The image above shows recovery of Arctic sea ice extent over the month of December 2019. As supported by the table later, the pace of refreezing allowed 2019 to match and exceed for a few days the 12 year average (2007 to 2018 inclusive).
The month began with seas on the Eurasian side (left) already ice-covered, so no additional extent came from there. OTOH Hudson Bay (right) filled in completely, gaining from 445k km2 to 1255k km2, virtually to its max. Most of the action now is on the Pacific side (bottom) where Chukchi iced over, and Bering (center) and Okhotsk (left) have started to freeze in ernest.
The graph below shows the ice extent growing during December compared to some other years and the 12 year average (2007 to 2018 inclusive).
Note that the NH ice extent 12 year average increases almost 2M km2 during December, up to 13.1M…
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