Arctic Sea Ice September 2013 Projections

What will the Arctic Sea Ice look like in September 2013?

Several projections for Arctic sea ice extent are being discussed at places such as ARCUS (Arctic Research Consortium of the United States) and the Arctic Sea Ice Blog. The image below, from ARCUS, shows various projections of September 2013 arctic sea extent (defined as the monthly average for September) with a median value of 4.1 million square kilometers, with quartiles of 3.8 and 4.4 million square kilometers.

Note that sea ice extent in the above projections is defined as area of ocean with at least 15% ice, in line with the way the NSIDC calculates extent. By contrast, the Danish Meteorological Institute includes areas with ice concentration higher than 30% to calculate ice extent.

Rather than looking at the projected average for September, one could also project the minimum value for September 2013. And rather than looking at sea ice extent, one could also look at sea ice area, which differs from sea ice extent as the NSIDC FAQ page describes:

A simplified way to think of extent versus area is to imagine a slice of Swiss cheese. Extent would be a measure of the edges of the slice of cheese and all of the space inside it. Area would be the measure of where there is cheese only, not including the holes. That is why if you compare extent and area in the same time period, extent is always bigger.

Above image shows Sam Carana's projected minimum area of 2 million square km for 2013, based on data by Cryosphere Today and on numerous factors, such as continued warming of the water underneath the ice, stronger cyclones, etc.

Roughly in line with above image, by Wipneus, Sam Carana's projection for Arctic sea ice minimum volume is 2,000 cubic km in September 2013.

Readers are invited to submit comments below with further projections.

Arctic Sea Ice Animation

Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volume

Above a tilted screenshot from the animation below, by Andy Lee Robinson, of Arctic Sea Ice minimum volumes reached every September since 1979, based on data from the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) at the University of Washington.

Andy also composed and performed the piano music, "Ice Dreams", accompanying the video.

video from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgiMBxaL19M

Dorsi Diaz

By Dorsi Diaz

They say a picture can be worth a thousand words. If so, then this video of the Arctic Sea ice loss between 1979 and 2012 must be worth a million. As the recently released video begins to go viral, more people are waking up to the reality of climate change.

Produced by Andy Lee Robinson, this beautiful short clip with its haunting music is revealing the reality of climate change in a brutal and honest way - perhaps even better than any journalist ever could.

In an interview with Robinson, I was amazed at how he had managed to put together this vital information in such a compelling video, and sought to find out more.

To the climate deniers horror, Andy has done this video with no sort of compensation - dashing away climate deniers theories that all climate activists "are on the payroll." With hundreds of painstaking hours put into the development of his video, Andy says he was motivated by "experimenting with ideas and what ifs" and sought to "bring to life something that only existed in my mind to communicate an important message that is being ignored."

To create the video, he used a text editor, numbers and only his imagination to weave together the horrifying decline of Arctic sea ice that has occurred in just 13 short years.

Andy says one of the reasons for creating the video was, "to contribute something to humanity and be recognized for it, applying the skills I have learnt with my free time and not to live in vain" and also, "to prove that anyone can achieve anything they want to given enough determination and dedication."

With over 100 hours invested just into the writing of the program for the video, Andy also said it took 28 hours for 7 servers to render the final video, then about a half hour to write, record, edit and merge the music. The piano composition in the video, "Ice Dreams", was also composed by Andy, who also specializes in digital audio sampling and signal processing.

Robinson, a linux system administrator and consultant, has a passion to bring awareness about climate change to the masses and is adamant about what may happen if civilization does not address this growing threat: "We are in a period of mass extinction and heading for decimation of the quality of life for most lifeforms on the planet, including ourselves who are also subject to the laws of nature of boom and bust as resources are exploited and depleted."

Robinson also believes, with many others, that climate change and ocean acidification are, "planetary emergencies in progress."

Robinson doesn't mince any words either when asked why he created the video: "To be heard loudly and truthfully because mainstream media is still tiptoeing around the herd of elephants in the room because of the fear of change and the pressure of special interests committed to ensuring it stays that way, ignoring the fact that it cannot."

Until recently, climate deniers had dominated much of the political landscape and held a tight reign on the mainstream media. Now that climate change seems to be spiraling out of control with billions of dollars in weather related disasters, people are waking up to a preview of what it's like to live in a climate altered world.

Robinson's research for the video uses records of Arctic sea ice loss from PIOMAS through the Polar Ice Center, a group of dedicated investigators that conducts interdisciplinary research on the oceanography, climatology, meteorology, biology and ecology of the ice-covered regions on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.

Through the perfect dance of loss and hauntingly beautiful music merged with pending disaster, Robinson has brought home a message in this video that we all need to heed: "Survival is not compulsory, nor a God given right. It requires effort, investment and cooperation."

Are we listening yet?

Dorsi Diaz is a freelance writer and art educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dorsi's passion is to help adults and children unlock their creativity and imagination and to also spread the word about the effects of world-wide climate change - follow Dorsi Diaz on Twitter

Below, the Arctic Death Spiral, another visualization of the PIOMAS data by Andy Lee Robinson. 

Andy's Arctic Death Spiral - update incl May 2013 - latest version at http://haveland.com/share/arctic-death-spiral.png

Below, Andy's Arctic Death Spiral video, with the sea ice volume data controlling spectral harmonics.




Added below is a video of another Arctic Death Spiral, accompanied by Chopin's 'Funeral March'. This work is not by Andy, it's from reric.org by R. Eric Collins.

High September 2012 methane levels

An earlier post reported average hourly methane measurements as high as 2500 ppb recorded at Barrow, Alaska. Sadly, hardly any further in situ measurements have been publicly released from Barrow since, as illustrated by the image below.

Flask measurements continue to be available and the five most recent measurements show levels well over 2000 ppb.

The image below shows methane levels over a period of three years, from August 1, 2008, to August 1, 2011.

The image below shows methane levels over a period of a more recent year, from August 1, 2011, to August 1, 2012. There is a marked increase of methane at higher latitudes, compared to the earlier three years.

The image below shows methane levels in August 2012, with high levels showing up at many places. 

The image below shows the most recent methane level measurements available, from September 1, 2012, to September 7, 2012. High levels of methane show up at even more places, such as in the Arctic to the north of North America.

Around this time of year, there will typically be a lot of methane at many locations on the Northern Hemisphere. The image below allows a comparison of the 2012 period with the same period last year. In early September 2011, there was not quite as much methane as there now is north of Alaska, in Greenland and along the Siberian coast. There was a lot of methane in China last year in this period in 2011, though, and the situation appears to have improved somewhat this year.

To compare things further, an image is added below showing methane levels during the same period in 2010.

Below are added images produced by Dr. Leonid Yurganov from IASA data. Note that the scales are slightly different. The images confirm the presence of high levels of methane in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. Further below a combination picture showing the significant rise of methane levels in that area between October 2008 and October 2011.

[click to enlarge]

The images highlight a number of concerns:

1. Methane levels are rising over the years; 
2. Methane levels are particularly high in the Arctic;  
3. Very high levels of methane are recorded in the Arctic in the months September and October, the very period when Arctic sea ice is at its lowest; 
4. Incidental measurements, such as at Barrow, add to concerns that levels can rise abruptly with significant amounts. 

Methane is more than 100 times as potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide over 20 years, and even more potent over shorter periods. This makes methane a very powerful warming factor in the Arctic. While the Arctic is already warming more than three times as fast as the rest of the world, the sea ice still acts as a buffer to prevent even more acceleration of warming in the Arctic, but this situation will deteriorate dramatically as the sea ice disappears, as Professor Peter Wadhams recently described.

The big danger is that ferocious warming in the Arctic will trigger methane releases from hydrates and from free gas in sediments, which will further accelerate warming in the Arctic and further trigger methane releases, in a vicious circle set to spiral into runaway global warming unless action is taken to reduce the danger.