Warm Waters off NWT Coast

[Cainer]

Hi everyone! Recently, whenever I've gone on wunderground.com and looked at their global SST map, I noticed a growing pool of warm waters off the NWT coast near the Mackenzie River delta. I thought for sure it was an error on the map, because it showed water temperatures near 16˚C. So I dug around a little, and found that the ocean waters off the coast were approaching 20˚C!! That's about 6˚C higher than where I live, in Yarmouth, NS.



This seemed very high to me, and sure enough, some of the waters that were near 10-14˚C were usually still covered in ice this time of year, leading to SST anomalies of over 15˚C from what I can tell from the bunched up lines on the map below:


Average Ice Extent Map.


Arctic SST Anomalies.

Temperatures in Tuktoyaktuk, which is on the shore near the Mackenzie River delta, have only been about 4-5˚C above average for the past few months, so it doesn't seem like air temperatures are the main cause of the heating, and likewise the Mackenzie River itself is not as warm as the waters off the coast. So I really have no idea why the waters are so warm, but something interesting I felt like pointing out to everyone on the boards here. If any mets have clues or theories as to why the waters are so warm, I'd love to hear them!

[Chickenzilla]

This site says that sea surface temperature at Tuktoyaktuk are 7 degrees Celsius.