The Beaufort and Chukchi seas will be entering March completely devoid of multi year ice, in danger of a swift runaway of meltout. Will it happen this year?
A reactivation of the Gyre would bring MYI from the CAB but also openings along the coast with bad consequences. A more static situation leaves us with thickening FYI and no open waters... interesting.
ACNFS predicts for the 28th some modest detachment of drifting ice from the coasts West of Barrow, nothing more, but we'll see, ice looks fragile. Thickening progressing fast now. It is pretty early yet.
I'm aghast looking at that image - 90+ % of the ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi is *well* under 2M thickness, and a major slug of that under 1.5M. We have about 4 weeks of opportunity for weather to be cold enough for the ice to thicken - in water that much of which has been between 1/4 - 1/2C degree warmer than normal per NOAA.
Under the most optimal of conditions I'd expect at most about 30CM of growth at this juncture, but I'm anticipating far less than that. Consider also that both the Beaufort and Chukchi are much further south than the Atlantic side, and much of the region is already getting over 8 hours of daily sunlight. In short, the thermodynamics there have already shifted against the ice. I'd be surprised if we got 10CM of thickening, much less 30.
QED - in 3-4 weeks time if we get any sort of significant wind event, I predict the entire extent of the Chukchi and Beaufort will be torn to shreds in ways we haven't previously seen until May or June, and it won't recover, nor will ice re-cover the leads opened up. I predict the water opened up will both significantly shift the heat uptake such that we'll see early melt ponding, or just simply large areas of thin ice just being beaten into slush. I expect by the middle of May, we may see areas of open extent on a par with what has been seen in late June and July in previous years. Import of MYI from near the CAA won't help; there's not enough of it.
TL;DR - by the Equinox, I expect to see the beginning of a cascading failure starting in the Bering and Chukchi and by dint of that, rapidly spreading to the Beaufort in its entirety, with the effect of accelerating the melt season by at least 2 and possibly 4 weeks. I expect it will go downhill from there.