What if ...

April 28, 2013

by arctic io

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... we never run out of oil, asks Charles C.Mann and 11,000 words later my impression is he avoids the answer on purpose. Instead he explores how the demand for cheap energy soaks like a parasitic disease all aspects of daily live on each scale. In case 'peak oil' comes to your mind - forget about - Mann argues after oil there is still enough methane-hydrate. Actually we have to leave carbon not because it runs out, it is because of its sheer abundance on this planet.

TheAtlantic.com: What if we never run out of oil?

Launches: ArcticTruth, Meereisportal

April 25, 2013

by arctic io

Information Whistleblowing Launches

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Two ambitious website launches appeared on my screen last week, both proving the Arctic moved again a step further into the center of public attention.

arctictruth.org, launched by Greenpeace, encourages whistleblowers to uncover more detailed information of important public interest relating to the safety of oil drilling in the Arctic, by any company.

 

The 'sea ice portal', launched by AWI, gives several German scientific activities a home and presents knowledge, observations, modelling and data regarding sea ice - currently only in German. The data section promises periodic sea ice thickness maps based on CryoSat and SMOS results.

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Chasing Ice

April 25, 2013

by arctic io

Video Cryosphere Movie Glaciers

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Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of climate change. Using time-lapse cameras, his videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate.

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Google Outage

April 17, 2013

by arctic io

Outage

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As parts of arctic.io rely on Google services there are currently some interruptions. This includes the split zoom feature and in part the near real time satellite maps. I'm sorry for that. This status page shows when things are back normal: google.com/appsstatus

Fund Me, Maybe?

April 11, 2013

by arctic io

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Hilarious video made by scientists at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, CA as part of #hackAAS. Hopefully the US budget sequestration bypasses Arctic science, although additional creative communication is welcome.

Three Oil Spills per Week - Check!

April 10, 2013

by arctic io

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Brinicles and the Origin of Life

April 9, 2013

by arctic io

Life Sea Ice Brinicles

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Brinicles are the most bizarre phenomena below sea ice. They grow like stalactites, but much faster and in absent of other forces eventually touch the sea floor freezing all creatures to death in their path. In 2011 the BBC team filming for 'Frozen Planet' captured these 'icy fingers of death' for the first time.

In a recent paper Julyan Cartwright at the University of Granada in Spain and colleagues describe in detail the chemistry of brinicles, and their most interesting observation is that brinicles also create chemical gradients, electric potentials and membranes - all the conditions necessary for the formation of life.

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DOI Report: Managing for the Future in a Rapidly Changing Arctic

April 6, 2013

by arctic io

Obama DOI Management

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A written manifestation nature can change faster than anyone can adapt. These three selected paragraphs describe at best the starting point and where to go. Reuters collected a few more voices.

The U.S. Arctic is a vast area that is changing rapidly while economic and social expectations are growing. This combination of factors is adding stress to a largely balkanized management system already straining to address many competing issues and priorities.

The sheer number of federal agencies alone presents challenges and underscores the need for a more coordinated approach. That said, however, there are many efforts at the local, regional, state, federal, and international levels that endeavor to improve coordination among the region’s stakeholders. These promising approaches can provide a foundation for a more holistic, integrated approach to management in the region.

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Colors of a Melting Cryosphere

April 5, 2013

by arctic io

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The Polar Science Center just updated the monthly PIOMAS sea ice volume table and instead of presenting a line chart I thought of a different approach. In the image above every single day is color coded, consult the color bar to translate into volume.

Some years stand out, in 1995 melting started earlier and it took a whole year to reach usual volume. Also 2007, which already started with a below average winter volume. Green indicates roughly the middle of the distribution, note how winter volume on the right side approaches summer volume on the left side.

With 2010 a new era started, interestingly with no trend between years in winter and much higher losses in summer. Given the strong decrease of thick multi year ice, PIOMAS seems to approach the maximum winter volume for an ice pack consisting mainly of first year ice.

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Russia in the News

April 5, 2013

by arctic io

Russia

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Reuters disseminates a note from Kremlin saying Gazprom Neft and Royal Dutch Shell prepare to join forces to exploit on- and offshore resources in the Arctic. Putin visits The Netherlands next week.

As a follow up of Putin's inspection of the Franz Josef Land in 2010, arctic.ru reports a team of 30 students will start cleansing the archipelago as of 1st of June. 400,000 barrels as well as 700 containers of varying size that hold 10-50 metric tons of oil and lubricants were found in 2010.

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Something is missing here...

March 25, 2013

by arctic io

Humor

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... in the pseudo science group. Also, The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense, same author.

Beaufort Sea Cracks captured by Suomi NPP Satellite

March 24, 2013

by arctic io

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Make sure to watch the HD version. One image per day is not especially smooth for an animation, but the accelerated drift speed of the floes is nicely visualized. If I only find out how to make use of NOAA's Class site and get direct access on the true color images.

The Deep Ocean Immersion Heater

March 22, 2013

by arctic io

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Only partially related to the Arctic, but the global warming hiatus discussion may have finally found an end. I always thought that discourse was dead on arrival and not worth the efforts. Now Balmaseda et al. found the deeper ocean is heating up and present the graph and explanation below. You'll find the message by examining the trend after 2000.

credit: Balmaseda et al.
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Abrupt Climate Change in the Arctic - A Lecture by Prof. Carlos Duarte

March 21, 2013

by arctic io

Duarte Lecture Australia

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This Inquiring Minds Lecture by Professor Carlos M. Duarte serves as an excellent opener to a new melting season. It reminds you there is more than sea ice in the Arctic. During one hour he covers almost all hot topics, provides information about new developments, drops surprising details, presents scientific insights from papers published just weeks before and he connects the dots.

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If you don't mend up a small crack on the wall you end up building the entire wall.

March 20, 2013

by arctic io

Drift Beaufort Gyre

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It was never so easy to detect the Beaufort Gyre and its clockwise rotation on satellite images. Whether winter ice is now that thin it can't stand usual weather forces or the weather changed remains to be determined.

Cracks with an irregular stress pattern are common in the Arctic - the floes are constantly moving, but this distinct pattern is visible up to North Pole. Fore sure, weeks after melting starts, we'll see an even more unknown pattern of floes. I expect unusual noisy extent charts, too.

Click the image to zoom into a mostly cloud free and spectacular ...

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The Wheelchair and the Hockeystick

March 19, 2013

by arctic io

Anthropocene Temperature

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credit: Jos Hagelaars

Two reconstructions, an instrument record and the A1B scenario combined. Can you distinguish natural variations and anthropogenic impact?

Continue reading the details at ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com, also in Dutch.

Good Question

March 19, 2013

by arctic io

ice free Models Sea Ice

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Recently accepted paper by James Overland and Muyin Wang poses a challenging question: When will the Summer Arctic be Nearly Sea Ice Free?

The abstract says, it depends: Three recent approaches to predictions in the scientific literature are: 1) extrapolation of sea ice volume data, 2) assuming several more rapid loss events such as 2007 and 2012, and 3) climate model projections. Time horizons for a nearly sea ice free summer for these three approaches are roughly 2020 or earlier, 2030 +/-10 , and 2040 or later.

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Video: Arctic Infrared

Feb. 8, 2013

by arctic io

Video Infrared Sea Ice Dynamics

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Just an attempt to follow sea ice dynamics and escape Arctic winter darkness. Source video should be available from the Vimeo page in case you miss frame by frame playback. First frame is dated 2013-01-15. I'll try to update it once per week or so.

SMOS - Brightness Temperature

Feb. 7, 2013

by arctic io

SMOS Sea Ice Thickness Maps

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A very promising data set targeting daily sea ice thickness. Especially during Winter freeze-up thickness retrieval up to 0.5m appears possible. Once the science is settled and ice temperature, salinity, snow load, etc. fit into the equation every ice breaker's navigator will welcome this product.

The images below map only values between 105°K and 260°K, missing values are transparent. Files (netCDF) and further info are available at icdc.zmaw.de/l3b_smos_tb.html.

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Sea Ice Volume, S1E3, Monthly PIOMAS Thickness Maps 2012

Jan. 26, 2013

by arctic io

NCADAC Sea Ice Volume PIOMAS Maps

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This time the Sea Ice Volume Series offers an interactive feature to explore sea ice reduction in 2012. Just hover your mouse over the months below to load the indicated map.

PIOMAS shows significant reduction in thickest ice category North of Greenland and the Archipelago in December. An overall thinning compared to December 2011 is also observable, but less surprising, because that's the trend.

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