Friday, October 21, 2016

Arctic Cruises

There has been some tweeting about how Arctic sea ice regrowth has been, well anemic, weak, and so forth.  Indeed it is back in 2012/2007 territory, well below what is normal even in these abnormal times.

so Eli decided he would go look at the maps to check if he and Ms. Rabett could still book that Arctic cruise.




and well, sort of.  A narrow block in both the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage, but otherwise clear sailing.  Next year should be very interesting

11 comments:

Bernard J. said...

This later re-freezing following not-always-dropping-minimum extent is what I'd have expected from the sea ice extent record.

I wonder at what point in the slow-motion train wreck humans as a global community will grok that they're off the rails and heading for a very hard landing?

CapitalistImperialistPig said...

Maybe you can get a Summer job as an expert commentator on one of next year's "Kiss Your Ice Goodbye" tours.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Clear sailing?
Nary a transatlantic race goes by without a whale collision, and now they want to run a sea lane through the narwhals.
Yikes ! Have you seen the tusks on those things?

Fernando Leanme said...

The water temperature around Novaya Zemlya is at 2 degrees C, when it should be below zero. This will delay ice formation and lead to very thin ice for next year's melting season. On the other hand we should see much more snow over existing ice as well as northern Russia, Greenland, etc. it's going to be very interesting to see how things evolve as the El Niño fades and La Niña cools things down a little bit.

BBD said...

I wouldn't bank on La Nina just yet. It's far from clear that there is going to be one.

Fernando Leanme said...

BBD, the tropical pacific has a negative anomaly, it sure looks like La Niña is starting, and should dip below minus 0.5 deg C for the period of time specified to say there's an "official Niña event". California will have drought and Venezuela will have more rain.

BBD said...

Fernando

I'd be surprised if there wasn't an LN although perhaps not until next year. Even so, it's a bit early to call, imo. See eg. BOM hedging its bets.

Fernando Leanme said...

The Japanese are saying La Niña is ongoing. They use their own definition. http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/elnino/outlook.html

I wouldn't get too hung up on the "official" definition. The tropical pacific is definitely a couple of degrees C cooler than last year. I'll make a cute prediction: the rate of sea level rise will drop because the ocean will shrink a bit, and it's going to rain more over Australia and South America.

Meanwhile, I wish to report yesterday I went for lunch at a beach side restaurant in Villa Joyosa (o Villa Ioyosa), there were tourists swimming, it was sunny, about 24 C,, and the clams in white sauce were delicious. This global warming zingy does have its positive side, To get to Villa Ioyosa you can fly to Alicante direct from German, British, and Norwegian cities, take a taxi downtown to the Tram station, and then take the Benidorm Line 1 Tram, stop at Villa Ioyosa and walk down to the beach. Apartments are incredibly cheap, and the locals speak English.

BBD said...

Perhaps, but first a full-blown LN would need to develop and it hasn't as yet. Second, it would need to be very powerful like the one in 2011 which temporarily reduced global average sea level. Solid evidence that ENSO is getting stronger under anthro forcing and the hydrological cycle is intensifying. Really big floods are often catastrophic.

Anonymous said...

BBD, I agree with what you are saying there, but:

Using a combination of satellite and in situ data, we show that the decline in ocean mass, which explains the sea level drop, coincides with an equivalent increase in terrestrial water storage, primarily over Australia, northern South America, and Southeast Asia.

For context, doesn't that "terrestrial water storage" bit actually mean it rained so bloody hard that large portions of (IIRC correctly) Bolivia, Chile, Pakistan, Thailand, Germany and Australia had the bejaysus flooded out of them? IOW words, the sea level was reduced because a veritable sh#tload of water fell on 3 continents?

BBD said...

For context, doesn't that "terrestrial water storage" bit actually mean it rained so bloody hard that large portions of (IIRC correctly) Bolivia, Chile, Pakistan, Thailand, Germany and Australia had the bejaysus flooded out of them? IOW words, the sea level was reduced because a veritable sh#tload of water fell on 3 continents?

It's enough to set a man choking on his clams.