From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The previous June Arctic ice update showed that shallow basins on the Pacific side lost their ice rapidly.  The animation above shows in the last 15 days how Hudson Bay (bottom right) is nearly all open water. And Baffin Bay (center right) is down to 22% of its March max. The images also show CAA (Canadian Arctic Archipelago–center bottom) is still blocking the Northwest Passage, despite open water in Baffin Bay and in Beaufort Sea to the west.  Also the Russian shelf seas (left) are starting to open. This is all normal melting of Arctic drift ice, presently at 56% (8.4 M km2) of last March maximum, heading toward the September minimum.

The graph for the last 30 days shows the normal melt is ~2.5M km2 down to 8.3 M km2.  2023 was above average for 3 weeks, and matching average the last week.  SII tracked the MASIE average throughout, as did 2007 in June, but dropped lower toward the end.

The table for day 197 shows how the ice extent is distributed across the Arctic regions, incomparison to 17 year average and 2007.

Region	2023197	Day 197 Average	2023-Ave.	2007197	2023-2007
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	8356350	8252843	103507	7963047	393303
(1) Beaufort_Sea	843873	864156	-20283	825810	18063
(2) Chukchi_Sea	736044	627024	109019	550547	185496
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	891273	909597	-18324	729250	162022
(4) Laptev_Sea	632760	547279	85481	525724	107036
(5) Kara_Sea	313437	331825	-18389	401874	-88438
(6) Barents_Sea	64976	54022	10954	60637	4339
(7) Greenland_Sea	433035	394327	38708	434750	-1715
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	397917	292326	105591	314783	83134
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	649440	710624	-61184	711889	-62449
(10) Hudson_Bay	165147	348600	-183452	183962	-18814
(11) Central_Arctic	3227307	3169018	58289	3222022	5284

The table shows that Hudson Bay is the anomaly, melting out early, but will soon be matched by the average there.  CAA is also in slight deficit to average, while surpluses appear in Chukchi, Laptev, Baffin Bay and Central Arctic.  2007 was nearly 400k km2 lower than yesterday.