@gray-wolf "We know the weather heavily impacts the Atlantic side of the basin ( low export years) but could 'warm water' ,and the bottom melt this drives, over come atmospheric drivers?"
(Neven definitely stole my thunder on this - but I'm posting it anyway
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Last week I posted contrasting snapshots of the Atlantic side, illustrating the cold air & ice racing south coming up against the warm water moving North. That continues apace (although right now the wind at the interface has backed off toward the NE in places)
Attached is snapshot from nullschool showing the SSTA right now. The point highlighted in green is 6.3 degrees C warmer than average, with an absolute value of 5.9 degrees. If you pull up the picture yourself and animate the currents you'll see that the basic picture is unchanged from last week.
Looking at Neven's comparison plots the size and shape of the anomaly itself shows less red than in previous significant years - but IMO this doesn't necessarily signal a healthy prognosis for the Atlantic-side ice.
The combination a sharply defined Delta-T at the interface between ice and water, and the rate of transport across it (in both directions), is what I'd see as the most significant indicator of energy crossing to the North. Looking at the picture one can see that we have it right now in a big way.
If I understand it correctly (and I'm definitely open to being corrected!) - once it gets there that energy won't show up as warmer temperatures anywhere there is still ice I'd hazard that if the ice was melting and/or unusually salty, the SST might even show up as colder than usual right up till the day it melted out completely...