Barge caught after drifting loose in Bering Strait Climate Watch

Sea ice, winds, ocean currents and the land in and around the Bering Sea are intertwined in complex ways.

In recent decades, all the ice in the Bering Sea is ice that has formed since the end of summer. As recently as the early 1990s significant amounts of thicker multi-year would sometimes move through the Bering Strait from the north during late winter and early spring. This means nowadays Bering Sea ice is typically thin and mobile, but fast ice — ice anchored to the shore or ocean bottom— is very important for many winter and spring activities.

Unlike north of the Bering Strait, fast ice, tauq in Wales Inupiaq, from the Wales Inupiaq Sea Ice Dictionary by Igor Krupnik and Winton (Utuktaaq) Weyapuk Jr., is much more limited in extent and may break-up and reform repeatedly, especially early in the winter. And as we have seen more than once in recent winters, it may not form at all even in places where historically there is fast ice. Of course, Elders, who have spent a lifetime studying these interactions are the experts. Western science can play a role too, especially at the “big picture” scale.

The National Weather Service Alaska Region Sea Ice Program produces a sea ice concentration analysis seven days a week every day of the year and this includes specially identifying fast ice. The actual National Weather Service sea ice concentration is available as a full color image and as a zoomable map, with fast ice a distinct gray color. It is important to keep in mind that the scale of the analysis means that very narrow areas of fast ice, say a few hundred yards or less, are not normally going to show-up in this product.

The graphic here highlights the fast ice. For purposes of news print I’ve changed the original color scheme to gray and show the fast ice as analyzed on Valentine’s Day 2023 as hatching. The web link to all the NWS ice related products is: https://www.weather.gov/afc/ice