ASI 2012 update 9: stormy weather

What is important to remember, is the large discrepancies between this melting season and that of 2007. The latter had almost perfect weather conditions during almost the entire melting season, with lots of sunshine and compacting winds. 2012 had a reasonably good June, but after that the weather switched and hasn't switched back since. Those ideal weather conditions in 2007 pulled in large amounts of warm water through Bering Strait decimating the ice pack on the Pacific side of the Arctic. If 2012 is pulling anything through Bering Strait, it's cold water. The ideal weather conditions in 2007 pushed out very large amounts of multi-year ice through Fram and Nares Strait. 2012 doesn't come close to it. But still, even before the storm, 2012 was following the 2007 trend line as if the Arctic wasn't cloudy and winds weren't blowing the wrong way.

The fact that 2012 followed 2007 so closely, was the strongest evidence possible that a large part of the ice pack is so thin that it will melt out no matter what the weather conditions. The storm only emphasized this, giving all that thin ice a push into the abyss.

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When it comes to sea surface temperature anomalies (as calculated by DMI), things look more or less the same as two weeks ago (ie very bad), with the red expanding towards the East Siberian Sea:

This is very bad news for the re-freeze period. All those waters are going to have to release their heat to the colder air so that they can freeze over. One wonders what all that heat and moisture in the atmosphere will do.

Update conclusion

The storm did a lot of damage to ice that was probably going to melt out anyway. It's not entirely sure what the after-effects will mean for the remainder of the melting season, but it is looking increasingly likely that we are going to see new records, perhaps even new records on all graphs of all data sets. Especially if the Arctic is going to get some of that weather 2007 enjoyed all of its melting season.

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/asi-2012-update-9-stormy-weather.html