We shouldn't forget the vorticity of water masses. Because of the spin of the earth, the Coriolis effect tends to turn water masses to the right as they move north or south. Thus, Siberian shelf water tends to hug the coast of Siberia as it moves towards the Bering Strait and Pacific water tends to hug the Alaskan coast as it moves north from the Bering strait. The Beaufort gyre, however is an area of high sea surface heights under an atmospheric high pressure area and they both rotate clockwise.
The inevitable interaction of these different water masses leads to swirling eddies on the margins of the water masses. The position of the center of the Beaufort high has moved polewards this year compared to last year in response to months of anomalous southerly winds.
At the same time the southerly winds and strong sea surface height gradient intensified the Alaska coastal current driving anomalously salty water deeper into the Arctic than last year.
Also note that the Laptev polynya forms at the edge of the shallow Siberian shelf. Offshore winds push ice towards the pole and saltier water wells up from below during southerly wind events. At this time of year, those winds are warm and lead to open water. In winter those winds are cold and cause rapid refreezing.
Cause and effect thinking isn't very useful in a complex, coupled system. To the person who wrote that this melt season isn't very impressive - we will see. This year's extent is the second lowest on record for this date and ice thickness is more evenly distributed across the Arctic this year than in other years. There's more ice to melt out on the Siberian side, but much of it will melt out. The weather models are all inconsistent beyond 5 days so it's anyone's guess what the weather will do and how much ice volume will melt out. This year's more even distribution of volume could lead to an extent cliff in mid to late summer. Again, we'll see.