It is becoming increasingly clear that sea ice in the Arctic is largely controlled by Pacific Ocean temperatures. During the long period of cold Pacific water prior to 1977, the ice became quite thick.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the Pacific Ocean was very warm and a lot of ice got pushed out into the North Atlantic – where it melted.
Now that the Pacific is cold again post 2007, the ice is starting to thicken and less is being transported into the Atlantic. It really isn’t that complicated.
counterintuitive though…the Bering Strait is no match in width to the Greenland Sea. Perhaps the Gulf Stream means the Atlantic side is more stable and therefore less influencing on sea ice cover changes?
I think it has more to do with air circulation patterns than with movement of water in the Pacific.
lol, you mean its not the super-exponential temperature heat of constant negative temps?
It really isn’t that complicated.
But pretending it is complicated has provided job security for quite a few people.
Wind folks…wind. Slyder Fjord by Eureka, several miles long and about a mile across (memory is fading from when i was up there…), but one good wind day from the east and the fjord cleared out!
Any data to back this up?
ZZZZzzzzz
Ya, i watched it! And yes, we recorded on a daily basis, the amount of ice in the fjord, so that when the ICE BREAKER arrived with the FUEL TANKER in late August, they wouldn’t sink due to running into iceflowes….
Andy W: You could stop by my website for SST anomaly data for individual ocean basins. You’d find that the North Pacific SST anomalies appear to have peaked in 2005:
http://i55.tinypic.com/2rylcu8.jpg
The graph is from my June 2011 SST data update:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/june-2011-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/