Sea ice forming in Baffin Bay.
Slowly but surely ice is building up on the Arctic Ocean fringes. Baffin Bay in the center is shown growing ice the last ten days, while Gulf of St. Lawrence fills in on the left.
Click on image to enlarge.
Meanwhile on the Pacific side, Okhotsk on the left is filling in normally, while Bering is starting to catch up.
Click on image to enlarge.
Overall 2018 Arctic ice has reached 13.5M km2, about 500k km2 or 4% below average. The deficit comes half each from Barents and Bering Seas. Two months remain to reach annual maximum with the standard this decade being about 15M km2.
Drift ice in Okhotsk Sea at sunrise.
Science Matters 
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
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The Greenland Sea has “lost” about 100,000 sqkm of ice in under two weeks. Do you think this because the existing ice is being pushed up (and therefore thickened) against the coast of Greenland or is there something else causing it, such as volcanic activity along the Gakkel Ridge? Iceland still has icy pockets in many of its north, west and south inlets, so I can’t believe that the waters have warmed enough for ice to melt. I realise that it’s not generally thought that undersea volcanic activity has much effect on polar ice, but I did read a few months ago that volcanoes beneath the Antarctic ice may have caused some of the recent melting of the WAIS.
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sara, I don’t think it is so complicated. Arctic sea ice is all drift ice moving around constantly. Every year some of it is flushed out through the Fram strait where it melts when nearing the North Atlantic. I have not been following the wind regimes, but I suspect ice movements rather than melting in the Arctic.
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Thanks Ron. I keep a record of the MASIE Arctic ice charts but not weather charts and on looking back, I see that there was a massive low of 940mb centred over Iceland last week that must have moved huge amounts of ice out through the Fram Strait. I already spend far too much time these days looking at various climate sites but I must also find a few extra minutes each day to keep a check on what the winds are doing!
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no piomas mid month update at my usual warmist site.
Does this mean it is increasing?
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