frontranger8

2 hours ago, LithiaWx said:

The cheerleading in here by some is patently ridiculous.  We are number two in the record books.  There isn't much to hang a hat on except the date of the min where some can say they were right.  So what?  The ice is still in rough shape.  Low bar is really low.

I'm not sure you understand "cheerleading". It's all discussion. Move along.

On 9/5/2016 at 1:00 PM, frontranger8 said:

Given the upcoming pattern, a late minimum (past 9/12) looks very unlikely. Good chance the min is before 9/10.

On 9/7/2016 at 7:22 AM, skierinvermont said:

We hear this every year..

I'm such an idiot.

5 hours ago, forkyfork said:

what difference does it make? we got to second lowest without an extended summer dipole. that's more worthy of discussion 

And I believe it's being discussed? Geez...ice narrative nazi here.

6 hours ago, skierinvermont said:

We hear this every year..

You're confusing this with the musings of exceptionally early mins (before 9/5) we hear every year.

You think we'll see a min after 9/12?

Given the upcoming pattern, a late minimum (past 9/12) looks very unlikely. Good chance the min is before 9/10.

6 hours ago, chubbs said:

You were thinking 4-6'th at the start of the stormy period. Is that still your call?

It was actually prior that I said that. Probably depends on how long the dipole persists. Hard to say, given that it's a pretty destructive pattern, but coming so late in the season. I'd probably say 3rd-5th is most likely at this point for area, at least.

1 hour ago, stadiumwave said:

 

Folks who were hoping for 2012 cyclone repeat forget that volume is better than that summer.

And that pattern was much different than the one we've been in the past few days. Much smaller cyclone, stronger, and not nearly as cold.

Looks like a dipole develops next, though, so should see losses pick up again soon. But we're well past peak melting season, so that's the good news (if you're rooting for ice survival rather than annihilation).

Ice loss has slowed the past few days, as expected. No Icepocalypse, nothing like 2012.

7 hours ago, Bacon Strips said:

kinda surprised all the melt still going on, while it's been a very favorable pattern for ice the last week or so.    Maybe dude saying that storm was going to rip the ice up is at-least partially right.

That pattern is actually just now setting in.

1 hour ago, ORH_wxman said:

Area is currently 3.63 million sq km. In order to finish higher than 7th, we'd need to only lose 200,000 sq of area between now and the min as the current 7th place year of 2009 had a min of 3.42 million sq Km. A loss that low from here to the min has never happened I don't think (if it did it was maybe 1997 but I don't have the numbers right in front of me). The 6th place year was 2015 at 3.09 million sq km which is still possible to finish above. So I feel pretty safe saying that we will finish between 2nd and 7th in area.

Volume also doesn't bottom out in August. It bottoms in September. At least according to piomas it does. 

I think at this point, 4th-6th is most likely for both extent and area. It looks as though we'll remain in a favorable pattern for the ice through the 20th. By then, it starts getting a lot tougher to lose big chunks.

7 hours ago, skierinvermont said:

 

As ORH said, way too early to say if minimum will be early or not. And technically temperatures are only anomalously cold compared to very recent history. Specifically, they are cooler than most of the last decade, similar to the 1981-2010 mean, and way above the 20th century average.

However, this upcoming PV does look to provide anomalously cold temps for much of the basin. Definitely not way above the 20th century average.

2 hours ago, Amped said:

No, This is a bomb cyclone which will transfer lots of heat to the surface and mix up subsurface water. It's Icemageddon basically.

I don't think so. It's very broad and actually quite cold at times for this time of year. Similar pattern to what we've seen much of this summer, only stronger and colder. 

Some areas that have very thin ice and get strong winds will break up more, but overall it looks like more of an ice preservation pattern. Definitely not Icemageddon.

Looks like a pretty cold and large PV coming back here soon.

3 hours ago, Bacon Strips said:

just goes to show how unpredictable things can be.

late this past winter,  I think most of us thought we'd have a great shot at challenging 2012 .

I don't understand that. It's been proven repeatedly that there is little predictability until late spring at the earliest.

I agree. Certainly, RATPAC is consistent with the theory. UAH and RSS appear to be outliers.

This is not a fair statement. How many sources do we have actually measuring LT temps? And yet you claim the satellite sources are "outliers". 

Being inconsistent with the theory does not make a source an outlier, as Will explained above.

Even if were true that there was a warm bias due to drift, there were numerous papers pointing out probable cool biases. If they had corrected for that as well the result would have been unchanged, or perhaps even a stronger warming trend. It appears they only changed the method in ways that made it cooler and which were not peer-reviewed.

But then again, UAH had run pretty close to RSS in the past. It's strange how they'd been diverging prior to the update as well.

Nothing is black/white here.

The long-term trend between RSS/UAH vs other satellite (STAR and several other peer-reviewed criticisms of UAH/RSS), RATPAC, and surface data is more than noise and is scientifically significant. 

 

The RSS trend since 1979 is .13C/decade. This would imply a surface trend of around .11C/decade. The measured surface trend is .17C/decade. This is 50% more than implied by RSS. This is very significant scientifically and has serious implications for climate sensitivity.

 

The balance of evidence suggests UAH/RSS is in the minority, and is more prone to error given how susceptible the results are to arbitrary choices in methodology. 

I believe UAH is .15C/decade, compared to the .17C/decade for surface trends. That's within the realm of statistical noise, and not actually scientifically significant...it's been explained in more detail many times on here.

Also, I don't believe your .11C/decade number is right for "implied" surface trend.

Not sure why you grouped UAH/RSS together, yet only cited RSS' trend. Some might think that demonstrates bias...

Because the satellites have long-term biases. Resolution is not a bias, it is simply a lack of precision which over time averages out to zero.

I was referring more to the recent rash of questions on here: "What's going on with the satellite temps not mirroring the surface data??"

Short term view vs. long term. The differences in the long term trends between satellite data sets and surface are pretty minor.

The resolution wouldn't matter as much over a 60 year period. In shorter timescales, it's impact becomes more evident.

Why don't people apply this same logic to the satellite data sets? Instead they get all wrapped up in short term stuff.

Since the SMB is only one component of the GIS net mass balance, and not even the biggest component, it's a bit early to declare it a bust.  The DMI calculates the GIS melt season as Sept through August, and typically DMI posts a melt season summary late in the year that combines all factors.  Here is the current accumulated SMB.

 

 

In my estimation, 2015 will be a net 275 - 325 km3 mass loss for the GIS, well below the record in 2012 of around 400 km3.

The statement was about strong melt in August with strong -NAO. That hasn't been the case. Still a lot of month, though.

There will be above normal chances for strong August melt along the 1200M line in August with crippled albedo and the strong -NAO

If I was hunting for busts, it would have been this.

Yes, a huge turnaround. We went from way above average melt to average/ very slightly below average melt. His call of 55 - 65% looked pretty good to me based on melt percentage, it's not like he busted. I'm not sure what the point of your posts were.

The story of 2015 Greenland melt will be the highly anomolous melt in June/July. It won't be the near average melt that followed.

image.jpg

Looks like we briefly flirted with 55%. Regardless, any comparison to 2012 has been shut down in August. It's no longer even close. Three weeks ago, this was looking like it would be the second greatest melt year after 2012...not so sure about that now.

Likely going to reach 55-65%.

Could reach 75%. Highest since 2012 for sure.

Doesn't look like it got higher than low 50s. Obviously still a huge melt from mid June to late July, though.

What a turnaround for Greenland from June/July. Huge dropoff in melt. How does this August compare to previous years?

I could see arguing either way. The envelope of outcomes at this point could be closer to 2013/2014 or the 2007-2012 years. You can argue that July was a pattern that we hadn't seen in sustained form like that since 2012. On the flip side, if August ends up cold and stormy and we finish the melt season with a wimper, then that would reflect more like 2013.

If we have a 2007-2012 average melt from here on out, then we would finish with about 4.75 on NSIDC for the daily min. That is about halfway between the 2007-2012 mean of 4.52 and the 2014 min of 5.01 million sq km.

So depending on what side of that melt figure we end up on, that will determine (at least numerically) what season this will resemble more.

I think you have to take into account volume too. 2010 was much closer to 2013/2014 for extent numbers but volume wise it was far lower and suffered incredible volume losses that season. It remains to be seen how much volume loss 2015 incurs. It won't be nearly as much as 2010 but IMHO it doesn't need to be in order for this to resemble more of a 2007-2012 year.

We also will want to see where CT SIA finishes.

Agree on all points. Of course, this poll is for extent. But I think TGW was referring to pattern primarily.