Looking at the most current bremen amsr2 map, a few things stand out.
The ess is steadily “darkening” (losing concentration) and retreating, which will continue to provide sustained area losses for a while. The laptev bite is still widening towards the ess (helping its deeper collapse within less than 10 days?) and is crucially starting to also get bigger in the 80 north, possibly starting the race to the north pole that some here have predicted.
There is another torching of the greenland sea ice which might also contribute to losses if either the export stop or the cab can t sustain it anymore without showing visible signs of dispersion. Although expected, it is necessary to poin it out given the imminent loss of a few hundreds square kilometers there.
The more siberian side for the chuchki is headed for collapse with large patches of water visible, after a few days of preconditionning and lower retreat, it will soon fully eat onto the ess, precipitating collapse there in a domino effect.
The beaufort is looking rather poorly, not only because of the extending holes inside it, but also because the instabilities (read open water areas) that its dispersion created deep inside the pack are spreading towards the chuchki whose alaskan bite has now breached the 75 north parallel.
All in all, the pacific side looks pretty bad and worsening with each new amsr2. On the other hand, it looks like I was wrong about the cab/ kara blob, it will still remain for a while longer, but atlantification has started between svalbard and fjl islands, directly affecting the cab.
In other news, the Hudson is finally giving out, with very low concentration almost throughout, and despite some attack on the channels from the baffin, the caa looks to be little affected by melt, especially on the western side, maybe somewhat replenished by drifting floes from the beaufort?
So to conclude, pacification is getting worse and i think we will have the same result there as with the 2012 gac, but with no gac. Atlantification is also starting proper, but we have yet to see if it will be a decisive force this melting season. The cab is starting to get attacked in multiple sides, so the only real respite we have now is really only the western caa, but for how long