By Steve Goddard

The last piece of ice remaining in the Arctic

The death spiral continues, with Arctic ice extent and thickness nearly identical to what it was 10 years ago.

The graph above shows superimposed volume data (calculated from PIPS) for 2010, on top of the NSIDC extent data. Interesting to note that volume continued to increase for about a month after extent started to decline. This is because the Arctic Basin has remained below freezing, while the lower latitudes have been melting.

In the video of 2010 ice below, you can see how ice has been piling up to a depth of nearly five metres (red) on the windward side of Wrangel Island, the New Siberian Islands, and the Taymyr Peninsula.

Ice thickness in Barrow, AK seems to have reached it’s maximum this week, at about 4.3 metres feet.

University of Alaska – Barrow Ice Sensor

Temperatures in the Arctic interior have remained cold, and well below freezing. Not much opportunity for melt.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

You can see the Arctic temperature anomalies over the last 30 days in the video below:

The four major extent indices continue to diverge, with the next couple of weeks showing almost no year over year variability.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_2010.png

The modified NSIDC image below shows in red where ice has disappeared since early April.

The modified NSIDC image below shows in red where ice has disappeared in the last week.

The modified NSIDC image below shows a comparison between 2010 and 2007. Areas in green have more ice than 2007. Areas in red have less ice than 2007.

The modified NSIDC image below shows in red areas of ice deficiency relative to the 30 year mean, with areas of excess shown in green. The cold Pacific side has excess ice, while the warmer Atlantic side has a deficiency..

This corresponds quite closely with sea surface temperature anomalies seen below.

http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html

The image below from September 15, 2007 is the one which most interests me this week. After the big “melt” of 2007, it was widely reported that researchers expected the ice to be gone by 2013, and that “in the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly.”

How is five metre thick ice supposed to “just melt away quite suddenly?”

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From the linear predictions department :

Temperatures in Colorado have warmed up 20 degrees in the last two weeks. If that trend continues, it will become hot enough to boil water before Christmas. And the Arctic will be ice free by 2013.

Sources:

http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_overview_complete.png

http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2010/BRW_MBS10_overview_complete.png

And finally, GLOBAL sea ice has returned to normal:

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