Monthly Archives: July 2017

The sea ice in the Antarctic is at minimum extent in February and expands through to mid September.

This movie shows the Antarctic sea ice extent from 1 Feb to 25 July 2017. The data come from the DMSP SMMI sensor, and it shows the expansion of the sea ice as winter progresses.

 

For me the stand out feature is how late the sea ice expands in the Bellingshausen Sea. I think this is a feature of the super low sea ice last year, and the amount of time it took to lose the extra heat absorbed by the ocean.

The NSDIC data set shows the sea ice is lower than we've seen before by satellite.

Antarctic sea ice extent to 26 July 2017 from NSIDC.
Antarctic sea ice extent to 26 July 2017 from NSIDC.

Currently the Antarctic sea ice extent is ~450 thousand km2 below 1981-2010 median.

~7-8 weeks of sea ice expansion to go.

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The sea ice in the Arctic is at maximum extent in February and retreats through to mid September.

This movie shows the Arctic sea ice extent from 1 Feb to 25 July 2017. The data come from the DMSP SMMI sensor, and it shows the retreat of the sea ice as summer progresses.

You can see from the NSDIC that Arctic sea ice extent is tracking close to the 2012 minimum, and about ~1.6 million km2 below 1981-2010 median.

Arctic sea ice extent to 26 July 2017 from NSIDC.
Arctic sea ice extent to 26 July 2017 from NSIDC.

To see where the sea ice "isn't" you can see the gif I made for a post last week.

The mean Arctic sea ice for the years 1989-93 on 27 July, the sea ice concentration on 27 July 2017 and the difference between the two data sets. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.
The mean Arctic sea ice for the years 1989-93 on 27 July, the sea ice concentration on 27 July 2017 and the difference between the two data sets. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.

In that post I said

Things that stand out for me are the virtually open water in the Barents and Kara Seas.

~6-8 weeks of melt to go...

Today the NASA Earth Observatory Website has published a beautiful image from 29 June 2017 of Hudson Bay in a post called Lingering Sea Ice on Hudson Bay.

Lingering Sea Ice on Hudson Bay
Lingering Sea Ice on Hudson Bay. Image NASA Earth Observatory.

To the untrained eye the sea ice in the bay looks like cloud, but if you look at the still from the movie above on the same day, the sea ice is clear.

Hudson Bay 28 June 2017
Hudson Bay 28 June 2017

The NASA blog post talks about how polar bears were hunting in this sea ice.

 

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I thought it was time to look at the sea ice data as the summer Arctic melt proceeds.

The image below shows the mean sea ice extent 1989-93 on 22 July, the sea ice extent 22 July 2017, and the difference between the two data sets. Reds imply less sea ice than the mean 1989-93, and blues an increased sea ice extent.

The mean Arctic sea ice for the years 1989-93 on 22 July, the sea ice concentration on 22 July 2017 and the difference between the two data sets. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.
The mean Arctic sea ice for the years 1989-93 on 22 July, the sea ice concentration on 22 July 2017 and the difference between the two data sets. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.

As we would expect, compared with the 1989-93 data the sea ice edge is consistently further north. Things that stand out for me are the virtually open water in the Barents and Kara Seas. This region was very slow to freeze over in the autumn and winter of 2016, so I would have expected the sea ice there to be relatively thin at the end of the Arctic winter.

Also the Chukchi Sea is opening.

Overall the area of the Arctic Ocean covered with sea ice is low. Some will note it is currently above the record low in 2012, but it's only 90,000 kmabove that. To me that is not that significant.

Arctic sea ice extent to 22 July 2017 from NSIDC.
Arctic sea ice extent to 22 July 2017 from NSIDC.

What is significant is the sea ice 22 July 2017 is ~1.7 million kmbelow the median extent from 1981-2010.

I looked a couple of days ago at the sea ice in the North West Passage (19 July 2017), and it is starting to open up.

The North West Passage. Image 22 July 2017 from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite.
The North West Passage. Image 19 July 2017 from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite.

The yellow line traces out possible ship routes through the North West Passage and whilst there is still ~1200 km of sea ice on that route, when you compare the region to the longer term data you can see how low this is compared the historical record.

The difference in the sea ice in the NW Passage on 22 July 2017 compared with the mean for the years 1989-93 on 22 July. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.
The difference in the sea ice in the NW Passage on 22 July 2017 compared with the mean for the years 1989-93 on 22 July. Blue shades imply more sea ice and reds imply decreased sea ice compared with the mean. The original data come from the DMSP SMMI data set at the NSIDC.

It may be this year that the passage may not open at all, but taken together the two plots are a a good example of how we can expect the north west passage to become consistently open as the Arctic continues to warm.

 

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Project MIDAS shows us that the iceberg A68 is about one trillion tonnes.

This is the Antarctic Peninsula and the outline of A68 from the satellite image on 14 July 2017 shown in black. The ice front is from the Bedmap2 data set (so a little out of date), and the bathymetry from the IBCSO data set.

Larsen C Ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula and the location and area of iceberg A68. The outline of A68 is derived from a satellite image of the ice shelf 12 July 2017.
Larsen C Ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula and the location and area of iceberg A68. The outline of A68 is derived from a satellite image of the ice shelf 14 July 2017.

There are some astonishingly beautiful processed satellite images of A68 out there such as this one via ESA from Adrian Luckman and the excellent Project MIDAS.

One image I haven't seen is how good is knowledge of the bathymetry around A68?

The iceberg is going to drift and likely ground quite quickly. (I wrote about this on the conversation a while ago: When an Antarctic iceberg the size of a country breaks away, what happens next?)

In the map below, the shaded colour is the distance of any point on the sea bed to the closest actual depth measurement.

The distance to the nearest good depth measurement around the Antarctic Peninsula.
The distance to the nearest good depth measurement around the Antarctic Peninsula.

So the dark blue stripes labelled in the Weddell Sea are actually ship tracks - and the dark colours are good depth data. These measurements will have been made by icebreaker.

Just in front of A68 there is a very large area where no ship has been within ~80 km.

One small note on the size. I digitized the iceberg from a satellite image (a KML File can be downloaded). On twitter today there were satellite images showing fractures already.

But Martin O'Leary of the MIDAS team posted today on twitter that to the untrained eye looks like iceberg, is very likely fast ice (so thick sea ice that is "fast" to A68 - but only a few metres thick.)