Kara and Barents Seas Chilling Out: The animation above shows the last two weeks on the Atlantic side, with Kara achieving its annual maximum and Barents growing ice up to 75% of its max last March. Those two regions are the last to cool down this year. In the upper right the ice solidifies next to Svalbard and fast ice forms along the mainland. Icing begins in the Baltic.  In the center Greenland Sea ice reaches out toward Iceland.  On the left, Baffin thickens along the Labrador coast and is filling the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  Below is the ice recovery on the Pacific side.

As we will see in the numbers below, Bering on the right has 100k km2 more ice now than  a year ago, though still lagging the 12-year average.  Okhotsk on the left is almost average and is reaching well south of its basin.

The graph below shows January progress in ice extent recovery.

2019 ice extents are tracking slightly lower than the 12-year average (2007 to 2018 inclusive).  SII lags MASIE by 157k km2 at this date. 2019 presently has 300k km2 more ice than 2017, and 500k km2 more ice than 2018

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the various Arctic basins.

The table shows how 2019 is matching the 12-year average almost everywhere.  Barents and Kara Seas have caught up and edged ahead of average, and are much higher than last year.  The slight overall deficit is due to Bering ice down 100k km2 to average, while being 143k km2 more than last year.

via Science Matters

http://bit.ly/2DHO0OI

January 29, 2019 at 01:17PM