The latest Alfred Wegener Institute sea ice concentration map shows that the Pacific side of the Central Arctic Basin is now almost completely refrozen:
On the Atlantic side of the Arctic the Kara Sea is rapidly refreezing:
However, sea ice extent in the Barents Sea and Baffin Bay is currently lowest for the date in the AMSR2 record:
Pan Arctic JAXA/ViSHOP extent is currently lowest for the date in the satellite era:
The latest Alfred Wegener Institute sea ice concentration map shows the East Siberian and Laptev Seas almost completely refrozen. However, refreeze of the Kara Sea has barely begun:
Across the Arctic as a whole the refreeze has slowed significantly, and JAXA/ViSHOP extent is now 2nd lowest in the satellite era:
However, average NSIDC extent for the month of October was higher than last year and above the linear trend:
The ERA5 MSLP map for October shows high pressure over Siberia, associated with lower than normal air temperatures at 925 hPa across the region. However, temperatures across almost the entire Arctic Ocean were above normal:
High Arctic freezing degree days based on DMI >80N data were lowest for the date at the beginning of November:
Here is the Alfred Wegener Institute’s CryoSat-2/Sentinel 3/SMOS Arctic sea ice thickness map at the end of October:
Here too is the associated sea ice volume graph:
Bear in mind the caveats about the current lack of reliable SMOS data on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, and that Sentinel 3 data is only incorporated from Autumn 2023.
[Update – November 20th]Refreeze of the Beaufort Sea is complete, and refreeze of the Kara Sea has started in earnest:
However, the Barents Sea is still sea ice free and refreeze of Hudson Bay has barely begun:
JAXA extent is still second lowest for the date:
The PIOMAS gridded thickness data for October has yet to be corrected, but here is the mid month thickness map from AWI:
Here too is the associated volume graph:
JAXA/ViSHOP extent is now lowest for the date in their record going back to 1978:
The PIOMAS team have finally published gridded thickness data for October and November, so here are the October 31st and November 15th thickness maps:
The conversation continues over on the December open thread, including the latest PIOMAS data.
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:
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in May 2025This isn’t exactly “shock news”, since we (slightly hesitantly!) predicted this 5 days ago.
A GFS 2 meter temperature chart revealing greater than zero degrees Celsius at the North Pole later today:
The 2 meter temperature anomaly at the Pole is almost off the charts:
Plus the cause of these unusual numbers, a cyclone with central pressure of 959 hPa spinning north of Ellesmere Island at 18:00 UTC this evening:
All of which has led to the JAXA/Vishop Arctic sea ice extent being the lowest for the date since 1979 at least by a significant margin:
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in February 2025The Laptev and East Siberian Seas have now refrozen. Consequently Arctic sea ice extent is now increasing more slowly, and JAXA/ViSHOP extent is 3rd lowest for the date in the satellite era:
Introducing the third dimension, here’s the PIOMAS gridded thickness data for the end of October 2024:
Note the change in scale from previous months, to allow for easier comparison with the “near real time” CryoSat-2/SMOS merged thickness data from the Alfred Wegener Institute:
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in November 2024Since a certain “sceptic” has recently been comparing 2024 sea ice extent to “20 years ago”, here’s the current JAXA/ViSHOP extent graph of selected years, including 2004:
The CryoSat-2/SMOS merged Arctic sea ice volume graph finishes on April 15th, but older data is being reanalysed and here is the latest version:
The gap in the near real time data due to the problem with the SMOS satellite during the first half of March has been filled in, but the result doesn’t look very convincing to say the least!
The PIOMAS gridded thickness data for April 2024 is now available. Here’s the end of month volume graph:
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in May 2024Starting this month with a look at assorted volume/thickness data, here is the CryoSat-2/SMOS merged Arctic sea ice thickness map for March 31st:
Plus the associated volume graph, which still suffers from a gap in the near real time data due to the problem with the SMOS satellite during the first half of March:
The PIOMAS gridded thickness data for March 2024 is also available. Here’s the end of month thickness map:
Plus the calculated volume graph:
Especially for Peter, here too is the DMI’s chart of monthly Arctic sea ice volume for March:
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in April 2024A change is perhaps even better than a rest? Let’s start February with a reminder that following close behind another recent Arctic cyclone, Storm Ingunn caused red weather warnings for high winds and avalanches in Norway two days ago:
By yesterday evening another long period, storm driven swell was arriving at the sea ice edge in the Fram Strait, and to a lesser extent in the Barents Sea:
By this morning Ingunn had merged with the remnants of the prior cyclone, as revealed in Climate Reanalyzer’s visualisation of the latest GFS model run::
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in February 2024A change is allegedly as good as a rest, so here’s an alternative view of high resolution AMSR2 area and extent created using the experimental tools provided by the AWI’s Lars Kaleschke at: https://sites.google.com/view/sea-ice/
After a brief pause mid-month the refreeze has accelerated again. Both metrics are in the upper half of the decadal range, with extent this year just above 2021 and area just below last year.
Next let’s take a look at sea ice concentration at the end of October:
By way of a change we’ll start the month of May with a closer look at one of the ice mass balance buoys deployed in the Beaufort Sea last Autumn. IMB buoy 569620 was deployed at 78.5 N, 147.0 W on September 3rd 2021, and since then it has drifted to 81.0 N, 147.7 W. Here is the buoy’s record of atmospheric conditions above the ice floe it’s embedded in since then:
Here too is the buoy’s record of the temperature of the ice floe itself, as well as the thickness of the ice and the snow layer covering it:
There’s a few things to note at first glance. The ice floe continued to decrease in thickness into November. It’s thickness then started to increase, but is currently still less than 2 meters. Also the snow depth has gradually been increasing, and (apart from some data glitches!) is now ~38 cm. Finally, for the moment at least, the ice surface temperature has been slowly warming since mid February and is now ~-11 °C.
Returning to more familiar territory, high resolution AMSR2 Arctic sea ice area has taken a bit of a tumble recently:
followed less steeply by extent:
Not unexpectedly, the Pacific periphery is currently leading the decline:
The Rutgers Snow Lab has updated its northern hemisphere snow cover bar chart for April 2022:
The May edition of the NSIDC’s Arctic Sea Ice News has also just been published. It summarises April 2022 as follows:
Average Arctic sea ice extent for April 2022 was 14.06 million square kilometers (5.43 million square miles). This was 630,000 square kilometers (243,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average and ranked eleventh lowest in the 44-year satellite record.
Extent declined slowly through the beginning of the month, with only 87,000 square kilometers (33,600 square miles) of ice loss between April 1 and April 10. The decline then proceeded at an average pace for this time of year through the reminder of the month.
During April, temperatures at the 925 mb level (about 2,500 feet above the surface) over the Arctic Ocean were above average. Most areas were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, but in the Beaufort Sea, April temperatures were up to 5 to 6 degrees Celsius (9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) above average:
This was accompanied by a strong Beaufort High pressure cell through the month:
The NSIDC’s update also refers to the Chukchi Sea polynya we’ve been keeping an eye on here:
Strong offshore winds over the northwest coast of Alaska led to openings in the ice cover, called polynyas. The first pulse of winds began on March 21. At that time, surface air temperatures were still well below freezing, and the water in the coastal polynya quickly refroze. By April 9, the offshore push of the ice ceased and the polynya iced over completely.
However, starting on April 12, a second round of offshore wind pushed the ice away from the coast, initiating another polynya. Refreezing began anew in the open water areas, but the ice growth was noticeably slower, reflecting the higher surface air temperatures by the end of the month
The NSIDC also updated their graph of sea ice age, on this occasion for the week of March 12th to 18th over the years:
Arctic sea ice news concludes with brief news of the recent death of Canadian Arctic scientist David Barber. CBC News’s obituary for David provides more details:
Family and friends are mourning the loss of the visionary Arctic researcher and University of Manitoba professor David Barber.
Barber, who was a distinguished professor, the founding director of the Centre for Earth Observation Science and associate dean of research in the faculty of environment, earth and resource, passed away on Friday after suffering complications from cardiac arrest.
Barber, 61, is survived by his wife Lucette, three children and two grandchildren.
The waters of the Mackenzie River are starting to spread over the fast ice off the delta:
The Polar Science Center at the University of Washington has released the PIOMAS volume data for April 2022:
Average Arctic sea ice volume in April 2022 was 23,000 km3. This value is the 9th lowest on record for April, about 2,300 km3 above the record set in 2017. Monthly ice volume was 30% below the maximum in 1979 and 15% below the mean value for 1979-2021. Average April 2022 ice volume was 1.45 standard deviations above the 1979-2021 trend line.
The daily volume numbers reveal the PIOMAS maximum volume for 2022 to be 23,225 km3 on April 26th.
The PSC report continues:
Ice growth anomalies for April 2022 continued to be at the upper end of the most recent decade with a mean ice thickness (above 15 cm thickness) at the middle of recent values.
The ice thickness anomaly map for April 2022 relative to 2011-2020 divides the Arctic in two halves with positive anomalies in the “Western Arctic” but negative anomalies in “Eastern Arctic”. A narrow band of negative anomalies remains along the coast of North Greenland but a positive anomaly exists north of Baffin Island.
Note that the “positive anomaly north of Baffin Island” referred to is not apparent in the CryoSat 2 ice thickness anomaly map, although there is agreement about the thicker ice in the eastern Beaufort Sea:
CryoSat-2 thickness maps stopped for the Summer in mid April. I’ve been hoping for mid May data from the PIOMAS team, but in vain so far. In its continuing absence here is a “work in progress” PIOMAS thickness map for the end of April:
The sea ice in Chaunskaya Bay and along the adjacent coast of the East Siberian Sea is starting to look distinctly damp:
That’s not too surprising when you also look at recent temperatures in Pevek, which have been approaching all time highs for the date:
P.S. The Mackenzie River has reappeared from under the clouds and is now largely liquid:
Some surface melt is now visible on the fast ice at Utqiaġvik:
No doubt the recent above zero temperatures are responsible, but the forecast is for colder conditions to return:
Discussion continues on the new open thread for June 2022.