The first storm of the summer appears on it's way. August 3rd/4th. This pic is for Aug 4th. It looks like a low with a center of around 975mb. https://ibb.co/i40wpk

Just looking at the GFS forecasts for the next 2 weeks, and it looks like there's a storm coming (no surprise there). But there are also signs of a reverse dipole becoming established where the high pressure is over Siberia and the low pressure over the Beaufort. I say reverse dipole, because typically we see a dipole where the High is over Beaufort and the Low is over Siberia. I've been observing the Arctic Sea Ice for about 5 years now, and it's the first time I've seen this in the middle of summer. Maybe somebody has seen this before? Just to speculate on the a reverse dipole would have at this stage: * ice pushed away from Svalbard towards the warmer waters on the pacific side * possibly an ice-free Nord Pole! * better for retaining ice than a classic dipole that pushes ice to its death in the Fram Strait. https://ibb.co/gL3B4k

@Hans - i noticed the same thing. A big swing. If you look at the sea ice thickness here, http://ocean.dmi.dk/anim/index.php, you can see that a big chunk of the Pacific side is going to melt out before August. Today was the first time i became convinced that 2017 finish below 2012 - driven by the Pacific side. I don't even think it needs August storms now - it will melt out in place.

IJIS now below 2012 for the same date. Still some ice left in Hudson Bay and the Greenland sea, so I expect another day or two of 100,000 km drops. After that, it will probably slow down relative to 2012 unless the Kara sea goes quickly.

Hey Patrick. Well done on being way ahead of mass media. BBC covered it today. 260 sq/km is their estimate of the size of it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10900235

Wow Neven, surprised you're not a native speaker, your english is that good. Nice blog, btw.

Interesting August coming up, where I expect lots of ice loss in the Beaufort + Chukchi seas. The massive wildfires in eastern siberia will be depositing a lot of soot on the ice pack - see http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2010213.terra.4km From Aug 6 for at least 5 days, it is expected that a large high pressure will sit over the pole: http://weather.unisys.com/gfsx/9panel/gfsx_500p_9panel_nhem.html That will cause in-situ melting, although the sun aint so strong. However, the soot from the fires should increase the albedo effect. The high-pressure weather is not the di-pole anomoly setup. No warm air will be sucked up over the pole. In fact, the expected high pressure is the opposite of the typical low pressure over the pole at this time of year.

@: Lord Soth The coriolis effect creates the prevailing westerly winds in the northern hemisphere. Hence you should go around the world eastwards (assuming the Greenwich longitudinal system). The best place to start work have been somewhere like Petropavlovsk-kamchatsky, and do the NWP first. However, as those guys are Norwegian, they left from Oslo. They'll probably have to wait a few weeks for the NEP to open. I reckon they'll make it anyway.

@Artful Dodger: I think most people who read this blog, myself included, know the difference between sea ice extent and volume.

We are now behind 2009 in ice-melt. 2009 had 7,101,719, we are at 7,122,813. Weather outlook for next 10 days is not good for melt either: http://weather.unisys.com/gfsx/9panel/gfsx_500p_9panel_nhem.html Low pressure to dominate the arctic basin. On a related note, there's not much activity at intrade.com for betting on whether the ice minimum for 2010 will be higher than 2009.

@Artful Dodger: according to the paper, the Bering strait only pumps 1/3 of the heat of the atlantic through the fram strait. Have you seen something I missed? Are heat flows suddenly increasing over the Bering strait? Cloud cover looks like it will continue for the Arctic Basin for the next 10 days, so I fail to see how this looks like 2007. What am I missing?

There's a good brief description of the Arctic dipole anomaly in the June 2010 update on http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/. It's a fancy name for an unusual weather pattern with a low over siberia and a high over the Canadian archipeligo. The "normal" weather pattern for the north pole is that air circulates around the pole. This somewhat insulates the north pole from warmer air further south. The Arctic dipole anomaly draws in air from the south over the pole, and then pushes the air southwards through the fram strait (pushing ice with it). For increased melts, we need more sun, IMHO, not intense lows.

Regarding the unisys weather forecast map, we can see that a low pressure system is expected to form over the Kara sea around July 24, intensifying to July 28. It will push some ice out the Fram strait for a couple of days, and then probably move towards the Beaufort sea. It won't have the effect of pulling warm air over the arctic from the south like the Arctic Dipole Anomaly, as it looks like winds will circulate within the Arctic ocean. So, lots more cloud cover when the last of the really strong sun is here. However, the low is quite low - like a north atlantic autumn store (983mb), so strong winds will break up floes and if there are warm currents this will promote ice loss later in the summer.

Looking at the Unisys 10 day forecasts, it looks like there will be even more intense low pressure systems covering the arctic. http://weather.unisys.com/gfsx/9panel/gfsx_500p_9panel_nhem.html Short-term outlook is, therefore, for no increase in the rate of melting in July.