A high-pressure area has been moving in over the Beaufort Sea lately. It's quite big and quite high in pressure. Environment Canada has the current pressure there at 1042 hPa:
I've coloured the land masses to make it easier to orient. I've also put in the red arrows to show which way the winds blow along the so-called isobars.
This is the second notable high of this year, following another big one in February that produced strong winds that pushed the ice away from the coast. This phenomenon called the Beaufort Gyre resulted in what we call a cracking event around here (see this blog post). Of course, the Arctic was plenty cold around that time and so the leads froze over again, but the marks are still visible on this AVHHR image (provided again by Environment Canada):
On the one hand those leads let heat escape from the ocean water, on the other hand the thin ice between the enormous floes will melt out easily as soon as sunlight and higher temperatures start taking over, possibly making the entire zone more vulnerable early in the melting season.
The reason I've decided to dedicate a blog post to this, has to do with the current ECMWF forecast for the coming 6 days:
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