April 1 Resilient Arctic Ice (No Fooling)

Previous posts showed 2022 Arctic Ice broke the 15M km2 ceiling in February, followed by a typical small melt in March. Climatology refers to the March monthly average ice extent as indicative of the annual maximum Arctic ice extent. The graph above shows that the March monthly average has varied little since 2007, typically around the SII average of 14.7 M km2. Of course there are regional differences as described later on.

The animation show ice extent fluctuations during March 2022. Bering Sea (lower left) gained ice over the month, while ice in Okhotsk (higher left) retreated. At the top Kara and Barents seas lost and the gained ice. Baffin Bay lower right lost ice during March. The main changes were Baffin losing ~360k km2 of extent and Okhotsk losing ~260k km2.

The effect on NH total ice extents is presented in the graph below.

The graph above shows ice extent through March comparing 2022 MASIE reports with the 16-year average, other recent years and with SII. Hovering around 15M km2 the first week, 2022 ice extents dropped sharply mid month, then stablized and at March end matched the average. Both 2020 and 2021 ended nearly 400k km2 below average. The two green lines at the bottom show average and 2022 extents when Okhotosk ice is excluded. On this basis 2022 Arctic was nearly 400k km2 in surplus, then declined mid month before ending nearly 200k km2 in surplus to average, except for the ice shortage in Okhotsk.

Region	2022090	Day 90 Average	2022-Ave.	2021090	2022-2021
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	14563095	14616765	-53670	14266634	296461
(1) Beaufort_Sea	1070776	1070116	660	1070689	87
(2) Chukchi_Sea	966006	963906	2100	966006	0
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	1087137	1086102	1035	1087137	0
(4) Laptev_Sea	897845	896958	887	897827	18
(5) Kara_Sea	935023	918083	16941	935023	0
(6) Barents_Sea	748326	645014	103311	602392	145934
(7) Greenland_Sea	616239	652388	-36148	620574	-4334
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	1441014	1400528	40486	1243739	197275
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	854685	852982	1703	854597	88
(10) Hudson_Bay	1260903	1254217	6687	1260903	0
(11) Central_Arctic	3245216	3232275	12941	3192844	52373
(12) Bering_Sea	785874	720525	65348	549939	235935
(13) Baltic_Sea	52068	63446	-11377	33543	18525
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk	596190	849221	-253031	942085	-345895

The table shows that the large deficit in Okhotsk is only partially offset by surpluses in Bering and Barents Seas. All other regions show typical extents at end of March