Hi Lewis, Good summary of the year-to-date. Thank-you for all your effort! Slight errata: you wrote "first-year ice ... is more prone to melting than multi-year ice, partly because of lower brine content." Of course, that should read "higher brine content" for 1st-yr sea ice. Brine rejection continues for about 3 yrs by when MYI seaice is mostly brine-free and is highly resilient to melting. Most MYI is lost through transport out of the Arctic via the transpolar drift, rather than melting out in-situ. Or at least it used to work that way before the southern Beaufort sea turned into the place MYI ice goes to die. Oh, the changes we have seen in our life times. Cheers, Lodger

Hi Sam, Congrats on your first post on the ASI blog! Keep up the good work in Tuk, and make sure to "get the t-shirt" ;^) Cheers, Lodger

Hi folks, Okay, here's the situation: We've got two "D"'s here. One is a clearly a troll, ie: http://profile.typepad.com/d124703635257857805 The other "D" is George / FishOutOfWater, who is a long-time commenter of good standing: http://profile.typepad.com/d105296734383478540 So then, a few things: 1. Appologies to George/F-O-O-W for confusing you with this "Other D", 2. Neven, time to use your Admin Powers to reset George's Username properly. 3. "Other D" now on IGNORE. Cheers, Lodger

Pardon for the HDVC ref above, of course I meant HVDC, a high-voltage, direct current (HVDC) electric power transmission system (also called a power super highway or an electrical super highway ;^) P.P.S. George: "I'm too short for this shit" - Platoon - YouTube Cheers, Lodger

Hi Folks, To wit, how best DO you spend TERRA-BUCK$ to power the planet and avoid climate catastrophy? China's State Grid is proposing a $50 Trillion world-wide electrical grid to make renewable energy available via HDVC, even when it's not windy on your side of the mountain or sunny on your side of the planet. Certainly, Africa will be all-in for a Global power grid project: (click this image for the IEEE proposal) Remember the Yuan is now a world-wide Reserve Currency ($$$=JOB$). So China and Africa gives us two regions separated by the required 8 time zones (120° longitude), then joined to the European Supergrid. Now we just need one more somewhere in the America's. Oh say, I hear Mexico wants to build a wall solar farm, and make China pay for it. Potentually, Hair-Force One remains grounded the U.S. declines to participate, so energy from Mexico may have to go South to Brazil and on to Antarctica, but that could also have advantages (beyond moving U.N. HQ to Brussels ;^) More on Antarctica in my next comment... Cheers, Lodger P.S. Fish/D/George, the 1st rule when you're in a hole is "STOP DIGGING!" C02 cuts must come first. Deal with the cause, because Big Oil will just use solar shades as an excuse to burn more shit.

Rob Dekker wrote | December 29, 2016 at 08:48 "Do you have any evidence that an ice free winter will occur 5 years after the first ice free summer?" Hi Rob, Well of course there is no evidence (given that we are talking about a future event ;^) but there is recent analysis supporting similar scenarios: Bathiany S, Notz D, Mauritsen T, Rädel G, Brovkin V. On the mechanism of Arctic winter sea ice collapse. Journal of Climate. 2016 Apr 4;29:2703-19. The authors examine the transition from a seasonally ice-covered Arctic to an Arctic Ocean that is sea ice free year-round under increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. They conclude that loss of Arctic winter sea ice area may occur roughly twice as quickly as the preceding loss of summer sea ice area for the same warming rate. In two of the models, several million square kilometers of winter sea ice are lost within only one decade. Cheers, Lodger P.S. CAPITAL work on the PV vs. Solar Shade business case analysis. This idea just SHOUTS out for its own blog post. Are you up for a Guest Authorship? 8^)

Pardon for the mal-formed link in my last comment. Here is a citiation to the full article, first published 14 July 2016: Irvine, Peter J., et al. "An overview of the Earth system science of solar geoengineering." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 7.6 (2016): 815-833. Cheers, Lodger

Hi folks, We seem to rehash the idea of solar shade geo-imagineering here ever few years. Here's some highlights why it's a bad idea: The L1 Lagrange point is unstable. Non-powered objects placed in that orbit will not stay there. So much for the $1 Trillion plan to place millions of 1 gram, 1 m^2 reflectors there; won't work. That same $1 Trillion DOES buy about 2 TW of new terrestrial solar PV at current prices, about 17,500 TWh/yr or close to 10% of the world's current energy consumption. Think EROEI. A solar shade that MIGHT mitigate the radiative imbalance part (~1.8%) of climate change also reduces solar PV output in proportion. Will your country chip in an extra $18B to make up the shortfall in energy production? Solar shades don't mitigate energy imbalance in a linear way, they also change rainfall patterns and could interfere with the monsoon. Does India still have a strategic nuclear deterrence force on standby to respond to external threats? Arctic amplification continues unchecked as the magnititude of the albedo flip of a open Arctic ocean overwhelms the piddling local reducion in insolation under the (too late to matter) solar shades Orbiting solar shades in particular and geo-imagineering in general are specious arguments by the do little/do nothing crowd. "It's okay to keep burning shit because we have a get-out-of-jail card." It's the worst kind of magical thinging, it will not work, and it will not happen. Instead we are like the mugging victums who have a gun to their heads, and are arguing about who is the best most affordable brain surgeon. Here's an idea instead: Let's stop burning shit, and work with nature instead of against it. Yeah, let's talk about how we do that. Cheers, Lodger

Hi folks, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays! And a special thanks to Neven and all the Regulars who keep this blog (and the Forum) relevant, and who make the pair a "must-read" meeting place for the Arctic. Best wishes for 2017! Cheers, Lodger

Abel Adamski | November 12, 2016 at 10:01 Does anyone know what is happening to the JAXA and Bremmen sea ice feeds, have been off apparently due to server issues since 10 Nov. Hi Abel, The Arctic Data archive System posted this to their Twitter feed on Nov 10: 現在、ADS、次期サービスの準備のため、メンテナンス中です。 ... which is Kanji for roughly "Currently, ADS is under maintenance for the preparation of the next service." Sounds like some upgrades in the works, wot? Cheers, Lodger

VaughnA | November 09, 2016 at 22:38 Neven [snip] Hopefully you can continue in some capacity and/or partly pass the torch to another competent person to continue this dialogue. Relax folks, Neven isn't retiring. This is just his annual Winter hibernation. He'll be back monthly(ish) with PIOMAS updates, and to start a new Open Thread. Cheers, and have fun! Lodger

Ah, come on LADS! Would Boromir quit? That's not the way into Valhalla! ;^) Cheers, and it has been GREAT fun. (Respect!) Lodger

Hi folks, What a tragic loss for his family, friends, and the science community. He will be sorely missed, but never forgotten. Full Scientist Interviews: Andrew Slater - Aug 2012 Does anyone know what happened? Feel free to send a PM to me on the Forum if you don't feel comfortable sharing here. Best regards, Lodger RIP Drew.

Hi folks, JAXA's five-yr mission for GCOM-W1 (the bird AMSR2 flys on) will be complete in July 2017. While JAXA hopes the instrument will continue to provide data for some time afterward, we will be solidly into 'bonus-minutes' by the 2017 SIE minimum. So we may not be have pole-hole issues at all, more like '89 GHz data hole' issues. In fairness, AMSR-E operated nearly 11 years (h/t Mitsubishi Electric) until the bearings seized in the fall of 2012. So we may get lucky again (if we do, I'm buying another VCR). Cheers, Lodger

Hi folks, Yes indeed, nihilism is the flip side of denial and should be one of the 5 stages of grief. But even if you know you're going to hit the wall, it's important to hit the brakes. I think we'll be lucky if we even manage to take our collective foot off the gas before the sea ice is gone. But action remains important. Four years ago, a friend argued that it was already too late for mitigation, and we should spend our money on adaptation. I think his house flooded 3 months later. Some thngs are beyond our ability to adapt. Like when a 7 year old shakes the candy machine, which then falls, crushing him. Whoops, shudda wudda cudda. It's prescience like that expressed most succinctly by that prophet of pugalism Mike Tyson: "everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth". To close, I'd remind folks (or inform new comers) that we first discussed the 'North Hole' issue way back during the 2010 melt season. IJIS (the joint U Alaska/JAXA group) made the following comment: Please note that this area is also counted as sea-ice cover in our estimation of sea-ice extent. We may change the policy (i.e., filling the gap with full coverage of sea ice) in the near future due to the recent drastic reduction of Arctic sea ice. We will announce this if it is implemented. Neven has a tag for blog posts on this issue, North Hole. Cheers, Lodger

viddaloo wrote | September 15, 2016 at 00:39 Well, I, for one, am not ready to call the Arctic Sea Ice melt season minimum quite yet Hi v, (hi folks) Certainly the Arctic cyclone of 2016 hasn't spun down yet. It's still maintaining a temperature inversion between the 500 hPa and 300 hPa levels over the CAA. (these 2 charts show that it's about the same temperature at 5.500m and at 10.000m, or between about 18,000ft and 30,000 ft) Met 101 tells us when a cooler low layer is overridden by a warmer upper layer, net upward radiation of heat approaches zero. As a consequence, little heat is lost to space while under this inversion, and the surface is thus insulated. BTW, this has been been the state throughout GAC2016. Without a rapid freeze-up, the oldest MY sea ice in the Arctic remains in peril via advection from the CAB thru the CAA and thus South to oblivion. Indeed, the early freeze-up of seasonal sea ice on the European side means nothing. FYI all melts out again the following Summer (earlier and earlier it seems). The [b]WHOLE GAME[/b] is the [b]MYI[/b]. When it's gone, it's a new climate regime in the Arctic: Seasonal sea ice followed by increasing lenghts of ice-free (read stormy) conditions. So enjoy the Fall, and keep watching the MYI export. Personally, I hang on each word written by Werther, with his amazing CAD ice-tracking efforts. The ability to track individual ice flows vectors from passive microwave sources is IMHO invaluable. Thanks for all your contributions, Werther! My guess? I est we lose > 400K km^2 of MYI thru advection before the next melt season begins. We shall see, it will be a interesting Fall/Winter indeed. Cheers, Mate! Lodger

Pardon, Dingos ate my Baby... 18Z EnvCda N.pole Cheers, Lodger

Szívesen, Andy Lee! Did you see the GINORMOUS iceburg off the port side of the C.S. on the far-left of the 14:45 PM port-side image? Must be 10 m in the air, so wot 100m keel to sail? I'd like to know which glacier calved that! I couldn't find a Hungarian version of the Stan Rodger's classic "Northwest Passage", but I hope you enjoy this Polish rendition I posted earlier: (you must click on "Kelvin" in the linked image to go to the song on Youtube). Cheers, Lodger P.S. This MUST be a new RECORD: Seven (7) surface lows in the Arctic Basin/Greenland/Nordic seas simultaneously! Hurray in, this image in this link will be over-written after 18z hrs tomorrow!

Hi folks, For the exotourists among you, the Northwest Passage cruise ship Crystal Serenity is about to shoot the Bellot Strait, a 2 km wide 25 km long strait connecting the Gulf of Boothia on the east to Peel Sound on the west. Here is the current view from the bridge (click the image to see it full screen): Also take a look at the scenery to the port (left) and starboard (right) as the ship makes the passage, which should take at least 2 hours. Enjoy! Cheers, Lodger

Hi Nick, Well hmm, say approx. 35 kmh winds with a 1200 km fetch, over 72 hrs? What could possibly go wrong? Reminds me of this scene from LOTR: The Pass of Caradhras. "This will be the death of the Hobbits". By which of course I mean that I hope all the sea bears came ashore early this year in the Beaufort sea. Mortality rates for any mothers with cubs will be appalling during a relentless 2+ week Arctic cyclone. Even big male bears would find it tough to survive a 600 km swim in these conditions. Regards, Lodger

Hi folks, If you thought this melting season was finally grinding to a close, there may be at least one more surprise in store for Arctic watchers. Huricane Gaston is now tracking N. on our favorite Env. Cda N. pole synoptic WX charts (out in the Atlantic at the lattitude of Georgia/N. Carolina as of 18z). Today's 12z GWS model run has the hurricane stalling briefly in the N. Atlantic before coalescing w. the deep low S. of Iceland, then blowing right over top of Reykjavik and N. through the E. Greenland sea to Svalbard. It's still a 10 day forecast though, so YMMV. Could be worse: Yesterday's GSW has Gaston brushing the coast of Norway, blowing overtop of Novaya Zemlya (radiation anyone?) before finally making landfall on the Taymyr peninsula. And then dissipating in the Laptev sea. Ugh. But as always with Arctic amplification and U.S. elections, "objects in (the) mirror are closer than they appear". I'm hoping a record late October minimun shakes loose some votes in the Senate. Cheers, Lodger

Hi folks, Yes indeed shoppers, come see the new models of 'Kelvinators' for 2016. Still available in classic "Arctic White", but now also in the new exciting hybrid model "cold-core at surface/mid levels, with warm-core characteristics at the 200 mb level". Get'em while they last. Arctic sea ice is going fast. Cheers, Lodger

Hi Folks, Regardless of the final Summer minimum this year, the icepack faces another real threat this Fall/Winter. With the current separation of the pack at the Lavtev Bight (from 45E to 135E), there is a real risk that the transpolar drift pushes ALL of the multiyear sea ice from the European sector out of the central Arctic via Fram Straight before the next melt season. Constant bleeding. The loss of multiyear ice over Winter would be devastating, given that it takes 2 years to reform MYI with the appropriate low salitity via the brine rejection mechanism. This leaves the remaining reduced MYI pack (about 2M km^2 or so Werther?) to oppose the forces of any GAC17 or GAC18. OMNIMOUS. Think I go read some Goethe. Cheers, Lodger

Thanks for the update, Neven. I wonder how much warm water has mixed into the surface layer by this nearly-stationary low-pressure field? Oh for $8M and some air-deployable underwater drones! Data is Golden (Blogs r Cheap ;) and either the Louis or Odin is in just the right place to deploy them and collect the data. Or in a pinch launch an USN C-130 from Thule... Very deep sigh if we miss this data. But who knows, we may yet see this data, just knot in real time. Cheers, Lodger

Hi folks, It won't be long before all the sea ice in peripheral seas (ie: Hudson, Baffin, Kara) has melted. Then, with 2012 AMSR2 data coming online July 23, the REAL race can begin. Right now, it's still too close to call. With 2012's sunnier June and 2016's warmer Winter, it may just come down to August weather. Cheers, Lodger P.S. anybody watching Siberian WX/wildfires this Summer? I suspect the 30C temps there in 2012 contributed greatly to the formation, duration, and intensity of GAC2012.