<P> Most of the ice - free seas are covered by ice for part of the year (see the map in the sea - ice section below). The exceptions are the southern part of the Barents Sea and most of the Norwegian Sea . These regions that remain ice - free throughout the year have very small annual temperature variations; average winter temperatures are kept near or above the freezing point of sea water (about − 2 ° C (28 ° F))) since the unfrozen ocean cannot have a temperature below that, and summer temperatures in the parts of these regions that are considered part of the Arctic average less than 10 ° C (50 ° F). During the 46 - year period when weather records were kept on Shemya Island, in the southern Bering Sea, the average temperature of the coldest month (February) was − 0.6 ° C (30.9 ° F) and that of the warmest month (August) was 9.7 ° C (49.5 ° F); temperatures never dropped below − 17 ° C (1 ° F) or rose above 18 ° C (64 ° F); Western Regional Climate Center) </P> <P> The rest of the ice - free seas have ice cover for some part of the winter and spring, but lose that ice during the summer . These regions have summer temperatures between about 0 and 8 ° C (32 and 46 ° F). The winter ice cover allows temperatures to drop much lower in these regions than in the regions that are ice - free all year . Over most of the seas that are ice - covered seasonally, winter temperatures average between about − 30 ° C and − 15 ° C (5 ° F) and + 5 ° F). Those areas near the sea - ice edge will remain somewhat warmer due to the moderating influence of the nearby open water . In the station - climatology figure above, the plots for Point Barrow, Tiksi, Murmansk, and Isfjord are typical of land areas adjacent to seas that are ice - covered seasonally . The presence of the land allows temperatures to reach slightly more extreme values than the seas themselves . </P> <P> An essentially ice - free Arctic may be a reality in the month of September, anywhere from 2050 to 2100 </P> <P> Precipitation in most of the Arctic falls only as rain and snow . Over most areas snow is the dominant, or only, form of precipitation in winter, while both rain and snow fall in summer (Serreze and Barry 2005). The main exception to this general description is the high part of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which receives all of its precipitation as snow, in all seasons . </P>

What are the conditions like in the arctic winter