Despite the feverish reporting that last summer was hell, and that hot is now the “new normal,” the Arctic ice man is hard at work. In reality, Arctic ice is spreading everywhere. The image below shows how quickly Hudson Bay froze over in recent days.



Baffin Bay in the center next to Greenland is extending south and added 250k km2. Hudson Bay on the left added 700k km2, now at 73% of maximum, with both east and west coastlines freezing all the way down into James Bay.

On the Eurasian side, on the left margin Chukchi is closing in. On the right side Kara has added 300k km2 of ice extent, now at 85% of maximum

The graph below shows 2018 is now exceeding the 11-year average after being down in October.

MASIE is showing 10.8M km2 ice extent, 400k km2 greater than the average for day 327, Nov. 23. SII is slightly lower, while 2007 is almost 500k km2 lower. In fact, in the past decade, only two years, 2013 and 2015, had more ice than 2018 at this date.

Region 2018327 Day 327

Average 2018-Ave. 2007327 2018-2007 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 10815225 10412198 403027 10323881 491344 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1070498 1068397 2100 1053320 17177 (2) Chukchi_Sea 624371 744131 -119760 655458 -31087 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1077862 9275 1055561 31576 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897263 582 897845 0 (5) Kara_Sea 795273 712636 82637 784601 10672 (6) Barents_Sea 133731 197266 -63536 137195 -3464 (7) Greenland_Sea 453657 518028 -64371 589509 -135852 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 786601 615297 171304 585929 200672 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 853337 851790 1547 852556 781 (10) Hudson_Bay 916266 406475 509791 494237 422029 (11) Central_Arctic 3142574 3186697 -44124 3151036 -8462

Small deficits in Chukchi, Greenland and Barents Seas are more than offset by surpluses in Kara Sea, Baffin and Hudson Bays. Note Hudson Bay is more than twice the average for this date.

Meanwhile, in Nunavut, it is a great time to be a polar bear, even more of them than people want.