https://storify.com/icey_mark/giving-a-talk-at-the-nerc-science-large-grants-pan
https://storify.com/icey_mark/giving-a-talk-at-the-nerc-science-large-grants-pan
https://storify.com/icey_mark/climateofgavin-scottadamssays-tweetstorm
The polynya I saw forming in early February is still clear, and very large in the Southern Weddell Sea. At the moment it is more than than 80,000 km2, although there is clearly a lot of young sea ice covering a large part of the polynya.
In my original post I said this was likely formed by winds from the Ronne Ice Shelf.
Well Dr Stef Lhermitte (Delft) has put together the most amazing movie showing the development of the polynya over January and February. It shows satellite sea ice data with winds from the ECMWF overlain.
You can clearly see the winds pushing the sea ice away from the ice shelf as time progresses.
It is just as @StefLhermitte said in his tweet yesterday:
Trying to understand the geographic nature of the very low Antarctic sea ice extent I made the following animation:
The highlight issues in the graphic are the clear lack of sea ice in the Amundsen/Ross Seas and the Southern Ocean off Dronning Maud land. (If you are not familiar with the names off the seas / locations see the map below).
The Weddell Sea is has a relatively compressed sea ice cover this year - but it's clear there is large inter-annual variability.
Off Wilkes Land the sea ice is heavier this year - and it's easy for this to get lost in the headline story around the very low extent. There are several Antarctic research stations along this coast:
The French Station Dumont d’Urville,
Two Australian Stations of Casey and Davis,
and the Russian Mirny Station.
Here is the NSDIC Antarctic sea ice extent 1 March 2017.
And finally the promised map from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) with regional seas and other features marked.