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Nevin, let me add my heartfelt thanks for everything you've done and created here, as well as my best wishes for your 'sustainable lifestyle project.' We're trying to do something of the sort ourselves, albeit toned down a bit, as we're a generation older than you and must plan on lower *personal* energy levels over the next decade or two!
Thanks, too, for the chance to collaborate with you. It was a pleasure and a privilege!
I don't make it by here as often as I used to--more paid employment (good), and a shift of emphasis toward studying and writing more about mitigation strategies (hopefully good, but who knows?) But dropping by is always like visiting a family home. Thanks again for yor role as builder-in-chief of this cyber-home!
Sabbatical (I hope)
I've alluded to it a couple of times already, but I'm really going to take a break from blogging, as I have been struggling with an Arctic burn-out since 2012. On the one hand it's caused by everything that has been and still is going on in the Arctic. The learning curve, the excitement, but mo...
Quite the finish to the melt season! How low can it go? Guess we'll soon know, but this is 'spectacular', all right.
PIOMAS September 2016
Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: Weather conditions in the past month - the (Great?) Arctic Cyclone followed by the Mega-Dipole to be ...
Hi, AbbottIsGone--
One (fruitful, I hope) way to think of the greenhouse effect's patterns of warming is that they don't involve so much actual warming as diminished cooling.
So it's only logical that night-time and winter-time temperatures will be the most affected. A pretty stark example is the DMI 'north of 80' temperature reanalysis: there's little change over the years in summer temps, but marked warming for the winter months.
2016 Arctic cyclone, update 2
So, the storm has been raging for a while now. The latest Environment Canada weather map shows it's at 984 hPa. According to this tweet by PhD climatologist Brian Brettschneider a IABP buoy from the University of Washington measured a lowest central pressure of 966.5 hPa, which is somewhat lower...
It's hard to disagree with Neil's points. One slight addition, though; there is a significant negative feedback which we've previously discussed here: that is that more open water in the fall also means more heat loss from the ocean.
That ties in with the comment about early melt, though--the implication would seem to be that seasons like this one are more damaging than what has bwen typical. Front-load area loss and you maximize the effect of the albedo feedback. Maybe you also increase ocean mixing in the CAB and get more warming at depth, too.
Crisis in the Cryosphere
I recently received an e-mail to draw my attention to a recent two-part feature article on the Scientific American website by Dr. John J. Berger, an independent energy and environmental consultant. The article called Crisis in the Cryosphere is about the changes going on in the world of ice and ...
Apparently not.
Trying again:
Beaufort under relentless (high) pressure
When I wrote the Beaufort under early pressure blog post last month, I didn't quite expect this unprecedented pressure (timing and magnitude) to keep up for so long. High pressure areas tend to be short-lived in the Arctic, but this one was still going strong when the Beaufort quick update was p...
Here's a screen shot of the Fort McMurray fire plume. I was remiss in my earlier comment not to state clearly that the smoke isn't currently reaching the Arctic shore, but rather that it is forecast to do so in the next couple of days (note the date on the screen shot.)
Hopefully this is the correct html:
Beaufort under relentless (high) pressure
When I wrote the Beaufort under early pressure blog post last month, I didn't quite expect this unprecedented pressure (timing and magnitude) to keep up for so long. High pressure areas tend to be short-lived in the Arctic, but this one was still going strong when the Beaufort quick update was p...
"Schnieders", not "Schneiders." Damn autocorrect anyway!
Beaufort under relentless (high) pressure
When I wrote the Beaufort under early pressure blog post last month, I didn't quite expect this unprecedented pressure (timing and magnitude) to keep up for so long. High pressure areas tend to be short-lived in the Arctic, but this one was still going strong when the Beaufort quick update was p...
Another joker thrown into the hand, at least as far as snow cover in the western Canadian Arctic and remaining Beaufort ice are concerned: the smoke plume from the Fort McMurray fire seems to be reaching the shore, according to this:
http://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/
Don't know how long that may last, nor how much deposition may be expected, but if we're looking at a prolonged period of sunny skies, a fine dusting of soot will not help matters any.
(Hat tip to Michael Schneiders for asking the question over at RC.)
Beaufort under relentless (high) pressure
When I wrote the Beaufort under early pressure blog post last month, I didn't quite expect this unprecedented pressure (timing and magnitude) to keep up for so long. High pressure areas tend to be short-lived in the Arctic, but this one was still going strong when the Beaufort quick update was p...
"Stupid"!?!?!?
Really, could a stupid person write this:
I have theorized that if we could somehow bring the 1988 testimony of James Hansen to the volcanic peak of Mauna Loa and drop it into the fiery bowels of the infernal mountain itself, we would finally end the reign of Al Gore for good. It would be an arduous and perilous quest for some brave blog scientists, for Mauna Loa is said to be circled by predator drones controlled by the all seeing eye of Obama. Even more dangerous however is the corrupting nature of logic and facts. The person we send would have to carefully chosen, someone who possesses an inate immunity to reason. I would volunteer to do this myself, but I have been drinking a lot of wine lately and plan to drink quite a bit more.
Mad Max 2: The Arctic Warrior
I started writing this blog post almost two weeks ago, initially wanting to call it Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, as a logical follow-up to the event that I described as Mad Max last year. Max refers to the maximum Arctic sea ice cover that is usually reached around this time. It's Mad when the r...
I've got to take issue with your formulation, Rick, though the overall point is correct.
Stated the way you have done, there would be 'no trend' in the UAH temperature record, for instance: its calculated value is 0.11 C/decade, but if you look at the anomaly values for 1998 (0.42 C) and 1999 (-0.05 C), you will find a 'fluctuation' of 0.47 C, or more than four times the decadal trend. Yet as you know, the reported UAH is indeed robust and statistically significant.
A difference in nonsense
There isn't all that much fake skeptic nonsense going round when it comes to Arctic sea ice. Climate risk deniers rather just ignore the geologic time scale event going on up North that could lead to an ice-free Arctic Ocean within one human lifetime. Still, every now and then an effort is made ...
"…cooler than the air…"
Indeed. Readers may be interested in the investigations of William Charles Wells, who investigated the phenomenon of dew in the 1810s, winning the Royal Society's Rumford Medal for his considerable pains. (Also, later, the admiration of none other than John Tyndall.)
Having considered these “circumstances” affecting the formation of dew, Wells examines the “circumstances” affecting the cold which is dew’s precursor: on clear, still nights, the grass would become much cooler than the air temperature (customarily measured at 4 feet); long grass would cool more than short grass; and wind or cloud tended to eliminate this difference in temperature—although high cloud “would yet frequently allow of the grass being several degrees colder than the air.” The ground beneath the grass would be warmer; metal lying upon the grass tended to be warmer, too.
http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/Global-Warming-Science-In-The-Age-Of-Washington-And-Jefferson-William-Charles-Wells
More on melt ponds
After you've read the blog post below, make sure to check out this web page by one of the co-authors of the Nature paper, and also this page with lots of other Arctic sea ice goodies. --- A really good paper has been published online a couple of days ago on Nature, called September Arctic sea-i...
3.25 If memory serves me correctly, that was my previous guesstimate. Repeating it reflects my assessment that the slow start will not strongly affect the September outcome.
The original rationale was a guesstimate that 2012 did indeed represent a regime change, and that the process of ice loss would end up taking us 10% below the 2012 value.
Crowd-Source Prediction of Mean September Sea Ice Extent (July update)
Each June, July and August, the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook (SIO) collects predictions for the mean extent of Arctic sea ice in September. These predictions come mainly from scientists but also some other people, drawing on a variety of modeling, statistical or subjective methods that each contributo...
Excellent summary, Neven. This bit:
"As the melting season ends, it feels as if things are only beginning. The age of consequences."
...really spoke for me.
ASI 2012 update 11: end or beginning?
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Central to these updates are the daily IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) and Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2011 period (NSIDC has...
Cool! And from a 'bird' designed to deliver information on wind...
But I have to wonder how homogenous this year's data is? Presumably IJIS have done what they can to splice the data as adroitly and as accurately as possible?
Oh well, that won't affect our ability to follow day to day changes--though historical context will remain somewhat problematic, I suspect.
ASI 2012 update 2: no daily data
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Because of the demise of AMSR-E the IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) numbers are no longer central to these updates. Instead I now use Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers and...
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