GROUP 4 - The 3 Central Arctic Seas - Beaufort, East Siberian and Central Arctic Seas (5.5 million km2) Longer-term trends
Open Water percentage Climate Change - towards maritime seas vs icy deserts since 1979.
As each sea loses ice the climate must trend to maritime (milder, wetter) from an icy desert (cold, dry). The measure I use for this is to plot the change in the percentage of open water compared with the total area of each sea. I have done this for the maximum ice month, the minimum ice month, the three minimum ice months, and for the entire calendar year.
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It is essentially a summer story for these seas. Solidly frozen in winter, in summer the percentage of open water for the three minimum months of August, September and October is increasing:-
- in the Beaufort Sea from 30% to approaching 70%,
- in the East Siberian from 30% to well over 70%,
- in the Central Arctic Sea from 10% to over 25%,
- for the average of these three seas from 20% to over 40%.
These seas are in essence still icy deserts.
Overall