summer.

Is this normal?

The following is all that I could find to provide a historical perspective of what we would normally have expected without rapid warming

Details emerge about Greenland tsunami, and a new video

New details have emerged about the Greenland landslide that occurred in Karrat Fjord and the deadly tsunami it produced late Saturday (local time), June 17, 2017.

180,000 forgotten photos reveal the future of Greenland’s ice

To tell whether the island’s glacial cap will melt away any time soon, researchers are poring over old pictures and drawings for clues to its past behaviour.

With Arctic temperatures rising faster than anywhere else on Earth, Greenland is now losing about 200 billion tonnes of ice per year and raising ocean levels around the globe. Projections suggest that melting from the island might swell sea levels by 30 centimetres by the end of this century. If all Greenland’s ice melted — a possibility over the next few centuries − it would push up sea level by more than 6 metres, enough to flood coastal megacities such as New York and Miami.

But the projections carry large uncertainties, in part because researchers lack basic information about Greenland’s past. Satellite data only go back 40 years, which is why Bjørk and his colleagues are poring over 180,000 photographs and other data that record how glaciers have advanced and retreated during cold and warm spells in the recent past. Their first sets of findings suggest that Greenland ice has responded more strongly to past climate changes than was previously realized. Now, the researchers are trying to unravel what factors within the oceans, atmosphere and inside glaciers control their behaviour

Nearly 4 million tons crashed into sea! - NEW details about the Greenland Tsunami

June 21, 2017: It was initially thought that the tsunami was created by a magnitude 4.0 earthquake with the epicenter (17.4 miles) north of the village of Nuugaatsiaq on the western coast of Greenland. However, reconnaissance flights performed by the Danish Joint Arctic Command on June 18 discovered a large landslide scar (approximately 985 x 3 600 feet, thus confirming that the cause of the tsunami was a landslide. Nearly 4 million tons of earth went crashing into the sea! 

https://watchers.news/2017/06/21/gree.

Photos taken by the Danish Arctic Command

https://www.facebook.com/JointArcticCommand/photos/pcb.1411383648977477/1411377628978079/?type=3&theater

An ice-free Arctic by next year

Great 9 minutes of education on the consequences of the loss of sea ice and the subsequent release of methane.

Cameos from Stuart Simpson who describes the Arctic sea ice as decaying exponentially, and that it could be gone as soon as this year and Peter Wadhams who doesn't believe that industrial civilisation can survive a 50 gigatonne discharge of methane. Both are members of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group).

That 50 gigs equates to 10 times the amount of methane in the atmosphere than today,that would effectively double the atmospheric burden of carbon! Try and get your head around that this Northern Hemisphere Summer?

The thermostat is broken folks. It will runaway in an exponential, non linear way.

---Kevin Hester

WARNING! Polar Ice Caps Melting Rapidly | Ice Free Arctic By Next Year!

Since the year 2000 we have had 16 of the 17 warmest years ever recorded, with 2016 being the warmest yet. 

As March almost ends it becomes clear that the ice caps are not the same as they once used to be. 

They are shrinking dramatically fast and are not following a linear equation anymore, but rather an exponential one. 

It is predicted that on the current course we could have an ice free arctic by as soon as the summer of 2017, and 2020 at the LATEST. 

This is a very bad situation, as the polar caps act as the earth's air conditioners and help to keep the planet cool. 

Also underneath the frozen Arctic lies a massive methane reserve, which if released by the melting permafrost will release enough methane into the atmosphere to kill all life on earth and render it inhospitable. 

Will the human race wake up to the imminent threat in time or will we continue to be blind and ignorant until it's too late?

Arctic ice update

Disappearing Arctic ice

East Siberian Sea/Chukchi Sea 04 28 2016

East Siberian Sea/Chukchi Sea 04 28 2017

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/…

Record low Arctic ice again

Arctic Sea Ice Falls into Record Low Ranges — Again

Extreme Arctic warmth this fall has again pushed sea ice levels into record low ranges.

Robertscribbler,

18 October, 2016

Across the Arctic, temperatures for the months of September and October have ranged between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius above normal for the entire region above the 66 degree north latitude line. Such extremely high temperatures have served to slow the rate of sea ice accumulation. The result is that the line in the sea ice graphs appears to be moving more sideways than following the traditional upward trend for this time of year.

(2016 enters near record low extent ranges on October 17 of 2016. Green dashed line represents 2012 sea ice extent, blue line represents 2007, black line the 1981 to 2010 average, orange line 2003, blue line 1994, and yellow line 1980. The gray border represents the 2 standard deviation from trend boundary. Image source: NSIDC.)

Trend lines for 2016 are also now within 90,000 square kilometers of exceeding previous record lows for sea ice extent set in 2007 and nearly matched in 2012 for the date of October 17.

Big Arctic Temperature Spike Driving Losses

Over the next few days, GFS model runs predict that a strong warming trend will take hold over the Arctic Ocean environment. As a result, temperature anomalies for the region above 66 North are expected to again spike to near 5 C above average for this time of year.

Given this predicted heat build-up, it’s certainly possible that refreeze rates will continue to be inhibited and that new record daily lows will be breached this week. Meanwhile, the overall trend for 2016 from January through middle October shows a year that is likely to see the lowest averaged levels of sea ice ever recorded for an entire year.

(Arctic temperatures have remained high throughout the fall — which has contributed to a very slow sea ice re-freeze so far. By Sunday, GFS model runs predict that temperatures over the Arctic Ocean will again push into much warmer than normal ranges for this time of year — possibly further delaying this region’s return to an ice-covered state. Image source: Climate Reanalyzer.)

Polar Amplification in Evidence

Loss of sea ice is a primary feature of polar amplification in the Arctic due to human-forced climate change.  Under polar amplification, warming of this region occurs faster than in the rest of the world. During summer, lower sea ice levels allow more sunlight to be absorbed by dark ocean waters — which preferentially traps heat in the Arctic environment. Less ice coverage during winter allows ocean heat to re-radiate into the Arctic which provides a significant boost to temperatures during the cold season.

(Anomalously warm temperatures over the Arctic Ocean have represented more a strange hybrid between fall and summer than a typical drop-off toward winter patterns during 2016. In the graph above, global warming appears to have basically levitated temperatures in the region above 80 North right off the chart. Image source: DMI.)

Last year, a never-before-seen late December warming of the Arctic pushed temperatures at the North Pole above freezing. If human fossil fuel burning continues and greenhouse gas accumulations in the Earth’s atmosphere keep rising, the Arctic is in for more dramatic fall, winter, and spring warming events than even those it is experiencing today. And with global temperatures entering a range of 1-2 C above preindustrial averages, the risk of a complete loss of Arctic sea ice over the coming years is on the rise.

Links:

NSIDC

Climate Reanalyzer

The Sydney Morning Herald

Arctic Sea Ice Graphs

Hat tip to Colorado Bob

Hat tip to Marcel Guldemond