The Beaufort Sea is critical to determining late summer melt, and has above “normal” ice this year.
University of Illinois – Cryosphere Today
The reason Beaufort Sea ice is important is because it is at relatively low latitude and is blocking sunlight from entering the water, so the water is staying cold – making a big late summer melt very unlikely.
Don’t forget that the wet ice/melt pond/blue ice bias error that is inherent in the CT algorithm always under represents the actual ice area at this time of year. Note the fast ice in the archipelago that CT lists as (red) 60% coverage.
The actual ice area s greater than the values presented in the CT plot.
According to MASIE, the Beaufort Sea ice is “unprecedented”. LOL
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r01_Beaufort_Sea_ts.png
It’s difficult to see how the amount of ice can be described as “unprecedented” when the plot shows an anomaly relative to the 1979-2008 mean very close to zero. There’s certainly more ice than last year, but since it melted out completely then, that is not entirely surprising.
what month Is the ice melted away from the shore line and how far from sure is it retreated?