Here are some comparisons of Oct-Nov refreezing for 2013-2016. The first figure tracks open water in the Beaufort, Chukchi, ESS and Bering Strait region (as defined in a previous post) using UHH AMSR2, in units of millions of sq km.
Below that, four hycom 30-day runs for temperature, salinity, sea surface height and ice thickness are synched at 2x size. The prediction component goes out to November 11th and suggest considerable closing in of the ice pack: 666,000 sq km of open water still on that date (which translates to 44208 deepest blue pixels on the AMSR2 product, not shown).
If this event is associated in part with anomalously higher inflows through the Bering Strait, we might ask why the Pacific flows into the Arctic Ocean to begin with. According a comprehensive 2015 review by R Woodgate, the lead scientist monitoring Bering Strait influx (at the A3 mooring, data retrieved once a year), nobody knows. It’s often attributed to persistent low pressure over the Aleutians however.
Lower air pressure does in fact result in higher sea levels: an decrease in air pressure of 1 hPa, a slight decrease from the average air pressure of 1013 hPa, raises water level by 1 cm. Air pressure routinely varies between 950 and 1050 hPa during a year, so the expected variation in sea level amounts to +63 cm and -37 cm around mean sea level.
However sea level at a particular location is not only affected by the local air pressure above but also by other factors, so a simple correlation is rarely observed. For example, the sea surface on the Baltic can slope significantly both from north to south and from west to east. A dipole of deep low pressure passages over the Bothnian Bay, combined with high pressure over the southern Baltic, can lead sea level differences of up to 2 m across a moderate distance, according to an account at Sweden’s SMHI.
The data below do not support the notion of higher sea levels south of the Bering Strait driving anomalous volumes of warmer Pacific Water through the Strait over this time frame. However tides and winds from the south can also affect the sverdrups passing over the very shallow sill. Large variations in flux can occur within a few hours; the 21-year mean and std for the Bering Strait are provided in Serreze 2016.