Although there are multiple places where the ice is thinner than it should be, across the top of Greenland and the Canadian islands on the left you want solid red by this time of year and along Russia's Northern Sea Route on the right there should be more turquoise-into-green 2.0 meter thick ice.
However, the two areas of greatest concern are doing better than last year.
As mentioned back in September's "Some Potentially Positive News For The Arctic Ice Cap This Winter" it looked as though the Bering Straits and the Bering and Chukchi Seas, top center in this view would have a chance to grow some ice. important because Arctic storms tend to blow top to bottom, which brings us to the Fram Strait between Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago.
The Fram acts as a plug holding back wind-blown ice and slowing one of the factors leading to decreased ice, the physical/mechanical movement out of the polar waters.
A couple more weeks and Svalbard may be completely iced in.
And helping things along is the wind. Click through to Ventusky's interactive wind and temp map to see for yourself.
