I wanted to offer a more detailed examination of current events in the CAA based on the 7/12 Worldview, which gives a passably clear image of a lot of the region. Spoiler: It isn't good.
First, the state of the Crack. On the west, there is open water leading from the Beaufort Sea along the north coast of Banks Island, past Prince Patrick, and now all the way to Brock. Meanwhile, on the CAA's east flank, open water stretches along Ellesmere Island and across Nansen Sound to the coast of Alex Heiberg. In between is a vast, wide "river" of fragmented ice. You can see the contrast between this -- apparently the new normal of Crack behavior -- and what the ice should look like most clearly by examining the Arctic Ocean outlets of the PGAS and the Peary Channel. Last year, the rotation of the central pack turned the Crack into a vacuum, pulling ice north out of the CAA channels and then exporting it west to the Beaufort. That's especially bad for the CAA, because it destroys the remaining MYI reserves in a brutally efficient fashion (some such exported ice may survive the summer in Beaufort as it did last year, but it is, ultimately, doomed).
Second, I want to point out a couple areas where rapid fracture is underway. The CAA does retain older, harder ice than many other regions of the Arctic. In combination with the typical breakup patterns of fast and fast-adjacent ice, that makes some of the CAA channels prone to breaking up into large, impressive ice blocks. In better years, southerly export of these blocks is limited by traffic flow rates (that's the vaunted garlic press), and northerly export should have been minimal to zero. In this year, well...? Right now, in the south, we're seeing fragmentation at the Belcher Channel. Last year, this area was under cloud throughout mid-July, but we're a solid week ahead of 2018 here. Meanwhile, there's quite a bit of action at the mouth of the M'Clure Strait; this Beufort-adjacent passage did sometimes break up even in non-Crack years, but it's a place to watch for 2020. Although most of M'Clure cleared last year, the Viscount Melville Sound held out (keeping the Parry Channel from opening completely). Now, Viscount Melville is under cloud right now, so it's tough to judge the health of the channel in its entirety. A lot may depend on whether that big block of ice anchored by Banks and Eglinton Islands holds out for awhile; in 2016, it didn't, and 2016 was a bad year for that part of the CAA.
For slightly less immediate areas of concern, I'm always keeping a watchful eye on the PGAS. There's not much to say there right now. The ice doesn't look good on Worldview, but action here will wait until later in the season. Also waiting until later in the season is the tiny body of water called Wilkins Strait. Wilkins is important because it was a champion holdout against the damage dealt in 2019. It's under high cloud right now, and so details are tough. I don't think significant melt or breakup has occurred here, but there are features on Worldview that may portend weakness: one between Borden Island and the "finger" of MacKenzie King, and a wider feature between Borden and Brock.
