For much of February, NH has been overall slower than usual to add ice extent. But that does not mean nothing is happening.  For we can observe ice dances on opposite sides of the Arctic from January up to now. The image above shows how Pacific ice extents have shuffled back and forth between Okhotsk (left) and Bering (right), alternating waxing and waning so that both basins combined are below average. Lately Okhotsk has added ice to reach normal, so now Bering makes most of the difference. Bering is now only 45% of last years maximum, while Okhotsk has reached 81% of last year’s max extent.

On the Atlantic side, the two players are Barents and Baffin Bay/Gulf of St. Lawrence. On the left side  you can see Baffin Bay extending down to reach Newfoundland, and Gulf of St. Lawrence filling in.  Meanwhile Barents has waffled up and down, first growing to reach Svalbard and then receding along with Greenland Sea opening to the left of Svalbard.  Barents is presently at 75% of last years maximum, while BB/GSL extent is its highest this year and 96% of last year’s max.

Overall 2018 Arctic ice has reached 14.1M km2, about 600k km2 or 5% below average.

MASIE shows this year catching up to 2017 while SII 2018 lags ~300k km2 behind.  The graph below shows 2018 NH ice extents since day 1, with and without the Pacific basins Bering and Okhotsk, compared to 11 year averages (2007 to 2017 inclusive).
Clearly the deficit to average is mostly due to B&O, and as the table below shows, mostly Bering at this point.

Region	2018044	Day 044  Average	2018-Ave.	2017044	2018-2017
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	14140166	14756619	-616453	14287848	-147682
(1) Beaufort_Sea	1070445	1070178	267	1070445	0
(2) Chukchi_Sea	965971	965614	357	966006	-35
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	1087120	1087134	-14	1087137	-18
(4) Laptev_Sea	897845	897842	3	897845	0
(5) Kara_Sea	874714	906136	-31422	908380	-33666
(6) Barents_Sea	465024	567976	-102952	363927	101097
(7) Greenland_Sea	529094	630790	-101696	565090	-35996
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	1655681	1483847	171834	1564353	91328
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	853109	853029	80	853214	-106
(10) Hudson_Bay	1260838	1260792	46	1260903	-66
(11) Central_Arctic	3117143	3218063	-100920	3209792	-92649
(12) Bering_Sea	319927	730017	-410090	564241	-244314
(13) Baltic_Sea	76404	105038	-28634	59994	16410
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk	911105	906055	5050	834828	76277

The large deficit comes from Bering Sea, while Okhotsk is matching average, and Barents has grown recently.  Greenland Sea and Central Arctic are down to a lesser extent, nearly offset by Baffin surpluses. A month remains to reach annual maximum with the standard this decade being about 15M km2. For perspective, 2018 has to gain about 6% by mid March to reach 15M and gain 4% to reach 14.78, last year’s maximum. It should also be remembered that all of these dancing basins will likely melt out by September as usual.