Mid June Arctic Ice Lopsided

In the first half of June 2019, the shift from ice to water is unusually lop-sided in two respects. The image above, supported by the table later on shows that in the last two weeks water has opened up faster on the Pacific side, and much slower on the Atlantic, side with the exception of Baffin Bay. The other surprise is that MASIE shows much less ice than does SII, a reversal of the typical situation.

The graph below shows the surprising discrepancy between MASIE and SII appearing in May and continuing in June.

Note that the NH ice extent 12 year average declined from 12.7M km2 to 10.9M km2 during in the last 30 days. MASIE 2019 shows about the same decline from 11.9M km2 to 10.3M km2. That track matched 2016 in May, but is now closest to 2010 and below other years. Interestingly SII showed a much slower rate of ice extent loss, starting nearly the same as MASIE, but ended this period 400k km2 higher. and close to average and 2018.

I have no explanation for the differential between MASIE and SII. Note that ice extents in both datasets are levelling off mid-June.

Region	2019166	Day 166 Average	2019-Ave.	2010166	2019-2010
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	10340833	10933549	-592716	10534077	-193244
(1) Beaufort_Sea	761369	968193	-206823	933194	-171824
(2) Chukchi_Sea	680432	799211	-118778	839873	-159441
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	1049046	1054090	-5045	1068901	-19856
(4) Laptev_Sea	750164	778536	-28372	772185	-22021
(5) Kara_Sea	671900	722641	-50741	717539	-45640
(6) Barents_Sea	261587	215180	46408	138264	123324
(7) Greenland_Sea	549038	568045	-19007	524612	24426
(8) Baffin_Bay_ Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	558105	733399	-175294	667457	-109352
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	787036	798742	-11706	766642	20394
(10) Hudson_Bay	1014530	1004832	9698	826781	187749
(11) Central_Arctic	3229461	3221030	8431	3206453	23008
(12) Bering_Sea	17768	33002	-15234	21317	-3550
(13) Baltic_Sea	0	7	-7	0	0
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk	9381	35292	-25911	83076	-73695

The table shows where the ice is distributed to make the 5.4% defict to average. Beaufort and Chukchi Seas are more than half of the NH deficit to average, while Baffin has lost 175k km2 to average.