Well, actually yesterday, but I've been having problems with my computer's connectivity (some sort of software conflict, I think...), but that's neither here nor there. Two pictures from yesterday from the North Pole webcams; first, the fisheye view looking up:
The panoramic camera #1 has been screwed up during this past week, pointing toward the sky without much if any view of the surface. Here it is anyway:
Temp is -1.5°C, or 29°F. More below.
The 2008 melt season time series (below) shows that over the last few days, the decrease in area covered by arctic sea ice (15% in a 25 km2 square) seems to have stopped, at least temporarily:
The time series is an average over several days and is therefore subject to correction, as we've seen in past diaries of mine (including the one earlier this week when we passed 2005 as the second least ice concentration in the satellite record).
During this season, we've seen that when sea ice concentrations drop toward the 15% threshold of sea ice vs. no sea ice, by the next week that's the area with big sea ice loss. The sea ice concentration maps below comparing this week to last week (and this year to last year) are in the table below:
<align="center">Sea ice concentration, 8/31/08 | <align="center">Color legend, % conc. | <align="center">Sea ice concentration, 8/31/07 |
| | |
<align="center">Sea ice concentration, 8/24/08 | <align="center">Color legend, % conc. | <align="center">Sea ice concentration, 8/24/07 |
| | |
The area coverage of low ice concentration seems to have decreased somewhat; we may be nearing a bottom in sea ice concentration. I think the chances we'll break last year's record this year are dropping quickly, though a change in arctic atmospheric flow regime may change that.
By the way, both the northwest (through the Canadian archipelago) and the northeast (through the area north of Siberia) passages are open for the first time according to this article in Der Spiegel, though the ice guys want to make sure before they make it official. It's also the first time the Northwest Passage has been open two consecutive years.
Of note from that article: the opportunity for profit:
The ever-thawing Arctic represents a potentially major opportunity for the shipping industry. Currently, there are only between 20 and 30 days a year in which the Northeast Passage is 50 percent covered by ice or less ... But the Arctic Climate Assessment from the year 2005 estimates that such days will become increasingly frequent -- with up to 120 largely ice-free days by the end of the century. And that is likely a conservative estimate.
This of course, assumes there is oil or some other energy source to run those ships, a highly questionable assertion, but that's a subject for a different diary entirely.
Regardless of anything else, we're at about 5.0 million km2 of sea ice, second only to last years 4.3 million km2. I'll keep up with these diaries, let y'all know when we hit the minimum for 2008 (we'll only know that after the fact), and report on the "refreeze". If it's not as fast as last year's, that'll have a significant impact on next year's minimum concentration.