Observation: It's February! Middle of the winter. Our bay isn't frozen yet. People usually start jigging for tomcods by this time of the year on the bay. It hasn't been cold enough to freeze the bay. Last year, part of the bay froze and there were jiggers for tomcods but that was short lived. Not long after, ice started melting. Incredibly, we are fortunate to have more snow this year. Some men are able to go hunting and fishing, to surrounding villages by snowmachines, and there were some people that were able to go to timberline to get wood for maqi (Yupik steam house). Weather is starting to warm up again and soon the snow will start melting. It looks like winter is going to be short again this year.
LEO Consult: Figure 1. shows a graph of Arctic sea ice extent as of March 1, 2016, along with
daily ice extent data for four previous years. 2015 - 2016 is shown in blue, 2014-2015 in green, 2013-2014 in orange, 2012-2013 in brown, and 2011-2012 in purple. the 1981 - 2010 average is in dark gray. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
Figure 2. Arctic sea ice extent for February 2016 was 5.48 million square miles (14.22 million square kilometers). The magenta line shows the 1980 to 2010 median extent for the month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data. National Snow and Ice Data Center, Scientific Data Search.
Note: This observation has been added to our trend on the unseasonably warm weather this winter. It has been shared with Dr. Hajo Eicken with the , at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. M. Tcheripanoff
UAF International Arctic Research Center Consult: Thanks for this observation - it’s very striking to see the bay open at this time of year. This year’s winter ice extent in the Bering Sea is well below normal, as the link to the satellite data provided in the LEO Comment shows. This is due to a combination of factors. However, the warm winter which is in part due to a strong El Niño and in part may be linked to well above-normal water temperatures in the northeast Pacific (AOOS) plays a key role.
As you point out, Anna, normally at this time people would be fishing from the ice. In fact, in 2013 and 2014 Simeon John, an ice expert from Toksook Bay, has been making ice observations and for early March in those years he indicated an ice thickness in the bay of around 2-3 feet. You can see his observations at our website (if you select Toksook Bay it will bring up the close to 300 observations Simeon has kindly shared for those years).
In 2013, when I visited Toksook Bay and took some ice samples, those samples indicated that the river inflow into the bay also plays an important role in controlling the thickness of the ice.
Note that over the past two to three decades in many winters ice in the winter Bering Sea has actually been more extensive than normal. However, as observations from coastal communities and remote sensing data show, the ice has been getting thinner and less stable during that same time period. With reduced winter ice extent this year, the open ocean is able to take up more heat from the sun during spring which may then also cause more rapid and extensive ice retreat in the northern Bering and southern Chukchi Seas later in the season.
