2020 Pacific Ice See Saw Returns

By January there are not many places where Arctic ice extent can grow. All the Eurasian shelf seas are full, as is the case on the CanAm side: Beaufort, CAA, Hudson Bay covered completely. Barents and Greenland Seas have some room to grow, as does Baffin Bay. But mainly the variability is on the Pacific side, where the usual Bering/Okhotsk see saw is reappearing.

As we have seen in past winters, ice in the Pacific Arctic tends to grow in fits and spurts, often alternating between Bering and Okhotsk Seas. The above image of the first two weeks of 2020 shows Okhotsk on the left growing ice steadily while Bering waffled back and forth ending with almost the same extent. Combined the two seas ice extents are slightly below the 13 year average at this time.

The January graph shows MASIE and SII reporting the same pace of ice recovery and matching 2019. This is somewhat below the 13 year average (2007 to 2019 inclusive) and higher than 2017 and 2018. The table below shows the distribution of ice extent among the Arctic regions on January 14.

Region	2020014	Day 014 Average	2020-Ave.	2018014	2020-2018
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	13541376	13776703	-235327	13340428	200948
(1) Beaufort_Sea	1070655	1070223	432	1070445	210
(2) Chukchi_Sea	965972	965812	160	965971	1
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	1087137	1087133	4	1087120	18
(4) Laptev_Sea	897845	897842	3	897845	0
(5) Kara_Sea	932936	909656	23280	925247	7689
(6) Barents_Sea	619526	508236	111290	393026	226500
(7) Greenland_Sea	483377	610574	-127197	521896	-38519
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	1039079	1172487	-133408	1173039	-133960
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	854282	853058	1225	853109	1174
(10) Hudson_Bay	1260192	1251600	8592	1260838	-646
(11) Central_Arctic	3233354	3210543	22811	3194383	38971
(12) Bering_Sea	414963	521989	-107026	241830	173133
(13) Baltic_Sea	8863	43903	-35040	24486	-15623
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk	651004	626433	24571	696684	-45681

2019 NH ice is 235k km2 below the 13-year average, or 1.7%, and 200k km2 more than 2018 on that date. The deficits are in Bering, Greenland Sea and Baffin Bay, partly offset by surpluses in Barents, Kara and Okhotsk.

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