Arctic Ice Breakup Moving Rapidly After 4th-Warmest March In Instrumental Record

[hatrack]

Link to tweet

Action here moving largely from lower left to right, across the top of the Arctic Archipelago.



Here, the wide crack in question is at (roughly) your three to four o'clock, just above the first white-highlighted land mass from the right side of the image - that's northwest Greenland. A narrow passage runs between it and the next land mass over - Ellsmere Island.

https://climatecrocks.com/2022/04/06/arctic-sea-ice-break-up-in-progress/#comments

EDIT

Counter to what might be expected given the very slow rate of sea ice loss over the month as a whole, air temperatures at the 925 millibar level (about 2,500 feet above the surface) were above average over all of the Arctic Ocean (Figure 2b). March temperatures were up to 9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, up to 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in the East Siberian Sea, but up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average over a wide area. The key features of the sea level pressure pattern were high pressure (an anticyclone) over the central Arctic Ocean, a trough of low pressure extending into the Barents Sea, and an unusually high pressure over Northern Europe (Figure 2c). While having an anticyclone over the central Arctic Ocean is quite typical for this time of year, the combination of the high pressure over northern Europe and the pressure trough to the west led to a strong pressure gradient, leading to strong winds from south through the Norwegian and Barents Seas. As discussed below, this can be tied to the extreme warm event over the Arctic Ocean seen in the middle of the month, associated with strong water vapor transport and the passage of several strong cyclones.

EDIT

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/