With summer nearing its end, the surface of the ice in the central Arctic Ocean is beginning to refreeze. Polynyas have opened near 80 degrees N, north of the Kara Sea. While sea ice is overall more extensive than in recent summers, the ice pack is diffuse throughout the Beaufort Sea, the northern part of the Chukchi Sea, and within the East Siberian Sea. For the first time since 2008, the Northern Sea Route along Eurasia may not become ice free.
However, the Canadian Ice Service reports some ice remains within Victoria Strait.
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The southern route of the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Archipelago appears to be mostly free of ice according to sea ice concentrations from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (Figure 1c). Ice has persisted along the coast in the East Siberian Sea, where winds have pushed some of the multiyear ice against the shore. Regionally, ice extent remains below the 1981 to 2010 average in the Barents, Kara, and Laptev Seas, and the northern part of the Chukchi Sea. Since the beginning of August, the ice edge has remained relatively stable in the northern Barents and Kara Seas, with most of the ice retreating in the northern Chukchi Sea, the East Siberian Sea northwest of the New Siberian Islands, and within the channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Extent was higher than all other years since 2007 except for 20 (Figure 1b).
This was similar to the total extent observed in 20 for this time of year, within 80,000 square kilometers (30,900 square miles) and 40,000 square kilometers (15,400 square miles), respectively.
Yellows indicate sea ice concentration of 75 percent, dark purples indicate sea ice concentration of 100 percent.Īs of August 16, Arctic sea ice extent stood at 6.11 million square kilometers (2.36 square miles) (Figure 1a). This map shows Arctic sea ice concentration based on data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-2 (AMSR-2) data.
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