Beaufort Sea Ice Breaking Up Early And Quickly; "As If Someone Threw A Giant Brick"

[hatrack]

t's been a week since I announced that the ice in the Beaufort Sea was going to come under early pressure. Here's a quick update on what has happened so far, how the forecast played out, and what the short-term conditions for this part of the Arctic will be.

As expected, the Beaufort Gyre kicked into action, big time, with winds causing large cracks in the ice pack, moving it westwards and away from the Alaskan and Canadian coasts. The massive polynyas that are left behind, get partially covered with a thin veneer of ice.

EDIT

EDIT

A lot of 4- and 5-year old ice that is being transported to a place where it can either protect the inner core from melting towards the end of the melting season (like happened in 2010 and 2011), or melt out completely.

Here's a video made by Jim Hunt from The Great White Con blog showing the movement since February 1st (including the first cracking event):

As I wrote last week:

It will be interesting to see whether that high pressure area will cause an early decline, earlier than last year.

And it has. Not just in the Beaufort Sea, but in the Chukchi Sea as well.
Here are the regional sea ice area graphs as provided by Wipneus
on Arctische Pinguin:

http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b01bb08da85b1970d-800wi

EDIT

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2016/04/beaufort-quick-update.html#more