Hot Times North

The Arctic, and particularly Greenland, have been toasty lately, relatively speaking anyway. Over the next week, unusually warm air is expected to park over Greenland. Air up to 20 C warmer than normal. Of course that air is still below freezing: -10 C to - 20 C instead of the usual -30 C or so for this time of year, so it's not obvious to me that this will have a significant affect on the melt season.

The Arctic sea ice is at record lows for this time of year, but once again it's not clear that this will have a big effect on the melt season. Most of the melt is in the Atlantic east, while the Pacific side, except for the Sea of Okhotsk, is still intact. Currently, the sea ice area is nearly a million km^2 less than that of 2012 (the record low season), but, as the saying goes, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Could be interesting though.

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