Eurasian Snow Cover and Atmospheric Impacts

I've been looking again at the new summer atmospheric circulation pattern. In "The Recent Shift in Early Summer Arctic Atmospheric Circulation.", abstract, Overland et al identify the shift as an Arctic Dipole pattern. However as I have shown, and as Overland et al also state, this has wider impacts.

But is there a role for snow cover changes in driving this new pattern, and if so what is it?

Well I'm not going to post on April 1st...

...that could cause all sorts of misunderstandings.

Here's a rather late Monthly Miscellanea post.

What caused the volume loss in 2010: Part 2.

Back in September 2012 I wrote some posts on the 2010 volume loss in PIOMAS, why it was important, and what caused it. I'm now able to add another layer of detail into the explanation of what caused the 2010 volume loss and consider whether it has any reality outside of the PIOMAS model. I'm more confident that the 2010 volume loss was real, not just a blip in a model.

February 2013 Status

PIOMAS Data are now out so it's time for my February Status post. I hadn't intended to do these each month, but in light of the recent fracturing and the imminence of the Spring melt I've decided to keep with it until September at least. The pressures of overtime however mean this one's a bit shallow and bitty.

The Beaufort Break Up of February 2013

Over the last week there has been a large fracturing event in the Beaufort Sea, the aftermath of this event continues to unfold. This is being discussed at Neven's Sea Ice Blog, and at the new Arctic Sea Ice Forum. In this post I summarise my understanding which has been posted on those sites in a piecemeal fashion.

The Beaufort Sea Ice Lead of February 2013

There's a long lead in the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea at present, it's drawing some attention. So is this an unusual occurrence and is it telling us anything about the state of the sea ice?

Publicly available past archives of sea ice from infra-red (IR) satellites covering this region don't seem to be available. But I've recently commented of ASCAT the successor to QuikScat, so this morning I made a final effort to see if the archives of QuikScat are still available somewhere. After an immense amount of pissing around I finally found them, said pissing around reminds me of how Arthur Dent found the planning notice for the demolition of his house.

PROSSER: But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months!
ARTHUR: Yes, well, as soon as I heard, I went straight round to see them. You hadn’t gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody.
PROSSER: The plans were on display—
ARTHUR: On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them!
PROSSER: That’s the display department!
ARTHUR: With a flashlight.
PROSSER: The lights had probably gone out.
ARTHUR: So had the stairs.
PROSSER: But you found the notice, didn’t you?
ARTHUR: Yes, I did. It was "on display" in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, "Beware of the Leopard."

ASCAT, PIOMAS and the DAM

I've previously posted about the current state of the ice in January 2013. As I've just reminded myself of the ASCAT system that has replaced QuikScat, I thought I'd reproduce images from PIOMAS gridded data and the drift age model (DAM) together with ASCAT satellite images.