csnavywx

Looking at individual years, it doesn't show up every year, but it shows up quite a bit from here on out. Some years are just as cold, if not colder this year.

Just out of curiosity, I went through the CCSM4 output on Climate Reanalyzer and looked at that region out through time. Something interesting popped up: If I expand the timeframe to 2021-2040 vs 2001-2016, it's still there:

Wow, that's a big drop. Pretty surprising, even with the high variance.

Yep, this exactly. It's not a quantitative thing by any means, but still useful, imo. It only goes back through 2012 unfortunately, but it's got enough to start making comparisons. *Edit for typo.

Agree here. There's a big visual difference in ponding between years in which that snowcover disappears early and years like this one and 2013 where it takes a while longer. We haven't seen that much snow cover along the Siberian coast this late in over 10 years, maybe since the 90s.

Sorry, should've been more clear, I'm referring to EOSDIS Worldview and scrolling between years on this date: https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2017-06-12&z=3&v=-3714337.5732286554,-1744121.4245445705,4149982.4267713446,2552582.5754554295

Posted on Neven's forum. Definitely fits the bill of high snowfall retarding melt. Going to take a good dipole pattern to reverse that.

I don't really think that's going to happen for a couple of weeks at least. Maybe if the dipole showing up at D5+D6 comes to fruition. One would have figured the "bridge ridge" of the past few days would have done more damage, but that just shows how much snow is still there. Even 2013 had more melt ponds at this point looking at the daily worldview plots, even if it did have a lot less open water.

A 2007 pattern starting in late May would have done it this year I think. But that's an exceptionally bad pattern -- ergo pretty rare. This year is a bit wierd. We've got record low starting volume, but high adjacent land snowcover and a decent snowpack left on the ice in most areas. There isn't as much blue ponding on Worldview this year as last year or 2012, for instance, but there's a lot more open water in the ESS and Chukchi. I think the warm winter had the effect of dumping more snow on the pack than we saw in previous years. This has a lot higher albedo, retarding initial melt, but once that protective covering is eroded, the underlying thinner ice is melted more quickly. Not really sure which way to go this year because of the confounding factors. I don't think big domes of high pressure are going to necessarily get the job done in the melting department though. Wind and sun is really needed to take care of the snowpack and weaken the inversion and break the low level cloud cover that sets up as a result.

12Z EC pretty much goes nuclear.

Still a pretty decent gap there. Upcoming D3-D5 pattern look conducive to the development of widespread ponding pretty much basin-wide. Pretty similar to the 2012 pattern, just a couple of days later in the calendar, with the addition of the Atlantic side getting hit at the same time. Depending on how long that pattern lasts, we could see a pretty quick swan dive in area/extent/volume figures. The Pacific side is particularly weak and thin with FYI this year and it'll take less to demolish that ice cover than it typically does.

2012 cliff started in a few days. It looks like the forecast is pointing towards increasingly hostile conditions in the next week (recent model skill caveat applies here) which might give that 2012 dive a run for its money. 2017 is starting with less ice in the Chukchi, but more in the Kara and Barents. Preconditioning is somewhat less this year, but the ice is notably thinner due to warm winter weather. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out as we head into the most critical period for ponding.

Area tanking fast as melt ponding sets up. -157k yesterday and -117k. Now in 2nd place behind 2016. Kara/Barents look to be getting hit, with some contribution from the Beaufort and Hudson Bay. Model skill scores are still in the tank and generally unreliable past D4 right now, but they do more or less show more widespread warmth continuing through the next 4 days. The EC is suffering less than the GFS is, but still taking significant hits to its scores.

Stable 5-wave pattern showing up on ensembles now for the first week of June. That leaves the door open to ridging over/near the pole but doesn't guarantee it.

The GFS and GEFS skill scores have been in the tank over the last week. Euro and EPS have suffered as well, but not as badly. Use with extra caution.

Yeah, EPS and GEFS are showing a pretty strong +AD pattern from D6 onwards. The CFSv2 has been barking on this for weeks and was for the current cold spell as well. It'll be interesting to see if that verifies as it would pretty much jump-start the melting season. Interestingly, looking back, the first 12 days or so of May 2012 were pretty cool as well before it flipped warm.

Volume topped out at 20.7K km3. Terrible. Currently, there is a 1.6K gap with 2011, the previous lowest record. Near to slightly below average temps will help close a bit of that over the next 7-10 days. After that, signals are emerging for the massive NAO block to retrograde into a position to help produce a +DA by around the middle of the month and rapid warming over most of the basin. The GEFS, EPS and CFSv2 weeklies are on board for it atm, so this will have to be watched. A +DA going into the later half of this month would be bad news, as the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas won't offer up much resistance with a near total lack of MYI this year.

DMI 80N temps finally fell to normal for the first time since last summer. CFSv2 weeklies showed this happening a while back (starting at least in early/mid-April). The next couple of weeks look fairly cool compared to what we've had recently (wrt normal). W3/W4 shows some action -- so we'll see if that pans out as we're coming upon the critical period for early season melt ponds in about 3-4 weeks.

High eastern Pacific SSTs tend to favor melt over the Pacific and parts of the CAA, so keep an eye on that. Of course, a good PV pattern over the pole could negate a good deal of the potential damage. The Beaufort/Chukchi and Kara/Barents regions are particularly vulnerable this season due to low in-situ starting thicknesses. The Chukchi in particular didn't freeze over until early January.

A couple of sharp drops on JAXA over the past couple of days (-98k and -112k) as the peripheral seas are getting hit with some pretty high temps for this time of year. Some outright melting conditions are present over the Kara/Barents Sea area as well and look to continue for the next few days, so we may have hit our maximum for the year on extent. FDD anomaly totals are piling up again after a brief pause late in Feb and early this month.

IJIS extent in Antarctica is down to 2.25M, now at lowest on record with a 1-2 weeks to go on the melting season. NSIDC not far behind. Arctic extent up just 47k over the last 5 days. That may change after we get some cooler weather in a few days. Might even get a week of normal temps/climo weather in that region before that Pac jet extension and upcoming secondary SSW conspire to buckle the Pacific pattern again and likely build another AK/Pac side ridge.

Yeah, extent is fairly insensitive to basin-wide temp at this time of the year and is much more subject to temp swings on the edges (over the Bering, Ohktosk, Kara, Barents, etc). Much too early to make any calls there. Volume and very high basin temps are the big story of the refreeze season.

I'm more than willing to engage at length on this, but this phrasing leaves room for backsliding or goalpost-moving later. It also implies you have other objections besides the issue you raise. I want an intellectually honest conversation where there is no chance to drag the conversation through the weeds or possibility of engagement in an obstacle-course style argument where an endless stream of objections is thrown up after the first is countered. Basically, I'm trying to provoke you to think honestly about your position and set a standard that can be falsified*. Please provide the a full accounting of what it would take to convince you that it is human-caused climate change. The reason is that I want to know ahead of time if it's even possible to change your mind on the issue. If your personal standard is, for instance, too high (e.g. Earth must become Venus-like), then obviously no amount of data or argument will meet it and I've wasted my time. *Holding a scientifically-sound position means it includes the possibility of being falsified if a defined set of conditions are met. If it can't, it's speculative, hypothetical and/or faith-based and I'm not here to engage in that line of conversation.

Answering the question I pose above (in a way), this year is already considerably worse than any other in the basin with the slight exception of 2013, which also had a weak Pacific, though not quite as bad as this year. It's a bit deceiving though, as 2013 turned colder after the first few weeks and went very cold in February, something this year isn't likely to do -- so this likely opens up a wide gap even with that year. The volume differences outside the basin appear fairly minimal at this point (when comparing the actual thickness graphs) when compared to that year, so there's every reason to believe a 2009/2013 style summer won't be able to put up the numbers we saw in those years. If we continue with the ridiculous warmth for another 6 weeks, the ship will have likely sailed. It's a bit ironic, since fast FYI growth in a near MYI-less landscape was the last big buffer left to prevent a quick transition to a near-sea ice free state and this winter seems poised to largely erase that buffer. The Arctic is great at making fools out of prognosticators, so I'm not quite ready to throw my hat all-in on a new record, but I feel it's pretty safe to say that the chances have increased significantly at this point. A tie in volume with 2007 last year after a below-average summer increases confidence a bit too.