Climate Watch

This spring’s early loss of sea ice in Norton Sound and most of the northeastern Bering Sea set the stage for warm ocean surface temperatures in early summer. This is especially the case in the Yukon Delta and Norton Sound, where the water is quite shallow.

The overarching reason is simple: Early sea ice loss means that the dark ocean water is absorbing heating from the sun instead of that sunshine being mostly reflected back to space by ice. While temperatures are very As we go through the rest of the different, during the last week of summer the influence of spring sea April the amount of heating from the ice fades and water temperatures sun is the same as it is in mid-August. vary based on weather, especially the Skipping ahead to mid-June, amount of sunshine, storminess and we see this effect in action. The variations in the coastal and open graphic shows that most of the northeast ocean currents. Bering Sea is warmer than last In Norton Sound, the highest

Barge caught after drifting

year at this time, including most of ocean surface temperatures of the Norton Sound and the Gulf of Anadyr year are normally reached in late

loose in Bering Strait west of St. Lawrence Island. The July or early August, while around one area where sea surface temperatures St. Lawrence Island and in the Bering are lower this June than last Strait the warmest ocean temperatures June is from Little Diomede south to typically occur in the the east side of St. Lawrence Island. second half of August and in some In this area sea ice persisted longer years even the first days of September. than elsewhere in the region.