Yokel wrote:

"James Brown" wrote in message
...
| In message .com,
| "Keith (Southend)G" writes
|
https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/products/....NCODA.glbl_ss
| tanomaly.gif
|
| Somethings completely different with this image. All the arctic SST
| anomalies are negative (blue), the last few years we have been seeing
| nothing but reds and yellows. Is something going on up there?
|
| I noticed that as well Keith - it seemed to suddenly change, and having
| checked with one of the other SST anomaly sites I think I would
| personally conclude it is a website or database/programming anomaly. Not
| sure who to contact to get it corrected though.
|

I'm sure you're right. Until very recently the NCODA chart had all the ice
area "blanked out", ie it only showed the greenish colour for no anomaly.
Now, large areas of ice covered sea are showing dark blue. That would be
OK if this indicated ice that should have melted by now, but I suspect
actually we are no longer comparing "like with like".

I'm sure you're correct. I wonder whether the computer work for this has
been handled by programmers who know little or nothing about oceanography?


A better tell-tale is surely the the fringe of bright red and orange
colours where open water several degrees above the nominal -2C for
freezing seawater is present where climatologically ice should be. From
the ice concentration images, it looks like the NE passage will very soon
be open, and the NW passage is also thawing quickly. And, once again, the
Labrador Current has been partly cut off and sea surface temperatures
around Nova Scotia are several degrees above normal.

The NE passage has ice conditions that are worse than last year, as does the
western part of the NW passage. Barents Sea, Hudson Bay, and Baffin Bay are
lighter than last year. It appears as though the winds this winter and
spring have, for the most part, been blowing from the Barents Sea area
towards the Bering Strait.

One difference I noticed this year that I've never seen before is the
smaller amount of fast ice (solid ice-sheet attached to the land) in the
Canadian Arctic. In particular the Amundsen Gulf was covered with pack-ice
instead of fast ice. Also the fast-ice edge in McClure Strait is a couple
of hundred miles East of its usual position. This suggests its been a very
mild winter in that area.


I suspect another low sea-ice year is in prospect, especially after
reports that some fjords in Svalbard (Spitzbergen) which normally freeze
over at least partially have remained open this last winter.

The southern edge of the pack-ice in that area this winter was, at times,
further north than ever recorded - even in summer.

If the wind pattern continues as it has for the past six months or more, the
ice cover in the Arctic may be larger this summer than last. The ice will
not be forced out of the Arctic as much as it has been in the last couple
of years.

--
Graham Davis
Bracknell