Seven Days In May

I couldn't resist the title; Seven Days in May is a classic movie that's on my 'to watch' list. In due course I'll have more to say about the storm that's battered the sea ice over the last few days, and may come back for more next week. In particular what the implications may be.

But for now a picture says everything.

Summer Acceleration

I have recently outlined the changes in the Cryosphere Today Area index (CT Area), using anomalies to examine the changes from the long term average seasonal cycle. I've shown the changes in the CT Area anomalies, link, the autumn response to increasing open water in the summer season, link, and the recent June anomaly crashes, link. I have also covered research showing the majority of surface based Arctic Amplification is a response to summer ice loss, link, and that this amplification is probably being understated by the GISS dataset, link. However I have not addressed a substantial issue, that of the summer acceleration loss of area when compared to the loss of winter area.

The CT Area June Crash

Extent is preferred by professional scientists because it is less sensitive to melt ponds impacting concentration in satellite measurements of sea ice. However I stopped using the various extent indices some time ago because I consider that in seeking to avoid such issues extent is losing valuable information.

There is a new feature of the Cryosphere Today Area series (CT Area), a June crash in anomalies, this is an important feature, which I suspect is a useful indicator of conditions that prime the ice pack for record melts.

Mid May Miscellanea - Housekeeping

Just a quick 'housekeeping' post. I've been busy with other Arctic related matters, but have now updated some data.

2013 PIOMAS Volume Minimum Projection

Over at the Sea Ice Forum there's a long running discussion about predicting sea ice volume, link. This has finally prompted me to pull my finger out and do something I've been pondering for a while. Answering the question: What if I apply previous year's thinning profiles to the most recent thickness data from PIOMAS? What I find is no new record, with 2013 beating 2011, but not beating 2012.

Autumn Sea Ice Area

In my previous post I showed the post 2007 changes to the seasonal cycle of the Cryosphere Today sea ice area index (CT Area) in the context of previous decades. A notable part of this is the rapid climb of anomalies in the autumn after the lowest record area minima.

CT Area Anomalies

Cryosphere Today produce a dataset of sea ice area, which I shorthand as CT Area. Calculating the daily average over a long period gives an average sea ice area for each day (baseline average), subtracting these daily anomalies from the actual sea ice area data for each day of a given gives the daily anomaly. These daily anomalies are the differences from the average seasonal cycle. I use the period 1980 to 1999 as the baseline average period.

In this post I present graphs of the daily anomaly series from 1980 to 2012. This is a place holder for reference from future posts.

Click on any of the images to bring up full screen, with a selection menu at the bottom of the screen (this applies to all posts on this blog).

April 2013 Status

PIOMAS daily series data is now available for April, so it's time to include the Cryosphere Today Area and look at the status of the pack. Later in the year I may bring in discussion of what's happening in regions, but I see nothing at present that's important for the progress of the season in the concentration plots or IR satellite images.