What is the future of Arctic Sea Ice? Part 2.

In my previous post I discussed the results of model forecasts for Arctic sea ice, and have outlined why I am not convinced by GCM results suggesting long term survival of perennial ice well into this century. What happens if the current trend of sea ice losses continues and will the trend of volume loss continue?

Crowdfunding 'The Dreamlands'.

This has got nothing to do with sea ice, but there's a crowdfunding project ongoing I want to publicise, and it's my blog ;) .

What is the future of Arctic Sea Ice? Part 1.

Recently I blogged about a paper showing the cause of the post 1995 volume decline in PIOMAS, this being the period of greatest and most persistent volume loss. The cause turned out to be self-acceleration of volume loss caused by the ice albedo feedback, as this is such a fundamental process and as the later version of the PIOMAS has proven to be so successful, I am in little doubt that Lindsay & Zhang's hypothesis is correct and that in the 1990s atmospheric impacts on the ice ushered in a period of decline largely driven by the ice albedo feedback.

There is really only one issue I can move on to address now, and that is the future of the sea ice.

PIOMAS March 2014

PIOMAS volume data is now out for March. The PIOMAS model uses NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data to drive the ice and ocean components of the model, so the monthly data is for the month up to the final day of the month. Some thickening is due to occur over April in the Arctic Ocean, but this is typically small. So this data can be taken as indicative of conditions as the melt season starts.

2014: Large MYI Export into Beaufort & Chukchi

Last year weather led to a pulse of increased volume being fed into the sea ice system, since then we have seen this pulse being severely reduced. Now much of the increased extent of older ice (multi-year ice or MYI) in the Central Arctic has been transported out into Beaufort and is currently making its way into Chukchi. What does this mean for the coming melt season?