This summer has seen the radically thinning arctic sea ice battered by cyclones that might not have affected it in former years. We may see yet another before the melting process is done this season. This is a new source to me, so I’m posting this with that qualifier, but the news, if true, could impact the final sea ice number’s significantly.
Paul Beckwith warns that another cyclone is forecast to develop in the Arctic by September 7th, 2012, pointing at the image below, from the Naval Research Laboratory.
“This will cause lots of sea ice breakup in the Arctic if it develops and persists”, Paul says. “The sea ice now is thinner than in August, so the potential for severe damage to ice exists. On the other hand, however, the August cyclone lasted for a week, while this one looks like a 2 to 3 day event.”
“Most scientists think that the massacre of Arctic sea ice will stop on/or around September 15th which is the ‘normal’ date at which ice formation is due, as the decrease of solar insolation at the pole will cause the area of the sea ice to start increasing”, Paul says, adding however that “a minority of us think that the melt will continue beyond this date by several weeks, due to the warmness of the sea water both beside and below the very thin sea ice.”
Paul continues: “In fact, I predicted on August 10th that at the end of the melt season there would be virtually no sea ice left; this was predicated on there being a few more cyclones of equal intensity to that of the August 2nd to August 10th cyclone that eliminated around 0.8 million square kilometers of sea ice area (equivalent to about 20% of the ice remaining in 2007, the previous worst year in terms of ice melt). Thankfully, my prediction looks to be wrong, but we are not out of the woods yet. It appears that a strong cyclone will be attacking the sea ice in a few days, with the peak churning occurring on September 7th.”
So how common are these cyclones generally in this region? Is there any feedback between sea ice and cyclone formation and that’s making them more common? Or is the important feedback ocean heating?
I asked that of Mike MacCracken in a recent interview that will be included in the upcoming Sea Ice video – sometime shortly after the minimum is announced.
He feels it might be a feedback that has not gotten enough attention.
With increasing proximity to the Earth’s geographic pole, angular momentum at the surface will tend towards zero. Therefore, how can a cyclone develop at the North Pole?
Apologies for such a fatuous remark, which was in danger of appearing to be an attempt to deny the reality that cyclones do develop in the Arctic Sea on the basis of cherry-picked science. Those who know me at all would of course realise that this could never have been my intention; I was just in a silly mood.