As I noted last week, the National Sea Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has now confirmed that the pace of sea ice loss in the Arctic basin sharply quickened over the last ten days. That latest updated graph below does seem to indicate that that the trend over the last two days might have begun to resume a more normal trend, but I think they will need another week of data to confirm that.

The big question was why did we see this sudden drop off of ice coverage? According to the NSIDC, a series of strong storms helped trigger warm, southerly winds which broke up thin ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Looking at the sea level pressure map below for Aug 6th, 2008, you can see the large area of low pressure extending north from Siberia, the counter-clockwise flow around the low pressure produced the stronger southerly winds, especially over the Chukchi Sea. You can also see the large area of high pressure centered over Greenland. The clockwise flow around the high also produced southerly winds up through far northern Canada. By the way, that same pattern forced the chilly air that you normally see in northern Canada much farther to the south, resulting in the unusually cool and wet pattern that we have been seeing over eastern Canada, the Great Lakes and the Northeast U.S.

Northwest Passage opening up again

Just like last year, the famous Northwest Passage is opening up once again. Check out the August 10th satellite-microwave image of that region below. According to the NSIDC, just a small section of sea ice was blocking the route as of a few days ago, but that was expected to melt off fairly quickly.

Just FYI, here is the latest Arctic region sea-ice concentration map from the University of Bremen (Aug 12th)....