The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Three weeks into June, Arctic ice is still plentiful The graph below show ice extents up to yesterday, June 23, 2017, day 174.
After a dip, 2017 is again above the decadal average, 300k km2 greater than 2007, and 500k km2 larger than 2016. SII 2017 is presently showing 400k km2 less ice than MASIE does with its higher resolution. 2016 went below 10M km2 for the first time on its way to an annual minimum of 4.2M in September.
Barents Sea shows a surplus of 2017 sea ice extents inside the Arctic Circle. The graph below shows Barents this year compared to average and other years.
The black line is average for the last 11 years. 2007 in purple appears close to an average year. 2014 had the highest annual extent in Barents Sea, due to higher and later maximums, holding onto ice during the summer, and recovering quickly. In contrast, 2016 was the lowest annual extent, melting out early and recovering later. 2017 in blue started out way behind, but grew rapidly to reach average, and then persisted longer to exceed even 2014. It may yet beat out 2014 as the highest in the last 11 years.
What a difference a year makes.
The table below shows day 174 ice extents in total and by regions for 2017 compared to the decadal average and 2007.
| Region | 2017174 | Day 174 Average |
2017-Ave. | 2007174 | 2017-2007 |
| (0) Northern_Hemisphere | 10526281 | 10452265 | 74016 | 10222886 | 303395 |
| (1) Beaufort_Sea | 879223 | 950985 | -71762 | 937004 | -57781 |
| (2) Chukchi_Sea | 654738 | 779757 | -125019 | 702860 | -48122 |
| (3) East_Siberian_Sea | 995761 | 1050504 | -54742 | 991145 | 4616 |
| (4) Laptev_Sea | 802192 | 761406 | 40785 | 698410 | 103781 |
| (5) Kara_Sea | 684120 | 650542 | 33578 | 687443 | -3323 |
| (6) Barents_Sea | 223133 | 150741 | 72392 | 206816 | 16317 |
| (7) Greenland_Sea | 558685 | 549299 | 9386 | 549654 | 9031 |
| (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence | 713168 | 627004 | 86164 | 624502 | 88666 |
| (9) Canadian_Archipelago | 788679 | 790846 | -2167 | 780041 | 8637 |
| (10) Hudson_Bay | 961113 | 880059 | 81054 | 810482 | 150632 |
| (11) Central_Arctic | 3245726 | 3213273 | 32452 | 3219126 | 26599 |
| (12) Bering_Sea | 3489 | 21931 | -18442 | 5743 | -2254 |
| (13) Baltic_Sea | 0 | 9 | -9 | 0 | 0 |
| (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk | 15063 | 24399 | -9335 | 7983 | 7080 |
You can see that Pacific melting is producing deficits to average that are more than offset by surpluses elsewhere. Bering and Okhotsk started first, but are now inconsequential. BCE ( Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian) combined are about 250k km2 below average. On the Atlantic side, the largest surpluses appear in Barents, Baffin and Hudson Bay, while the Central Arctic is still at its annual maximum.
For more on why Barents Sea matters see Barents Icicles
Meanwhile, some Newfoundland harbours are still full of ice.
Ice in the harbour – Raleigh, Great Northern Peninsula. Still blocked by ice a week ago. h/t Newfoundsander
I’ll be honest. I’ve been watching ice melt and regrow since 2007 and the Jacques Cousteau style commentry about the life of baby ice surviving the summer to become a yearling in its first winter. I still don’t understand what clues portend a good or a bad ice season. I know a lot of ice is lost blowing out of the Fram Strait, even in winter but last year I expected to be good because there was a lot of circular wind and not so much southerly drift. I do know that high pressure in the Uk tends to keep the Arctic winds heading east and low pressure systems here see a waterfall of ice along Greenland. Last years wind pattern did keep the ice close to the Russian shore, away from the exit but the ice didn’t rebound as I expected in the winter.
This year the winds have been low and circulating in the Arctic but the ice is well broken up. It’s thicker through the Canadian Archi… Archep…. islands and up against them in the Archtic but the ice is thinner and vanishing fast from the Russian side. The possition of the ice isn’t good for keeping it in the Arctic. But then again – I still don’t understand what causes a good or bad year.
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Tiny, the whole thing is fascinating because it is so unpredictable. Alarmists believe Arctic ice must decline because temperatures must rise because CO2 keeps increasing. But actually, in any year the extents vary with the intrusion of warm water (mostly Atlantic), with winds, and with weather (cloudiness, especially). CO2 has not much to do with it. But since they regard it as a sign of global warming, it beats watching.
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I meant “bears watching.”
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I forgot to mention that even warmists are now acknowledging that internal climate processes are driving at least half of ice extent decline in last 2 decades.
See https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/03/17/honey-i-shrunk-the-arctic-ice-not/
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Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
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