Thanks, I guess PIOMAS is becoming mainstream.

Any guesses when and if the transpolar drift forms this winter? Now it looks like what ever build up of ice happens in Kara Sea coast, after a while it moves to the outflow near Greenland. The circulation seems to be slower now than week ago, but still somewhat oddly placed.

Steve Bloom answered:"winter ice will continue to re-form for a while, and it will keep summer temperatures tamped down. Eventually, if and when the ice goes in winter too," there could develop a massive temperature gradient between Arctic coasts and inland producing a narrow range for southern animals to occupy. Plants on the other hand would have to manage in nearly permanent darkness during winters. There would probably be very frequent freezing fog events also bit off coast, so occupants of such an area would likely like to know how to skate ;-).

Ac A : a) the 650 000y would be for the Antarctic ice cores, there's no good estimates that I know of the pliocene times (Chinese stalagmites?), the 10-15 millions would be the growth phase of the East Antarctic glacier, with very different oceanic circulation. I think there was some sediment cores drilled recently (off antarctic coast). b) nothing to add to Reynolds, wishing I was that good with massive amounts of data. c) this would probably be because the orbital forcing was different during Eemian (LIG, last interglacial?), NH having shorter but hotter summers then. (I'm pretty certain winter ice still persisted well) as usual no references from me (not working on these), sorry.

"More rain doesn't automatically mean more farmland." Any estimates about how long does this take on various unirrigable soils? Dumping clean waste on these areas now might speed up the process somewhat, but I still guess that would be an intergenerational project. Nitrogen-fixing plants would probably be good but rising the amount of phosphorus is more difficult. Possibly if dead zones on the seas could be dredged for phosphorus this would be instant but with dredging in those you get plenty other not so nice stuff too.

And it appears I've not been looking: Gagnon & Gough (2005) http://arctic.synergiesprairies.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/view/451

on hudson bay, doing a chart depicting the regressed anomaly increase on (monthly)/probably weekly basis over the years (so 52 regressions and their interdependence(what's the word?) might make a pretty graph of how the melt is progressing. there is a clear change (eyeballing) in the anomaly pattern after 1998 autumn (before it the autumns were quite normal) but doing a linear reg one on weekly intervals might still give some means to guess the 1st winter without full ice cover. I don't now where to find the data on this: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/region.all.anom.region.13.jpg and anyway I'd probably mess up somewhere in the process. This sort of thing was done to some other climatic variable (regional CO2?) on monthly basis a year or two back, but if I've not seen it done to sea ice.

Yeah, sounds about right james cobban. It's about an additional Mississippi flowing out of the glaciers, like I saw stated somewhere. Those atmospheric rates of moisture transport in tropics to Amazon basin are quite astonishing. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_discharge the glacier outflow would stand in the top ten currently, I guess.

It looks like Antarctic CT SIA positve anomaly is today a yearling. Congrats!

There's the 8th year anniversary coming up in two weeks (dec-10th). Any plans? Sure it's not something to celebrate much, but anyway. (subject: CT SIA continous negative anomaly)

the floe obuoy#6 is on looks kind of blue: http://obuoy.datatransport.org/monitor#buoy6/webcam

Good work, Neven, and good work, all scientists who done this. And what's happening on the other end of the Atlantic, one might ask. A couple of abstracts and possible research material wrt AMOC (well AMO too), Agulhas leakage seems to be the magic word on this: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7272/full/nature08519.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v456/n7221/full/nature07426.html?free=2 The current systems on Drake Passage and Falkland/Malvinas are more important in the palaeoclimate studies it seems: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2000.../1999GB900051.shtml http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2000/1999GL011072.shtml

Those smokes from the forest fires travel quite a long way so it's not necessarily so unconnected. Here's an example: http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Smoke+from+Russian+fires+covers+Helsinki+on+Monday+afternoon/1135221155495 so it's dependent of the wind direction. And the finer particles travel further, since I've also smelled those too on couple of occasions (western coast)

Re:currents in Arctic, this might be of interest, i can't read them well, but probably here are people who can: http://bulletin.mercator-ocean.fr/html/produits/psy3v3/ocean/regions/bull_ocean_arc_en.jsp?nom=psy3v3_20120613_22809

Masters Wunderground-page for (synoptic?) weather reports and local forecasts around Greenland: http://www.wunderground.com/global/GL.html It seems the Summit Station record is currently out of service/circulation.

My guess would be slush on top of the harder more solid ice. But that is a large area for that.

from Tenney Naumer' notes: http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2012/05/albedo-evolution-of-seasonal-arctic-sea.html the paper: http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl1208/2012GL051432/

just to inform the second buoy has been deployed, if someone here didn't know it already: http://obuoy.datatransport.org/monitor#buoy4/webcam

I'll take a WAG on march 22nd and 13.000001 Megasquare-km, and then start to argue of the inaccuracy of the measurements :-P.

"I was astounded that Arctic methane emissions seem to be a winter phenomena" some reasons would be: 1)The lack of sun (photosynthesis stops) 2)the ice cover (lack of atmospheric mixing of surface waters) it's not unusual in ice covered lakes for fish to die of lack of oxygen in winter, drilling a hole in the ice may even attract some of the fish near it in some lakes.

They've seen a polar bear at some +74N. And the going has been tough intermittently, pack ice is too rough on locations and headwinds make it difficult to get long daily trips. diary (french) at: http://www.sebroubinet.eu/la-voie-du-pole_nouvelles.html