I track it here most days - the information is one day out and the morning figure is provisional and has always been revised upwards later.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

To answer your question, there has been a slight recovery but 2011 is still in the cluster of lowest ever values for this time of year (with 2005, 2007 & 2010) and just ahead of 2006.

2006 posted the lowest ever end-of-winter maximum at 13,782k sq km.

Thank you Stu N & GTW.

I don't think we can call it a 'recovery' when sea areas are only just freezing over 28 days before 'spring' (if we use meteorologist timings) arrives?

Things are in the lower 3 values of the IJIS plots (of 8 years) but that would place them in the lowest 3 values of the past 32 years of records?

With the Basin 'full' any new ice is on the peripheries of the frozen zone and so will be the first to melt out?

Agreed G-W, but I was trying to put a slightly positive gloss on the figures.  You have re-stated what was in my note and I agree with you. 

Depending on the synoptics there is between five and eight weeks left before the ice starts to recede once again.  As I am sure you know last year had a very late peak of 31 March. 

The normal peak date has tended to be in the second week of March. If that is the case this year then we have ca. 40 days to go and might expect another 500-750k sq km of extent.  That would put us between 13.8m and 14.0m, which would put us in the bottom 2 of the last decade and around 1.7m to 2.0m below the 1979-2000 norm.

Stephen expressed disinterest in the daily movement until we reached the end of the season, so we will have his attention briefly in a month or so.   After a winter of "two halves" with the cold first pushed out of the Arctic and then mostly bottled up by the renewed vigour of the PV I think we should be able to regard the synoptics overall as neutral to favourable (for ice recovery).

Over the past 5 years I've been watching the 'fragmentation event' that the spring full moon causes in the pack. Last years 'late finish' was ,IMHO, aided and abetted by this 'fragmentation event' with the 15% or more criteria enabling 'growth' when ,in fact, it was drift apart (esp. in Bering sea).

This year the full moon is the 19th of March so I will be checking the 'Wokingham sat site'

http://www.woksat.info/wos.html

to see just how the moon impacts the pack.

With thin ,brittle ice making up the larger part of the pack we could see a lot of fragmentation/leads across the basin this year.

If we are very unfortunate we may also have some spring storms across the basin at this time helping the smashed pack drift into the Atlantic/Pacific.

As with the 'collapse and spread' events that we used to have during the final destruction of the Paleocrystic (at the other end of the melt season) the 15% or more rule can make a 'destructive event' appear like a 'constructive event'. The spring version leads to a rapid fall off of 'extent' as the ice either melts or drifts  apart beyond the 15% or more criteria.

As you say ,a very interesting time of year so I'm sure Stephen will show his face soon enough!

EDIT: Just came across this Abstract;

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010GL045662.shtml

I'm sure we'll get a 'write up' from somewhere soon enough? Seems to suggest , with a similar setup for a good portion of this winter, that we can expect 'more of the same' this melt season (minus the plume of remnant Paleocrystic that S. Beaufort did for last summer of course)?

In some ways the loss of the 'channel ice' from the Canadian Archipelago last year would suggest that those 'inlet channels' (from the Arctic Ocean to viscount Melville) will open early this year allowing even more 'space' for the central pack to ease apart into?

Might even be that the NW Passage is plagued with a steady stream of Arctic ice flowing to the north of the Deep channel out into Baffin?

Thanks for that. I hadn't really thought through the potential reasons for the late peaking last year.   You have prompted me to have a close look at the Ice Area graph on Cryosphere Today - and sure enough the ice area figure peaked earlier in March.

Looking at the current ice area graph we are still running around 8% down on the new 1979-2008 average (which itself is obviously lower than the old 1979-2000 one).

Hi GTW!

Check out the Antarctic 'fragmentation event' that cost it 1million sq km, Yup a big storm in the Weddell area but what phase was the moon?

Each spring moon is annotated by a sudden 'increase' in ice 'extent'. most of this 'increase' appears ,to me, to be no more than the fragmentation of the pack followed by it 'relaxing apart'. Don't take my word for it though!

Anyhoo's ,I'll be watching (again) to see just how large this effect is becoming with an ocean full of 2m thick ice (instead of a pack strengthened with a spine of over-ridden/ridged Paleocrystic form South Beaufort to East Greenland.)

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Febs NSIDC 'update' is now available (above) and it reflects what has been said on here through Jan. If we are following last years AO-ve pattern then it doen't bode well for the melt season. At this stage of the Arctic degradation it appears that summer melt is less and less about synoptics and more and more about ice age and thickness. Should we also suffer the 'double whammy' of Synoptics favouring melt (with the thin ice and young ice) then we may well approach the 'seasonal ice' threshold.

If only summer melt patterns could promote an Azores high extension over U.K. that lasts July and Aug!!!

Wouldn't this spring storm peripheral fragmentation just be something that happened most years since...uhm... whenever?

The cracks between will still freeze up pretty deep in March I'd think.

Well I imagine it depends on the synoptics.  Aside from that of course the sun is above the horizon and temperatures starting to climb on average.  That is why the ice area and extent start to contract sometime around mid-March.

The point is, I think, that even if the cracks re-freeze the ice remains fragile.  You aren't going to get the same rigidity from chunks of ice that have bonded together as you would from a solid ice sheet. 

Lest we forget;

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

at present we are 'tracking last winter's ice levels very closely. Were this to continue we would need to gain over 1 million sq km (extent) of ice in the coming weeks. Do we have the synoptics to turn on the 'ice factory' like last year? Have we got as much frozen water in the lower latitudes? (our Baltic reporter went quiet in early Jan?)

If we have had a similar winter to 09/10 but lack the 'late spurt' we may start melt season 1 million down on last years 'plumped up ' final figure.

Will this have an impact later on or was last years max an unrepresentative figure (seeing as it was all outside the central basin and melted out before mid may?)

EDIT:

http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEM660Y1LJG_index_0.html

Anyone else who has registered and been able to get a reply from the Cryosat FTP tell me how they managed!!! I have my C.U.T. but without a connection I'm stumped!!

I tried my best to get in there, Gray Wolf.
It seems set up for 'not the general public'
There is now way I could give a resume of funding or studies as required by the application.
It's a shame.But understandable.
Hope you get sorted and can give us some reports or direction towards availability of info.

I'll keep trying anyhoo.

Good luck.

With a positive AO now fixed in for a couple of weeks I'd expect to see rapid freezing in the Baffin Sea West of Greenland. The other unfrozen areas at this time of year may not have the cold synoptics to see a big freeze. I'd say a positive AO is more important for compacting and thickening the Arctic basin ice, and slowing spring melt, rather than for major ice growth (West Greenland apart) at this time of year.

I flew over Western Greenland a week ago and the lack ice there was startling, a clear result of a major negative NAO in Early winter and that famous WAA. I'll attach some pictures when I get them uploaded to the internet. As anyone who's flown to West of the US will know, the passage over Greenland is one of the most spectacular sights in the world.

There's still hope for Arctic sea ice - summer melt may not force a tipping point after all.  Or, rather, if warming stops or reverses then summer ice cover will respond accordingly.

Which explains why it came back again after the mid Holocene warm period

I'm gonna stop listening to folk promising cold and ice gain across the basin(lol) all it seems to do is promote ice losses!!!

I don't think many folk doubted that the ice 'could' return if conditions were favourable to such Essan?

If we look at 'winter' now we see the ice return once the heat content of the ocean surface is shed. I feel this only becomes problematic when global ocean temps mimick those of the optimum that had crocs on Ellesmere island and palm trees within the Arctic circle and that surely is well beyond the worse case scenario?

Hi Gray-Wolf

As I am sure you know, Essan's comments were firmly tongue in cheek.

I agree - I keep seeing talk of how more favourable synoptics are going to come to the rescue, but we have had 'favourable synoptics' before and it hasn't achieved all that much.

With today's provisional value we have had a reduction of almost 40k sq km in two days.  No doubt yesterday's value will be revised upwards again but is unlikely to pass yesterday's, so two days of decline.  At this stage we should still be adding around 200k sq km per week, which we are just managing to do.

I know GTW, with such a clamour for recovery I can ,at times, get caught up in it myself but then reality rudely interrupts!

I've always cautioned that a 'low' start point to the melt season must result in a record low come Sept (even with an 'average summer') now that we have lost the 'backbone of the Arctic'.

Surely some of the major organisations will utilise the Cryosat2 data and bring us daily 'volume figures' for the basin this summer? It will be very interesting to see the thickness data prior to the start of the melt season (I'm still having no joy with my C.U.T. software/server link for the Cryosat data) just to compare it with the data we have atm.

With a similar winter to last years but even less 'old ice' in the mix another 'mixed' summer must have us looking at a lower min than last years (even a record low?) with any 'perfect storm' synoptics leading to a very low min (approaching 'seasonal').

It will also be of interest to me to see how early the NW Passage becomes navigable this year (though I expect a lot of ice flow to the north of the deep water passage as ice exits the Arctic ocean via the channels into Viscount Melville, Parry and Lancaster before exiting into Baffin). I guess the nautical challenge will now be how fast you can do the northern and NW Passage over a summer!

As an aside.Any luck with the Cryosat issue?.

I'm sure he did.

Now, talking of geological history, remind me what happened to the dinosaurs?

Did you ever examine geology perchance Gray?.

Originally Posted by: AIMSIR 

I'm sure he did.

Now, talking of geological history, remind me what happened to the dinosaurs?

Originally Posted by: Gandalf The White 

More circles?.

Originally Posted by: AIMSIR 

Quite possibly, but at least the dinosaurs didn't alter the carbon cycle - they were victims of a natural disaster.  We may be victims of our own sustained folly.

Did you ever examine geology perchance Gray?.

Originally Posted by: Gandalf The White 

I'm sure he did.

Now, talking of geological history, remind me what happened to the dinosaurs?

Originally Posted by: AIMSIR 

More circles?.

Originally Posted by: Gandalf The White 

Quite possibly, but at least the dinosaurs didn't alter the carbon cycle - they were victims of a natural disaster.  We may be victims of our own sustained folly.

 

Originally Posted by: AIMSIR 

I think that depends on outlook or perception.btw.

I still think the geology of the region could explain away some of Gray Wolf's perceptions as opposed to his climatological presentation..

My degree was Comb. science with Geology and computing so I've 'glimpsed' Geology (the 'Master Science'!)

Sadly my fears are borne out of that knowledge so you'll need to help salve my concerns as to why the Geology of the basin is something that will prove useful to ice retention?

Re read your recent posts.