I simply cannot get over how little fucking ice is up there...

[phantom power]

I mean, holy fucking shit.

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=12&fy=2012&sm=09&sd=16&sy=2007

[GliderGuider]

1. And that's even in comparison to a catastrophic year, 2007.

We are witnessing a shift worthy of a Hollywood disaster movie. Perhaps we could call it "Why Wait for the Day After Tomorrow?"

Part of me is jumping up and down like a kid on Christmas Eve.
Part of me is more frightened than I have ever been.

[phantom power]

2. exactly so - it makes 2007 look old school

[Mojorabbit]

18. That makes two of us... nt

[n2doc]

3. looks like 3.5 million sq Km's

more than 1/2 million square Km's less than previous record. It really crashed this year.

[GliderGuider]

5. And the area is down to 2.24 million sq km

665,000 sq km below the previous record - down by almost 23%.



It crashed so hard the ice is all broken up into little pieces...

[truebrit71]

4. So..ice-free in the summer when ...2014/2015?

...Holy fucking shit is right...

[GliderGuider]

6. That's what it looks like.

[XemaSab]

7. That's what the volume projections show

I would be *not shocked* if it was next year.

[GliderGuider]

8. It would take exceptional conditions for it to happen next year

But with warm air, warm, water, the right wind directions and another summer cyclone it could. There will be a lot more first year ice that will melt fast.

It will be interesting to watch the re-freeze this year - that should tell us a lot about water temps.

September 2015 looks like a pretty sure bet at this point though.

The term of the week is Rossby Waves. That's where the shit is going to really hit the fan for human beings.

[XemaSab]

10. Blocking events

How do they work?

[GliderGuider]

12. I think they're high pressure areas that interfere with wind flow

http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/features/story.aspx?id=146

It seemed that the model had difficulty in simulating a particular kind of weather regime, namely a blocking high pressure area located over or near Greenland. Blocking is a very dramatic event, in which a large high pressure centre develops and persists for many days or even weeks, blocking the normal westerly winds and storms.

But frankly, I just learned the term "Rossby wave" yesterday...

[XemaSab]

9. Someone just pointed out that on Neven's blog, 2.6 M

is the lowest option available for the sea ice area.

[GliderGuider]

11. And Neven was being pessimistic when he set up that poll.

[XemaSab]

14. XemaSab's law: not just for policymakers

[XemaSab]

13. Also from a comment on Neven's blog:

"While much of the focus is on new records being set on area and density, another record might be the closeness of open water to the actual north pole. Could a gyre, driven by the Earths strong rotation, be forming at the North pole right now? Also, notice on https://sites.google.com/site/apocalypse4realseaice2012/home/sea-ice-concentration-and-thickness-comparison the loss of concentration around the pole, in almost a circular pattern. 2007 never came close to doing any of this."

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/sea-ice-loss-2012-what-do-the-records-mean.html

[NickB79]

15. So all that red around the pole wasn't a data error or glitch

Fuck me, but that's baaaaaaad.

[CRH]

16. Now the only dark purple is next to land mass, ...

The ocean is too warm, for dark purple.

[joshcryer]

17. It doesn't look that bad unti you notice the red is 60%.

Then it's like, what the fuck!

[phantom power]

21. and yet, it's record-smashing bad, even if it was all purple.

But it's not. It's record smashing bad, and what's left is slushy.

[XemaSab]

19. If the ice was fucking then there might be more of it

[phantom power]

22. I've heard that ice breeds only at temperatures <= 0C.

[Odin2005]

20. There is 60% slush at the pole!

Santa's factory is sunk!