Oren: NSIDC has much coarser resolution much more affected by wet ice surface and melt ponds, so during the melting season NSIDC extent > UH extent > UH area > NSIDC area… events prove again volume and area matter more than extent, which is simply the rearrangement of ice. thin wispy ice is worth much less than extent would have us believe. Extent really matters only in Sept
Very much worth repeating. Stalled melt? Maybe in a parallel extent universe. Better resolution AMSR2 data shows August continuing to see significant new daily open water forming (primarily ice periphery melting to oblivion); the de-clouded image below shows growth in open water over the last four days (pink, click for 6.2 km scale).
The once-in-a-lifetime story playing out in the pack interior is consistently weakening ice concentration from the Lincoln Sea to the Pole, with unprecedented additional involvement for the date on the Atlantic side.
WorldView has some recent clear views (
https://go.nasa.gov/3iF1P27,
https://go.nasa.gov/3anMyzU) that confirm and add detail but don't provide an explanation for this puzzling development nor indicate where it is headed over coming weeks.
Insolation is still going strong at the key 75º latitude contrary to intuited rubbish above: week 9 (Aug 12-19) has
52% of the incoming solar at the solstice (June 17-24) according to the graphical albedo calculator. (Clouds and lower incident angle scattering will affect actual energy deposition.)
An overview is perhaps best given by the simplified ice concentration (light blue) in OsiSaf ice motion. The brief animation butts together 1200Z timestamps on alternate days (the product spans 48 hours but is posted daily in temporal overlaps).
The new AMSR2 in the works from AWI also benefits from a simplified block palette. Some central weather issues affect parts of the date shown but disintegrating regions on the Pacific side are well-resolved.