ARCTIC SEA-ICE –Fram Flushing–

A fascinating change in the pattern at the Pole is occurring, involving the winds in Fram Strait switching from south winds, which prevent the sea-ice from exiting the Arctic Sea, to north winds, which flush the sea-ice down into the Atlantic.

One interesting example of the bias of Alarmists is that both south winds and north winds are a sign of Global Warming. South winds bring milder air north, which is proof the Pole is warming, while north winds flush sea-ice south and reduce the amount of sea-ice in the Central Arctic, which is proof the Pole is warming.

In any case I’ll start with a bunch of maps, which will show the switch. We’ll begin back on March 18, when high pressure over Norway and low pressure north of Greenland had south winds in Fram Strait, and a clear “feeder band” of milder air probing up towards the Pole.

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The “feeder band” fed the weak low north of Greenland, and it took an unusual route over Svalbard, strengthening and switching the winds from south to north in Fram Strait.

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The storm became quite strong, but notice how the “feeder band” fades. Despite the sunrise at the Pole, the warmer air is still lost to outer space, and the temperatures at the Pole remain close to thirty below.

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The storm fades into western Russia, but a small low follows over Svalbard, keeping the flow of cold air south through Fram Strait.

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At this point I am noticing the low down by Iceland, and wondering if it will disrupt the pattern by taking a more traditional route. High pressure is being pumped behind the prior storm, over Scandinavia.

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In the above map I am already noting that the Icelandic gale will not behave as I expect, as the prior low has pumped a ridge over Scandinavia, blocking the Icelandic gale. It will be deflected towards Fram Strait. This could get interesting.

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Another big low moves up from Cape Farewell at the southern tip of Greenland to Iceland, and runs up against the blocking high over Scandinavia. That high is expanding south and west, growing into what would be a northern positioning of the Azores High, if it was warmer, but it is not a balmy high pressure.

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The gale has managed to squeeze over the top of the high pressure, weakening a lot, and the flow in Fram Strait is now east to west, flushing out less ice. The blocking high has forsed the next gale up the west side of Greenland, into Baffin Bay.

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As the Baffin Bay low transits the high icefields of Greenland it sucks a new “feeder band” up through Fram Strait, fueling a “Ralph” (Anomolous area of low pressure) over the Pole, as the old Atlantic gale sags into Russia. At this point I am sitting back and quite confident the flow down through Fram Strait is over. The blocking high pressure is bulging north south of Iceland, forsing a second Gale west up into Baffin Bay.

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Only a day later and I am scratching my head, for again there are north winds in Fram Strait, despite the Baffin Bay low approaching from the west, which I thought would create south winds. However I figure the north winds will soon shift south, and my attention is diverted to the speed at which the “feeder band” is cooled, as it fuels the “Ralph.”

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The Baffin Bay low fights its way over the blocking high and the 10,000 foot high icefields of Greenland, and is in Fram Strait, where winds are nearly calm. High pressure builds in its wake. I pay little attention. I am thinking of writing a post on how the “feeder band” cooled despite the fact the sun has risen, which shows the Pole is still losing heat to outer space. I am watching “Ralph”. Fram Strait is not a focus of my attention.

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Yowza! What the heck happened!? Crossing the northernmost north Atlantic the Baffin Bay low totally exploded, and the high behind it became totally pumped, and the winds are screaming south in Fram Strait. Who the heck cares about the dwindling “Ralph”, or about “feeder bands” you can barely see any more?

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The Baffin Bay low, (which now perhaps qualifies as a “Barents Sea Blaster”) never sunk down into Russia, but rather wobbled about southeast of Svalbard, helped by a Fujiwara dance with another Atlantic low which managed to squeak over the blocking high. The maps below basically demonstrate we have seen six days of roaring north winds in Fram Strait. (And many other things as well, but one needs to limit ones focus, at times.)

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At this point we perhaps can sit back and attempt to see what the effect of six days of Fram Flushing has been. One rather cool effect is that the sea-ice, formerly crushed west into the east coast of Greenland, has been spread out, forming polynyas of open water or very thin baby-ice along Greenland’s coast, but actually crossing the Denmark Strait and touching the north coast of Iceland in two places.

However, before you plan to saunter from Iceland to Greenland, it is important to be aware “thickness” maps exist in a dream-world of “averages” and the average of a few big bergs and much open water is six inches. There is in fact no six inch thick ice to stroll upon, and you’d better be prepared to hop like a super-kangaroo to get from big berg to big berg. A satelite few of the ice-edge between Greenland and Iceland will give you a good idea of the conditions we are dealing with.

Of course, with ice being flushed south in Fram Strait, one looks north to see where the sea-ice is coming from. And indeed some big leads have opened north of Greenland. (Greenland coast at lowest right corner.)

If you look at these leads you will notice they are dark on their left sides and more milky to the right, which shows you how rapidly sea-ice forms with temperatures still down close to thirty below. In some ways leads may increase the production of sea-ice, especially in April. (In July it is totally different, with air temperatures above freezing.) To be honest, I am uncertain if exporting sea-ice through Fram Strait decreases the amount of sea-ice, or increases it.

In the short term the more sea-ice you flush down into the Atlantic, the less your total will be, because the Atlantic swiftly melts the bergs. However there are long-term consequences as well. What happens if you chill the Atlantic?

In the winter of 1816-1817 there was apparently such an amazing Fram Strait flushing that it seems pure hyperbole. The sea-ice didn’t just reach the north coast of Iceland; it reached Ireland.(Never seen since). So much ice was flushed south the waters north of Greenland were wide open. Coastlines never mapped before were mapped, and one whaler claimed he sailed up through Fram Strait, westward over the top of Greenland, and down through Baffin Bay. The English Navy was galvanized, for it seemed a Northwest Passage might be opening up. But the same time saw a “year with no summer” in western Europe, because the Atlantic had been so chilled by the discharge of sea-ice. (Meanwhile Eastern Europe was warm; apparently the chilled Atlantic caused the summer jet stream to dig unusually far south over Western Europe, but to loop north in the East.)

In any case, the current flushing (so far) is small potatoes compared to 1817. But it is interesting to think about the factors involved.

One factor is that if you greatly cool the Atlantic you also cool the water that ordinarily melts a lot of sea ice, when it enters the arctic as the northernmost tendrils of the warm Gulf Stream. If you cool those tendrils they can melt less ice, which leads to more ice and colder temperatures which leads to even more ice. In fact the very low sea-ice of 1817 sent the 600 ship British Navy, (recently unemployed with Napoleon defeated and the conflict with the United States ended), exploring open Arctic waters which they then saw become increasingly ice covered. In 1819 William Parry was able to sail far west in the sound which now bears his name, yet the Franklin expedition perished, trapped by ice in the same waters thirty years later. It might be that a discharge of sea-ice through Fram Strait is a sort of “tipping point” or “trigger”, which sets off cooling. Or maybe not. But it should at least be considered.

Fram Strait is important because it is the only deep connection the Arctic Sea has with the rest of the world’s oceans. The arctic cools vasts amounts of water, and cold water sinks, drawing warm water north to replace it. As the warm water comes north the colder water must exit south, but has difficulty doing so in shallow waters of the continental shelf, such as Bering Strait or the waters east of Svalbard. Only west of Svalbard is there a deep channel for cold waters that have sunk deep. Even so, some cold water spills over the shallow waters of the continental shelf on the Greenland side of Fram Strait, but, as soon as that water has a chance, it plunges downwards. South of Fram Strait, where the continental shelf draws closer to Greenland, there is a sort of underwater Niagara Falls, where huge amounts of cold water plunges down over the edge of the continental shelf.

As this cold water plunges down it is removed from the influences that control weather at the surface, and, though part of the thermohaline circulation, it cannot effect temperatures at the surface for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, when it reappears as an upwelling at some other place on the planet. However if that water comes south with a bunch of sea-ice, the sea-ice cannot sink down to the abysmal deeps, but merrily continues to bob south at the surface, and consequently continues to be able to greatly alter weather at the surface. Those who sail northern fogs state you can feel the chill of an iceberg long before you can see it.

Despite six days of frigid north winds, current anomaly maps do not show much cooling of the north Atlantic.

I think ice-water causes problems for the models that produce such maps. Technically ice-water is as cold as water can get, for it is where ice and water coexist. Therefore, because water any colder would not be water but rather ice, ice-water cannot be “above normal”, because that would suggest a “normal” where water was fluid below freezing. However I have often seen such models describe ice-water as a degree, (and in one case three), above “normal”. Impossible. But in any case I am expecting to see the models catch on later in the season, and to see the North Atlantic cooled. Currently the cooling is only apparent east of Iceland.

Another effect the north winds have is to slow the flow of warmer waters to the arctic. The major warm tendril of the Gulf Stream in Fram Strait is the WSC (West Spitsbergen Current), which bounces off the coast of Norway and travels north roughly along the line of ten degrees longitude. This mild current is responsible for ice-free water on the east side of Fram Strait, and ice-free waters north and northwest of Svalbard, sometimes even in the dead of winter. However this water is only held at the surface because it is warmer than than surrounding water; in terms of salinity it wants to sink, because evaporation down in the tropics makes it saltier than surrounding water, and salty water wants to sink below fresher water. Therefore when the WSC chills to a certain point it sinks below the surface, and can melt sea-ice no longer. Six straight days of being blasted by northern winds likely has chilled the WSC more than usual. It may dive beneath the surface prematurely, and allow sea-ice to persist north of Svalbard.

Interestingly, the WSC remains recognizable even after it dives under the surface, due to its salt content and temperature, and hard working scientists have traced it as it describes a complete circuit of the Pole and exits, still different from colder water, on the west side of Fram Strait as part of the ice-clogged, southbound EGC. (East Greenland Current.)

I am somewhat amazed by the hard work done, getting beneath the sea-ice to measure these currents, especially as such study discovers no gold and isn’t profitable in any immediate worldly sense. I’ve noticed the discoveries don’t always jive with prior discoveries. I don’t think this is due to one scientist being “right” and another “wrong”, but rather because the currents wander. After all, like the jet stream high overhead, currents have no restraining banks like a river has, and are free to meander whither they will. What I imagine is needed is a salesman to sell the idea of under-ice sensors as numerous as weather balloons are above the ice, to trace the meanderings. Hmm. Good luck with that job.

Another effect of the north winds howling south through Fram Strait for six straight days would likely be to slow the speed of the WSC northward, while increasing the speed of the EGC southward. This creates interesting pneumatic problems, for water doesn’t compress and cannot stretch. Initially I would think that slowing the speed of the WSC by a tenth of a mile per hour would only delay the arrival of the water in Fram Strait slightly, but the effect upstream might in some ways be immediate. When you press a brake pedal the pneumatic effect takes no time to reach your brakes. The only give in the Arctic Sea pneumatic system is the level of the sea, and if the WSC is importing less water north as the EGC is exporting more water south, the level of the Arctic Sea should theoretically drop. And if it is then lower than surrounding seas, would that not increase the tendency of water to pour into the arctic in other places?

Lastly, the tundra and taiga are just starting to see days longer than nights, and snows are just starting to melt, which means arctic rivers, frozen to a mere trickle by the bitter winter cold, are just beginning to rise. The increases are astounding. For example, the largest river, the Lena, can rise sixty feet in spring floods. The import of fresh water into the Arctic Sea goes from near zero to vast amounts. This fresh water tends to form a “lens” atop the saltier water, and freezes more easily than salt water. Therefore the import of water to the Arctic Sea switches from largely being saltier water from the tropics in early April, to fresh water from rivers in June. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, (or put it in your climate model and watch the computer smoke and melt down).

The more you study sea-ice the more you become aware the variables are multitudinous, and perhaps chaotic to all minds but the Creator’s. Every year 20 thousand cubic kilometers of sea-ice are created, only to melt away every summer down to around 5 cubic kilometers that remain. By the end of summer the sea-ice is splotched with meltwater pools, and in places broken into slabs.

The satellites tend to see meltwater pools as open water, but the scientists slogging about collecting data (and rescuing equipment before it sinks) know such pools are usually but puddles on firm ice (though a few can reach down through the ice, holes down to an open sea a mile deep.)

It is a beautiful landscape. I wish we still had the Barneo polar tourist-trap and jetport, the floating buoys with cameras, and the intrepid adventurers skiing past polar bears, but pictures are getting harder and harder to find. Right now we’d be seeing the floating bergs were now firmly fixed in the winter’s new baby-ice.

We could examine where leads had opened, frozen swiftly over with baby-ice, and then clapped shut, stacking the baby-ice like plates.

All these images strike me as beautiful, and inspire no dread of a “Death Spiral”, nor of a planet broiling and boiling. A quick glance at the “volume” graph shows we have more ice than last year, and indeed more than in 2017, so it’s hard to fear it is all melting away.

In fact, rather than inspiring fear, the sea-ice inspires a sense of wonder. It is amazing how our Creator designed our planet to work, with its seasons and its ebbing and flowing. My mind is more inclined towards awe than towards dread, which makes the pseudo-scientists hired by politicians seem all the more like purveyors of panic porn. They make it their business to inspire fear, rather than appreciation of how well the world is made. They want to sell vaccines, rather than appreciate the excellent antibodies made by immune systems we already possess, so they downplay wonder and stir up dread.

God’s beauty currently does not manifest in Washington D.C., but it does manifest at the Pole. If you want to feel uplifted, shut off the Fake News, and study the clouds, or sunsets, or sea-ice.

As a final aside and wonder, I’ll point out that the current flushing of Fram Strait has drained the Pole of a lot of its cold air, exporting the cold all the way south to April snows in England. Yet despite the export of all this cold air, temperatures at the Pole are not all that far above normal, and indeed are closer to normal than they were at this time last year.

It will be interesting to watch the arctic for further developments. Stay tuned.

ARCTIC SEA-ICE –Ralph’s Hooked Signature–

“Ralph” (Anomalous polar low pressure), which was created by a North Atlantic gale that swerved left and proceeded north right up the spine of Greenland, has merrily crossed the Pole and headed towards Central Siberia. On November 17th new low bombed-out south of Greenland, as high pressure was pumped over West Siberia.

As Ralph passes the Pole he sucks north milder Atlantic Air, creating a “signature hook” in the temperature isotherms.

Twelve hours later we see Ralph moving closer to Siberia, and the high pressure in his wake to some degree cutting off the Atlantic “feeder band”, and redirecting it north of Greenland where “Ralph Junior” is brewing. Major cold is building in Central Siberia, and the North Atlantic Gale is not moving north into Baffins Bay like the last one.

The “signature hook” can still be seen in the temperature isotherms, but cooling is evident. A slight hook is appearing north of Greenland.

Twelve hours later Ralph has reached the New Siberian Islands, as Ralph Junior develops north of Greenland. The North Atlantic gale is wobbling east towards a more traditional stance as the Icelandic Low.

The temperature map reveals only faint traces of Ralph’s original “hook”. The temperature isotherms reveal both the minus-five and minus-ten isotherm have retreated west along the Siberian coast towards the North Atlantic. Not that the mild air has moved west; rather it has physically cooled. A less dramatic hook of Atlantic air is probing north of Greenland to feed Ralph Junior. Interesting to me is the elongated pocket of minus fifteen isotherms extending from the Canadian Archipelago and crossing the Pole. Did the primary Ralph leave colder temperatures in its wake?

Twelve hours later this morning’s map shows the primary Ralph is fading on the coast of Siberia, cut off from its feeder band. Ralph Junior is surviving north of Greenland, but the Icelandic low looks like it is sweeping in a lot of North Atlantic “juice” and perhaps cutting off Ralph Junior from further supplies.

The temperature map shows little trace of all the warm air the original Ralph brought north, and the original “hook” has vanished. The secondary hook made by Ralph Junior imports fresh mildness over the Pole (if you can call minus-ten Celsius “mild”).

Importing all the mild Atlantic air north has created a dramatic spike in the DMI polar temperatures graph, now starting to descend.

While this spike is incorporated into global-average-temperatures, and makes them look higher, to me it appears it is largely a reflection of heat lost. If you desire to retain heat it should be placed in the piggy-bank of the south, not squandered under the sunless skies of the north.

When I look a little deeper I notice an oddity. Initially the surge of Atlantic air made the entire Arctic Ocean “white hot” on the GFS temperature anomaly-map (from Weatherbell). (“White hot” is still below freezing, but 16 to 30 degrees above normal.) However Ralph’s transit of the arctic did not increase or even sustain that anomaly. In fact the “white hot” area appears cut in two, as if Ralph left a trail of cooling in his wake. (Also Ralph Junior involves some less-than-white-hot temperatures in his signature curl.)

In conclusion, the overturning of the atmosphere and heat-exchanges, seen in Ralph, makes mincemeat of the ideas within the elegant idea of there being a Polar Cell of descending air and high pressure at the Pole.

One exercise I find interesting is to attempt to draw a picture of the overturning atmosphere as elegant as the above one is, but to include a Ralph of rising air. Try it. All sorts of problems manifest.

One fascinating thing to observe has been a reverse from a cross-polar-flow to a cross-polar-low. The flow was from Europe to Canada, and in barely a week this swung to a whirl from Greenland to Siberia. I don’t claim to understand what I watch, but I think it is well worth watching. Geeks (not me) who devote study to such stuff deserve funding, for, rather than a mere reflection of what happens at more southerly latitudes, these arctic shenanigans may be pivots that swing the weather further south. The discovery of a forecasting “tool”, as valuable as the discovery of the tropic’s “MJO” was, may be awaiting discovery.

Sorry to be so distracted from sea-ice by what is moving and shifting and growing the sea-ice. The sea-ice itself is continuing its ordinary expansion, and so far we haven’t seen the down-dip which sometimes occurs in late Autumn, despite Ralph bashing the ice about a bit.

The appearance of Ralph north of Greenland did bring about wrong-way south-winds in Fram Strait, slowing and even briefly reversing the discharge of sea-ice south into the Atlantic down the east coast of Greenland, and also compressing that sea-ice against Greenland’s coast. This reduces the possibility we’ll see the rarity of an ice-bridge between Greenland and Iceland in early January.

The area of open water north of Bering Strait is shrinking but still sizable. Beaufort Sea is nearly completely frozen, the retreat on the Kara-Sea-front has reverted to expansion, the top of Baffin Bay is seeing rapid expansion of sea-ice despite the recent south winds, and Hudson Bay is starting to freeze (which is always interesting to watch.)

Stay tuned.

ARCTIC SEA-ICE —Pacific To Atlantic Flow—

I’m preoccupied working on my “Manifesto”, and am currently involved studying the madness of the French Terror, and Stalin’s purge of all Russia’s successful farmers, and Mao’s “Cultural Revolution”, because the way some people fanatically insist Global Warming is real despite all evidence presented to them reminds me a little of the Red Guard.

Trying to argue with the Red Guard was a bit like arguing with a Freudian, only rather than seeing everything as sexual they saw everything as political. (Don’t the above gals look lovely? But they couldn’t wear make-up, for either it was evil because it was “traditional’ or was evil because it was western and “imperialistic.”)

Who the heck needs all that? I’m in the mood to run away to the North Pole and just watch sea-ice for a bit.

For a while now there has been high Pressure towards North America and Greenland, and Low pressure towards Eurasia, which sets up a cross-polar-flow from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

This has pulled a feeder-band of milder and moister air from the Pacific up over the Pole.

This is not as dramatic as the surging feeder-bands that came north from the Atlantic last winter, but it has caused a spike in the temperatures north of 80 degrees latitude.

And I suppose this has the Alarmists very excited:

I hate to mention to them that these surges push the colder air from the Pole south, and we in North America are going to be freezing our tootsies off for the next two weeks. So I won’t. Instead I’ll point out some interesting effects this has on the sea-ice. It is moving differently from last year. The south winds have pushed a lot of sea-ice from Bering Sea through Bering Strait and built a wall of thicker ice to the north, towards the Pole:

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On the far side of the Pole the south winds become north winds, and push the sea ice south where it was getting pushed north last winter. Last winter there was great excitement among Alarmists when the open water of a polynya opened north of Greenland as the ice was pushed north, and also because there was less ice in Fram Strait and around Svalbard, but this year the ice has come crushing south, flushing through Fram Strait and crunching up against the north coast of Greenland and Svalbard.

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The movement of the sea-ice gets me wondering about a couple of things. The first is how open the Northwest Passage will be this summer. It looks like there won’t be much ice in Bering Strait, but I’m a little worried about that wall of ice north of the Strait. It is liable to be chunky and contain piled-up pressure ridges and be slower to break up than usual, and any north wind could bring it to the northwest coast and create an impediment as yachts turn the corner to head east to Barrow.

Once east of Barrow the sea-ice ought break up fairly swiftly, as south winds much of the winter have pushed the thicker ice far out to sea. (The light blue sea-ice is over six feet thick. the vivid blue sea-ice is roughly 3 feet thick, and once the sea-ice gets lilac-purple it is less than three feet.) Down by the Mackenzie Delta it is only around a foot thick, not due to spring floods (as they don’t get going until April) but due to offshore winds. It would take a major shift in the weather patterns to crunch the ice back south to the coast.

As one heads further east next summer there will likely be problems, as the passage east of the Makenzie Delta and south of Parry Channel is very jammed with ice.

Further east, the eastern part of Parry Channel has been surprisingly mobile for the depth of winter, and over the past 45 days a lot of the ice flushed east into Baffin Bay and joined the parade of sea-ice heading south towards Newfoundland, along with a few far larger icebergs that have calved off glaciers. In a sense it seems a reflection of the Pacific-to-Atlantic press. Once again the Canadian Ice Service is noting many icebergs off Newfoundland. In fact this is the fourth winter out of the last six that the “extent” of sea-ice flushing out of Baffin Bay and down past Newfoundland (blue bar) has crept above normal (green line).

Last winter, when Newfoundlander fishing boats became trapped, a young “climate scientist” theorized the increase in ice was due to ice which had formerly been “fast ice” to the north being melted free by Global Warming. The problem with his theory was that the increased levels of ice were getting back to former levels, after ten years of reduced ice (which some had claimed was itself a sign of Global Warming, before the levels recently increased.) Also, way back between 1871 and 1873, the ill-fated Polaris expedition sailed up to the very top of Baffin Bay, and a group of survivors drifted on an ice floe from Nares Strait clear down to Newfoundland in the dead of winter. The sea-ice has always been very mobile.

This brings me to the second thing I’ve been wondering about, which involves the effects of an increased export of sea-ice into the Atlantic. This difference between last winter, which saw sea-ice prevented from surging south by “wrong-way-winds” in Fram Strait, (or at least slowed), and this year, when the flow has been assisted by a Pacific-to-Atlantic flow, might assist the study of such effects.

I wonder about this because back around 1816-1817 there was an amazing export of sea-ice south, with whalers noting open water north of Greenland yet icebergs grounding on the coast of Ireland. Some think this may have so chilled the water of the North Atlantic that it lead to “The year Without A Summer” in Western Europe in 1817.

The Arctic Sea must always be exporting sea-ice and very cold water, because it imports water four ways, and can lose little due to evaporation. Even though the Pole receives little precipitation and is sometimes described as a “desert”, air heading north is nearly always moister than the air heading south, which means moisture is left up there. Second, the northern tendrils of the Gulf Stream reach the Arctic Sea, ramming water north. Third, some of the largest rivers in the world pour into the Arctic Sea. (The Lena River is described as “tenth largest”, but I think it may be second or third largest when it is in full flood in August; its water-levels can rise sixty feet.) Lastly, the north-facing glaciers of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago calve huge bergs.

The export of water occurs in cold currents down the east coasts of Asia, Greenland and Baffin Bay, and the Atlantic receives far more than the Pacific. The water heading south in a liquid form is more dense than warmer water, and at a certain point dives beneath the warmer water. In fact between Iceland and Greenland in Denmark Strait, where the bottom gets dramatically deeper, the cold current plunges down in a manner I have heard described as an “underwater Niagara Falls.” However the sea-ice, (whether the thinner chips of frozen ocean, or huger bergs calved off from glaciers), cannot sink beneath the warmer waters, and instead sails right into the warmer waters, significantly chilling it. Therefore I’ll be watching to see if the Atlantic becomes colder, perhaps influencing the weather in Western Europe.

The ambiguity of the situation is that it is opposite of what some Alarmists suggest. Less ice left up in the Arctic makes it colder, not warmer, to the south. If it chills the Gulf Stream heading north, then, after a lag, it can make it colder in the Arctic Sea as well. I wonder if this fluctuation could play a part in the roughly sixty year oscillation of the AMO.

I’ll be watching to see if there is any decrease in the “volume” graph. Last year, when sea-ice was prevented from coming south, there was an unexpected increase in “volume” that surprised many Alarmists, beginning in February. This year, so far, the “volume” remains above last year, but I’ll be keeping a sharp eye on it.

In terms of “extent” (which means little this time of year, as there still is little or no sunshine to reflect, and “albedo” is not much of a consideration), we may have already passed our winter “maximum”. Alarmists will be dismayed it already beat last year’s (by a hair). Once again the “Death Spiral” is debunked. Not that the facts ever penetrate certain thick skulls.

Stay tuned.

ARCTIC SEA-ICE –A June Storm–

This could get interesting.

Usually things get benign (or boring, depending on your inclinations), at the Pole in June. The 24 hour sunshine warms the air to the temperature of the water, and there is less of a trouble-causing clash between north and south, and winds calm down. Back when we had cameras we tended to see sunshine slowly soften the crisp snow and turn it to slush, as temperatures slowly rose until most of the Arctic Sea was just above freezing. We have been moving in that direction this year, but an interesting storm is brewing on the coast of the Kara Sea.

Usually these lows roll east along the Siberian coast. At most they stall and loop-de-loop, before proceeding east in a weakened state. This one may plow straight north across the Pole.

The European model sees it slowly moving up to Fraz Joseph Land by Friday.

The GFS model has it faster, and deeper, at roughly the same spot by Thursday.

Notice how the GFS has milder air and rain pulled up from central Siberia. (The GFS is always a little milder, for some reason) But mostly the storm has snow, and not the sunshine and thawing we expect in June. But the sea-ice will be bashed and crashed.

By the weekend the GFS sees the storm weakened. (A weakened weekend). And it is directly over the Pole. Snow is still falling and sunshine is scarce.

The Canadian model (which is usually colder) elongates the storm and develops a second center towards Canada, so that by Friday it looks like this (Canada to left rather than to right):

The Arctic is more or less a desert, and the third of an inch of (melted) precipitation shown by the Canadian model is unusual. The Canadian has it in a more condensed area. (I think it may be using the milder air drawn up from Siberia to develop the second storm). Judging from temperatures, all the precipitation is seen as snow.

(Thanks to Dr. Ryan Maue for developing these maps, which are available at the Weatherbell site [Week free trial available.])

All in all, I expect this storm will make a complete mess of all the careful calculations of Alarmists and Skeptics alike. Days of clouds and a swath of fresh snow will require a rebooting of “albedo” calculations, to begin with.

Then there is the smashing and crashing of sea-ice. The Pole is not the “ice cap” many imagine, and sea-ice is highly mobile, and becomes more mobile when fragmented by storms to smaller pieces. Judging from the location of the storm, it looks to me like not all that much will be transported south through Fram Strait, but that will have to be watched.

Lastly there are changes in the speed of the melt brought about by the mixing of stratified water under the ice. Sometimes milder water is brought up, when differences in salinity allow warmer water to slide beneath colder, fresher water at the surface, but these conditions vary from year to year. Also it is still early, and the water is still more protected from winds by winter ice (at least until it gets smashed up). Lastly, the inrush of fresh waters from huge, north-flowing arctic rivers like the Lena has only started, and the “lens” of fresher waters by the coasts is not as expansive as it becomes later in the summer.

There is lots to wonder about. One thought that occurred to me is that the power of this storm may be due to the fact the air over the Pole is colder than normal, perhaps brought on by the fading La Nina, and the “Quiet Sun”.

I should confess that the cross-polar path of this storm is making complete mincemeat of my idea that the lagged effects of the La Nina would make the storm tracks more zonal. I assumed the cooler La Nina would lessen the clash between the warm tropics and the cold Pole, but perhaps the “Quiet Sun” perpetuates the clash. Things can’t get much less zonal than a cross-polar storm, and it looks like a “Ralph” (low pressure anomaly at the Pole) which I associated with an El Nino.

Not liking to admit I’m wrong, I cast about for excuses other factors. One idea that occurred to me is that the “wall” of thicker sea-ice, extending down past the New Siberian Islands to the East Siberian coast, may create colder air above, and a “wall” of high pressure that deflects storms north.

It will interesting to see if the storm produces a dip in the “extent” graph.

The only thing I’m certain of is that the storm will produce a hubbub at Alsarmist sites. It will be fun to do some lurking.

Worst would be if all the models are wrong, and no storm develops. What fun would there be in that?

Stay tuned.

ARCTIC SEA ICE –Pole Temperatures Below Normal–

Any time one of my forecasts is correct I am struck by a sense of disbelief.

It reminds me of one time I got a long hit in a baseball game when I was twelve. I had swung the bat with my eyes completely shut, as hard as I could, and hit the ball with the “sweet spot” of the bat, for the first time in my life. When the “sweet spot” is involved the ball striking the bat makes hardly any noise, and you hardly feel it through the handle. As I opened my eyes I assumed it must be a foul tip, but moments later I heard the loud crash as the long line-drive hit the plywood wall in deep center field. My jaw dropped, and I looked towards the bench completely amazed, and by best buddy screamed, “Run, you idiot!  Run!”

In any case I said the polar temperatures north of 80º north latitude would drop below normal in mid-May, months ago,  and lo and behold they have. Perhaps they did so a few days past the middle of May, yet still, it has happened. This doesn’t mean my reasoning is correct; it may merely be a case of “the blind squirrel getting the nut”; however it does give me a chance to sit in the sun and bask in my five-minutes-of-fame.

When I was twelve, and had hit the only double of my little-league career, I was able to talk like a slugger, until the next time I struck out. In like manner, I will now pontificate like a learnéd scientist.

The Pole has been cooler than normal, starting in mid-May, in recent years, with the exception being right after a strong El Nino, and even then the temperatures only got up to normal. Not only does this throw a wrench in the idea CO2 will warm the Pole, but it also makes one cast about looking for another cause.

My idea is that the Pole, during the summer, is the one place on the planet where the Quiet Sun actually has the “cooling effect” my simple mind expected it to have. In all other places the effects are varied, and tend to muddy the waters.

A few months ago I simply inquired on my blog what effects the Quiet Sun might have, and received more comments at my obscure site than I’d ever before received. As I pondered the observations of many minds, it did occur to me that the Quiet Sun likely had more than one effect, and that not all effects would necessarily be cooling. Therefore the effects might cancel each other out at certain times and in certain places, and give some the idea the less-energetic sun had no cooling effect at all.

For example, besides measuring energy with thermometers we also measure energy with anemometers.  If the Trade Winds were at all less energetic, there might be less up-welling  of cold waters on the west sides of continents, which would warm the world’s temperatures rather than cool them. If you then threw this warming into the mix of other cooling effects the Quiet Sun may have, the result would be the indecipherable slumgullion we call climate.

But at the Pole things become wonderfully simplified in May.  Many factors ordinarily effecting the region grind to a halt. Both the air and the ice warm to close to freezing, and the water under the ice is close to freezing as well, so there is no clash in temperatures to generate uplift and storms. Also the Pole shifts from 300 days, when it is a part of the planet that loses energy to outer space, to 60 days when it gains heat from the sun, and this shift slows down ordinary weather patterns. The weather (usually) becomes quiet. (In fact this quiet was a reason D-day was scheduled for early June in 1944; the success of D-day was due to an unusual gale, and the fact the Germans assumed the Allies couldn’t invade in bad weather.)

Because other factors have become quiet, the Pole becomes a laboratory where the chief influence is the sun, and therefore the effect of the Quiet Sun can be seen in the record of temperatures. Or so I theorize. Using this theory I assumed that, as we are at the solar minimum (and also with temperatures cooled slightly by a La Nina), we would see temperatures at the Pole dip below notmal as soon as winter storms ceased and weather became calm. Sure enough, it happened.

We will have to see if this continues. I think it will. If temperatures are slightly below normal there will still be some thawing at the Pole (because there always is, with 24-hour sunshine), but there will be less than usual, which will effect the “extent” graph.

At the moment the “extent” graph continues low, but the decrease in sea-ice is largely due to areas outside the Arctic Ocean melting. It will continue to drop as Hudson Bay melts,  but the real crux of how low the minimum will be involves the Arctic Sea itself.

When we look at the thickness map some open water is seen in the Arctic Sea, but, as temperatures have yet to rise above freezing (except briefly in a few small locations) and still often are below -5º C, this open water is not due to melting, but rather are polynyas created by winds pushing sea-ice away from land. They are now apparent in the Laptev Sea and Bering Strait, north of the Mackenzie River Delta, in the North Atlantic, (and also, outside of the Arctic Ocean, in northwest Hudson Bay and northernmost Baffin Bay.)

Because this decrease in extent is due to winds, and not melting, it should actually be compressing and thickening the ice in the Central Arctic, and indeed this can be seen when we compare this years thickness map with last year’s, from the same date. (2017 to left, 2018 to right.)

Notice the Polynyas are roughly in the same places (though the Laptev polynya is skinned with ice last year, and more sea-ice is down in Fram Strait last year [where it was basically doomed to melt in the summer]) The big difference is how much thicker the ice in the Central Arctic is. This has resulted in a somewhat amazing increase in the “volume ” graph.

Volume is now the highest in five years, and is so close to the “normal” line that a somewhat cynical friend of mind thinks they will have to create a higher “normal”, by basing it on the years 1993-2004 rather than 2004-2013. Such monkeying-around with graphs may change the impression the general public gets from such graphs, but it cannot change the reality.

And what is the reality? The reality is that, once the ordinary melting around the periphery of the arctic is over with, the melt will slow down, as thicker ice must be melted, and the “extent” graph will flatten out, and we may see the sea-ice minimum nearly as high as in 2006.

The only hope for the Alarmists who hanker for an ice-free Pole would be the infusion of warm currents. Most of the summer melt occurs from the bottom up. Therefore I look to the NOAA graphs of the PDO and AMO, which tend to hint whether the waters entering the Arctic Sea will have the power to melt sea-ice or not. For some reason NOAA has failed to update the graphs I use since March. Perhaps they are switching to a different format, but my somewhat cynical friend would tell me (if he knew) that NOAA sure would be in a big hurry to update the graphs if there was warming to be seen, and therefore things must be colder.

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

CLICK BAIT –Arctic Temperatures Crash Below Normal–

The DMI graph tells it all.

The only reason I’m pounding a drum about temperatures being slightly below normal at the Pole is because the media made such a hoopla about the spike that preceded it. Call my post anti-hoopla, if you will.

Not that any weather can be anything other than proof of Global Warming, in the eyes of some. For example, a few weeks ago the loopy jet-stream brought warm weather to the east coast of the USA. That was proof of Global Warming. However now it is bitterly cold, but that too is proof of Global Warming. If you choose to enter that mindset, here are examples. Warm spell is proof of Global Warming? See here:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21022018/february-record-high-temperature-east-coast-arctic-climate-change-nws

Blizzard a few days later is proof of Global Warming? See here:

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13032018/global-warming-weather-data-winter-storms-arctic-sea-ice-jet-streams-ocean-temperature

It is really an amazing sort of delusion, wherein there is no way to refute the hypothesis, even if it is incorrect. I am reduced to rolling my eyes.

One thing I refuse to do is to allow these poor, misguided zealots to drop the term “Global Warming.” It is their roots, and they need to stay grounded. I know they dearly want to forget their past predictions of doom and gloom and to “move on .com” to new predictions of doom and gloom, and therefore want to move to the safer topic of “Climate Change” (for the climate always changes), but they promised us a warmer world, and by gum I am not going to let them skip out on their promise. Also I don’t want them to avoid the absurdity they face, and have earned, when the weather is bitterly cold. It is a custard pie plashed into their face, and they themselves deliver it.

I have to admit they display adroit dexterity of logic, when explaining how a howling blizzard is due to Global Warming. I appreciate that sort of balderdash, for such balderdash is at the root of creative writing. Of course, mature writers know they have entered the world of fiction, and have left the landscape of science. But, before they were mature, some writers were forced to attend Algebra classes they loathed, and, when asked to explain why their Algebra homework was undone, wove such amazing webs of balderdash that the classroom hushed, and the teacher couldn’t help but smile. In the process they displayed adroit dexterity of logic. For this reason I think many Climate Scientists are actually creative writers who missed their calling.

But they do not fool me one bit. After all, I am myself a creative writer, and know all too clearly the difference between science and fiction, for in my time I too have offered bill collectors my poems, with a predictable result.

It doesn’t matter how fantastic your flights of imagination may be, (that you call “explanations”), you can’t eat them when your belly growls (and anyway, the unimpressed bill collector calls them “excuses”). A day must come when reality knocks at the door like the Grim Reaper. And, for Alarmists who are seeking to sell Global Warming, that is what cold temperatures are: The Grim Reaper (or bill collector) knocking at their door.

And that is why I am so cruel as to post the above graph. I want to be the cold slap of reality on a feverish face, and to wake people up.

I need to warn those young dreamers (who are desperately attempting to make their Global Warming creativity look like science) that they need to be careful.  They need to take care not to slip into the landscape of liars. Not that the temptations may not be more seductive than those faced by a man with an ugly wife and a beautiful secretary. But, as a creative writer, I can guarantee nothing dries up the founts of creativity faster than cheating in terms of Truth. For example, if a great creative writer succumbs to the big paycheck of working for an advertising agency,  he notices an almost immediate increase in what is called “writer’s block”, and in some cases ceases to be able to write at all.

How might such lies occur in the world of something innocuous as polar temperatures? Well, for an example, begin by looking at the color-codes in the scale of temperatures in the map below, from the recent February spike in arctic temperatures.

Look at the color of -4°C. It is a blue so pale it is nearly indistinguishable from white. But then look at +4°C. It is a vivid ochre .  This visually gives more “weight” to four degrees of warming than four degrees of cooling. It is a sort of lie. And then also note how the planet is tilted, so Siberia is away from the viewer. That too makes Siberia seem smaller and gives it less “weight”, and is a visual lie. Third, the map does not reflect actual temperatures, but rather “anomalies”, which can make temperatures far below zero appear cherry red, and thus generate an impression of warmth where it is cold.

Please compare the “impression” given by the above map with the “impression” given by the map below, (from a few days later), which reflects not “anomalies”, but actual temperatures.

It is difficult to recognize the maps as being from the same planet, let alone as being from roughly the same time. Considering the second map reflects actual temperatures, it reflects Truth as it actually is, while the first “anomaly”map reflects something that isn’t, a “departure”, and slips from reality towards a sort of slight-of-hand.

I appreciate this sort of cleverness, as a creative writer, but also recognize the danger. It is one thing to display adroit dexterity of logic when telling baldfaced lies to an Algebra teacher who is demanding undone homework, but quite another when you enter the adult world where a man’s word (and a woman’s word) is their honor.

What is the danger? The danger is that, if you don’t stand for Truth, a time may come when you look around for who will stand for you, and all around you will be false. Even worse, when you look within for the founts of creativity and recreation, the springs will be dried up, and all will be a desert. Indeed, while a warming world would be of benefit to many, the political dishonesty involved in Global Warming seems more likely to result in a global desertification.