Far North Science

Source: NSIDC

The annual late-summer meltdown of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska has commenced in earnest. While the satellite jockeys at the National Snow & Ice Data Center aren’t logging alarming visions of an all-time record slush cup, it’s getting close.

“Arctic sea ice extent for the month of July was the third lowest for that month in the satellite record, after 2007 and 2006,” the NSIDC ice wizards reported this week. “The average rate of melt in July 2009 was nearly identical to that of July 2007.”

As the climate savvy might remember, September of 2007 produced a polar ice cap with the smallest overall extent ever recorded during the 30-year age of satellites.

That year, an area the size of Argentina disappeared from the summer ice habitat, leaving the largest expanse of open water north of Alaska ever recorded.

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The countdown to the annual Arctic slush cup has ended, and the realm of polar bear and ice seal has shrunk yet again. The meltback may not be as bad as last year, but it’s worse than any other season logged by the satellite record.

How bad was it?

The Arctic Ocean ice cap has basically lost an area three times larger than Texas.

The eye-in-the-sky scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center said today that the extent of Arctic sea ice hit its minimum coverage over the weekend and has begun to slowly refreeze for the winter.

The floes and pans that create the floating bedrock of the polar ocean’s ecosystem — providing the necessary hunting platforms for polar bears and the undersea nurseries for plankton and fish — covered only about 1.74 million square miles on Sept. 12.

That coverage is still about 150,000 square miles bigger than the all-time record minimum set last fall, the NSIDC pointed out in a release (complete with links and graphics.)

But given the Arctic’s remarkably cool 2008 summer, a season where ice melt ought to have slowed dramatically, it’s not good news.

While above the record minimum set on September 16, 2007, this year further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years. … The 2008 minimum is the second-lowest recorded since 1979, and is 2.24 million square kilometers (0.86 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum.

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Summer hiatus is over. Far North Science returns to discover the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean has shriveled like an ice cube in a pitcher of lukewarm lemonade.

The eye-in-the-sky scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center say the far north’s frozen cover — the Earth’s air conditioner — now covers the second smallest area ever recorded during the 30-year-long age of satellites.

“Will 2008 also break the standing record low, set in 2007?,” NSIDC asks in a news release.

“We will know in the next several weeks, when the melt season comes to a close. The bottom line, however, is that the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent characterizing the past decade continues.”

Sea ice typically shrinks in extent and volume during the late summer months, eaten by sun-warmed ocean water and flushed into the Atlantic by currents. But what used to be a slight peeling back of the thick, royal-blue, steel-hard continent of ice off Alaska’s north coast has transformed into a disappearing act.

The result? The coastal residents of Arctic Alaska regularly enter the stormy fall with a vast fetch of ocean at their backs.

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NASA: Sea ice minimum / summer 2007

Arctic Ocean ice has thinned dramatically during the past few years, with vast quantities of stable multi-year ice flushing into oblivion out in the Atlantic Ocean.

Replacing these reliable royal-blue floes built over many years — the literal bedrock of the Arctic ice habitat — are weak pans formed during one or two seasons at a time.

Credit: UNEP

As this older ice increasingly “gives way” to the younger and thinner ice, the Arctic becomes more prone to another unprecedented meltback similar to the 2007 season, when ice cover set an all-time minimum record, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“This thinner, younger ice makes the Arctic much more susceptible to rapid melt,” said Research Professor James Maslanik in an online story. “Our concern is that if the Arctic continues to get kicked hard enough toward one physical state, it becomes increasingly difficult to reestablish the sea ice conditions of 20 or 30 years ago.”

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A winter sunrise on Alaska’s Arctic coast in 1949
Source: NOAA photo library

With the specter of rising temperatures and meltdown of summer sea ice haunting Alaska’s climate outlook, a dollop of liquid cold gave Barrow a startling surprise last month.

The sun rose on Dec. 1, weeks after its official disappearance, according to the Alaska Climate Research Center in a dispatch about the 12th month’s climate in the Far North state.

In a rare optical effect, there was looming of the sun above the horizon at Barrow on the first of December On this date the sun is always well below the horizon at Barrow, having set for the winter one week prior.

This time, however, very cold air near the ground refracted the suns rays northward beyond their usual range. In addition, some clouds formed about 6 miles above sea level, and provided a mirror to reflect the suns image north to Barrow.

So, even though Barrow was theoretically dark on the first of December, it was quite bright this year, even though the almanacs do not show the sun rising there until the 23rd of January.

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This still image from an animation shows the temperature
anomalies that were present during 2007. Note the Arctic.
Source: NASA GISS

With January’s chill comes the season of the annual temperature scorecards for the home planet. Both the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Climate Data Center say 2007 delivered some of the warmest average temperatures on record for the globe and United States. Each agency produced slightly different results.

Was 2007 the second warmest year on record? Or the fifth? And what about the United States?

Here’s one answer, from the NCDC:

The average U.S. temperature for 2007 was 54.2 °F; 1.4 °F warmer than the 20th century mean of 52.8 °F. NCDC originally estimated in mid-December that 2007 would end as the eighth warmest on record, but below-average temperatures in areas of the country last month lowered the annual ranking.

For Alaska, 2007 was the 15th warmest year since statewide records began in 1918.

One thing’s for sure. The trend line has continued to lurch upward. For up, and for those of us at the high latitudes, where the sun never abandons June yet hardly shines in December, 2007 clearly was another sign that climate change continues its acceleration.

From the GISS story:

The greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions. Global warming has a larger affect in polar areas, as the loss of snow and ice leads to more open water, which absorbs more sunlight and warmth.

Snow and ice reflect sunlight; when they disappear, so too does their ability to deflect warming rays. The large Arctic warm anomaly of 2007 is consistent with observations of record low geographic extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2007.

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Barrow Sea Ice Cam on 12-19 at 15:25:41 AST
View latest image

Here are some new Far North Climate tidbits:

November dried out Fairbanks, delivering the 6th lowest precipitation on record, only .11 inches. Four of the six driest Novembers have struck since 2001. Turkey day baked at 43 °F — second warmest Thanksgiving ever.

A bold Chinook scoured the Alaska Range between November 20 to 24 with 66 mph winds at Antler Creek and 50 mph peaks at Otto Lake in Healy. The mercury chipped 51 °F near Fort Greely, far above normal.

Barrow saw the 3rd warmest November of record, with 3 November days Zero or below. If you stood on the Arctic shore and scanned north, you would have seen not a single pan or floe of frozen water. Supposedly that’s never happened before.

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Source: NSIDC

Here’s more insight into the solar influence behind the Arctic Ocean’s record meltdown, released last week during the American Geophysical Union’s annual conference in San Francisco.

Portions of the sea surface in the Arctic Ocean just north of the Chukchi Sea beyond Alaska warmed about 9 ° F more than historical averages — rising from a “normal” average summer temperature of about 30.2 ° F to more than 39 °F.

The data comes from a study led by Washington oceanographer Michael Steele, who has appeared in several FNS dispatches and national climate news this past week.

Steele and his co-authors worked data showing the summertime ocean surface temperatures and heat content, with a particular concentration on the Arctic’s “peripheral” seas, he wrote in the abstract published by the AGU.

Many areas cooled almost 1 deg;F per decade between 1930 and 1965, when the Arctic Oscillation pattern fell. The same areas warmed by the same factor during the next 30 years.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Summer warming of the ocean between 1965 and 1995 stored enough heat in the water to actually thin the next winter’s ice pack by about 50 cm, or about 20 inches.

As the heat oozes back into the air, it can delay fall freeze-up up to 10 days. Further, the extra warmth rides the wind to shore, where it can deliver an extra 15 to 20 watts/m2 to Alaska’s North Slope, Steele and his authors wrote.

This process feeds on itself: More heat, later freeze up, thinner ice, bigger meltback. And the heat goes on….

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