I'm reluctant to say this since I cannot prove it, but I REALLY am starting to wonder if we're witnessing a somewhat paradigm shift in the Atlantic currents to cause the breakup above Greenland/Lincoln Sea. I realize it's been quite warm in that entire region, but I do not think surface melt alone is enough to facilitate so much action and change.
There may well be a pardigm shift in currents as you say. But a more likely explanation comes to mind, although I could be wrong, but here goes: Off the north-east corner of Greenland you will find a very persistent and large polynia every single year. I don't think it is the one prosaically called the
North East Water polynia (NEW), the description does not really fit. There is another Sirius Water Polonya as well, but that is considerably further south.
The polynia in question seems to be in the first stages of opening up in the image below. The grey blotch in the middle is what I take to be fast ice that has formed during the winter months and is here seen melting rapidly from below. The surrounding ice was not really moving this early in spring but once general ice movement gets closer to Greenland, this polynia can be more or less obscured by inflowing ice and is rarely "clean".
As I say, this seems to repeat every year that I have followed the Arctic and I seem to remember that there was a general consensus that this was caused by upwelling of warm waters that most likely had somehow escaped from the Spitzbergen current on the other side of the Fram strait, dippeed under the East Greenland Current, to resurface here at the coast of Greenland.
And it has of course occurred to me that the current opening up of ice further north of Greenland was somehow linked to this polynia and the warm upwelling. So not a paradigm change, no, but perhaps a change in magnitude - at least in temperature but perhaps also in the amount of water involved.
Or perhaps the combination of an existing current and persistent warm southerly winds were enough? And not to forget that winds over open ocean can strengthen surface currents, pulling them further and increasing their flow.
Both images benefit from a click.