I've produced an animated GIF of the part of the MODIS Arctic Mosaic where you can see the mouth of Nares Strait, the Lincoln Sea and the upper part of Fram Strait. Normally the Nares Strait, the water between Greenland and Ellesmere Island (see map) is closed by so-called ice arches or ice bridges that keep the ice in the Lincoln Sea from flowing out into Baffin Bay and further south where it melts more readily.
Until recently these ice bridges would remain intact until late summer, but this has changed since 2007. As can be read in the Broken Bridges of Nares article by Patrick Lockerby, the ice arches failed to form in 2007 and "the open Nares Strait discharged about 10% of the total ice loss" of the mean ice export at Fram Strait. Lockerby also says: "The Nares Strait and Lincoln Sea areas should be surveyed as a matter of urgency." So this is pretty important, especially as the arches have failed to form again last winter.
Below is the GIF I've produced, covering the period from June 7 up till June 14th. The quality isn't great, mostly because of interfering cloud cover and having to cut down resolution (the animation wouldn't work at first because the files was too big). I would suggest to keep your eyes focused on one spot instead of trying to take the whole picture in. Concentrate in particular on the mouth of Nares Strait on the middle left and the part of the Fram Strait in the lower right hand corner (click on the picture for a version with a higher resolution):
What's interesting to see is that big floe (probably around 50 km across) that is floating towards the mouth of Nares Strait. As Gareth Renowden put it in a recent blog post:
I suspect, however, that there may be a temporary halt to ice export as a big lump of what could/should be thicker ice looks about to get stuck in the narrow entrance to the strait. If it’s thick multi-year ice, it could be a formidable obstacle, but if it’s “Barber ice”, it might not last long.
The floe has arrived at the mouth and we'll see how much blocking it will do.
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