2023 First report

June 2, 2023
Arctic Sea Ice Information Center, Noriaki KIMURA (Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo)

Figure 1: Predicted sea ice distribution on September 10, 2023.

Minimum ice extent will be about 4.51 million square kilometers in September. This is slightly smaller than in 2021 and 2022.
The Northern Sea Route will open around August 15, and the Canadian side except for Canadian archipelago will open around July 26.
Sea ice will remain on the Canadian archipelago side of the Beaufort Sea.

Annual change in minimum sea ice extent since 2003 — Figure 2: The interannual change of minimum sea ice extent since 2003. Value of 2023 (marked by yellow) is our prediction.

Figure 3: Animation of predicted Arctic sea ice extent from the July 1 to the September 20.
The white line indicates the ice edge for 2023 and the colored lines for 2021 and 2022.

Figure 4: Animation of the daily anomaly of the predicted ice concentration from 2003-2022 mean. Red color shows the area of faster ice retreat. Blue shows the area of slower ice retreat.

Figure 5: Sea ice age distribution on April 30, 2023. Light blue, blue, green, yellow, and red indicate 1-year, 2-year, 3-year, 4-year, and 5-year or older sea ice, respectively.

The Arctic sea ice extent on September 10, when the sea ice minimum will be about 4.51 million square kilometers. This is about 6% smaller than in 2021 and 2022.

Sea ice along the Russian coast will retreat at about the same pace as last year. On the Canadian side, sea ice extent will be much smaller than 2021, when more sea ice remained in the Beaufort Sea. The speed of the retreat is expected to be slightly faster than last year.

Russian side

Both the timing and the distribution of sea ice extent in the East Siberian Sea are similar to 2021 and 2022 until mid-August. After that, sea ice in that area will retreat earlier than 2021 and 2022, and the minimum distribution will be similar to 2022. Sea ice extent in the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea will retreat almost the same as in 2022. Compared to the recent 20-year average, sea ice will retreat later than usual in the East Siberian Sea and earlier in the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea. The Northern Sea Route will open around August 15.

Canadian side

Sea ice in the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea will retreat at about the same time in 2021 and 2022. Sea routes of the Canadian side will open around July 26. Sea ice will remain on the Canadian archipelago side of the Beaufort Sea, but not as much as in 2021 and 2022. This is because the extent of old ice is smaller than in 2021 and 2022.

The prediction was performed using three factors: sea ice redistribution from winter to spring, sea ice age, and mean divergence of sea ice. The sea ice redistribution was determined from the sea ice movement from December 1 to April 30, and the sea ice age and mean divergence of sea ice were estimated by the backward tracking of sea ice up to four years from April 30. In addition, by using the mean sea ice drift velocity since May over the past four years, effects of sea ice transport from May 1 to the prediction date was considered. Changes in prediction accuracy due to improved prediction methods and the certainty of the predicted sea ice concentration are discussed in the complement page. Daily prediction data can be also downloaded here and daily sea ice age distribution data can be downloaded here.

You can also check the daily forecast and sea ice age data (daily and yearly) on Arctic Data archive System (ADS) at National Institute of Polar Research.

If you have any questions about satellite monitoring of the Arctic Ocean, sea ice forecasting, or the forecasting methods used here, please contact the Arctic Sea Ice Information Center（sea_ice@nipr.ac.jp）

The sea ice forecast and its basic research were started in GRENE, continued to ArCS Project, and has been conducted in ArCS II Project since 2020.

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