I mentioned the phenomenon of grounded sea ice in the Kara Sea a few years back. Here a recent image of the same area in a wider view of the whole northeastern Kara Sea showing this still happens in 2017 at the same places.

But this is not the only area in the Arctic Ocean where sea ice gets in contact with the ocean floor at places away from the coast and is thereby fixed in place and does not move with the general ice drift in the area any more. The most famous area of this kind is the Norske Øer Ice Barrier off the East Greenland coast. The special thing about this is that the ice in parts is semi-permanent here, it only breaks up completely in some years.

At this time the ice barrier forms a continuous solid area of ice together with the freely floating land fast sea ice closer to the coast. How this typically looks like in summer can be seen in my Greenland mosaic. Another places where grounded sea ice is well visible at the moment is the East Siberian Sea. Here an image from March of the area north of the Medvezhyi Islands.

And here the same area a few days ago.

All images based on Copernicus Sentinel-3 OLCI data.