Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer (ESMR) data for 'winter' months, November 1973 to April 1974, and for 'summer', May to October 1974, are used to examine the synoptic scale sea ice-atmosphere interactions over the Beaufort/Chukchi Sea and the European sector of the Arctic. The synoptic scale variability in the microwave brightness temperatures and sea level atmospheric pressure and temperature is examined through the use of principal components analysis. Changes occurring in the ice ablation season are found to be responsible for much of the variance in the data. Canonical correlations are used to derive the leads and lags in the ice-atmosphere system. Positive feedbacks are identified between the ice and the atmosphere, and the direction of the ice-atmosphere forcing is found to vary both seasonally and regionally, and also between the areas of permanent pack and the seasonal sea ice zone.