Via Climate Progress: Arctic Death Spiral Continues: Record Low Sea Ice Volume Appears Likely
Posted: 04 Aug 2012 07:13 AM PDT
by Neven, via the Arctic Sea Ice Blog
The PIOMAS people are early this month with updating the numbers (probably so that the SEARCH people have some extra info for their SIO).
Here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center:
I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’re going to have a new record volume low, although the difference with 2010 and 2011 has become smaller. Right now it’s 1249 and 730 km3 respectively.
Here is Wipneus‘ version with the calculated “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.”
The trend is following the dotted line quite nicely, I would say.
The anomaly has come up a bit compared to last month, it’s no longer 4 standard deviations below the linear trend:
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:
That small uptick at the end makes the graph look slightly less alarming.
Thank you, PIOMAS.
Average thickness for July 31st (in m):
- 2005: 2.38
- 2006: 2.41
- 2007: 2.15
- 2008: 2.43
- 2009: 2.06
- 2010: 1.57
- 2011: 1.55
- 2012: 1.48
As a bonus, Jim Pettit‘s PIOMAS volume death spiral chart [see top figure].
Neven writes for the Arctic Sea Ice Blog. This piece was originally published at the Arctic Sea Ice Blog and was reprinted with permission.
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