A little over a month I looked at the situation in the Bering Sea, with sea ice cover larger than it has been for the last decade. This hasn't changed as NASA's Earth Observatory shows with the following satellite image of the day and accompanying text I have reproduced below:
Bering Sea Teeming with Ice
For most of the winter of 2011–2012, the Bering Sea has been choking with sea ice. Though ice obviously forms there every year, the extent of the ice cover has been unusually widespread this season. In fact, the past several months have included the second highest ice extent in the satellite record for the Bering Sea region, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
The natural-color image above shows the Bering Sea and the coasts of Alaska and northeastern Russia on March 19, 2012. The image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Black lines mark the coastlines, many of which have ice shelves or frozen bays extending beyond their land borders.
NSIDC reported that ice extent in the Bering Sea for January was 562,000 square kilometers, at least 104,600 square kilometers above the 1979 to 2000 average. Though numbers were not released for February, the pattern persisted through to March 2012.
Continue reading at NASA's Earth Observatory website...
So, what is the explanation for this? I read about the large amounts of snow in Alaska. Has it been very cold there this winter? Is this going to mean that it will take longer for the ice above the Bring Strait to melt?
Posted by: Tony Duncan | March 21, 2012 at 01:43
Could very well be, Tony. Of course all the ice is first year ice, so weather conditions could make it disappear fast. I'll be sure to do posts on it with comparisons to other years when things have gotten underway for a while.
Posted by: Neven | March 21, 2012 at 06:16
Tony Duncan asked:
.
"Has been" is a rather impropriate statement, as it still is very, very cold, very deep under average in Alaska and the Bering Sea region.
At this moment - 33 °C at Barrow, -9 °C at Anchorage, -26 °C at Wales (Tin City).
No less than -11 @ -15 °C cooler than the avaverage!
Going on for virtual 3 months now, and it doesn't seem to come to an end yet.
Posted by: Kris | March 21, 2012 at 09:45
Off-topic: I looked at the mosaic today for the first time in weeks and stuff is happening all over. The Bering Strait is flushing out, there's some quite dramatic break-up happening north of Franz Josef Land, up to at least 86 degrees and possibly all the way to the pole, and (less easy to discern) the western end of the NWP, north of Banks Island, seems to be breaking up. This all seems very early to me.
Posted by: Nick Barnes | March 21, 2012 at 12:03
Nick have you compared to last year
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2011076.terra.4km
That is slightly earlier in 2011.
No problem agreeing that around Franz Josef is very low this year.
Bering and Baffin however have much greater extent and NW passage was more broken up last year. Bering does perhaps look a little thin but given much greater extent, I think it will be slow clearing out this year not fast.
Posted by: crandles | March 21, 2012 at 13:07
Same image, with all 60 megapixel zoomable:
http://www.arctic.io/zoom/olzU/0.5;0.5;1/Nasa-EO-Bering-Sea
Quite strange to see the cloud streets appearing over the ice. Concentration is too low to call it an isolation.
Try to go full screen (F11).
Posted by: Arcticio | March 22, 2012 at 22:04