Now I'm free! Free falling!

[XemaSab]

[kimmerspixelated]

1. Dammit!

Poor Mother Earth!

I'll admit at first I thought this was about Tom Petty!

[flamin lib]

4. Mother Earth will be just fine. It's us parasites that might suffer.nt

[hatrack]

2. To paraphrase Prince . .

Verticality - it's all you'll ever need!
Verticality - we're gonna make the Arctic ice-free!!

[samdogmom]

3. But...."Free Fallin" is a Tom Petty Song.....

[XemaSab]

5. Enjoy this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQrC_C6SexI

Happy earth day! :hi:

[hatrack]

6. Really interesting phenomenon I haven't seen before from the National Ice Center

If you look at some of these PDFs from the Arctic Basin, you'll notice an ice feature that I've not seen since I started following these maps seasonally about five or six years ago.

On these charts, look for a long thin line with diminished ice coverage in between - it shows up typically as a long thin line that looks like a boundary between two major pack ice plates, but is thicker and contains a thin stripe of color denoting shrinking ice coverage.

Here, on High Arctic West One, look at about your 4:00 position for the features marked with the letter A:

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/West_Arctic/Hi_West/hi_West_two/2008/currentcolor.pdf

On High Arctic West Two, they run from about 5:30 to 8:00, again all marked with "A":

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/West_Arctic/Hi_West/Hi_West_One/2008/currentcolor.pdf

Here, for High Arctic East, the width of the feature is a bit more pronounced and the yellow more visible at 2:00:

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/East_Arctic/Hi_East/2008/currentcolor.pdf

Might be nothing, or maybe Natice has altered their graphics. However, I can't remember seeing anything other than black lines on any of the graphics for the High Arctic this early in the season.

[XemaSab]

7. What does the A stand for?

So far none of these features are showing up on the cryosphere today imagery:



But it looks like the yellow areas on your figure are areas with 40-60% ice coverage between the edges of the fissure.

Last summer the sheet melted from the outside in. Right now there are some flaky spots around Svalbard and all the other Arctic islands, but no melting so far in the interior of the sheet.

I'm reminded of some of the fissures that we saw in the middle of winter, where old, thick floes were drifting around and disrupting the newly formed ice. I've been curious what became of those fissures, and if they ever properly iced over, "locking" the smaller sheets together, or if they're still up there and active. The thing's rotating, which probably stresses the sheet and gives the different parts a chance to drift in front of the warm Gulf Stream. I'm guessing the rotation is pretty constant throughout the year. But I'd have thought that most of the internal stresses were dealt with via plastic deformation of the ice. Maybe it's so thin that it can't properly absorb the stresses internally and it's just failing?

Melting from the inside out would be... interesting. :popcorn:

(Oh, and if you download the video of last summer's melt from cryosphere today, it looks like the bulk of the ice was PUSHED from the Chukchi Sea out towards the Kara Sea, then down towards the Greenland Sea and the Gulf Stream. The ice that didn't melt almost looks like it was trapped in a lee in the Arctic Basin. From a mental-modeling standpoint, it's interesting to see how currents and wind patterns affect melting rate in a way that watching static images doesn't really give you a feel for. Also, I would have expected the ice to rotate in the exact opposite direction, with the Gulf Stream doing more of the "pushing." I thought water exchange via the Bering Strait was minimal? :shrug:)

[hatrack]

10. I suspect the features visible on the Natice site aren't visible at the scale the Illinois map uses

It's definitely a more detailed and in-depth charting procedure.

Not that there's anything wrong with Cryosphere Today - after all, it's where I first spotted a great big long dark patch in the Beaufort back in . . . 2004? 2005?

[XemaSab]

11. Was it a shark?

:shrug:

:hide:

[hatrack]

12. Yes, and as I recall it ate a shitload of ice

No, seriously, I recall posting something along the lines of "Hey, guys - is this just an artifact of satellite imagery or what?"

Then, a few weeks later, a big hole appeared in the Beaufort sea ice.

I didn't do anything - really! I swear I didn't freakin' touch that ice pack!!!!

[XemaSab]

13. Oh, yeah, the ice pack was FINE until you started messing with it

:eyes: :P

[phantom power]

15. Don't lie to me. You, the Sierra Club, and shaped explosives.

[NickB79]

17. Nah, it's Al Gore, James Hansen, and a REALLY BIG blowdryer.

[Shoelace]

8. is there a link to a main page?

so I can access these charts as they update? The PDF for the Arctic High East definitely shows some shrinkage or cracks or?? Scary as hell if you ask me!

[hatrack]

9. Sorry, here's the overall chart from NOAA

It only updates every one (or two) weeks - budget cuts, you see. They used to do every sector every week, but, well, y'know . . .

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/arctic/index.htm

Anyway, just click on the sector of the Arctic Basin you're interested in, and there it is.

[Shoelace]

14. thanks Hatrack

and yea, I heard about the budget cuts. Hopefully that changes next year, hope being the operative word.

You might be interested in some of the MODIS images at the link, particularly the "Antarctica, March 17th" image.

http://modis-snow-ice.gsfc.nasa.gov/images.html

[XemaSab]

16. And I'm a bad boy, 'cause I don't even miss her...

:P