Friday, July 17, 2020

Laptev Sea melt madness, Goodbye Waves have no time to be artistic

~ Most dramatic record pace melting on Russian side of Pole
~Visual record shows particular "Goodbye Waves"


NASA EOSDIS July 12 to 17,  Laptev sea ice retreats at stunning speeds,  mostly by melting, as exemplified by Goodbye Waves,  not having a chance to twirl and be creatively beautiful.    Never noticed this before on such a wide scale.

East Siberian sea during the same time period,  thawing is just as frenetic,  the G. Waves  are likely from much thicker sea ice pans,  so the twisting around or final act of sea ice can be seen.   We can indirectly surmise what kind of ice it was by the last moments of its existence or life,  a pan of sea ice includes a world of beings all dependent of it.  WD July 17, 2020

Thursday, July 16, 2020

North Pole compression & pond lakes, Atlantic Front open water intrusion

~The current record pace sea ice melting has a significant wind component. 

NASA Eosdis recent July 13-16 North Pole look was granted by lesser cloud cover.  What was observed is sea ice moving towards North of Alaska,  along with huge top of sea ice lake ponds.
Compressed sea ice by the persistent wind driven flow.  Any change of winds would trigger decompression, wide open features are just about to start.


Just Northeast of Spitzbergen Island, North Atlantic front action continues unabated, at remarkable speeds (July 7 to 16).   With a mixture of sea ice movement and rapid melting exemplified by "Goodbye Waves" remnants of about to completely vanish pack ice swiftly thawed by very warm sea surface temperatures.  Again a different wind venue would trigger even more melting because of the just created and warming sea water.   WD July 16 , 2020

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Atlantic front; very rapid melting

~A look at some record pace melting. 

   EOSDIS July 11-12   2020 Just North of Spitzbergen,  look and place mouse pointer on the "Goodbye Wave Peninsula"  lower centre right of animation,  the basic nature of Goodbye Waves stages of melting demonstrate huge pans of sea ice, 1 km wide vanishing in a day.  The winds on July 12 were light in the photo sector.  The sea current is somewhat rapid,  approximately 1 km and hour towards the NW.  A weak cloud cover is also key in more rapid thawing at this time of summer.   The same speedy liquifying can't be repeated,  slowed and  hampered by denser pack ice (colder sea surface ) and denser clouds near Franz Jozef Islands.  WD July 12, 2020


April 20 sea ice projection

~Written about,  sketch omitted then
~Appears to be coming through


Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Arctic sea ice calamity, Arctic Ocean warm High

~If memory serves, not observed this consistent since 2007
~The only reason possible is warmer sea temperatures and thinner sea ice

CMC July 7 SST,  Artificial Intelligence doesn't like lake Baikal and East Siberian sea temperature readings.  But likely accurate. Warm sea surface temperatures
may contribute to a stable High on the Pacific side of the North Pole quadrant,  this I did see coming but only for a short time,  not as long as a week or 2.  It is a disaster for sea ice:



Given that the Atlantic front has collapsed, the flow of mainly pack sea ice will be dumped at a monstrous rate,  especially with the North Atlantic Low ideally located.    The CMC July 8 surface map also depicts something not common,
it is a cold surface High over sea ice,  but very warm High aloft.  It means an upper air heat source.  The origins of this more than one week old anticyclone are equally interesting..... 




.......    It simply appeared (U. of Wyoming),  on June 30 past.  Likely formed in part by the flow of North Russian Urals hot air pumped by a similar if not the same Low pressure vicinity Novaya Zemlya.

This warm aloft High seems quite stable.   A disaster for sea ice is in the making....  WD July 8 2020

Sunday, June 28, 2020

Massive off Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere "Big Lead" event just occurred

~Unusual since it is not moon related
~A sudden apparently surface wind easily broke up a once consolidated multi-year sea ice with ease

 
The thickest strongest Sea ice is getting pulverized quickly,  mainly by consistent North of Greenland high pressure giving clockwise winds,  with other factors such as tides.   Reminiscent of 2016 action,  or March 1989,  but the latter was related to massive synergistic tidal forcing under very frozen sea icescape.  2020 June 26, 27 and 28 action was unequally caused by melted snow accelerating true ice surface melting.  This event appears highly regionalized,  suggesting a rather poor consolidated state of sea ice everywhere else.  WD June 28, 2020

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Atlantic Front sea ice collapsing

~With top of sea ice snow curtain melted,  the status at the Atlantic Front is revealed
~It is broken up ,  ready to move anywhere, at the winds whim

    Deep past the Atlantic ice front between Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Islands lies a state of loose pack ice, ready for the clearing,  only if the winds team up with the sea current.  And so it is just a matter of synergistic coincidence as to whether a massive melt will show at end of September.  NASA EOSDIS June 20-23 2020 loop  depicts a rather unsteady flow, moving one way one day,  the opposite direction the next. Once a certain towards the South wind pattern hits this region for about 1 week,  the clearing will be done.  leaving sea ice even further towards the Pole more vulnerable. 
The survival of 2020 sea ice is rather precarious at this moment.  WD June 24,2020

Monday, June 15, 2020

Jupiter has Arctic sea ice "Goodbye Waves" , the red version

~Geophysics can be filled with symmetrical effects,  some having same or wildly differing causes
~Arctic Goodbye waves,  seen here: http://eh2r.blogspot.com/2016/09/wrangel-bridge-waves-away-goodbye.html  , are a terribly photogenic,  even artistic expressions from sea ice melting away. 
~But Jupiter is no Earth.  Or is there solids on top of its dense gaseous atmosphere?


    Thanks "New Horizons"  view here. Something on Jupiter looks familiar?  EH2r has dealt with this before:

  Although Jupiter is much more colourful,  the look is pretty much the same.  Here we can offer what is happening on top of Jupiter's dense (almost liquid?)  atmosphere.  "Goodbye Waves"  were once majestic sea ice just about vanished by melting,  leaving a trail of salts, biomass and fresh water not readily mixing with Arctic sea water,  but carried by sea currents giving the stylish twists and turns only found where there is an interface exposing the physics of two differing layers not readily intermixing.  2020 sea ice melt season will be great and perhaps will offer other planetary looks,  spectacular but too much of it is pretty bad from always pretty planet Earth.  WD June 15 2020

Friday, June 5, 2020

Assessing the impossible by other means; 2020 has a faster snow melting pace.

~A careful look at Northern Greenland and Ellesmere reveals the early melting pace
~2019-2020 was a winter with lots of snow
~Most of it gone where it should have been remaining,  that is if you look at surface temperatures and sea ice extent numbers.
~The mystery white mask of 2020 season is melting/sublimating away

   The first thing we remember about 2012 sea ice melt season,  was the cyclone over the Arctic Ocean on August 5.  But 2012 was also a year with a more normal snow cover as opposed to 2020.
The thing about Arctic snow over ice and land is that it is spread out quite evenly by the winds which may span in the same direction for hundreds of Kilometres. 2020 spread out was more important, by about a factor of 2 compared to 2012.   So you might think,  2012, the year with greatest sea ice melt on record should show more land than any other known year at an early melt season date,  say June 3:



NASA EOSDIS June 3 animation for years 2012 to 2020.  We see mainly  Ellesmere Island and a bit of Northeast Greenland,  the perineal coldest area of the Northern Hemisphere, doesn't quite matter which month you may chose.  Turns out 2012,  the year with less winter/spring snow precipitation, has more snow than 2020 on same June 3.   This is a very significant finding.  Less snow on ground means less fog or low clouds as well, 2012 shows that,  unlike cloudier 2020 still in progress of melting a once thicker snow carpet.  All the other June 3's from 2013 to 2019,  had over all significantly more snow coverage.

   The 2012 2020 comparison leaves no doubt about current faster snow melting, despite a cloudier 2020 late Spring.  WD June 5 2020

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

History of a recent Rogue vortice from a positioning to North Pole Polar Vortex

~Extraordinary latest geography of the shrinking Polar Vortex
 ~A North Polar centric Polar Vortex has one deleterious effect:  extra sunshine for vulnerable sea ice.
~Skinny elongated P.V.  are very vulnerable to become a Rogue vortice at extreme Southern limits. 


Keep in mind of extreme South light purple limits of the following:  (it mainly implies the position of the Polar jet stream)


With 3 rogue vortices  at once  from a shrinking Polar Vortex,  the biggest strongest one formed over Hudson Bay on May 5, becoming smaller the P.V. has no strong cold core capable of repulsing significant cyclones moving Northwards.  These cyclones warm the Vortex on its Eastern elongated sides  and pushes broken segments of it away from the cold center core.  Once isolated, cold vortices warm quickly,  rapidly reducing their lifespans.  Although the Hudson Bay Rogue vortice  may not have seemed to have warmed quickly enough on the ground,  having created some chilling snow flakes in extreme Eastern Southern Canada.  However the elongated nature of a vanishing Polar Vortex can create such freak weather events. 

What you just witnessed is the positioning of the core cold P.V. center towards the North Pole. What does this mean? In all practical terms a North Pole centric summer P.V. implies more sunshine hitting the thickest Northern Hemisphere sea ice in existence:



CMC May 12, 2020  1800 UTC surface analysis.  Note the Cold Temperature North Pole does not hover over a Cyclone or Anticyclone,  it usually is found in between these massive atmospheric pressure features,  the sun shines more in these huge area ,  smack over thickest sea ice.  This is not good for its survival.  Especially since the P.V. cold core is not about to move somewhere else fast:

Same area 6 hours later 500 mb level CMC analysis.  The pressure systems are very much vertically aligned with the jet stream around the light purple extreme Southern perimeter of the NOAA animation above.  A stable configuration settling the Cold Temperature North Pole over the North Pole.  WD May 12, 2020