JAXA/ViSHOP extent is no longer “lowest for the date”! After “flatlining” for most of April the metric is now in the midst of a close knit group of the other years in the 2020s:
The high pressure area over the Central Arctic persisted through the second half of April, and so did the consequent drift of ice from the Pacific side of the Arctic to the Atlantic periphery:
AWI’s sea ice area for the Greenland Sea is currently “highest for the date” in the AMSR2 record that started in July 2012:
The offshore winds along the Laptev Sea coast have continued, and sea ice area is now “lowest for the date”:
The first signs of a break in the high pressure dominance are appearing. GFS currently forecasts that a low pressure area will enter the Central Arctic, bring above zero temperatures over the Kara Sea on Sunday:
Much further into the future (and hence much less likely to verify!), GFS is forecasting temperatures above zero at the North Pole in a week’s time:
Watch this space!
Here’s a recently published paper in Geophysical Research Letters:
“Regime Shift in Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Extent”
According to the abstract:
Well, we have reached a point where on a bad year, only the most difficult to melt ice remains in September, ie the thick ice north of the CAA, Greenland, and of course the melt season is very short north of 80°.
The sea ice has melted completely in the past, so it’s not illogical to assume it can melt again.
It doesn’t look like its ready to go, in immediate future, though come back in 2050, we might be looking at a different picture.
In my mind the question is, what will be the final straw?
Maybe the warmer water below surface will finish it off, maybe the multi year ice will thin to the point where it exports through the Nares and CAA all winter.
It’s still not, as some have suggested, making any recovery…