Slowly Melting Arctic Ice May 2023

The image above shows 2023 Arctic ice extents from May 1 (day 121) to May end (day 151).  The Pacific basins of Okhotsk (center left) and Bering (bottom left) rapidly turn to open water.  Baffin Bay (center right) melts more slowly. Barents Sea (top center steadily loses ~200k km2 ice extent.  Note Hudson Bay (bottom) mostly keeps its ice, ending the month with 86% of its March max.  And Canadian Archipelago (lower center) retains 97% of its ice. On the left center, the Eurasian coastline remains mostly frozen.

The graph below shows 2023 compared to 17 year average and some recent years for this time period.

Firstly, on average this period shows ice declining 1.73 M km2 down to 11.72 M km2,  Note that  2023 matched the average May 1,  then retained more ice than usual during May, ending with a decline of 1.24 M km2.  Most of May Sea Ice Index (SII) tracked higher than MASIE, an average 100 km2 extra ice extent..  The other years, including 2006, were 200 to 300k km2 lower than average.

Region 2023151 Day 151 Average 2023-Ave. 2006151 2023-2006
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 11996164 11720243 275920 11425616 570548
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1050178 1007125 43053 1063879 -13700
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 926367 866851 59516 907609 18758
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1058013 1065740 -7727 1073889 -15876
 (4) Laptev_Sea 840340 827727 12614 856108 -15768
 (5) Kara_Sea 761159 832280 -71121 848172 -87013
 (6) Barents_Sea 214069 313115 -99046 180906 33163
 (7) Greenland_Sea 785442 568692 216750 522040 263402
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 958973 902385 56588 721606 237367
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 831728 813589 18138 800561 31167
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1079040 1091081 -12041 989550 89490
 (11) Central_Arctic 3243187 3218357 24830 3188696 54491
 (12) Bering_Sea 131130 115713 15417 179378 -48248
 (13) Baltic_Sea 0 243 -243 720 -720
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 115156 95869 19287 89739 25417

The table shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic basins.  The main deficits to average are Kara and Barents Seas, more than offset by surpluses in Beaufort, Chukchi, and Greenland Seas, along with Baffin Bay. Most other regions are surplus with a few slightly negative.  Note that 2023 exceeds May 2006 by  more than half a Wadham (1M km2 ice extent).

Resources:  Climate Compilation II Arctic Sea Ice

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