[Whitefang]

We are now late enough in the season that the trend is unmistakably back upward. Scanning through the years it is clear that 2019 as essentially the same as 2007. 2012 remains the record low year, now seven years in the past. This is absolutely not the way I expected this decade to turn out, but I am thankful for the reprieve however long it lasts.

Same here T, we should be grateful for every year of sea ice on top of this world, Amen and inchallah, Godwilling.

Pigs could even become the default meat source, over cattle. Of course, that would only be after a transition to a warmer, and wetter, northern plains

EG, thanks for the ideas, drive to adapt, I think humanity will not give up and die at the drop of a hat but agriculture is facing a hard time already while we still have a more or less normal arctic.
I do not think pigs will enter the food chain in Morocco though.......

Last week I travelled the Rif, mix of small medieval type farming with modern large scale agriculture production.
For centuries, millennia even I suppose, olive trees together with other fruit bearing trees have stood their ground, grazed by sheep, goats, mules and horses, grains, beans and chicken.
All depending on the winter rains and a limit to how many people can live on the available resources.
The green leaf, the weed crop uses a lot of water, I'll look into it.

Abdeslam, a family member, rich farmer with a Peterson machine, has 3000 olive trees and no harvest this year for lack of water.
Trucking water in is no option, that would be possible but financially unwise unless oliveoil gets to double the price it is now, around 50 Dirham per litre.
He has already 3 wells but is digging a 4th deeper.
If the rains do not return to normal, he has to give up the farm.

Nordin, another family member but small scale farmer on a hill has some more water but can barely make it, keep BAU.
Thing is the system is indeed already at a breaking point without CC pushing it over the brink of disaster.

[Nefarious]

We are now late enough in the season that the trend is unmistakably back upward. Scanning through the years it is clear that 2019 as essentially the same as 2007. 2012 remains the record low year, now seven years in the past. This is absolutely not the way I expected this decade to turn out, but I am thankful for the reprieve however long it lasts.

Careful talk like that will get you labelled a denier.
Welcome to the grand solar minimum. The weather and climate are about to get a lot more chaotic and it's just the beginning.

[dohboi]

Yeah, and the records set by super-El-Nino year 1998 weren't broken for another decade, but that also had absolutely nothing to do with the viability of gw theory, despite what denialists (which T is not!) tried to make of it.

Any year now could see a confluence of factors--that happened to occur in the Arctic in 2012 and has not happened since--that would plunge Arctic sea ice numbers down into the area most regular observers would consider a Blue Ocean Event.

I, too, am a bit surprised and relieved that we have not yet seen such a convergence of factors. But it could still happen in any given year, as far as I can tell.

[Azothius]

I share the mutual surprise and relief that the arctic sea ice has not diminished more quickly.

But...what has become the perennial worry - the stage may be in the process of being set for a more significant loss next year:

Arctic sea ice extent was 4.88 million km² on October 13, 2019, the lowest on record for the time of year.

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/





see images on the link above:

air temperatures are high over parts of the Arctic Ocean where there is no sea ice... Anomalies look set to get stronger, as illustrated by the forecast for October 24, 2019, in the right panel.

another Graph:
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/amsr2 ... evious.png



Projected:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

[Tanada]

My fear is a weak winter setting up weak and low area of Arctic ice followed by a warm and storm tossed Arctic summer. Based on 2012 and the last half decade of gradual warming of Arctic near surface waters and that could tip things over.

[Azothius]

I share that fear.

And if a late/slow freeze up results in the the polar vortex weakening further, spilling its arctic air to the south even more than it has been in recent winters, it of course just compounds the issue.

Hm. That thought brought this poem to mind:


The Second Coming
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[evilgenius]

It looks like a continuation of what happened at this time last year, only worse. Sea ice buildup is not happening at a rate that will ensure the sort of maximum most disinterested people expect. But, unless the maximum we get is very much lower than the average, those people still won't accept it. We will need them to, or the tax money that will have to be spent won't possibly get approved. The important issue, in my opinion, will be whether to try and save the old order, which I think is impossible, or to try to adapt at a pace that will save the best aspects of that order. Soon, the interests which have been actively funding denial, and fomenting the divisiveness in our societies, will converge in order to prevent the taxation. When we see the marketing before us, trying to convince us that "backyard chickens" can save us, we should ask who is behind it. Is it the way, or is it the cheapest way?

[waterpowerman1]

Here in Canada we have an election. The Liberals have taken baby steps trying to do the minimum. -Things like a carbon tax. The Conservatives vow to back track those baby steps. The Greens are a voice in the wilderness with no hope of any power. So at best we'll see more inadequate baby steps or going backwards. The situation is similar in other countries with the US leading the charge backwards. We're doing it to ourselves.

[careinke]

Here in Canada we have an election. The Liberals have taken baby steps trying to do the minimum. -Things like a carbon tax. The Conservatives vow to back track those baby steps. The Greens are a voice in the wilderness with no hope of any power. So at best we'll see more inadequate baby steps or going backwards. The situation is similar in other countries with the US leading the charge backwards. We're doing it to ourselves.

To be expected from a country that lets their cities dump raw sewage into the Straights of Juan de Fuca.

[yellowcanoe]

Here in Canada we have an election. The Liberals have taken baby steps trying to do the minimum. -Things like a carbon tax. The Conservatives vow to back track those baby steps. The Greens are a voice in the wilderness with no hope of any power. So at best we'll see more inadequate baby steps or going backwards. The situation is similar in other countries with the US leading the charge backwards. We're doing it to ourselves.

To be expected from a country that lets their cities dump raw sewage into the Straights of Juan de Fuca.

Victoria is two years into a project to build a tertiary sewage treatment plant. I don't think it is accurate to say they are dumping raw sewage as all solid material is screened out. There doesn't appear to be any scientific reason for Victoria to stop what they are doing -- the conditions of where they dump effluent are pretty unique. The decision to build a sewage treatment plant is purely political. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/le ... ne-alberta

[Azothius]

https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/amsr2 ... evious.png

[Azothius]

https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom

significant warm anomaly in the arctic and significant cold anomaly below the arctic = arctic air spilling out to lower latitudes:




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_vortex

When the polar vortex is strong, there is a single vortex with a jet stream that is "well constrained" near the polar front. When the northern vortex weakens, it separates into two or more vortices, the strongest of which are near Baffin Island, Canada, and the other over northeast Siberia.

It's interesting to note that, at the moment, viewing the winds on the earth.nullschool site, while there is a low pressure vortex over northeast Siberia, there is no other low pressure vortex in the arctic. But, there is a high pressure vortex over the middle of the arctic.

And the low pressure system that presumably would typically be over Baffin Island in this situation, it looks like it has migrated south to WSW of Hudson Bay.


https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/w ... 614,69.864

[Plantagenet]

there is a high pressure vortex over the middle of the arctic.

There is currently a high-pressure "warm" anomaly over Alaska.....This feature has formed for several years now in the fall. It is a consequence of the extreme loss of sea ice around Alaska in the summer. More open water means more heat absorbed means anomalously warm conditions in this area of the Arctic persist into the late fall, only ending when winter sea ice forms around Alaska. The existence of this long-lived warm, high pressure anomaly tends to divert the circum polar vortex to the north and around Alaska, and then down to the south, resulting in cold breakouts and snow storms down through Canada, the rockies and the great plains.

The record warm temps in Alaska are here again....we just about hit 50 yesterday here in central Alaska. And right on schedule major snowstorms will be arriving in the lower 48 states.

winter-blast-dump-heavy-slow-across-rockies-plains-midwest

Cheers!

[yellowcanoe]

The record warm temps in Alaska are here again....we just about hit 50 yesterday here in central Alaska. And right on schedule major snowstorms will be arriving in the lower 48 states

After seeing the temperature anomaly map yesterday I pulled up the weather for Barrow, Alaska and found that the current temperature was +3C. Pretty amazing for near the end of October!

[Azothius]

Extent increase during the freeze-up is still lagging behind other years, though it is catching up to 2016 (see link below).

Wondering if the positive feedback loop that Plantagenet just mentioned could result in a further slow down of the freeze-up this year, or if it will now progress at a more "normal" pace.


https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/amsr2 ... evious.png

[Plantagenet]

Weeee-OOOOO! We did it! A new RECORD LOW!!!



Arctic Sea Ice set a new record for October....Arctic ice extent just established a new record low for the month.

arctic-ice-reached-record-low-in-october

Now this isn't the all-time low.... its a new record just for the month of October. But its still very important and another big step towards an ice-free Arctic Ocean. The new record low for October set last month shows the importance of the increased length of the summer melting season we are seeing now in the Arctic.

This has global implications. Here in central Alaska we've been having a very mild downturn into winter, precisely because the sea ice hasn't formed yet in the Bering Straights and the Chukchi Sea. As long as Alaska stays a Peninsula with water all around it, our Temps stay mild. But when the sea ice finally forms, and Alaska is essentially connected with Siberia into a massive supercontinent with no open water----thats when we get hammered with cold up here in Alaska.

But so far its been great----beautiful clear skies and sunny day up in the 20s today. Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice,

Meanwhile the warm high over Alaska diverts the jet stream north......and then it plunges south into the lower 48 bringing big early snow storms to the Rockies and low Temps into the midwest and the east coast, with further displacement of the jet stream all around the globe until it reaches the sticking point again here over Alaska and the Arctic Ocean, where it MUST go north around the blocking high.

Kind of nice to be in warm, sunny Alaska right now, watching the weather all around the northern hemisphere dance to the song we are playing.

CheerS!

[dohboi]

the graph on Chukchi Sea ice is Yikes!-worthy! Extent is again wandering off into new, uncharted territory!

https://mobile.twitter.com/zlabe/status ... 4526687233

[EnergyUnlimited]

Kind of nice to be in warm, sunny Alaska right now, watching the weather all around the northern hemisphere dance to the song we are playing.

Even if heating bills are lower I begin to miss cold, crispy winters in Poland with beautiful sunny days and below -10*C outside.
Actually this kind of days are making you very energetic in opposition to some sort of ever deapening autumn which never turns into winter what we have now.

[radon1]

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... Dfrom_main

140-year-old temperature record broken in Moscow

“Moscow will feel the full power of warming. In the middle of the day the air warms up to plus 13 degrees! That is, the previous daily maximum will be exceeded by as much as 2 degrees. Cloudy weather with light rains will continue at night. Therefore, the air will cool slightly - the minimum temperature is about plus 9 degrees. And this, by the way, is the norm of the beginning of June, ”the portal said in a statement .
...
“This year is unique in that there is no El Nino, and this means that warming is happening only due to anthropogenic impact,” said the weather forecaster.

[Plantagenet]

Thick multi-year sea ice in the Arctic is thawing at twice the rate of thin sea ice

arctic-sea-ice-disappearing-fast

Once we get blue ocean conditions during the summer in the Arctic Ocean, we'll also see accelerated warming in Greenland and other areas around the Arctic ocean.

Cheers!