Arctic Sea Ice, Climate Impacts

Bering Ice March Madness

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In February the media breathlessly told us that Bering Sea ice has melted away, and thus Arctic ice is doomed.  Now we see that reports of the demise were premature.  More surprising than the early retreat, Bering ice roared back in the last two weeks, and continues to grow even after the overall NH ice extent peaked

Two Weeks of Growing Bering Ice: The above image shows the last two weeks of dramatic ice growth in Bering with only minor melting in Okhotsk. Bering Sea on the right more than doubled, adding 250k km2 and effectively sealing off Chukchi inside the Arctic.  Meanwhile on the left Okhotsk ice seesawed, ending up 150k km2 lower, but still at 88% of 2019 maximum.
The graph below shows March progress in ice extent peaking and beginning the melt season. As noted before, the month started with a sharp increase nearly reaching average and 15M km2. After March 12, ice declined steadily as is normal after mid-March.  2019 extent is running lower than the 12 year average, but slightly higher than other recent years.  SII is showing about 100k km2 less ice than MASIE.

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

Region 2019082 Day 082 
Average		 2019-Ave. 2018082 2019-2018
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14600645 14891081 -290436 14511954 88692
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070291 1070115 176 1070445 -154
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 965595 411 966006 0
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1086844 293 1087137 0
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897552 293 897845 0
 (5) Kara_Sea 926462 917591 8871 934807 -8344
 (6) Barents_Sea 681050 653698 27352 720725 -39675
 (7) Greenland_Sea 552178 642867 -90689 539109 13069
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1431122 1509559 -78437 1346761 84361
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 853337 852881 456 853109 229
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260903 1255967 4937 1260838 66
 (11) Central_Arctic 3227734 3227309 426 3158495 69240
 (12) Bering_Sea 446151 773234 -327083 345861 100291
 (13) Baltic_Sea 41886 87497 -45611 135848 -93962
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 1150521 933366 217155 1183119 -32598

The table shows how 2019 is 290k km2 or 2% below the 12-year average.  Most basins are matching average extent, including Barents Sea edging slightly ahead of average.  Greenland Sea and Baffin Bay are below average. Despite recent gains, Bering ice is 327k km2 in deficit to average, nearly the difference in overall NH extent.  Meanwhile Okhotsk is 217k km2 surplus to average, partially offsetting Bering.

 

 

 

 

3 comments

  1. Hifast · March 24, 2019

    Reblogged this on Climate Collections.

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  2. hunterson7 · March 26, 2019

    All the hype over floating sea ice.
    And no connection between the sea ice and negative climate impacts.
    You have so much patience to follow the issue do closely.

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    • Ron Clutz · March 26, 2019

      Thanks hunterson, I became fascinated years ago noticing how important it was to claim that warming is causing ice to melt, sea levels to rise and coastal cities to flood. The dots don’t connect, CO2 has no mechanism to cause sea ice fluctuations, yet it is still a central belief in the anti-fossil fuel mantra. Al Gore for example predicted several times, as did Wadhams, that the Arctic sea ice would disappear (less than 1M km2 in September, that metric now known as a “Wadham”.) I am persuaded by AARI russian scientists that the Arctic is a self-oscillating system, and so I am intrigued to watch and document what is happening there. I also noticed that MASIE ice charts are ignored, despite being the most accurate representation of sea ice conditions. So I publish MASIE reports and images as a counterweight to the satellite-only products like Sea Ice Index (SII).
      BTW, the funding for MASIE operations is not secured, and I encourage people to go to their website and express support and interest in their products. MASIE website is https://nsidc.org/data/masie/

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