Arctic Death Spiral - Evolution to July 2013

Image by Andy Lee Robinson, from http://haveland.com/share/arctic-death-spiral.png

The video below is a visualization of the Arctic Death Spiral showing the evolution of the volume of sea-ice over time from 1979 to July 2013.

The rate of ice loss in the Arctic is staggering. Since 1979, the volume of Summer Arctic sea ice has declined by more than 80% and is accelerating faster than scientists believed it would, or even could melt.

Pitch of the notes are proportional to the average sea-ice volume for each month. Spectral filters are derived from the average sea-ice volume for each year. Produced using Perl and PovRay, Midi perl and Reason and Virtualdub on a cluster of Linux servers.

Above image is another way to visualize the data. It is a screenshot from the video below, by Andy Lee Robinson, illustrating the dramatic decline since 1979 until July 2013.

Andy Lee Robinson

The soundtrack "Arctic Requiem" also by Andy Lee Robinson, is available for free download: http://haveland.com/share/Arctic-Requiem.mp3

Sea Ice Volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) developed at APL/PSC.

Source data is available from:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFMDmS783Ro

More on Wildfires

Previous posts have highlighted the huge amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and soot being emitted as a result of wildfires. Apart from this, there are further important pollutants to consider in regard to their potential to contribute to warming, especially at high latitudes.

The image below, dated August 7, 2013, and kindly supplied by Leonid Yurganov, shows high levels of carbon monoxide as a result of wildfires in Siberia, reaching high up into the Arctic all the way to Greenland. 

[ click on image to enlarge ]

Formation of tropospheric ozone mostly occurs when nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) react in the atmosphere in the presence of sunlight. NOx, CO, and VOCs are therefore called ozone precursors. Apart from a health hazard, tropospheric ozone is an important greenhouse gas. Furthermore, carbon monoxide emissions contribute to hydroxyl depletion, thus extending the lifetime of methane.

While there appears to be little or no carbon dioxide from wildfires over North America on the above August 7 image, there are many recent wildfires raging over the North American continent, as illustrated by the August 12 map below, from Wunderground. 

[ click on image to enlarge ]

This point is illustrated even better on the image below [added later, ed.] showing a composite image with carbon monoxide over July 3-13, 2013. Carbon monoxide resulting from wildfires in Canada is seen crossing the Atlantic Ocean, due to the Coriolis effect, as well as reaching Greenland in large amounts.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

Related

- Wildfires even more damaging
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/wildfires-even-more-damaging.html

- The Threat of Wildfires in the North
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-threat-of-wildfires-in-the-north.html

- Wildfires in Canada affect the Arctic
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/wildfires-in-canada-affect-the-arctic.html

Cyclone raging on Thin Ice

Another cyclone is raging over the Arctic Ocean. The Naval Research Laboratory image below shows the speed and drift of the sea ice.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

Last time a cyclone hit the Arctic, this resulted in a temporary increase in area covered by sea ice, as shown on the Cryosphere Today image below. The cyclone pushed down on the sea ice, flattening it and pushing it sideways. 

Note that area as measured by the Cryosphere Today includes all spots that have a 15% or higher concentration of ice. This way of measuring area ignores the fact that the cyclone reduced the sea ice concentration in many spots, from a high sea ice concentration (around 90%) to a lower concentration (less than 80%), as shown on the Naval Research Laboratory image below. 

Furthermore, sea ice has since dropped in thickness, as illustrated by the Naval Research Laboratory image below. 

Much of the ice is now less than one meter thick, while some areas close to the North Pole have ice that is only between zero and half a meter thick.

The cyclone is raging most fiercely in those areas and much of the ice is drifting out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Neven mentioned at the Arctic Sea Ice Blog that average thickness (crudely calculated by dividing PIOMAS (PI) volume numbers with Cryosphere Today (CT) sea ice area numbers, see image below) had a very steep drop in July, similar to the drop in 2010. This year's trend line is now lowest, probably signifying that the ice pack is spread out and thin at the edges (read: melting potential).

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The image below, from the University of Bremen, Germany, shows sea ice concentration on August 11, 2013.

Arctic satellite thermal infrared CH4 data compared to surface in-situ and total column measurements

Leonid Yurganov, Senior Research Scientist,
Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology,
University of Maryland Baltimore County

Below an abstract of a paper written by Leonid Yurganov, Xiaozhen Xiong and Ira Liefer, and submitted for presentation at the AGU-Fall meeting 2013.

ABSTRACT: The trace gas sensitivity of Thermal InfraRed (TIR) sounders (AIRS, IASI, TANSO) is greatest in the middle and upper troposphere; though, lower troposphere (1-2 km of altitude) sensitivity is less but not negligible. As a result, where methane largely is constrained to the lower troposphere, as is common in the Arctic particularly the marine Arctic, retrievals from these instruments provides important synoptic data on high latitude methane sources. Low Arctic water vapor content favors a better sensitivity to methane as well: H2O is the main absorber in the 7.8 micrometers spectral region.

Both AIRS/Aqua v6 (NASA) and IASI/Metop-A (NOAA/NESDIS/CLASS retrievals) methane data averaged over 0-4 km altitude clearly demonstrate increased methane concentrations over the Barents and Norwegian Seas (BNS) with seasonal maximum in December - March. Similar increases are observed over the Kara, Laptev, and Chukchi Seas for September-November, i.e. during the period of minimum ice cover over the Arctic (Figures 1 and 2). Comparison of a long series of AIRS data with in situ methane concentrations at the Zeppelin NILU observatory (Svalbard) show good agreement both in amplitude and phase of seasonal variations. Agreement with Barrow NOAA continuous methane in situ data is much worse, which likely results from lower thermal contrast in winter over the cold and icy surfaces of the Eastern Arctic. Further surface validation is by a comparison of total methane columns with the Sun-Tracking FTIR at Ny-Alesund, Svalbard (TCCON network).

These analyses demonstrate that TIR satellites are capable of detecting Arctic methane enhancements from space, particularly over relatively warm year-round water surfaces such as the BNS. Ongoing research is addressing further verification of retrieved methane columns by collecting data with a cavity ring-down spectroscopy analyzer for methane and carbon dioxide on board of the Russian Research Vessel Akademik Fedorov during the expedition NABOS-2013. Data will be collected to measure marine methane concentrations and vertical fluxes between Norway and the Eastern Arctic (New Siberian Islands) between 20 August and 23 September, 2013.

Figure 1

Figure 2. methane concentrations over the Barents and Norwegian Seas (BNS), over the Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian Seas, and over Eurasia (between 50 and 70 degrees North)