Sea ice researchers like to talk a lot about what they call ‘Century Drops.’ Days when Arctic sea ice area or extent values fall more than 100,000 square kilometers. In the past, daily Century Drops were relatively rare — with steepest rates of loss occurring during late June through early August and featuring, perhaps, a handful of days in which 24 hour losses exceeded 100,000 square kilometers. But the record melt years of 2007 and 2012 showed a proliferation of daily drops that exceeded the 100,000 square kilometers daily threshold.
Well, a couple of days ago a three Century Drop showed up in the Cyrosphere Today measure. And it may just be something we’ve never seen before (UPDATE: actually the last time was 2008, see Neven’s comment below). At the least, it’s an event that’s pretty amazingly rare — or it should be, without the heat added to the Arctic by human fossil fuel emissions.
On Tuesday evening, the Cryosphere Today site showed Arctic sea ice at about 8,986,000 square kilometers. The next day the measure stood at about 8,646,000 square kilometers. That’s an extraordinary loss of 340,000 square kilometers in just one day.
(Cryosphere Today sea ice graph shows that losses basically went vertical on Tuesday, June 16. Image source: Cryosphere Today.)
340,000 square kilometers gone in a single 24 hour period. That’s an area of sea ice the size of the state of New Mexico gone in a single day. In the above graph, you can see the drop as the vertical turn in the yellow line denoting 2015.
The massive single day drop temporarily brought sea ice area in the Cryosphere Today sea ice area chart into the range of second lowest on record for the date. Area losses of around 70,000 square kilometers for Wednesday resulted in a retreat to around 4th lowest on record. But any period in which drops of this size become frequent would easily transport the measure into new record low territory.
(LANCE MODIS showing the tell-tale blue of melt ponds all over the Arctic Ocean and most concentrated in edge zone regions. Proliferation of melt ponds during early season, especially when combined with the impact of human caused global warming, can increase risk for new record lows by end season.)
The cause of such a large single day drop is likely due to a combination of factors. Lately, storms have been more prevalent in the Arctic Ocean proper and such storms have a tendency to spread the ice out more, opening gaps in the ice called polynyas which tends to push the sea ice area measure lower. In addition, there is melt pressure now in Baffin Bay, Hudson Bay, the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea, the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea, The East Siberian Sea, the Canadian Archipelago waters, and in the Barents border region. This basically composes the entire border zone of the Arctic sea ice.
Finally, the NASA MODIS satellite composite for recent days has shown a marked shift toward a light blue coloration for the entire Arctic Ocean zone and especially for the border zones. Such a shift is indicative of a proliferation of melt ponds. Major snow cover losses over sea ice during the past two weeks have removed insulation to the sea ice pack and probably aided in the formation of these melt ponds. Melt ponds are a strong indicator for sea ice health throughout the melt season — so a proliferation of melt ponds at this time may be a sign of sea ice melt vulnerability (see more over at Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice blog where they do a bang-up job tracking seasonal melt ponds and their potential impacts).
Though a three Century drop occurred, melt overall still has some catching up to do to make 2012 levels. So though this massive daily drop occurred, we are not yet in the red zone for sea ice area. Sea ice extent measures, on the other hand, remain in the range of second to third lowest on record and are still very close to all time record low levels. So this particular melt season is certainly one to still keep watching.
Links:
Hat Tip to Neven
robertscribbler 
dtlange
/ June 18, 2015– I guess it had to happen, with FF burning continually. Not a good sign.
– Speaking of ‘burning’, AK:
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dtlange
/ June 18, 2015LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015And the wildfires are indeed starting to light off in Alaska… Pretty decent number in the MODIS shot so far. Looking kinda pre Siberian. One thing to note is the rather significant number of storm systems moving around the mid and upper Latitudes for this time of year.
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Connecticut Gordon
/ June 18, 2015Hi Robert, I’ve checked out your site for a year or so now, but never contributed before. Can you please explain why the totals in your graph for ice extent differ by more than 2 million sq kilometres than the higher figure used by NSIDC? Also how does one site report a loss of 320,000 sq kilometres in one day when the other reported only about 73,000 I think. Clearly different calculation methods but very baffling to me.
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robertscribbler
/ June 18, 2015One calculation is for area, the other extent. Extent measures the total region encompassed by the ice, but does not include the holes or gaps within the ice (polynyas). Area includes all the holes to a certain size. As such the area measure is usually smaller. The causes for swing in numbers between area and extent can be numerous. In the current case, we have storms spreading the ice pack out which can mute losses in the extent measure. The issue is we also have gaps opening up behind the ice edge due to this dispersal, which is one of the major drivers for more rapid area drops. In addition, some of the ponding features we’ve seen can also bore down through the ice and generate more polynyas.
In general, though the area measure is usually about a couple million square kilometers lower than the extent measure once all the polynyas are accounted for. In addition, large drops in area and in extent often do not coordinate on single days as the greater melt forcing on one (dispersal in the case of area and compaction in the case of extent), can tend to mask losses in the other. A greater trend will, however, tend to line up and affect both — in the case of a big high pressure generating massive compaction and melt ponding, for example.
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Connecticut Gordon
/ June 18, 2015Thanks Robert, it all makes sense now.
I hope to be able to contribute positively in future. As I am British, living in CT now for a few years, I actually know more about the effects of climate change on the UK rather than here. One example is the northward ‘march’ of butterfly species, usually just seen in the south of England or actually parts of northern Europe previously. Some species are now reaching Manchester [where I am from] and moving north by the staggering amount of 20 miles per year
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wili
/ June 19, 2015Aren’t the Cryosphere Today values always a couple days behind the NSIDC ones, too? IIRC, Werther has talked some about this at neven’s forums.
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015Yes, Cryosphere Today does tend to lag a bit. It can catch up unevenly as well.
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Ryan in New England
/ June 19, 2015Hello there Gordon. I too am a resident of Connecticut, however I’ve been here for a bit longer. I can remember the weather going back to the mid-eighties, and we have certainly seen a change since then. I don’t rely solely on memory, the meteorological records confirm my suspicions. One of the most noticeable changes is the frequency of intense precipitation events, both snow and rain. Large downpours of many inches used to be fairly uncommon, now it is a regular occurrence. Earlier this week some towns in the state saw 6-7 inches. These kinds of numbers used to be reserved for tropical storms that made their way this far north. This trend is noticeable in the winter as well. With warmer ocean waters we witness storms that undergo bombogenesis far more frequently than before. This kind of rapid intensification of storms used to be nearly unheard of in New England, and now it seems to happen every winter. Not sure if you were here in 2012-13, but we experienced our all time largest snowfall, which was off the charts at 30-40 inches (40 was recorded in Hamden) and nearly double our previous record. The top 5 snowfalls occurred in my lifetime, with four of those happening since 2000. Coupled with Arctic amplification and its effect on the jet stream (Dr. Francis seems to be coreect) the result is some pretty nasty winters in recent years. In the late 90s and early 2000s we were seeing warmer winters with little, if any, snow. That has changed dramatically in recent years, which sadly contributes to the local troglodytes proclaiming climate change to be a hoax. We also have seen a trend towards more extreme storms in general, and most meteorological records of all kinds have been broken in the last two decades.
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NevenA
/ June 18, 2015Robert, that 1-day drop on CT sea ice area was even larger: 340K (from 8.986 to 8.646 million km2).
My spreadsheet doesn’t go further back than 2006, but the last time there was a 300K+ drop was in 2008. In fact, there were two monster single-day drops that year: 396K in late April, and 437K (!) in early May. The largest one-day decrease since then was 287K in the first week of June last year.
The current situation in the Arctic is extremely interesting and could be crucial for the remainder of the melting season. Somehow I don’t see 2012’s record get broken, but under the right conditions 2015 could go really low. I’m also really interested in what volume is going to do. Will the (small) rebound still be there at the end of the melting season?
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NevenA
/ June 18, 2015For more info on why the coming two weeks are so fascinating, read the latest entry on the Dosbat blog: Are we facing a crash in 2015.
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robertscribbler
/ June 18, 2015Hey Neven! Thanks for the feedback. Corrections in as well as a mention to this comment. The current early season does seem rather interesting. Not certain about a record breaker for this year. But conditions are rather odd, wouldn’t you say? The few bits that seem to come up is more rain over sea ice and a push — pull of wind patterns — one meridional set up over the Atlantic and another over the Pacific that seem to be in sync. When it’s north south on the Atlantic side, it’s tended to be south north on the Pacific Side. That and the storm pattern encircling Greenland has seemed rather persistent as well. Crazy heat waves over those continents.
Will take a look at the article you linked below. Been eyes deep in the encyclical today.
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015OK Neven. That CICE model is just terrifying. A kind of nightmare melt scenario for ESS and Chukchi with big implications down the line. ARCc is more conservative. But looking at the visual, it’s pretty clear that the ice in those regions is undergoing rapid change. Most recent pass shows a deeper bluing of the ice. Indicative of your melt ponds. In addition, the base ice appears much more disassociated, mobile, and for lack of a better word — mealy. The difference over seven days is that of white ice with a few leads to that rotten ice look we tend to see before a big melt.
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Colorado Bob
/ June 18, 2015As Pope Francis issued his warning on global warming, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released figures showing that last month was the hottest May in 136 years of global records.
And the first five months of 2015 were by far the hottest year so far on record, on pace to beat last year’s record.
“It was the warmest May on record, about a degree and a half warmer than the 20th-century average,” said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring for NOAA. It was unusually hot all over the world, including 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average in Alaska.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/may-was-hottest-globally-wettest-in-u-s/
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climatehawk1
/ June 19, 2015Thanks, tweet scheduled.
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Ed-M
/ June 19, 20151-1/2 degree warmer than the 20th Century average. I suppose that’s Fahrenheit. Which is about 0.83 C above that average. So that would be about 1 C above 1880’s value?
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 20151.8 F is the conversion for 1 C.
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Ed-M
/ June 21, 2015Yes. I did the conversion in my head.
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Wake
/ June 18, 2015Out of curiosity, what is the error range around these daily estimates. It would seem to have a lot of potential for error and uncertainty even with a computerized measurement, which I assume it is?
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015The margin of error is probably in the range of +/- 200,000 square kilometers. Overall, it’s pretty reliable in broad brush and the error bars aren’t nearly as high as in the volume measure.
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Ryan in New England
/ June 18, 2015So I just watched the CBS Evening News, and towards the end of the program they mentioned the Pope’s warning about climate change. It was introduced as an argument that fossil fuels and man cause climate change…as if that’s not an established fact of reality. They then juxtaposition a farmer who has been putting up wind turbines with a “skeptic” who stated that the effects predicted by scientists haven’t happened…the exact opposite of reality! Things are much worse and happening much faster than any scientist predicted, and this post of Robert’s is a reminder of that. The last IPCC report estimated Arctic summer ice cover lasting into the 22nd century. The very next story that was featured after a climate denier was given airtime was one about the “tragic floods in the Midwest”. Talk about tragic irony. Their message was essentially not to worry about a problem that doesn’t exist, then report on the current manifestation of that nonexistent problem. We live in a god damn bizarro world.
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Colorado Bob
/ June 19, 2015I saw that as well , No room to report on the NOAA numbers for May, due to the sad day in South Carolina. …………….
Also from CBS :
“It was the warmest May on record, about a degree and a half warmer than the 20th-century average,” said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring for NOAA. It was unusually hot all over the world, including 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average in Alaska.
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Ryan in New England
/ June 19, 2015You’re right, Bob. This encyclical release suffered some bad luck with the tragedy in Charleston occurring on the same day. Naturally that was the major story. Although, sadly here in America mass shootings are far more common than a Conservative urging action on climate change. As the voice of reason once again is barely acknowledged or ignored all together, we race down the road that leads to possible collapse of our current civilization. A very unstable future where gun violence becomes even more common, as more people struggle to meet their basic needs in a world of food and water shortages.
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015The same kind of thinking that enabled this crime is enabling the climate crisis. The exploitative mindset is basically rampant and brazenly encouraged among a certain group. They’ve been transformed into zealots by vastly irresponsible media (Fox). The result is deep division, instability and internal violence. The division further enables the bad actors by drawing away resources that could instead go to solving systemic crises.
Examples include Rush Limbaugh accusing Obama of politicizing the massacre (Rush appears to have failed to get the point that the massacre was clearly racially motivated and likely encouraged by his own brand of hate mongering) and Fox News claiming that if the church group were armed, they could have defended themselves. In Fox’s case, it appears that their goal is to enflame discord and then give everyone weapons…
An educated or just society would have taken down voices like Rush and Fox long ago. The pattern has been incitation of violence and undermining the constitutional authority of government since jump. Over the years, they’ve become more brazen, continuing to sell their harmful product to the masses. This is blanket exploitation through divisive and inflammatory rhetoric. Encouraging both directly and indirectly the kinds of American on American violence we see with such frequency today. The racial hatred motivation is intrinsic, but the aims are more detached — a kind of internal divide and conquer. In other words, if whites and African Americans are at each other’s throats it becomes easier for exploitative business practices and wealth concentration to continue. It becomes easier for fossil fuel companies to avoid the necessary end to the selling of their harmful product as national attention is shifted toward the internal struggle and away from the needed fixes.
This impact of internal violence can be plainly seen in this drawing away of attention from the Pope’s encyclical yesterday (an encyclical which the entire US mainstream press has basically downplayed by using the implied language of failure, by not responsibly honoring the Pope’s call to action with appropriate language). The violence, thus, couldn’t have happened at a worse time for those of us focused on solving the climate crisis and saving people from ever increasing degrees of harm.
At a deeper level, what we see is the visible hand of exploitation doing its destructive work. In this case enflaming racial hatred and resulting in the violence in Charleston. Today and tomorrow and the next, we will see the same hand at work in the climate, generating the ever-increasing difficulty we have tracked here for three years. But the root cause of both is cynical exploitation. A rape and pillage of the social mind, a torturing away the desire for community and common good we all share and a concordant rape and pillage of the natural world. An exploitation of innocents that will not cease until we confront the perpetrators and remove them from power.
The crime in Charleston was not just an individual crime, but a systemic one. One that is a symptom of the state of the political language and discourse in this country. We saw it with Travon Martin, we see it in the increasingly violent and militarized policing in this country — whose assaults on the poor have become egregious, and we see it in yesterday’s terrible events.
So we have a choice, to attempt to bring everyone together in brotherhood to face the amazing crises we see rising (climate change…) or we can allow the exploitative forces to continue to divide, fracture, and prey upon us. And if we fail. If we do the latter, we will be unable to mount an effective response to any of the larger outside crises the exploitative powers have already unleashed.
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Dave Person
/ June 19, 2015Hi Folks,
You are exactly correct about the conservative propaganda machine. The other meme that relates directly to climate issues is the belief that government is the enemy. Governments have to lead the way or facilitate the large scale reinvention of energy use, and economic and social processes required to address the problems, as well as supporting the great cost of the science. Consequently, governments are going to need a lot of public support.
dave
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robertscribbler
/ June 20, 2015Absolutely, Dave. Part of the underlying problem is that private interests have gained so much power and influence over the past few decades. This has greatly harmed government’s ability to act in the public’s interest and to effectively respond to crises like this one. No one benefits from such a situation.
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Ryan in New England
/ June 19, 2015Robert, you’ve hit the nail right on the head. This is not an isolated event. Just like the extreme meteorological events we currently experience, it is one data point that is part of a larger trend. A trend that is by design and promoted by the corporate propoganda machine.
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Ed-M
/ June 20, 2015Exactly, Ryan. It’s like we need a total economic collapse, utterly, to enable the mass of people to change their (our?) ways. Of course, such a collapse will not just enable them, but force them to change, too!
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robertscribbler
/ June 20, 2015Economic collapse would reduce speed of transition away from fossil fuels. We need non materialized economic systems powered by renewables that are greatly more efficient and that are value rather than profit driven. Collapse just promotes dependence on fossil fuels. Those cheering collapse don’t get the problem nor do they have a grasp of basic human nature in a collapse situation.
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Ed-M
/ June 20, 2015Except (at least IMO) an utterly total economic collapse would disable the extraction of fossil fuels, leaving humanity to find aboveground substitutes, usually biomass in the form of trees.
I know, apocalyptic thinking here. part of the Religion of Progress, which is a materialist ‘heresy’ of Christianity!
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robertscribbler
/ June 20, 2015It’s too easy to extract the most dangerous fossil fuels, especially coal (brown coal). And a major collapse would incentivize coal use, which would be just terrible. And, yes, deforestation…
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Ed-M
/ June 20, 2015As if an economic collapse and burning down all the trees were a good thing. I forgot about human nature — adverse changes in circumstances force people to change but the change is not always good! (ex.: Germany between the two World Wars)
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Ed-M
/ June 21, 2015Yes, Robert, coal is horrible. But these days coal is extracted by machinery operating on diesel. I suppose they could refit the machines to burn the coal itself, but it could be in a collapsed economy and there’s no oil or gas coming out of the ground because the FF companies went out of business, people and governments will have to dig out coal the old-fashioned way, with hand labor. Now that’s really bad.
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Ryan in New England
/ June 21, 2015I have to agree with Robert here. When I think of rapid collapse or destabilization of industrial civilization the first thing that comes to mind is my experience with the back to back extended power outages that occurred in 2011 here in the Nortgeast, particularly in Ct, where I live. We experienced Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene at the end of August 2011, and the loss of power for some for over a week caused chaos. What really sticks in my mind is the record shattering snowfall that happened a short time later, just a day before Halloween. Many of the trees were still green, and we ended up getting 24 inches of wet snow in Farmington (I live one town over in Bristol) which devastated the trees and electrical infrastructure. Many towns in the Farmington Valley, and across the region, had power outages of 90-100% of their customers. Gas stations couldn’t open, people couldn’t find fuel for transport or generators. The temps were around freezing for the following nights, so many people started burning wood to stay warm. I can recall the sunrises/sunsets in the following days, they were striking because of the excessive smoke from fires building up and stagnating in the valley. Some had no power for nearly two weeks. Needless to say, people were becoming desperate, and I was shocked by how quickly a relatively minor inconvenience (in the grand scheme of things, losing power is an inconvenience, though some behaved like they were dying) could destabilize the area and bring about dramatic behavior. So I agree with Robert. Collapse might, at first thought, lead to less fossil fuel use and a better situation for the climate. But in reality, people will become desperate and turn to coal and wood to stay alive, and people will give up in important things that require our civilization remain intact, like preventing nuclear power plants from melting down. We must transition to renewables, because decreasing power usage is something that most people simply can’t/won’t do.
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robertscribbler
/ June 21, 2015Exactly. Say you’re a person who has lived with electricity all your life and you’re suddenly dumped in the dark without heat or air or running water. Without the things you and your family relied on for generations. What are you going to do? Well without access to wind and solar you’ll go for diesel generation first and failing that it’s almost immediately back to wood burning. But an economic collapse in the current day would retain enough connective infrastructure to maintain some regions at near pre collapse functioning. And if these regions don’t have access to wind and solar, they’ll turn to wood and the more widely available fossil source that is brown coal. Possibly even continuing destructive fracking.
But if we retain the electronics production infrastructure while jettisoning the fossil fuel based energy production infrastructure sans economic collapse, we have a speeding transition away from carbon emissions. If such a transition happens in concert with increasing efficiency and reduced materials use, the stress to Earth’s carrying capacity and extinction stress is reduced. If the human population curve continues to bend down and if people eat less meat then the stress becomes even less.
But if we are specifically talking about the climate crisis then the thing we must do, the most important thing we can do is to jettison fossil fuel use as swiftly as possible. The industry doesn’t want to go, but it simply must go for our survival and for the well being of the life entrusted to our care.
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Jeremy
/ June 22, 2015Just to reiterate collapse will not end fossil fuel use – go back to the general strike (1926) in this area of north Wales and the coal miners, when on strike and locked out of work dug their own bell pits and hewed coal for their own use and to sell/barter. While the skills have been lost the knowledge that coal exists, often at shallow depth has not gone away, and desperation will lead to new workings and deaths from collapses and breaking into old workings causing flooding.
After shelter and food the next great demand is to stay warm and dry, coal fits the bill.
Wood burning stoves are a niche product in the UK but the increased popularity here already causes problems for land owners, any major economic collapse in the UK would lead to most trees being cut down (only 12% of the UK has tree cover.) in short order.
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Colorado Bob
/ June 19, 2015“It was unusually hot all over the world, including 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average in Alaska.”
It was 84F degrees in Fairbanks today. 2F degrees short of the record , and 11F degrees above average.
The 10 day forecast –
Link
Note the night time lows , then scroll down to the Almanac.
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015Check out the most recent MODIS shot of the US, Bob. Bill really does look like a Hurricane over land. Dumped crazy rains over Texas and Oklahoma over past two days. Numerous instances of 1 foot rainfall totals. Just made a screen capture. Not certain if the link will work:
Yep, that got it!
Heading in my region’s direction. Still looks set to dump 3-6 (8 local) additional inches of rain along its projected path.
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Colorado Bob
/ June 19, 2015That’s thing , even weak lows now carry the energy from the ocean longer and deeper .
And it took 2 days to cross Oklahoma. Some parts of Oklahoma have gotten 3 feet of rain in 6 weeks.
By the way , central China just got 9 ins. in 8 hours. More rain in the forecast.
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015Pattern stuck there and over the Central US. Lots of moisture delivery systems setting up.
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Ryan in New England
/ June 19, 2015It seems that remarkable events are simply the new normal. Nearly every storm seems to carry much more potential (makes sense since there’s more energy in the system) and we see huge precipitation numbers quite frequently. 6-8 inches in your area, Robert? I remember when 1-2 inches of rain was a big event in the Northeast. The TV weatherman would remind us that “if this were snow it would be 1-2 feet!”. The comfortable weather of those days seems so quaint. Now all weather stats are delivered with superlatives- hottest, driest, wettest, most, largest- and the public acts as if this is somehow normal. Doesn’t anybody realize that if things weren’t changing we would be seeing less records set as we move forward in time? Do young people just think every year is supposed to be the hottest one ever? It’s total freaking madness!
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015Add to that the fact that some use their religion to make false claims that the situation isn’t something to worry about even as the leader of one of the largest religions in the world states clearly that this is an existential crisis. The scientists say this is a major problem. The Pope agrees. But the fossil fuel industry and their agents have decided on profits at any cost. We are at war now a war in which these destructive industries have decided that lives can be forfeited and yours and your children’s’ may be among them.
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Robin Westenra
/ June 19, 2015Sorry folks, I am having some difficulty with the maths and visualising this. This must be like a square with each length being about 500 km, must it not? 320,000 km is the distance to the moon. Sorry for my ignorance.
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015340,000 square kilometers or nearly 600 by 600 km or basically the size of New Mexico. So visualize that.
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Colorado Bob
/ June 19, 2015One kilometer is 0.6 miles.
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Greg
/ June 19, 2015Democratic contender Ex-Maryland Governor O’Malley just moved the goalposts on Climate Change related policy. Citing the Pope’s Encyclical he calls for a moral obligation:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/06/18/pope-francis-encyclical-clean-energy-technology-campaign-column/28859409/
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015It’s absolutely a moral obligation. It’s just madness not to respond. A bizarre amoral madness. The kind children wonder about when they hear a tragic tale of how a race or a people fell due to their own blind pride.
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Ed-M
/ June 19, 2015Exactly. The Greeks had a word for this: hubris, which becomes its own nemesis when it’s time for karmic payback.
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robertscribbler
/ June 19, 2015Absolute hubris.
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Jay M
/ June 19, 2015Ag commodity producer outlook on TS Bill weather and onward in the corn, soybean, wheat belt:
http://www.allendale-inc.com/radio/weather/
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Nathan
/ June 19, 2015Old news, but climate change is affecting southwest Australia in a similar way to the southwest US.
Click to access sudden_forest_canopy_collapse.pdf
http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/6/6/2082/htm
Sudden ecosystem collapse in the Jarrah forests of Western Australia. Very sad news… and will not get better.
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dtlange
/ June 19, 2015– Climate Fires: Another impact as we get smoke and ash filled air sheds. We will see more of this, and in many locations. Especially sump and valley topographies with flaccid air currents. It’s bad enough here in PDX — most days Mt. Hood and and St. Helen’s are barely visible through the hazy,smoggy, particulate filled skies of the Willamette Valley.
Forecasters: Shifting winds could trap wildfire smoke in Southcentral Alaska
A shift in winds could trap smoke from numerous wildfires burning in Southcentral Alaska, making air quality worse for residents of the region’s most populous areas Saturday and Sunday, the National Weather Service warned in a special weather statement Thursday night.
The statement said the predicted wind shift would bring cooler ocean air up Cook Inlet, creating “an inversion trapping smoke and concentrating it where we live and breathe,” beginning around midnight Saturday morning.
Smoke will be thickest in Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and Matanuska and Susitna Valley…
– The setting sun is obscured by smoke from the Sockeye wildfire that started near Kashwitna Lake on Sunday afternoon, June 14, 2015. The Anchorage skyline is in the foreground. A shift in winds could create an inversion this weekend, trapping smoke and worsening conditions in Southcentral Alaska, forecasters said Thursday. Bill Roth / ADN
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dtlange
/ June 19, 2015http://www.adn.com/article/20150619/forecasters-shifting-winds-could-trap-wildfire-smoke-southcentral-alaska
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todaysguestis
/ June 19, 2015https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CH4aY4kXAAA-b1n.png:large
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janearthlover
/ June 20, 2015Can we then surmise from this that the tipping point has been reached in the Arctic? Countries are salivating for this to continue in order to exploit the Arctic for its resources. Is an Arctic War next?
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robertscribbler
/ June 20, 2015Bad idea given that oil is now such a massive malinvestment.
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