Clouds blocking our view of events below make the False-Colour Composite images Environment Canada makes of the LANCE-MODIS satellite images very welcome (for further explanation read the first and second blog posts with the same title), especially after they have been 'declouded' by commenter dabize.
The latest animation showing weekly changes from July 3rd to August 7th:
Here's another panel dabize made showing the latest declouded false-colour composite image on the right, and changes compared to a month ago (red) in the image on the left, and to a week ago in the image in the middle (click for a larger version):
Thank you, dabize!
It will be interesting to see the declouded images in two weeks from now. Why two weeks? The Arctic has been so incredibly cloudy because of that huge summer storm that I wonder if we're going to be able to see much next week. But who knows.
As mentioned in Peeking through the clouds 2 with regards to the NWP:
Our attention gets drawn immediately to the spectacular changes in the ice pack from the East Siberian Sea to the Beaufort Sea, but also note in the right bottom of the animation how the ice in the Northwest Passage just vanishes overnight. It's not transported, it just melts in place (or in situ, as the Romans liked to say). An astonishing sight. No wonder the NWP is as good as open.
Today's Image of the Day on NASA's Earth Observatory website shows just how fast this melting has been with two images from July 17th and August 3rd respectively, which I've combined for this animation:
All of that ice has melted in situ. No transport, hardly any compaction. Amazing.
Ice retreated rapidly in the Parry Channel—part of the famous and elusive Northwest Passage—between mid-July and early August 2012.
These images, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, show significant changes over two weeks. The top image shows Parry Channel on July 17, 2012, when ice filled the channel. The bottom image shows the same region on August 3, when some ice was still clinging to the shores of Victoria and Melville Islands but open water otherwise dominated the region.
The Canadian Ice Service reported that ice cover in Parry Channel began to fall below the 1981–2010 median after July 16, 2012, and the loss accelerated over the following two weeks. On July 23, the percentage of ice cover in the channel was roughly 67 percent, compared to the median of 80 percent. On July 30, ice cover was roughly 33 percent, compared a median of 79 percent.
These photo-like images appear to confirm the Canadian Ice Service’s findings, given the widespread open water in early August. Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center cautioned, however, that while the Parry Channel appeared almost entirely free of ice, it was not necessarily open for navigational purposes. Sea ice can be thin enough to avoid detection by satellite sensors such as MODIS yet still thick enough to impede ships. A close examination of the image from early August shows lingering patches of ice south of Melville Island.
Read the rest of the article here.