2013 Melt Season – Arctic Ice in Free Fall Again?
July 21, 2013
The most amazing thing about 2012 in the arctic was how un-amazing it was in terms of weather and warming – yet ice last year plunged to a stunning new low, most likely because the ice has become so thin and fragile that even the wear and tear of a normal year are enough to devastate the ice pack.
This year’s melt season has trended only a little below the 1981 – 2010 average up until about mid-june, then taken a dramatic downward turn. If it does not level off, ice loss will soon match the 2012 pace.
It’s not clear if 2013 levels will match 2012′s astonishing record low, but – with temperatures over the Arctic Ocean 1-3 degrees above average – the 2013 melt season has picked up in earnest during July.
“During the first two weeks of July, ice extent declined at a rate of 132,000 square kilometers (51,000 square miles) per day. This was 61% faster than the average rate of decline over the period 1981 to 2010 of 82,000 square kilometers (32,000 square miles) per day,” the National Snow and Ice Data Center writes on its website.
Despite this rapid ice loss, the current mid-July 2013 sea ice extent is greater than 2012 at the same time by about 208,000 square miles NSIDC says.
Financial Times (registration required):
Arctic shipping is set for a record year, underlining how melting sea ice is raising the prospect of an important new route for trade between Asia and Europe that shaves thousands of kilometres off the trip.
As of Friday, the administrators of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) – which follows the north coast of Russia – had granted permission to 204 ships to sail this year. In 2012, only 46 ships sailed the entire length from Europe to Asia, up from four vessels just two years earlier.
Commenter Danp opened a thread on the ASIF a couple of days ago, showing a cleaned up compilation he made of LANCE-MODIS satellite images (like commenter dabize did last year). The result looks very nice indeed, giving us a clear view of the holes on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, near the North Pole:
Ice experts weigh in – but those swiss-cheese like holes near the pole appear to be signs that we could see a dramatic disintegration later in the summer.
Arctic Sea Ice Blogger Neven adds the animation shown at the top of this post with this note:
At the same time Dutch blogger Lars Boelen has combined images from the all-new high-resolution sea ice concentration maps that are put out by the University of Hamburg (discussed a couple of weeks ago in this blog post)
To see the most recently updated video, check out Lars’ YouTube channel. He tries to update the video on a daily basis.
Below, last year’s Sea Ice Minimum video:
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
July 21, 2013 at 4:02 pm
The models are forecasting a cyclone in the Arctic by midweek. Could this be a repeat of GAC2012?
July 21, 2013 at 4:17 pm
get popcorn
July 21, 2013 at 4:32 pm
The storm is really going to shuffle the deck. With the ice already badly fractured by June’s persistent cyclone, it’s possible that the ice could be below 2012 levels by the end of the month
July 23, 2013 at 3:50 am
Link is broken
July 21, 2013 at 4:18 pm
I have just published a new Arctic Sea Ice update: cyclone time again. Wrt the cyclone:
(..)
July 21, 2013 at 4:29 pm
If we do get close to the record low of 2012, or even surpass it, I’m really curious what the response will be from for example WUWT. They had some ‘interesting’ responses to the event last year.
July 21, 2013 at 5:33 pm
any examples? sounds like comedy gold.
July 21, 2013 at 5:57 pm
Well they were pushing the weather not climate idea a lot:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/27/record-arctic-storm-melted-sea-ice/
Or for example the idea that the speed at which ice extend grew had any bearing on the health of Arctic ice:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-14-arctic-refreeze-fastest-ever/
Or the switch to focussing on records in the Antarctic:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/29/according-to-noaa-data-all-time-antarctic-sea-ice-rxtent-record-was-set-on-sept-22nd-2012/
Or casting doubt on the measurements due to processing differences:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/26/arctic-ice-and-the-dmi-deficit/
Or forwarding the idea it’s natural variability and not a response to AGW:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/24/tisdale-how-much-of-an-impact-does-the-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation-have-on-arctic-sea-ice-extent/
Or this post (I don’t know what to make of it):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/14/friday-funny-guardian-publishes-a-story-about-earth-raising-the-white-flag-due-to-disappearing-ice-then-disappears-the-story/
Or trying to imply something about temperatures in the Arctic from one study:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/29/new-paper-finds-deep-arctic-ocean-from-50000-to-11000-years-ago-was-1-2c-warmer-than-modern-temperatures/
Basically if you look in their sea ice tag you’ll find all kinds of interesting posts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tag/sea-ice/
Some of them were really pushed by the usual suspects on social media like twitter. Sometimes filling my twitter timeline with references to posts.
July 22, 2013 at 1:00 am
I think a few of the global cooling diehards at WUWT are pinning their hopes on a flip of the AMO to turn around Arctic sea ice loss.
Problem is that the most likely time frame is 2020 – we could be down to nothing but the most entrenched pack ice by then.
Other views on the period of the AMO flip is that its either 13 years late or not due until 2040.
July 22, 2013 at 1:05 am
The other problem with believing in a negative AMO to restore sea ice is the the decline in the Arctic began in the early fifities and continued steadily through to the present even though the AMO was strongly NEGATIVE from 1970 almost to 2000.
July 21, 2013 at 11:29 pm
Mostly it was “Squirrel!”
July 23, 2013 at 3:41 am
They’ll show more pictures of submarines sitting in polynyas at the North Pole and say it’s 1960 all over again, despite every evidence to the contrary.
July 21, 2013 at 5:48 pm
Can Canada ship her Western oil, and her Tar Sands oil and natural gas, her iron ores, this way ie: from a port on Hudson’s Bay to Eurasian marketplaces, any time soon? Can Russian Nuclear Ice Breakers help? Will Arctic oil become a practical reality?
July 22, 2013 at 12:53 am
After last year’s dramatic decline, I expected a partial recovery. It’s still too early to predict another low or something close to it but if the extent & area for this year is below 2008 or 2009, that’ll be something.
We still need a reliable way to track ice thickness – PIOMAS is not enough.
July 24, 2013 at 11:11 pm
[…] 2012 Melt Season – Arctic Ice in Free Fall Again? (climatecrocks.com) […]
July 26, 2013 at 12:06 am
The images of melting at the North Pole are going viral all over the social media sites
October 14, 2013 at 4:43 pm
In hindsight, and record ice growth, this article and comments seems needlessly alarming. Does anyone deny this?
October 15, 2013 at 12:38 pm
“record ice growth” is not descriptive of what is happening in the arctic. If you are not alarmed, you do
not understand the situation.
October 15, 2013 at 11:40 pm
Unless you have accurate numbers for AREA and VOLUME, you can’t claim record ice growth. Those numbers take more time to determine than extent which only looks at 15% or greater ice coverage.
Here’s how extent misleads:
Let’s say that at some point you had 3/4ths of the Arctic area with 90% coverage of 3-foot thick ice.
Then you have a freakish melt that causes a drastic reduction in % coverage and thickness, followed by one of those famous polar storms that scatters the thinner, more fragile ice over a wider area.
Now you have an Arctic area that is 40% covered over its maximum area with ice that’s 1 foot thick.
Guess what – you now have 100% according to the standard of measurement of extent.
Oh look – RECOVERY – Woot!!!
Now calculate this – what’s the change in actual area of the Arctic Ocean that’s covered by ice?
What’s the change in volume?