bluewave

Updated for April 2019. 4...2019....EWR...10...NYC...8...LGA...10...JFK...10...BDR...9.....ISP...5

Looks like we are on track for a new lowest April average sea ice extent. NSIDC monthly record lowest average sea ice extents Jan...2018 Feb.. 2018 Mar...2017 Apr....2019...so far...previous record 2016 May...2016 Jun....2016 Jul.....2012 Aug...2012 Sep...2012 Oct...2012 Nov...2016 Dec...2016 https://mobile.twitter.com/bhensonweather/status/1115700868723003392 Arctic sea ice extent is plummeting into truly uncharted territory for mid-April. (link: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/) nsidc.org/arcticseaicene…

https://mobile.twitter.com/bhensonweather/status/1112750445397577728 Arctic sea ice extent has broken into record-low territory for the start of April. Late-spring & summer weather are bigger factors in determining how much ice cover is lost during the warm season. Still, this is a disconcerting drop. (link: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/) nsidc.org/arcticseaicene… https://mobile.twitter.com/IARC_Alaska/status/1112768243251314688 March was the warmest of record over all nearly of Alaska north of the Alaska Range & Bristol Bay. Some places on the North Slope & in Northwest Arctic Borough were more than 20F (11C) above normal. Early snowmelt southern areas. https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1112711147415691264 Utqiaġvik (Barrow): average March temperature +5.9F (-14.5C) is highest of record, 18.6F (10.3C) above 1981-2010 normal & 6.6F (3.7C) above the previous warmest March (2018). 8 of 10 warmest Marchs since mid-90s. https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1112754212293636096 Kotzebue average temperature for March 23.0F (-5.0C) is 21.9F (12.2C) above normal and 9.5F (5.3C) warmer than ANY other March in the past 90 years. That is so warm it would be a top ten warmest APRIL https://mobile.twitter.com/Pat_wx/status/1112766213913042945 At 14.4°C above normals, this past month was the most anomalous month on record in #Inuvik, including all months and both cold and warm anomalies! Note that February 2019 also made it into the top 10.

Updated the list to include the 7th snowiest March so far at BDR with 13.5.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2019/03/04/bering-sea-ice-is-at-an-unprecedented-low-right-now/ Bering Sea ice is at an ‘unprecedented’ low right now Sea ice is again at a historic low in the Bering Sea. At the time of year when ice usually reaches its maximum, there’s open water in a vast area stretching from Bristol Bay to the Bering Strait, said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “You could take your sailboat and sail from Dillingham all the way to Little Diomede and never see much more than an ice cube,” he said. March and early April are typically when sea ice in the Bering Sea reaches its maximum extent, and when communities that live along the coast travel on the ice for subsistence hunting and fishing. The unprecedented lack of ice in the Bering Sea follows another record-breaking winter. Last spring, in 2018, the extent of ice in the Bering Sea only reached half of its previous lowest size, which was recorded in 2001. Thoman called the lack of ice “stunning” at the time. This spring, the situation is even more extreme. While there’s more ice on the Russian side of the Bering Sea, there’s virtually none on the Alaska side. Watch the anomalous southerly flow push sea ice poleward through the Bering Strait since February https://mobile.twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1103690280576802818?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet

March 3-4, 2019 Fairfield County... Monroe 12.0 640 AM 3/04 Trained Spotter 3 ESE Bethel 12.0 700 AM 3/04 CoCoRaHS

https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1101160230199603200?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet Very little #seaice left in Alaskan waters of the Bering Sea from AMSR2 data as continued storminess has eroded away near all of the ice south of 64N. The significant areas of open water in the southern Chukchi Sea and Kotzebue Sound just stunning. https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1101263457918234629?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet Suomi NPP image courtesy @uafgina early Thursday afternoon, February 28. The loss of #seaice in the Bering and southern Chukchi Seas is beyond belief. The impacts to western Alaskan communities immense. https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1101300151388332032?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet Utqiaġvik (Barrow) sets a new record high temperature for February 28. Through 3pm AKST, the high has been 33F (+0.6C), which nips the previous record of 32F (0.0C) set in 1960. This is the 6th day this month to set or tie a daily record high.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1099865227414331393 330pm AKST Sunday SNPP shows more of Kotzebue Sound. Ice completely pulled away from northern Seward Pen coast. Southern Chukchi Sea looks like more like late May/early June. Suomi NPP image 147pm AKST Sunday shows the weekend storm has decimated #seaice in the Bering Sea. Little more than "junk ice" anywhere in the open Bering Sea except near the Strait. Impacts on communities and ecosystems continue apace. Utqiaġvik (Barrow) high temp so far today 30F (-1.1C) is a new record high for February 24rd. Previous record 29F (-1.8C) in 2011 & fifth day this month to set or tie a daily record high. Climate obs since October 1920. #

https://mobile.twitter.com/ajatnuvuk/status/1093786714022105088 It’s February, the coldest month of the year. We have open water in front of Utqiagvik. It is 30 F out at 11:20 at night. Strange days indeed. https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1094296276730925056 Incredible warmth on the North Slope Friday, with temperatures in most places 30 to 50F (18-28C) above the daily normal! https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/1094017492580655105 MODIS image from Friday afternoon courtesy @uafgina showing impacts on #seaice in the northern Bering & southern Chukchi Seas of recent mild, stormy weather. A lot of water showing up, even significant areas north of the Bering Strait.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1092449357096353792 2018's average #Arctic sea ice extent was the 2nd lowest on record Data from consistent passive microwave satellite record (1979-2019)

It could be the trapped heat finally reaching the surface. https://www.carbonbrief.org/natural-ocean-fluctuations-help-explain-antarctic-sea-ice-changes/amp?__twitter_impression=true It is possible that this could explain why, during 2016, sea ice levels reached record lows, he adds: Although the overall magnitude of changes to ocean convection is not yet known, it is possible that the trapped heat could escape to the surface, Zhang says:

A solar minimum is no match for the CO2 forcing. There was a good paper out on this several years ago. As for the AMO, the sea ice was in decline during the last cold phase during the 80's into the mid-90's. Natural oscillations like the PDO and AMO can impact shorter term rates of decline. But the long term decline is a result of rising global and Arctic temperatures. https://www.pik-potsdam.de/members/feulner/research/how-would-a-new-grand-minimum-of-solar-activity-affect-the-future-climate

Quick gains in Hudson Bay won't do anything for the long term volume downward trend. It's a peripheral region outside the main Arctic basin that completely melts out in the summer. So you can't retain any ice there since it's all first year.

It was quite high in the Hudson Bay, but not the Arctic. That's why the regional sea ice figures tell the bigger story.

No problem. Zack Labe does a great job putting together all the Arctic data in detail on his site. Patwx is a great resource on twitter for Canadian weather records. https://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/ https://mobile.twitter.com/pat_wx?lang=en

There's nothing particularly rapid about the sea ice growth in the Arctic this month. But the record cold to the south of the Arctic in Hudson Bay area is responsible for the fast increase above average there. It looks like it could be a result of the Warm Arctic, Cold Continents pattern. 7th consecutive day of record #cold in Southern #Nunavut, this time extended into Northern Ontario, Quebec and Labrador as Arctic front moves south!#MeteoQC #ONwx #MBwx pic.twitter.com/PB7jyVrBak 9:17 AM - 21 Nov 2018

Yeah, 27 storms so far for the 2010’s is a remarkable number. It reflects the record amount of snowfall that has occurred in this decade. This increase in 12"+ snowstorms also shows up as a record number of KU storms for the 2010’s. The text product archive with all the snowstorms in the OKX zones is incomplete before 2008. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/rsi/nesis https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/list.phtml Archive Completeness: 1996 thru 2001: Sometimes sparse / missing data. Also note that product source IDs are likely different back then (prior to NWS Modernization), some work was done to assign present day WMO source IDs to the product metadata stored in the database. The original text as not modified. Known holes exist at: 29 Oct-1 Nov 1998, 24-27 Dec 1998, 25-28 Jul 1999, 21-25 Jan 2000, 26-27 Mar 2000, 12-13 Jun 2001, 28-29 Jul 2001. 2002 thru 2007: More consistent archives, but still likely missing things. Much better coverage though. 2008 thru now: Very good data coverage and higher fidelity archiving.

There are some interesting surprises with the timing of 12"+ snowstorms during the historic 2010's snowfall era. The first unusual occurrence is that the October 29 to November 15 period has been more active than the December 1-15 interval. Another interesting pattern is the more active first half of March than the second part of February. Roughly 2 week snowfall periods for the 2010's and number of 12"+ snowstorms Oct 29-Nov 15.....3 Nov 16-Nov 30....0 Dec 1- Dec 15.....0 Dec 16-Dec 31....3 Jan1-Jan 15.......4 Jan16-Jan 31.....6 Feb 1-Feb 15.....7 Feb 16-Feb 28...1 Mar 1- Mar 15....6 Mar 16-Mar 31...1 Apr 1-Apr 16.....0 Individual events and the highest snowfall totals 2022 Jan 28-29….Islip….24.7 2021 Jan 31-Feb 2....Blomingdale, NJ.....26.1 2020 Dec 16-17 East Tremont, NY....12.4 2019 Mar 3-4...Monroe, CT....12.0 2018 Nov 15....Mount Hope, NY.......18.3 Mar 21-22...Patchogue, NY......20.1 Mar 13...Southampton,NY.....18.3 Mar 8....New Farfield, CT..........26.8 Mar 2...Monroe, NY.................14.0 Jan 4...Islip, NY.......................15.8 2017 Mar 14...Montgomery, NY.......23.5 Feb 9...Selden, NY...................16.0 Jan 7...Orient, NY....................12.5 2016 Feb 5...Setauket, NY................12.0 Jan 23..JFK,NY.........................30.5 2015 Feb 2..New Faifield, CT............12.0 Jan 26-27....Orient,NY.............28.5 2014 Feb 13-14...Roselle, NJ............16.7 Jan 21-22....Centerreach,NY....14.0 Jan 2-3......Lindenhurst, NY.....12.5 2013 Mar 8....Harriman,NY..............15.0 Feb 8....Upton, NY..................30.9 2012 Nov 7-8.....Monroe, CT..........13.5 Jan 21......North Haven, CT....12.0 2011 Oct 29.....Harriman, NY.........16.0 Jan 26-27...NYC................... 19.0 Jan 11-12.......Meriden, CT....29.0 2010 Feb 25-26...Mount Hope, NY...27.5 Dec 26........Elizabeth, NJ........31.8 Feb. 10.....Sound Beach, NY....16.2 2009 Dec 19-20....Upton, NY..........26.3

Ice-free Arctic summers could hinge on small climate warming range https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180402110733.htm A range of less than one degree Fahrenheit (or half a degree Celsius) of climate warming over the next century could make all the difference when it comes to the probability of future ice-free summers in the Arctic, new University of Colorado Boulder research shows. The findings, which were published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, show that limiting warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) would reduce the likelihood of an ice-free Arctic summer to 30 percent by the year 2100, whereas warming by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) would make at least one ice-free summer certain. "I didn't expect to find that half a degree Celsius would make a big difference, but it really does," said Alexandra Jahn, author of the study and an assistant professor in CU Boulder's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a fellow in the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). "At 1.5 degrees Celsius, half of the time we stay within our current summer sea ice regime whereas if we reach 2 degrees of warming, the summer sea ice area will always be below what we have experienced in recent decades." The study used simulations from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) run at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and examined warming scenarios ranging from 1.5 degrees Celsius all the way to 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. The lower bound of the study is an important benchmark worldwide; in 2015, the international Paris Climate Agreement set a global target of constraining warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Arctic sea ice extent has declined overall in recent years with increasing global temperatures, but the effects of future warming remain uncertain. The new findings illustrate that different scenarios of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission levels lead to drastically different results for Arctic summer sea ice. "This dataset allows us to predict how soon we're likely to see ice free conditions as well as how often," said Jahn. "Under the 4-degree Celsius scenario, we would have a high probability of a three-month ice free period in the summer months by 2050. By the end of century, that could jump to five months a year without ice. And even for half that warming, ice-free conditions of up to 2 month a year are possible by the late 21st century." But, Jahn continued, if warming stays at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the probability of ice-free summers would drop by 70 percent, delaying or potentially even avoiding such occurrence altogether. The significant difference in the results, Jahn said, might provide added incentive for countries to attempt to hit the 1.5-degree Celsius warming target in order to preserve current ecological conditions. "The good news is that sea ice has quick response times and could theoretically recover if we brought down global temperatures at any point in the future," said Jahn. "In the meantime, though, other ecosystems could see permanent negative impacts from the ice loss, and those can't necessarily bounce back." The study was funded by the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Science Foundation. Story Source: Materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder. Original written by Trent Knoss. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Journal Reference: Alexandra Jahn. Reduced probability of ice-free summers for 1.5 °C compared to 2 °C warming. Nature Climate Change, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0127-8

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/11/autumn-spring-arctics-new-season November on the coast of the Barents Sea has been unseasonably warm. Halfway, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute could report 5,9 degrees Celsius above normal for Troms and Finnmark region in northern Norway. What was snow-covered and frozen in late October is again rainy and warm. The warm weather are confusing plants and trees. Some, like the low-growing goat willow tree, believes it is spring. On Friday, catkins, the fuzzy soft silver-colored nubs, started to appear, both near Kirkenes and in Murmansk Both are cities far above the Arctic Circle. Catkins are actually the trees’ flowers just before they fully bloom, like you normally can see in late April, early May in the Barents Region. “Very interesting, but not at all good news,” says Paul Eric Aspholm, Research Scientist with the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO). Aspholm works at Svanhovd, NIBIO’s department in the Pasvik valley in the Norwegian-Russian borderland, the heart of the area experiencing some of the most dramatic climate changes in the Arctic. He explains how such confusion like we see this November could harm trees and plants in the Arctic. “The plants use a lot of energy when blooming. It is a kind of failed reproduction and no seeds are produced. One thing is the catkins we can see, but there are likely a lot of other processes going on inside the plant disturbing the balance in what should be the dormant phase.”

JFK picked up 3.7 back in November 1989. I added the top 10 greatest snowfall amounts in November for JFK. #1...4.8....2018 #2...4.3....2012 #3...3.7...1989 #4...2.6....1995 #5...2.1....1967 #6...1.7....1978 #7...0.6....1977...1959 #8...0.5....1949 #9...0.4....1987...1986 #10...0.3...2002

https://mashable.com/2018/04/02/arctic-sea-ice-temperature-targets/#JiMVWHeLpgqI Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., said he's not surprised the studies found such a large difference between Arctic sea ice cover at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming versus 2 degrees. "Sea ice is quite sensitive to temperature because it’s so thin. And as temperatures warm, it gets thinner. The thinner the ice, the higher the chances that summer melt will be enough to remove the ice," he said in an email. Meier was not involved in the new studies. "I think that somewhere between 1.5 degrees Celsius and 2.0 degrees, the ice cover gets thin enough over a large enough region of the Arctic for it to completely melt during summer. At the low end, 1.5 degrees, there is probably enough remaining thick ice (e.g., greater than 2 meters) that it’s less likely that all of that thicker ice could melt in a summer," Meier said. There's another issue, though, with studies like these that examine the benefits of a 1.5-degree target. Based on emissions trends and projections, such a target is illusory, since the world is on track to blow right past it. Might it make more sense to study the consequences of far more severe warming, given that that's where we're headed?

Updated for the record breaking snowstorm on November 15th. This makes November 2018 a top 1-4 snowiest on record for all our major stations. November 2018 NYC....#4...6.4 EWR...#3...6.4 LGA...#2....4.7 JFK....#1...4.8 ISP...#2....4.3

#seaice finally forming the past few days at Utqiaġvik (Barrow). The@SNAPandACCAP Sea Ice Atlas helps us understand just how unusual in the historical context it is to be happening so late in the autumn. h/t @themadstone#akwx #Arctic @Climatologist49 @vennkoenig @ZLabepic.twitter.com/P79bT73pPq 8:53 PM - 15 Nov 2018