As yet another example of the differences we are beginning to see, despite suggestions that ice might hang around on the shores of Ellesmere, what we are seeing instead is that the ice is now separating from the shore even before the melt has gotten seriously underway. Compare the view in Worldview for 2013 with 2012. http://earthdata.nasa.gov/labs/worldview/?map=-2101863.229015,-56128,-4711.229016,1262784&products=baselayers,MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor~overlays,arctic_coastlines&time=2013-05-20&switch=arctic http://earthdata.nasa.gov/labs/worldview/?map=-2101863.229015,-56128,-4711.229016,1262784&products=baselayers,MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor~overlays,arctic_coastlines&time=2012-05-20&switch=arctic Sam

Two quotes come to mind... The first is from the TV series Firefly when Book replies to Mal: "We're very close to true stupidity here." The second from the movie Contact I have to paraphrase as I don't seem to be able to find it at the moment. As Ellie is in the Alien designed pod about to dropped into the maw of a wormhole, the whole apparatus is engulfed in a magnetic storm. Mission control asks whether he should terminate and hears from his technical lead: We're close, Steve. We're very close.

Steve, "I think I would argue that the new Ballantyne et al. paper is evidence for the former, anyway (unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean). The Arctic sea ice will go fast, the Arctic Ocean and surrounding continental margins will warm quickly, various feedbacks will kick in (more), and our descendants if any will probably be wishing the process had stopped at a Pliocene-like state." I haven't read the full paper since its behind a paywall. From the charts, graphs and figures, it appears to support a severe change to a new condition. And that should be expected once the ice is gone. Arguably that will be a step change, both because the ice dynamics are gone, and because the ocean is less shielded from warming leading to changes in conditions that foster warming and breaking of the clathrates (essentially lowering the depth at which the clathrates remain stable well below their current depth). And yes, that is the sort of thing I expect to see. However, I suspected the non-linear nature of the system would have shown some sort of state change before now. The areas that do seem to fit that are as Chris noted, the movement of the cold pole to Greenland in the summer, dragging the circulating lows orbiting it and the jet stream with it, and then also changing the frequency and dynamics of the Rossby waves. There may be others. Even then, these have, so far, not seemed to be severe enough changes to clearly call out that a state change has occurred. The obvious exceptions to that are the loss of summers in England and Scandinavia, and Hurricane Sandy being pulled ashore by the lows. So far that is a one off though, so we will have to wait a bit longer to see if this is a new pattern. One other amazing thing.... The Ballantyne paper appears to show vastly warmer winter conditions over Ellesmere. If that occurs early in the transition, that would appear to argue opposite to the recent suggestions that there may be a long tale on the summer ice as ice is maintained along the near shore of Ellesmere and Greenland. Watching the time lapse of the collapse of the ice, and having watched all of the old ice pull off the land this winter and spring, I suspect that is just wishful thinking. We may yet see the very sudden disappearance of the last remnant ice this year or next. But that will only be a year or two from the time I expected it to be gone and I find that hard to call a state change in and of itself, though the conditions after will be. I suspect too that we are seeing increases in ice extent over what might otherwise be expected precisely because the ice is shattering and dispersing. This results in an artificial increase in area that I suspect may be very transient. Sam

A-Team, That is a tad harsh. Thom's work is dense, but the ideas are actually quite simple. It is more of a challenge to find real world cases where the bifurcation folds are evident and where the natural noise of the systems doesn't obscure that. To date, there doesn't appear to be evidence of a step-wise change and hysteresis, or multi-state transition indicative of a fold space. Still, it is quite appropriate to be watching for such things, and it is very reasonable to suspect that at some point in the climate transition that the system will cross thresholds that do not easily, linearly or directly reverse. If that happens, we may well see a fold transition that may (just may) indicate some higher order space topological analogy that can be represented by Thom's catastrophe theory. Unfortunately, we will never live long enough to explore that space. With transitions that take millenia to unfold, it is beyond our ability to ever test. Still, once the ice is gone and the arctic ocean further warms, we should expect the methane clathrates to break releasing vast stores of methane to the atmosphere. This has already begun. Simultaneously, the warming of the arctic has already started collapse of the tundra releasing both the methane and organic carbon stored there. At >1,600 GT C, the warming potential of that is awesome. And the collapse of the tundra, rather than being a linear thawing effect, is showing several state transition sorts of behavior (both in collapse, and with fire, plant and tree growth, albedo change, physical collapse, and more). It is difficult to envision that being model-able as a linear reversible response function. Thom's theory offers more promise (at least in the shape of the transition), but again - with no historical data to build the equations and no testability it is hard to see how that provides us much guidance - other than to be on the watch for 'tipping points', 'state transitions' (akin to phase changes for physical substances), and hysteretic effects. Even then, the many different oscillatory changes combined with the natural stochastic variability of the system make it difficult to sort out. Sam

2.9 million +/- 0.8 The ice is thin and highly fractured, but behind trends for April. The binned thicknesses suggest 2.5 million or less. However, Cleveland is in active eruption. When the volcanoes in the Aleutians or Kamchatka Peninsula have erupted at this time of year in previous years, it has seriously slowed the melt. Countering that, the ice pulled away from Ellesmere in February removing the grounding limits, and there is a large melt of a band across the central arctic from Alaska to Svalbard in progress which could free all of the ice.

You can really see the ridges from northpole webcam2. As the sun goes around, they jump out. http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/WEBCAM2/ARCHIVE/npeo_cam2_20130501041732.jpg General page for the pole with both webcams: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/ Index page of recent shots for webcam2: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/webcam2.html Archive for webcam2: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/WEBCAM2/ARCHIVE/

Neven, I posted a comment awhile ago that seems to have gotten caught in the spam locker. It appeared briefly on the list, then on refresh it was gone. In addition to the North Pole web cam #2 images showing a pressure ridge. The latest AMSR shows a radically different melt pattern this season. Sam [Released the comment, it's above the comment that's above this one. Well-spotted, BTW. N.]

It is all too easy to forget just how fast these events are occurring in geologic time. It was only a handful of years ago that the MYI near Ellesmere failed and drained a surface pond that had a unique ecosystem extending back over 3,000 years. About 2007, the MYI pulled away from Ellesmere. It was stunning. Fast forward to today, and the MYI is disintegrating. Fast forward yet again into our very near future, and there will be no multi year ice at all. Shortly after there will be no first year ice. We sit perched on the knife edge of a change of ages. On the one hand it is an amazing opportunity. On the other it is scary as hell. Everything man has known in all his time since we parted from our brothers the apes, we have never experienced anything like this. In the very short time we have had language and culture, and the shorter time yet that we have had agriculture, nothing has prepared us for this rate or extent of change. It is little wonder that we aren't dealing well with it, and that so many of our brothers reject the idea entirely. But that changes nothing. The melt is full on. The sixth great extinction event is in the early stages and vying for a top spot on the list.

I commented some time ago that I expected based on the trends that we would see the first ice free arctic summer day/week in 2015, possibly 2014 or 2016. I also commented that I had somewhat expected and yet had not seen a change of state, that there hadn't been a step change as new conditions take over. With the extensive shattering of the ice, including the multi year ice, I think we are now seeing precisely that. The ice has become thin enough that at the very end we are seeing a change in the governing forces. Now breakage of the thin sheet is taking over. Unsurprisingly that increases the exposed surface, and allows for greater wave action to stir the ocean beneath. The calm flat surface is no longer an impediment. It is still too early to say with any certainty, but I expect we have a very good chance that this will be the first year of at least a day with essentially no ocean ice (<1% of total area) in the entire arctic. I think the probability is now greater than 50%. If it isn't this year, it is hard to see how the ice can recover sufficiently to prevent 2014 from being the year of the first ice free arctic summer. And once that happens, the warming takes on new power. Very quickly we should see the melt extend far into the fall. Within a year of the first ice free summer arctic day we should see the first ice free arctic month, and possibly 2-3 months. The breakdown of the jet stream that I think everyone here expected before it began, will continue and get worse. As was noted today or yesterday, it may mean the complete breakdown of the northern circulation as the ferrel cell moves north due to the loss of thermal gradient. It is all so stunning. Even expecting this doesn't make it any easier. We are now embarked on a great transformation of the entire Earth. We long ago passed the point of no return. The roller coaster long ago passed zenith and is now rocketing down the highest ride imaginable. Sam

It appears that work has begun at Barneo for the season. With the extensive fracturing of the arctic sheet, they need to be very careful. http://theadventureblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/north-pole-2013-work-begins-on-barneo.html

This may be premature for the reasons already noted in the blog, but across all of the measures of ice extent and area, it appears that we may have passed maximum and entered the melt season. Woo hoo. Here we go.

We have strayed far from the Arctic ice. But I think there are interesting comparisons. It is all too easy to fall into the either A or B trap, with reality being much messier and more interesting. As a meteor enters the atmosphere, it starts at high mach number and low resistance. As it plunges deeper the atmosphere around it thickens and resistance rises rapidly. A bow shock forms early on. Across the bow wave pressure and temperature change dramatically. The bolide is heated by friction and radiation. Depending on its composition, the surface may heat far more than the interior with a delay for conduction. Stresses build quickly as the hotter outer surface tries to expand and the colder interior resists. If the structure is heterogeneous, these stresses can rapidly shatter the bolide and generate explosive forces tearing the meteor apart and rapidly increasing its effective cross section subject to heating. If the meteor contains volatiles but is structurally strong, it can become a high pressure container that will ultimately fail releasing the stored thermal and pressure energy resulting in disassembly of the body. As before, the debris created rapidly expands increasing the area and the rate of thermal heating. In effect each of these acts like a bomb going off. The kinetic and stored energies are released rapidly in a growing cloud. So, back to the ice. The failing ice also stores energy structurally. This too can be released suddenly, albeit at much lower energy densities. If the ice has bubbles trapped in rapidly formed ice, it can and does structurally weaken it, allowing fracture ruptures to occur far faster than lab experiments might suggest. As the ice thins, the conditions change. Breaking a cube is far more difficult than flexing and breaking a sheet.

Werther, I am not quite sure why my post pushed your buttons. No problem though. Neven, I quite understand your choice about the deaths. To be clear, in my reply to Tor, I was not suggesting or arguing that dramatic catastrophic climate change isn't happening, or that the polar ice retreat is in any way a normal thing. Quite to the contrary. We are going through a massive shift that will disrupt and change the entire world. Whole biomes will die and be replaced. The thrust of my post wasn't about that at all. Instead I was simply agreeing with Tor and commenting about the mechanics of getting from there to here, to where-ever we go next, and how that proceeds. The closest approximation we currently have is a simple exponential decline. That is complicated by a more rapid and clearer decline in volume than in area. The volume signal is much clearer and easier both to interpret and to use for projections than the area data. As the ice thins and wave action expands (ceasing to be dampened by the structural integrity of the ice; and as the greater area of open ocean absorbs more heat; and as greater mixing occurs with depth; and as ... .... .... .... it would seem likely that at some point there may be/could be/should be a step change. That step change would likely also then involve wholly different governing equations than the things we have seen before. Yet, as we watch the ice collapse, that hasn't happened so far. The transition though dramatic and accelerating has been fairly smooth. The exceptions that we have seen so far have come from the movement of the cold pole and the jet stream changes. We will still see the first ice free arctic summer most probably in 2015, but plausibly in 2014, and possibly in 2016. After that, it will be interesting to watch to see if the way the melt happens changes and whether there is a more dramatic increase in the rate, extent, duration and other measures of the melt; and how that then ripples through the entire climate system. Peace.

Neven, I just stumbled onto this very sad news today. Antarctic Plane Crash Kills 3 Canadians http://icyseas.org/2013/02/08/antarctic-plane-crash-kills-3-canadians/ In recognition of their sacrifice, and the great danger that researchers at both poles face I think it would be good to start a separate thread thanking them for their service and dedication to all mankind. I worry this coming year about the team(s) that may be headed to Barneo and all across the Arctic. It is getting extremely dangerous as the ice thins. Sam

Tor, I share your concern. I have been expecting to see behavioral shifts as the ice thins and as the ice retreats. I think we have seen the beginning of a view of these. So far these haven't looked so much like bifurcations, and they have looked more like changes in rates. Since we haven't seen widespread sudden ice loss in first year ice due to wave action, at this point I suspect that if it does occur it will be in the last year or two. Safe bet there. We are in the last two years before the first summer essentially free of ice for a day to a month. The cyclonic systems in the last several years have churned the ice badly, driven it toward shore, pulled it away, and all manner of other things. But, it hasn't been the step change it might have been. I was expecting that we might see any of several effects leading to a butterfly graph transition (a la Catastrohpe' Theory of Rene' Thom). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_theory Perhaps the largest changes of that sort have been the result of the cold pole movement (a la Chris Reynolds) and the consequent movement of the orbiting low pressure systems, then tertiarily the stirring of the Arctic resulting in greater surface mixing, etc... The broadest impacts from all of that seem to be in northern Europe with the loss of summer, and in the Northeast in the New England and the Canadian maritime provinces. Per Rene's Catastophe' Theory, I still expect that we are headed through a polynormal transition, where the states we pass through, whether temporarily stable or not, are highly dependent on the path we take to get there. And with the high degree of chaos in the system, I expect that the detailed path will be unpredictable. On a longer time scale, it may appear smoother. But we will likely be left scrambling for explanations in many cases, be hit with many surprises, and never be able to sort out exactly how the transition occurred in retrospect. Or not. Perhaps the driving forces are smoother than I am imagining and there isn't a butterfly graph of states underlying it. Maybe it is just simple bounded exponentials. We will all find out - very soon.

Yes, 2013 looks like it will be breath taking. Sad as that is, and as helpless as it may make us feel, now is a good time to say thank you to Neven once again. We have this amazing chance to watch and analyze in real time because he created this amazing blog, that attracted such an amazing cadre of participants, experts and near experts alike. Thank you Neven!! I think as disastrous as this melt season will likely be, it likely won't be the first ice free Arctic summer. That is still likely to be 2014 or 2015. Woo hoo, ride the collapse. At least we all see it coming. Most people haven't a clue that this is happening, and even less what that means for the future.

Welcome to sunny Iowa - the new Sahara! New sport. Sand surfing the midwest desert. Corn? Oh yeah, didn't they grow that in Iowa before it turned desert?

Dude, Where'd all the ice go? What the hell did we do to the arctic? Watch out for polar bears. They are pissed off AND hungry. Ding. Game over. No more lives. 8-( Anybody got another Earth to burn? Uh Oh. We blew it man. No more ice. Is this how Venus ended? Is this how Venus roasted? Gnarly dude, surfing the Arctic! Woo hoo! Why is the Arctic Ocean bubbling like that? No Arctic Ice?! Oh crap, that can't be good. Svalbard, the new Miami.

No arctic ice means no bread basket.

Dad/mom - why did Santa drown? There is nothing quite so blue as a blue Arctic Ocean. Bummer! So this is what it feels like to start an extinction. Bummer! Too bad we killed the world. No arctic ice? Bad human! Oh we'll. It was a nice world, while it lasted. Recipe for extinction: Roast the world with carbon until the ice is gone. Too bad. So sad. We melted the ice and boiled the world. No ice, no problem. Welcome to Manitoba, the new Miami!

It should be much easier than that. Likely all that is needed is a good surface contact (heat and freeze should do that) and the use of acoustic methods, sonic or ultrasonic. The electronics needed is simple; transducer, receiver, transmitter, processors, memory, battery, antenna. On the previous thoughts. I agree with several of you that the real key now is the ice volume. It is crashing so very fast that even the deployment of sensors probably cannot happen fast enough to follow it. I fully expect to see our first essentially ice free arctic summer day to week in September of 2015. There is a possibility that may happen in 2014. And it appears certain to happen by 2016 regardless. I also fully expect to see our first ice free arctic winter day sometime in the mid 2020s. The ice volume plots suggest 2029. However, once the summer ice is gone and other feedbacks kick in (including ocean warming during the ice free summer), that will come sooner. On current trends, we will see the first ice free arctic summer (90 days ice free) in 2016; 2017 at the latest. Then we see another month in the next year or two and another a year after that. The IPCC models come no where near predicting anything like that. As has been noted, they are (badly; poorly) emulating the ice area trends. Even then, there is no polynomial superposition of the various models that can be made to emulate reality. Reality is proceeding decades faster than any of the models or submodels. They could try using some multi-model suite (e.g. Eileen Poeter's multimodel work at USGS) to try to find which model elements can best be combined to best emulate the reality. But, since none of the models is responding fast enough and the reality lies outside the bounds of the models, this won't work. It will be better than any of the assembled suites of models as they are currently portrayed. But it still won't work. And once the ice is gone and other feedback loops kick in, all bets are off. The science is too far behind to gauge what happens next. Almost certainly the jet streams will change in dramatic ways. As was noted previously, a new cold pole will almost certianly form over Greenland until that ice is gone. That too will radically disrupt the weather patterns we have all come to know and rely upon. The great oceanic circulation will change too with highly unpredictable consequences. Those will first impact the northern hemisphere, but soon will reach the entire earth. Then too there is the trend spotted by Dr. Hansen (and colleagues) for the spread of temperature variation to increase as the mean temperature rises. As this happens, the year to year variation of temperature, rain, drought and such will wreck havoc on agriculture. Within a few decades, agriculture as we have known it may well be impossible or at least impractical. As all this proceeds, the tundra and permafrost are collapsing. These too are happening far faster than any model predicts and it is accelerating. We have entered a thermal runaway. The system has gone beyond its quasistable balance and is in the process of resetting to some new balance in conditions man has never expereinced. The ride from here to there is going to be bumpy. We scientists do people no favors in not warning them about these dangers.

Would it not also be appropriate for the IPCC to say something like. "In addition, we have high confidence that though the models do predict the past annual cycle of ice formation in the winter and thawing in the summer; we have very high confidence that the rate and extent of thawing due to changes in the atmosphere is not represented by the models to any significant degree, and that future projections of the rate and extent of thaw are only adequately represented by simple extrapolation models. This is of vital importance to all peoples of the world, as the loss of the arctic ice poses such grave dangers to society, to agriculture, to climate, to weather and to war as to dwarf all other aspects of arctic modelling at this time. We have high confidence that this is a crisis of global proportions that directly threatens all peoples of the world in the coming two decades."

Yvan, As a scientist you don't want to underestimate either. You lose credibility equally fast either way. Clearly the models are divergent from reality. Reality wins every time. As Neven points out, the consequences of getting this wrong are of losing the earth we know. Sadly, that is now a done deal. The locked in rates of change are too great. The inertia in the now moving system is so huge, that no amount of effort on our parts can stop it. About the only thing left that could change it is an eruption of a super volcano like Yellowstone. And that would be an unimaginable calamity, and even that likely wouldn't be enough. Still our systems are running us, and are running out of control. In the rush for tight oil, the money is lucrative, so the rush is on faster than infrastructure can keep up. As a result, they are flaring much of the natural gas. From a climate perspective that is insane. Our financial systems don't allow for any other answers. And this insanity is repeated throughout all if our systems. Likewise our political systems respond after the act, not before. They are lagging indicators of what has already happened. They respond to entrenched interests. Unless and until those entrenched interests are convinced of what they might see as direct and immediate harm, they will not change. Climate lags our actions as well, but once it begins moving the inertia is so great that it will not be stopped. At this point, our best hopes are perhaps that we can see and understand the problem well enough that we can salvage some remnant of what once was as the system rolls over in one of the great changes in the history of life and as we enter not just a new chapter, and not even just a new volume, but a new book in the story of life on earth. And even here, the practice of science as a part of society is far too slow. We humans seem only to accept such changes on career or decadal scales. And if the changes that are needed as revealed by the science are painful or costly, the inbuilt resistance of the financial and political systems are so great that we seem only to change when no other answer is possible.