Near Barrow (Thanks for the link Sonia)...
If HYCOM is correct then the ice edge in the Beaufort Sea looks like it's about to hit the multi-year ice, a stall might be expected over the next week to two weeks. But there's a lot of open water there before the solstice and warming water this early in the season might be enough to seriously attack the multi year ice. I hope so, that would open up the possibility of a good low extent by September.
It looks as if open water is trying to surround that MYI. Could it possibly be attacked on all sides?
The weather is interesting there, there is a band of cloud over that region.
http://weather.gc.ca/data/satellite/hrpt_dfo_ir_100.jpgHowever Bremen shows not just reduced concentration persisting there, but also the structure of parallel fractures in the ice from the recent opening away from Banks Island - that's very big stuff! I'm certainly not saying a stall = loads of ice in September. And yes, that broken stuff behind the ice edge looks very promising.
Compactness is area divided by extent, using Wipneus's area and extent data*: I take the last ten days, 12 to 21 May (21 May is latest I have downloaded), and sort in order of lowest compactness.
2015 0.79
1998 0.81
1995 0.82
1991 0.84
2008 0.84
2012 0.85
1993 0.86
2014 0.89
1997 0.90
2011 0.90
2015 is the lowest on record and is
2.4 standard deviations below average compactness for 12 to 21 May.
The way that Beaufort is shaping up, reminds me of Laptev this time last year. it looks very promising for an exciting race in Beaufort. Now we just need Siberia to join in. But I am allowing myself to get a bit excited over Beaufort.
*PS, Wipneus's data is here.
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/dataFor full daily regional area and extent people need: nsidc_nt_nrt_detail.txt (recent data) and nsidc_nt_final_anom.txt.gz (finalised long term data).
I know that there is a lot of data there, but I keep getting the feeling very few are using this data and it really pays to put the time in to spreadsheet or write code to handle it.