The animation shows Arctic ice rapidly growing from September 30 to yesterday October 16.  Despite much ado about September minimums, in fact the ice recovers quickly from its annual low extent.  Several days exceeded the 17 year average with yesterday slightly in deficit. The graph below shows the distribution of ice across the Arctic Regions with 2023 compare to average, to some notable years and to estimates from SII (Sea Ice Index)

Note that refreezing starts mid September and accelerates upward.  October has already added 1.4M km2 and will likely end up 3M higher than end of September. As the table below shows, the ice extents are tracking the 17 year average and 600k km2 greater than 2007.

Region	2023289	Day 289	2023-Ave.	2007289	2023-2007
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	6291575	6397434	-105859	5685365	606210
(1) Beaufort_Sea	545048	740358	-195309	815519	-270471
(2) Chukchi_Sea	399345	309528	89817	98615	300730
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	495351	569412	-74061	32547	462804
(4) Laptev_Sea	578928	453308	125620	553919	25009
(5) Kara_Sea	178575	148145	30430	170928	7647
(6) Barents_Sea	22291	42524	-20233	25377	-3086
(7) Greenland_Sea	422335	341130	81206	446006	-23670
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	103295	100033	3262	92878	10416
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	362514	583556	-221042	502605	-140091
(10) Hudson_Bay	208	10894	-10686	1936	-1729
(11) Central_Arctic	3179853	3096957	82896	2943760	236093

Yesterday the overall extent was ~6.30M km2, ~100k km2 below average (2%).  Deficits were mostly in Beaufort Sea and CAA, offset by surpluses in Chukchi,Laptev, and Greenland seas, along with Central Arctic.

Previous post:  2023 September Arctic Outlook and Results Not Scary

The graph above shows the monthly averages for September Arctic ice extents including 2023 compared to previous years back to 2007.  This year is slightly below the 17 year average of 4.63M km2;  MASIE shows 4.43M and SII shows 4.37.  For comparison the 2007 September values were 4.30M for MASIE and 4.27M for SII.  The predictions below refer to the SII value.

2023: August Report from Sea Ice Prediction Network

The August median forecasted value for pan-Arctic September sea-ice extent is 4.60 million square kilometers with interquartile values of 4.35 and 4.80 million square kilometers, while individual forecasts range from 2.88 to 5.47 million square kilometers. We note that the lowest two forecasts predict a new record September sea-ice extent value (current record is September 2012, with a sea-ice extent of 3.57 million square kilometers), but these forecasts are outliers relative to the other contributions.

These are predictions for the September 2023 monthly average ice extent as reported by NOAA Sea Ice Index (SII). This post provides a look at the 2023 Year To Date (YTD) based on monthly averages comparing MASIE and SII datasets. (17 year average is 2006 to 2022 inclusive).

The graph puts 2023 into recent historical perspective. Note how 2023 was slightly below the 17-year average for the first 5 months, then recovered to match average in May and has maintained or exceeded average through August. September was below average slightly and above 2007. The outlier 2012 provided the highest March maximum as well as the lowest September minimum, coinciding with the Great Arctic Cyclone that year.  2007 began the period with the lowest minimum except for 2012.  SII 2023 was running below MASIE except for May/June and is currently just below MASIE and above 2007 and 2012.