Neven, thanks for
Reply #2121 and its links, informing that in 2013 the Arctic Basin also had a strong and persistent low pressure system in June.
That's mildly comforting given that 2013 was a recovery year from the carnage of 2012.
There are differences from this year though that may make comparisons unsafe.
Firstly, the 2013 system was earlier in the melt season, beginning towards the end of May.
The CAB ice pack has already opened up more than was the case in 2013 and is starting to melt out more, particularly on the Russian side.
In both years, the melt will be retarded by increased cloud cover.
I'm wondering if this year there may be a stronger competing effect from ice movement induced by the storm winds generated.
The ice is thin and may be more likely to move around than was the case in 2013.
Also, the winds North of Greenland will be from West to East, so pushing the ice in the direction of the Atlantic and the Fram Strait 'ice sink'. This year's thick ice is already biased over towards that side and so we may lose thicker ice.
Also, that displaced ice will likely produce leads and other gaps in its wake. Right at the Summer solstice now, those areas of open water will then heat up and seed melt in the adjacent ice.
Quantitatively? If those winds persist for 1-2 weeks then the thicker ice will likely move a couple of hundred kilometres towards the Atlantic. (To set the scale, the Fram Strait is 450 km wide, so perhaps half of that.)
If the ice front is of order 1000 km long then the total displacement towards the Atlantic might be of order 200 km x 1000 km ~ 200,000 km^2.
Given that the Fram Strait and Atlantic are 'death zones' in recent years, that 200,000 km^2 might be considered extra ice lost.
Correspondingly, the leads opened up in the pack behind might also have a total area of 200,000 km^2. That would be significant in seeding melt in the adjacent ice.
This is all speculative and back-of-the-envelope, but it will be interesting to see how much the thicker ice is pushed East to the Atlantic and also to see if any visible leads are opened up.
Then there will be Ekman pumping as well, which might melt some more ice.
Having said that, the cloud cover afforded from the 24 hour a day sunlight is a big loss of melting potential to compensate for.
So, in summary, this storm might be steering us towards a weaker melt season, like in 2013, but there are compensating effects so it might not.