So much for my prediction skills: only the largest remaining piece of A-Team's "E" got past Joe Island yesterday. It looks like "S" ran into Cape Baird causing "E" to rear-end "S", and the stress of the interaction broke "E" into pieces. The most recognizable (and 2nd largest) piece of “E” has a persistent dark mark on the image; it was on the rear port-side (east) part of “E” before the collision and remained (on Dec 4) in Hall Basin just off of Petermann Fjord and east of Joe Island.
Today’s drama: Will this ‘marked piece of “E”’ get stuck behind Joe Island or will it be drawn back into the flow? Saturday: Will the ‘largest remaining piece of “E”’ get by Hans Island on Saturday? (It was obviously slowed down by the collision – yesterday’s prediction of a Friday arrival will not come to pass.) And how long will Espen’s “new large piece” keep its hexagon shape?
Petermann Fjord is about 15 km wide, so pre-collision “E” was about 30 km long. It moved about 45 km between the Dec 2 and Dec 3 Sentinel-1 images – nearly 2 km/hr! The leading edge of the ‘largest remaining piece of “E”’ on Dec 4 was about 35 km downstream from where it was on Dec 3. The Dec 4 location is about 55 km upstream from Hans Island. I presume the Sentinel-1 images are spaced approximately 24 hours apart.
Figure 3 in Kwok (2005 “Variability of Nares Strait ice flux”)
http://rkwok.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/Kwok.2005e.GRL.pdf (if I read it right) indicates ice velocities in November & December up to 40 km/day at the northern (actually NE) end of Nares Strait. Ice seems to speed up once it gets into the strait; “E” did. (Ice bridges form – except for 2006-7 – between November and March.)
Edit: According to an internet calculator:
.83 m/sec = 72 km/day
.59 m/sec = 51 km/day
.24 m/sec = 21 km/day