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The Chukchi already has a large area of open water which is the largest there on record passing 2010 at this point. There is no sign of that area freezing up or getting smaller only slowly getting bigger. ...
What about cloud cover there? Non-existent, or?
By the way, there is one thing i was always thinking about how Arctic ocean absorbs sunlight, which might be relevant here and now. See, at this time of the year, the Sun is quite very low over horizon there, for most of every 24-hours period. Thus, sunlight approaches the water surface having very small angle to it. The water surface would reflect most (all?) of it IF it'd be 100% plain - in reality this is not the case, because there are waves. And then, much depends on how big waves are, and what their form is. If it's low, "long", not any steep waves - then much of sunlight would still be reflected at the air/water boundary. But if it's high, steep, "short" waves - then most of sunlight would get through into water, and much of sunlight won't have its angle changed any much. Which means, photons will keep going underwater having rather small angle - i.e. almost horizontally. And this seems important to me, because this means most of those photons will end up absorbed by near-surface layer of water, thus warming it up (as opposed to near-equator areas, where much (most?) of photons which get into water - would in fact travel dozens meters deep before being absorbed, thus heating near-surface layer (few meters) much more slowly.
It's all from basic geometry and optics, nothing extraordinaire, but i wonder if we have such very basic considerations actually accounted for in all the models... I have a lurking suspicion we do not, - instead, quite a number of models using numerical "tweaks" to adjust for observed in past years dynamics. If so, then such models will grow progressively incorrect as we get more and more cases of large-enough open water areas insolated by mostly-very-low-over-horizon sun.