Northwest Passage - 2017

[jackdale]

Arctic temperatures so far this year



Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut

[jackdale]

This is worth watching

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard...arctic-sea-ice

[SailOar]

As of March 16, 2017

CYAN - This year
RED - Last Year
GREEN - Record-setting 2012

Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph | Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis

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https://sites.google.com/site/arctis...t_byyear_b.png

[SailOar]

Up to half of the Arctic’s melt might be totally natural | Popular Science

A study in Nature Climate Change suggests that climate change is only partially responsible for the extreme rate at which the arctic is warming.

[SailOar]

Arctic meltdown: Sea ice plunges to record low after freak polar 'heatwaves' | Mashable

Arctic sea ice cover reached its annual peak extent on March 7, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said, at 5.57 million square miles. This is the lowest in the 38-year satellite record, and very likely far longer than that based on other data. This year's peak was about 37,000 [square] miles less than the 2015 record.

When compared to the 1981-2010 long-term average, sea ice extent this year was a staggering 471,000 square miles below the average annual maximum. This means a chunk of ice about the size of Texas, California and Kentucky combined was missing from the top of the world.

The record came at the end of one of the strangest winters that Arctic climate researchers have seen in modern times, with at least four instances in which unusually mild air swept across the entire Arctic from the North Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, bringing the North Pole to near or just above the melting point.

NSIDC scientists said air temperatures across the Arctic Ocean averaged more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the five months from October through February, with a series of "extreme winter heat waves" observed as well. Temperatures were even higher, averaging 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal over large sections of the Chukchi and Barents Seas, the NSIDC found.

[ImaginaryNumber]

Applications open for sea voyage around Canada's 3 coasts | CBC News

...As part of Canada 150's celebrations, the Students on Ice Foundation has organized an 150-day voyage starting in the Great Lakes, sailing down the St. Lawrence River, through the Northwest Passage, around Alaska and down to Victoria, B.C.

The trip will be broken into 15 10-day segments, five of which take place in Nunavut.

The ship can hold 60 people, half of which will be crew, while the other half will be invited politicians, artists, and Indigenous leaders.

And some "everyday" Canadians.

Applications opened today for any Canadian over the age of 18 to apply for one of the journey legs.

It's free to apply and participate. Green says the main criteria are "passion and interest." This voyage for Canada 150 is not exclusively directed at youth or students but there will be a digital classroom component for students to follow along, he said...

For the C3 journey the ship will be an old Canadian Coast Guard
icebreaker painted to reflect the Canadian flag.

[SailOar]

Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph | Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis

CYAN - This year
RED - Last Year
GREEN - Record-setting 2012

https://sites.google.com/site/arctis...t_byyear_b.png

[SailOar]

Icebergs Are Swarming Shipping Lanes in the Arctic | Climate Central

Around 450 icebergs — defined as hunks of ice covering at least 5,382 square feet and between 98-164 feet in thickness — are lurking off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, well above the average of 80 usually found for this time of year. The swarm appeared suddenly, too. Just last week, there were only 37 icebergs in the region.

The highest concentration of rogue ice is off the southeast tip of Newfoundland. The Titanic sunk after striking an iceberg just to the south of that area, so dangerous ice isn’t exactly abnormal for the region.

The early start to iceberg season is, however. According to the Associated Press, the number of icebergs currently in the water is more in line with what the Coast Guard expects to see in May or June. As a result, ships are having to slow down or travel hundreds of miles out of their way to avoid suffering the same fate as the Titanic.

But whether wild swarms of icebergs will indiscriminately terrorize the high seas is still up for debate. Icebergs in the North Atlantic typically come from calving events off of Greenland’s glaciers, which are quickly melting due to rising temperatures.

While it’s plausible rising temperatures will cause more calving and thus more icebergs, it’s also possible ice could just plain melt, according to Alan Condron, a climate modeler at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who has studied the region’s shifting ice.

“There is some evidence that while Greenland has been melting faster in recent years, the number of icebergs being formed each year has stayed the same and it’s the fraction of liquid melt that has increased,” he said, noting that there’s only about a decade of data on the topic, though...

[DeepFrz]

What I had read was that because of the huge melt and water running underneath the glaciers that they were moving faster than normal, hence faster calving rate. At least that is my understanding.

[SailOar]

Safe PASSAGE: can sensor technology open the Northwest Passage to shipping? | Ship Technology

A German-Canadian research project, PASSAGES (Protection and Advanced Surveillance System for the Arctic: Green, Efficient, Secure), aims to make the Northwest Passage as navigable as possible for global shipping. Their goal is to combine heterogeneous sources of sensor and non-sensor information, such as passive radar, satellite-based synthetic aperture radar, and underwater sonar installations, in order to provide situation pictures that then form the basis of situational awareness for vessels navigating the area.

The main issue concerns topography. The north of Canada is a highly complex archipelago with many small islands and narrow sea lanes, so navigation is a concern. There are also remnants of ice fields that are changing over time, so it is important that ship captains have up-to-date information in their traffic management systems on the current state of the ice and the route decision-making.

[SailOar]

Under the Arctic Dome — Brutish High Pressure System is Wrecking the Already Thinned Sea Ice | Robert Scribbler

"There’s a real atmospheric brute towering over the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea at this time. A high pressure system that would put shame to most other anti-cyclonic phenomena that bear the name. It is sending out a broad, clockwise pattern of winds. It is pulling up warm air from the Pacific to invade the Bering, Chukchi, East Siberian and Laptev Seas. And its torquing motion is shattering the already considerably thinned ice beneath it. Clocking in at 1046 mb of pressure, it makes typically strong 1030 mb high pressure systems seem weak by comparison. Over the next day it is expected to strengthen still — hitting 1048 mb by late April 15th (coming very close to an extraordinary 1050 mb system)."

https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/0...7.74,86.51,345

"This powerful and strengthening system has already been in place for about two weeks — slowly gaining momentum as its circulation has moved in mirror to the waters of the Beaufort Gyre that swirl beneath it. Masked only by a veil of sea ice considerably thinned by human-forced climate change, the waters of the Beaufort are now breaking through. Streaks of dark blue on white in an early break-up enabled both by a terrible Arctic warming and by this powerful spring weather system."

(Side-by-side images of Beaufort sea ice from April 4 [left frame] to April 13 [right frame].
Note the considerable and rapid advance of fracturing in a relatively short period.
For reference, bottom edge of frame in both images is 500 miles. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)

"In the past, meteorologists like Stu Ostro envisioned that climate change would tend to produce towering high pressure systems — featuring increasingly strong storms roaring about their fierce outer boundaries. And the massive high lurking over the Arctic at this time is a good example of Ostro’s predictions coming to light in a region that is very sensitive to human-forced warming.

This great atmospheric stack appears to have had a considerable impact on the ice already — helping to push extent measures back into record low ranges by accelerating the melt trend. But these impacts are likely to spike over the coming week as this powerful high expected to remain in place through the next five days — continuing to draw warm air into the region. "

[SailOar]

The Arctic Ocean Is Becoming More Like the Atlantic Ocean | Scientific American

A great deal of attention has been given to how much warmer the Arctic air has become. A new report published in Science suggests that the Arctic Ocean itself is undergoing a huge change.

...In the east Arctic Ocean, the shift is manifesting itself in changing the layers of the ocean. There’s a cap of cold, less salty water that covers the eastern portion of the Arctic Ocean. Underneath it sits a pool of warm, salty Atlantic water that until recently hasn’t been able to find a way to surface. That stratification of layers has kept ice relatively safe from its warm grip...

In winter from 2013-2015, the cap separating the deep water and surface water disappeared completely in some locations, allowing the warm Atlantic waters to reach the surface and cut further into sea ice pack. At the same time, warm air has further reduced sea ice, which is allowing still more mixing of the ocean layers.

The result is a feedback loop that is essentially turning roughly a third of the eastern Arctic Ocean into something resembling the ice-free Atlantic Ocean....

Polyakov said he’s seen the rapid changes in ice firsthand. When they first put buoys in the eastern Arctic in 2002, researchers had to reach the sites on heavy icebreakers.

“Now we can reach them using an ice class ship,” he said. Ice class ships are not necessarily as reinforced as icebreakers...

[SailOar]

The Permafrost is Thawing 20 Percent Faster Than Previously Thought | Robert Scribbler

About 1/4 of the world’s permafrost has melted due to just 1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming.

According to the new research, if the Earth warms by just another degree Celsius to 2° C above 1880s averages we’ll end up thawing another 3.5 million square kilometers of frozen ground to an ultimately reduced area of around 9 million square kilometers — cutting the Northern Hemisphere’s original permafrost coverage nearly in half.

Warming to 6° C above 1880s averages, which will occur so long as fossil fuel burning continues, will wipe out nearly all of the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost. These thaw rates are about 20 percent more than previously estimated.

[jackdale]

How a Melting Arctic Changes Everything

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-arctic/

[SailOar]

May 1, 2017

Cyan - this year
Red - last year
Green - record-setting 2012

Arctic sea ice extent for March 2017 averaged 14.43 million square kilometers (5.57 million square miles), the lowest March extent in the 38-year satellite record. This is only 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles) below March 2015, the previous lowest March extent, and 1.17 million square kilometers (452,000 square miles) below the March 1981 to 2010 long-term average. This month continues the record low conditions seen since October 2016.

Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis | Sea ice data updated daily with one-day lag