Gray-Wolf

And still we continue on the 'perfect melt storm' trajectory! The latest outlooks place a big high right across the pole for the most intense dose of solar that the season has to offer!! Let's not forget that the pole gets its solar 24/7 this time of year so that is a lot of energy pilling onto the thin ice and a healthy export of our oldest ice through Fram. If we get through to July in similar shape I think it will be safe to call a challenge on 2012's assortment of records?

Indeed forkyfork! Not just the forcing toward Fram exit all the way from the Pacific entrance but the conditioning this will put on a pack that is mainly small floes 'glued together' by late formed ice? Such a dynamic fragmentation event will also lead to mechanical weathering of floes as they bump and barge one another on their travels? Then we have Barentsz and the open waters maintained over winter ( again) hinting at what awaits ice pushed into that region? 'Collapse and spread' of ice entering open water may see extent/area figures but this will be temporary and illusory. Something feels 'off' about this melt season? I do not know if it is the record summer the southern Hemisphere just had, and the fear of such conditions transfering North with the sun or the strange amounts of High Pressure across the hemisphere? The 'Greenland high' caused issues across Greenland in 2012 and now , after a few years of it not performing, we see it apparently back to strength? Then there is the 'Perfect melt storm synoptic'? If we are still able to see such develop, and we have not mangled the atmospheric too much for such to develop, then we are still in its return period......

Well we are certainly still on track for a 'perfect melt storm' summer......just without the 'perfect melt storm' synoptics??? Is this what the last 5 years of 'winter preconditioning' was all about? Taking us to the point where an 'average summer' feeds us a sub 2007 finish and , over time, the 'Blue Ocean' event?

We are also seeing some massive temp anoms across areas of the basin so not only do we enter melt season lowest on record but with some pretty aggressive conditions on the ground?