Arctic sea ice extent is close to what it has been on this date for the past several years. Since DMI made their correction a few weeks ago, I agree with the graph below.
Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut
Ice loss is about to slow down, because the Hudson Bay has nearly melted out.
Temperatures in the Beaufort Sea are forecast to be cold the rest of the month, making a big melt this summer very unlikely.
It is likely that 2016 will be above 2015 in a couple of weeks, because there is a lot more ice this year in the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas. Note that the much hailed Northern Passage along the Siberian Coast is completely blocked this year, destroying yet another alarmist myth.
The areas where 2015 was ahead of this year, are areas which experienced rapid melting last year after this date.
The new weekly ice extent-by-date graph from the Canadian Ice Services department comes out July 16th and has the potential to show extent for Hudson Bay to be above normal for this time of the year. Right now it is running just below the median and with the jet stream running strongly in a zonal pattern, all the cold (relatively speaking, of course) is locked north of it and allowing the hot high pressure system to the south over the central U.S. to build. There is more reason than not to believe the same will hold steady for the remainder of July. Greenland’s surface mass budget is also above the median for the date with far below normal melt rates (29% vs. ~40%). AMO has turned negative, days are beginning to get shorter, and there is every reason to believe the Arctic sea ice will remain stable for the remainder of the summer melt.
That is, unless the data gets cooked to show the exact opposite.
I have noticed for the past few years that the hemispheric jet stream patterns oscillate seasonally between more zonal in summer to strongly meridional during winter. Seems to be a function of polar/equatorial temperature gradient. As we head towards N. Hemi. Autumn we will see the Meridional component strengthen, as the S. Hemi. gets more Zonal.
MASIE reported a large increase yesterday, so large I sent an email asking them to confirm it is not a mistake. Awaiting their reply.
We have improved….
So it’s now different from what you are comparing it to…the past
I’m still reckoning it will bottom out somewhere between the grey shaded area and the green and pink lines.
What is wrong with these two pictures. First is Canadian Ice Services Hudson Bay and Second is NSIDC’s daily image showing almost no ice in Hudson’s Bay.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS54SD/20160711180000_WIS54SD_0008957618.pdf
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_extent_hires.png
You can look for yourself using Google Explorer:
http://www.arctic.io/explorer/4Xa5A//4-N90-E0
The Canadian Ice Service seems more accurate, perhaps because they employ a smaller grid, and also perhaps because they have people up there who depend on their accuracy. Just using my lying eyes on days when clouds move away and I can use Google explorer, it looks like the ice has spread out to the east in Hudson Bay, and may be 40% ice and 60% water in places, but that is by no means “ice free”.
In fact, because “extent” graphs include areas that are 15% ice and 85% open water, (as opposed to “area” graphs), the extent can actually increase, when the ice spreads out, even when temperatures are above freezing and thawing occurs. (That may be what Ron Clutz noted in the MASIE data, above).
I’d say the maps Tony uses tend to miss a lot of spread-out ice, which is something I commented on here:
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2016/07/10/arctic-sea-ice-hudson-bay-melted-ice-unmelts/
In the end Hudson Bay’s ice doesn’t matter much, in terms of the anxiously awaited “sea-ice minimum”, because nearly every year all Hudson Bay’s ice melts away. Disappearing the ice a bit early doesn’t matter in that final tally. However to the folk who live up there, calling Hudson Bay ice-free when it still has ice does matter.
Ice growth anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere during the month of July is “not” a good thing !
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