Fog will lift revealing sunny, warm day! Arctic ice minimum records, global heat and ocean currents.

(I am hoping this post again goes out properly to email subscribers. Apologies for the disruption, the plugin delivering that service was causing other issues and I didn’t realise it was also handle email subscribers.)

The fog this morning will lift hopefully before noon and the clear skies above should allow us to quickly heat up to above 20°C.

Thursday will be likely follow the same pattern.  Cool damp morning and warm and sunny afternoon.

Rain will return Friday morning though, so don’t take this sunny interlude for granted. 🙂

2016 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum ties with 2007 for 2nd Lowest.

The melt season has ended in the Arctic (NSIDC). The final area of coverage of ice was approximately 4.14 million square kilometres (+-25,000km2).  That would make it second only to 2012’s minimum as you can see below.

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However, because the uncertainty is in the +-0.025 million km2 range, that means statistically, 2016 and 2007 are effectively tied.

You will notice all of the top 10 minimums have occured within only the past 11 years so we have been testing new lows for more than a decade and the trend has not slowed.

It is hard to expect this trend to reverse.  2016 was notable in that it set a big new record low *maximum* in May. You can see that in the graph below (blue line).  The extent then hugged the edge of that 2 standard deviation below average line all the way into September.  So really, we were set for a very low sea ice extend all summer long.

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This is despite what the NSIDC calls a summer of “generally stormy, cool, and cloudy—conditions that previous studies have shown to generally limit the rate of summer ice loss. That September ice extent nevertheless fell to second lowest in the satellite record is hence surprising.

They chalk up that surprising decline to a generally weak, and thin icepack affected by warmer than normal ocean waters being transported in from the south attacking the ice from below.

With August 2016 once again being the hottest monh of August in the 137 year record (NCDC), the 16th month in a row to do so.  August was also the 8th highest global temperature departure from average (1.25ºC) for any month on record.  We should not expect any change in trend in the Arctic or elsewhere.

And finally, Ocean Current videos

This is really cool!

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Click the link to go see the video.  Our part of North America is actually surprisingly absent of strong currents.

 

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