Sea Ice Update

I don't think I've made any significant comments on Arctic sea ice since the autumn, so let's fix that shortcoming.  First, the data from recent months shows that ice extent was nearly the lowest on record at the time of its recent seasonal peak, but a relatively cold spring across the Arctic marginal seas has allowed a modest recovery.

Two significant areas of ice deficit are obvious on the May map from NSIDC: in the Barents Sea to the northeast of Scandinavia, and in the Gulf of St Lawrence.  Both regions had a very warm winter.

Overall, May extent was greater than in most of the last decade, but of course still well below typical pre-2000 levels.

The only part of the Arctic with above-normal ice extent for January through April was the Greenland Sea, i.e. the Atlantic waters between Greenland and Svalbard.  Ice extent there was about 8% above the 1991-2020 median, but that doesn't amount to much of the Arctic overall.

Bering Sea ice was slightly below the 1991-2020 median and less than last year, but it marked the fourth winter of relatively near-normal ice after the big deficits of 2018 and 2019.

The chart below shows that this winter lagged 2021-22 nearly all the way through, but the cold April allowed ice to hold on relatively late at the end.  According to Rick Thoman, sea ice persisted near St. Matthew Island through the month of May for the first time since 2013.

The big question now is, what will the big El Niño episode do to sea ice in the next 12-24 months?  El Niño was "officially" declared today by the Climate Prediction Center, and there's little doubt that it will be a strong one.  The pulse of global-scale warming is likely to be amplified in the Arctic, and I'll be quite surprised if ice extent doesn't see another leg down in due course.