Thursday, October 4, 2012

PIOMAS Minimum Arctic Sea Ice Volume for 2012: 3,263 cubic kilometres


PIOMAS September 2012 (minimum)

by neven, Arctic Sea Ice Blog, October 3, 2012
We already knew a few weeks ago that the PIOMAS sea ice volume record had been broken, but with the latest data release by the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington we now know the minimum sea ice volume for 2012, as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS).
Here's the graph from the PSC:
BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2_CY
Yearly minimum sea ice volume for the 2005-2012 period (in km3):
  • 2005: 9159
  • 2006: 8993
  • 2007: 6458
  • 2008: 7072
  • 2009: 6893
  • 2010: 4428
  • 2011: 4017
  • 2012: 3263
So this year's melting season has gone 1165 and 754 km3 below the 2010 and 2011 minimums. That's, how shall I put it? A lot! More than at the time of the last update. Almost double the difference between the 2010 and 2011 minimums. Half the 2007 minimum.
Here is Wipneus' version for which he calculated the "expected" 2012 values (dotted lines), based on the same date values of 1979-2011 and an exponential trend. A caveat from Wipneus: "Note that the statistical error bars are quite large."

Piomas-trnd4-1
The minimum ended up slightly above the expected values based on statistics.
Here's Larry Hamilton's widely used bar graph:
Sea_ice_PIOMAS_min
Here's the PIOMAS anomaly graph:
BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2
I have used my crude method of dividing PIOMAS volume numbers by Cryosphere Today area numbers to calculate the ice pack's average thickness. Again, this is just an indication that allows us to compare with previous years:
PICT20120930
Average thickness for September 3rd (in m):
  • 2005: 2.04
  • 2006: 2.13
  • 2007: 2.04
  • 2008: 1.98
  • 2009: 1.79
  • 2010: 1.28
  • 2011: 1.25
  • 2012: 1.27
And here's the thickness graph from the Polar Science Center:
Bpiomas_plot_daily_heff.2sst
Let me repeat once more: we now know for sure the ice is thin. There are two lines of evidence for this: 1) observations from CryoSat-2, (definite confirmation as soon as Dr. Laxon publishes his paper), and 2) the fact that this melting season has annihilated all records on all graphs from all agencies, despite the fact that weather conditions didn't come close to those of 2007 (more on that in the latest NSIDC monthly analysis, which I'll report on tomorrow).
We now know that PIOMAS has it largely right, so a big respect for the scientists at the PSC. In coming years PIOMAS may be the most important tool we have to assess the state of the ice on an almost real-time basis. Again respect, and thanks for putting the data out for all to see.
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2 comments:

  1. EdOctober 8, 2012 at 12:54 AM

    You know what worries me most....the delta between september ice volume to march/april ice volume is sort of constant....what will happen if the september ice volume reaches rock bottom 0 in 2015.....then we will see a fast (in the bottom of the sinus) expansion of the icefree period that will then grow more liniear untill the icefree prediod will be 365 day's. If the current rate of decline continues that will be around (30/2.5 (loss in 5 years) x 5 = 60 years in our future (if we have any).....now that was linear extrapolation so even economists should be able to grab this.....if things go logarithmic as wel well then 25 to 40 years would be more precise...and thinking about the positive feedback loops running around the arctic ice, well we should be in for a big suprise.

    Greets, Ed.

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  2. DavidROctober 11, 2012 at 2:40 AM

    The headline for this story should be "3.26 THOUSAND cubic kilometres". With the rate of decline at more than 700 cubic kilometres per year for the past 12 years that's less than 5 years to go before we see the Arctic Ice free in summer.

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