SSTs are going to be insane on the Pacific side by season's end, indeed they already are. Much of the Chukchi sea is already 6C and water up to 9C can be found on WindyTV well clear of the coast. It's also showing an inflowing current at the Bering Strait. Much of Norton Sound, the big bay in Alaska just south of the Bering Strait, is 14C and sheltered waters can be found up to 17C. The Bering Sea is very warm
Jim Hunt, pack your swimming trunks! A summer wetsuit as well as the full steamer
Surf Reports from the Laptev to the Beaufort sea? Will a broad area of open water develop through the ESS connecting the Laptev bite to the Chukchi? Already in ice covered areas there are little blips of warmer(0C) water appearing the last couple of days on the chart north and west of Wrangel Island, also along along the crack in ESSbetween fast ice and mobile pack, as well as some in (I guess) areas where the pack is dispersed(as well as the river mouths on the coast, which are warmer again. In fact a great deal of the ESS shows as -1 or 0, not the -2 I expected to see,
Are the instruments being fooled somehow by the conditions(over ESS) or does this indicate some residual warmth from last season or mixing of the surface layer? The rapid warming of the Chukchi sea is suggestive(at least to me) of residual warmth lurking from the past few years where its really struggled to refreeze. It may lag yet further this year, maybe preventing the Bering from freezing at all, except for a few bays
The Laptev bite is about 3-4C mostly. All the fast ice that's about to crumble into it should help keep the temp down for now as its north sides marches on the pole.
I've attached a couple of windy/ECMWF SST maps to illustrate as well as the DMI SST anomaly map for yesterday, which also shows the warmth approaching Fram strait and Svalbard from the south(also getting redder by the day). DMI will have to extend their scale, as most of the Bering and Chukchi are literally off the chart