We are probably about 5 weeks away from the Arctic ice minimum. The North-East passage is open, but the NW passage is blocked by some thin seasonal ice that should clear up about 2 weeks from now.

The ice extent is 2 standard deviations below the 1981-2010 average for this date. On current trends we would expect 2015 to be the second or third lowest minimum on record.

But the best thing is that today the ice looks like a crying ghost.

Greenpeace Activists Dangle From Oregon Bridge for 2nd Day to Protest Arctic Drilling

Activists who have spent more than 24 hours dangling from an Oregon bridge to protest Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic vowed to sustain their human barricade, after they joined kayakers in the water below to block an icebreaking ship from leaving Portland.

Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A federal judge in Alaska has ordered Greenpeace USA to pay a fine of $2,500 for every hour that protesters continue to block a Royal Dutch Shell icebreaker from leaving Portland, Oregon, for the Arctic.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled Thursday in Anchorage that Greenpeace is in civil contempt because of protesters dangling off a bridge in Portland, whom she said impeded the Shell vessel.

Gleason in May granted Shell’s request that activists protesting Shell’s Arctic drilling plans be ordered to stay away from Shell vessels and beyond buffer zones.

dv said:

We are probably about 5 weeks away from the Arctic ice minimum. The North-East passage is open, but the NW passage is blocked by some thin seasonal ice that should clear up about 2 weeks from now.

Let’s hope the north-west passage opens before the end of summer.

Those eyes are getting wide.

I’ll try that again.

I said…

Those eyes are getting wide.

I get an x.

Bubblecar said:

I get an x.

But I spake too sooneth.

Looks like Canada has grabbed the arm of that ghost and is waiting for the police to arrive.

Bubblecar said:

Looks like Canada has grabbed the arm of that ghost and is waiting for the police to arrive.

The Pole-Ice

dv said:

Bubblecar said:

Looks like Canada has grabbed the arm of that ghost and is waiting for the police to arrive.

The Pole-Ice

Youse boaks are phun.

The Northwest and Northeast passages are both open, permitting circumnavigation of the north pole. The first time in human history that this occurred was in 2008. It has happened a few times since then.

Normally the sea ice minimum occurs in mid to late September. Currently the melt continues apace around the atraits of the Canadian archipelago and the area immediately to Canada’s north. I would expect a fairly late miminimum, and probably the second lowest on record: it is unlikely to beat the extraordinary mininum of 2012. I am intrigued by the little holes that have sometimes appeared in the AMSR2 output near the north pole but they are so erratic that I think they might just be some kind of irregularity with the data stream.

dv said:

The Northwest and Northeast passages are both open, permitting circumnavigation of the north pole.

>>> The first time in human history that this occurred was in 2008. It has happened a few times since then.<<<

you cannot back that statement up with any evidence at all!

Arctic sea ice melt may have turned the corner

September 11, 2015
We haven’t spent much time looking at Arctic Sea Ice this year, partly because I’ve rather lost interest in it as any sort of climatic indicator. This year’s melt seems similar to 2011 according to the comparison graph provided by Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research.

Source: https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html?N

The DMI graph also seems to indicate that melt has turned the corner, but shows the 2015 data higher than 2011 unlike the graph above:

Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png

Arctic air temperature from 80°N is well below the freezing point of seawater now:

Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Of course, since sea ice is highly prone to the vagaries of wind and weather, it could still take a turn downward in the next few days before starting back up again.

One of the things that I have come to notice about Arctic sea ice is that it appears to have reached a new plateau or regime, note how since 2007 the data seems to oscillate about the -1 million square kilometer line:

Source: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png

My personal opinion is that this new quasi-stable regime is related to increased surface soot and changes in the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Since the mid-1990s we have been in a warm phase, Now the AMO is now turning sharply negative, and next year might be quite different than the past eight.

Source: Dr. Philip Klotzbach on Twitter who writes:

12-month running avg AMO continues to drop. August ’15 value (-0.9 SD) lowest since ’94. Cold NAtl persists.

Only time will tell if this change in the AMO will change the future of Arctic sea ice.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/11/arctic-sea-ice-melt-may-have-have-turned-the-corner/

>>My personal opinion is that this new quasi-stable regime is related to increased surface soot and changes in the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Since the mid-1990s we have been in a warm phase, Now the AMO is now turning sharply negative, and next year might be quite different than the past eight.

Only time will tell if this change in the AMO will change the future of Arctic sea ice.<<

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch Observer.

PermeateFree said:

>>My personal opinion is that this new quasi-stable regime is related to increased surface soot and changes in the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Since the mid-1990s we have been in a warm phase, Now the AMO is now turning sharply negative, and next year might be quite different than the past eight.

Only time will tell if this change in the AMO will change the future of Arctic sea ice.<<

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch Observer.

which came first perm?

The_observer said:

PermeateFree said:

>>My personal opinion is that this new quasi-stable regime is related to increased surface soot and changes in the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Since the mid-1990s we have been in a warm phase, Now the AMO is now turning sharply negative, and next year might be quite different than the past eight.

Only time will tell if this change in the AMO will change the future of Arctic sea ice.<<

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch Observer.

which came first perm?

Dinosaurs.

PermeateFree said:

The_observer said:

PermeateFree said:

>>My personal opinion is that this new quasi-stable regime is related to increased surface soot and changes in the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Since the mid-1990s we have been in a warm phase, Now the AMO is now turning sharply negative, and next year might be quite different than the past eight.

Only time will tell if this change in the AMO will change the future of Arctic sea ice.<<

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch Observer.

which came first perm?

Dinosaurs.

the dinosaur or the dinosaur egg?

The_observer said:

PermeateFree said:

The_observer said:

which came first perm?

Dinosaurs.

the dinosaur or the dinosaur egg?

I can see this discussion going on for a very long time.

PermeateFree said:

The_observer said:

PermeateFree said:

Dinosaurs.

the dinosaur or the dinosaur egg?

I can see this discussion going on for a very long time.

The_observer said:

PermeateFree said:

The_observer said:

the dinosaur or the dinosaur egg?

I can see this discussion going on for a very long time.

There were no eggs in the very beginning, or with microbes. So I guess you lose.

From the point of view of cladistics, chickens ARE dinosaurs.

dv said:

From the point of view of cladistics, chickens ARE dinosaurs.

Well they evolved from dinosaurs.

I remember when 2007 was the low point of ice area, people watched for years to see if it would be beaten, then along came 2012 and set a new record low sea ice area, it beat 2007 by a long way.
Now we’re watching to see if the year will beat 2012.
And so it goes, but the funny thing is some people, some not too bright people think that for the ice to be melting it needs to set a new low every year and be graphed linearly, LOL.
True, there are people out there who believe that.

Okay so the minimum Arctic Sea Ice extent this year happened a bit early, on Sept 11, 4.41 million square kilometers which is the fourth lowest minimum on record.