IJIS minimum extent: 1,458 km^2. CT minimum area: 0,968 km^2. NSIDC september extent: 1,7 km^2. The ice in the main pack will need a little bit of time to weaken in the spring and early summer, but once it gets going it will be really dramatic. The amounts of MYI are not impressing and will melt away surprisingly fast in August when everything else is gone.

It looks as though the situation on the atlantic side of the arctic is about to take a turn to the worse again. Over the next five days, strong southerly winds will be pushing the ice east of Svalbard in to the pack while at the same time bringing along mild temperatures from far south all the way to the north pole. Meanwhile, almost equally strong northernly winds west of Svalbard will help flush even more ice out farm strait.

How much longer will it take before a sun from a clear sky will be able to warm the waters of an open crack, or a polynia, in the Beaufort so much that it is unlikely to freeze over?

Jim_pettit. I can't see why you and Walt Meier consider the anthropogenic origin for ice loss to be 70-95% instead of at least 70-100% (or as Carex suggests, 70% to greater than 100%, to make the point that we might be countering a negative trend). With solar activity falling and without the obvious presence of other natural forces that one would expect to heat the climate, shouldn't one expect that human influence is just as likely to counter a natural cooling that would be increasing the ice volume (and thus be responsible for 100% of the arctic melting), as it is to be strengthened by any natural variation that is causing the the ice pack to melt further?

John, it sure is cold in the far north these days, but I would question if this will have any significance on the sea ice. Much of the coldest air, -35 to -45 degrees, seems to be located in an area that is already covered by thick MYI which, as far as I know, can only gain further thickness by compacting. Also, we have now come to February, something which implies that these are areas probably covered in a significant layer of insulating snow as well, I therefore find it difficult too see how this cold can have any major impact on the thickness or the general state of the icepack itself. Last time the DMI arctic temperature map showed temperatures this low was in the winter of 09/10, but I cannot see any significant volume gains in this period looking at the PIOMAS data, instead, three months later sea ice volume begun one of its most spectacular "of the chart" drops in recorded sea ice history. It is interesting to see this cold phenomenon happening, but I doubt very much it can have any impact on the sea ice or the upcoming melting season.

A-Team Methane measurements from Tiksi are available here http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=TIK&program=ccgg&type=ts

Just mentioning: UAH-global-temperatures going through the sky. http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Jan_2013_v5.5.png An unprecedented increase taken in consideration the ENSO conditions.

It is quite frightening to watch how almost the entire area between 0 and 90 longitude east (the area between Svaldbard, Franz Joseph and the north pole) has been emptied of thicker ice and filled with weak FYI only a meter or so thick. This is an area that has always been filled almost entirely with 2+ meter thick ice during wintertime. Last year, all the ice that was thinner than 2 meters melted away completely. So if this ice doesn't thicken considerably in the coming months, or get replaced by thicker ice from deeper within the arctic basin (something which seems highly unlikely if todays wind patterns persists for much longer) I think we might be about to witness a complete melt out of ice in this sector between 0 and 90°E next summer, the pole included. With one of the last chunks of MYI currently beeing flushed out in the Beaufort as well, it looks as though a "2013 sea ice disaster" is inevitable.

Interesting to note that there is virtually no MYI left on eastern side of the arctic ocean. Everything left east of the pole is FYI, and some minor areas of what appears to be second year ice that nearly melted in september.

I agree Lavevn, wierd weather on Antactica should not go unnoticed like it often does. And it is not just the cold that is gripping the continent, take a look at the temperatures in the polynia outside of West-Antarctica http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/en/index/hav/sst.htm Surface temperatures that are 4 degrees celsius above average. That can't be very healthy, can it?

This is completly of topic, but I hope that's not a problem. For the last couple of weeks a quite large body of open water has appeared in an area west of the Antarctic Penisula and north-east of Pine Island, along the shores of West-Antarctica. The opening of large bodies of open waters along the antarctic coastline during spring and summer, doesn't apear to be anything unusual. But this particular mass of water seems, unlike the others, to be abnormally warm. According to the DMI-maps, ocean temperatures are some places up to 4 degrees celsius warmer that usual. Although it has become quite clear that both the West Antarctic continent and the oceans surounding Antarctica, are warming, I find this four degrees temperature rise quite staggering. So my question basicly is, what is this really? Is it an event that has become quite regular over the past years as a result of a changing climate both localy and globally (like the warming of the Barent sea), is it perhaps just a quite insignificant event that happens from time to time because of some local weather phenomenon or something else that basicly has little to do with global warming, or is this some kind of freak event that we previously have expected to see in the future, but have not really seen before?

Another analog to the legal system. Being a bad witness with inaccurate and shabby testimony is not a crime in it self. However to deliberately withhold or distort crucial information, is considered a crime. It works somewhat the same with science. Delivering a bad scientific report with inaccurate and bad predictions is not, and should not, be considered a crime, it is a different story with scientist who deliver reports that are purposely implanted with false statements. I agree with Yvan, who states in the very beginning of this discussion, states that scientists are often under pressure to deliver reports that are somewhat political correct. However, being under presure is not an legitamate excuse for distorting science, just like being under pressure and risk loosing your job or your wife ect, ect, is not considered a legitamate excuse for purposely delivering a false testimony in a courtroom. Some of you like to refer to this report as ultraconservative, and it sure is. But when I am looking at theese fractions of this report, I also get a feeling that this is a report where key elements, such as various feedback loops, are purposely excluded from the calculations just to give a more political correct result. I think that criminally prosecuting the IPCC scientists is to go way too far, but I just want to remind all those that are defending the conservatism of this report, that there is really no excuse for distorting the truth, whether it is in a court of in a scientific report. Eventually I think the time will prove the predictions from this report wrong, but when it does I think it is more suitable to blame the politicians and the "big oil" for the havoc that will be following, not the scientists.

Although half the greenlandic ice disappering in 5 years sounds like way too much, one shall, as NLPatents points out, never underestimate the power of exponential growth. Not only will the reflectivity feedback that will create extensive melting, but also remember that for each hundred meters you go down temperatures usually increases something like 0,8 degrees kelvin. Assuming that this works the same way on Greenland, you would increase temperatures with about 5-10 degrees kelvin "only" by melting away half a mile of ice. And, as you probably already are aware of, if you combine this effect with albedo increase and the temperature increase created by global warming itself you get an inferno of melting. To melt away the entire greenlandic icecap within a century doesn't sound to unfamiliar to me, although I rather think it is more realistic to melt away about half of it in a century. I haven't done the math for either of theese scenarios, but think they are far from impossible.

That was very informative Crandles. However, I'm not so sure that ozone levels in the atmosphere will stop falling. Remember that when greenhouse gasses trap more heat in the troposphere, less heat reaches the stratosphere, and because ozone do not form in temperatures lower than -78 C this is already having a significant impact (The large ozone hole that formed over arctic last winter is a good example). But when it comes to what is happening with stratospheric cooling, changing wave momentum flux, and how that changes location of polar and Hadley cells, I'm the wrong guy to ask.

Thanks for the answer Neven. I agree that when the air gets colder, it sinks faster and therefore also result in stronger katabatic winds, however, the statosphere and the troposphere are usually not intimatly connected through various windsystems and heatexchange systems, like the upper and lower troposphere. That is after all why that troposphere can be warming while the stratosphere is cooling rapidly (That is at least the way I've been thinking about it, but you must correct me if I'm wrong). So to me it seemed a little bit strange that the cooling of the stratosphere also should cool the air above the Antarctic inland and thus result in stronger katabatic winds. But if I've understood you right and the air above Antarctica get so cold that it drag down the cool air from the stratosphere, wouldn't it mean that the katabatic winds only would grow stronger in the future as the global warming continues to cool the stratosphere, which again would imply that the SIA will grow bigger and bigger until this strange feed-back-loop somehow ends? Or I'm getting it all wrong?

As far as I understand the expansion of antarctic SIA is mainly, if not entirely, caused by stronger katabatic winds from deep inside the inland icecap. I have heard somewhere that the ozone hole and the cooling of the stratosphere are somehow causing the katabatic winds to increase in strenght, and thus being responsible for the increasing SIA, but I don't really see the connection. Is there any connection at all, or is there an entirely different reason why SIA is increasing in Antarctica?

When speaking about ice volume. Does anyone of you guys know about some recently updated volume measurements from other significant ice caps, like the greenlandic or antarctic ones? I have been searching a litle bit one the internet, but I can't uncover any data from after 2009. Taken in consideration my relatively poor googling skills, I do still believe that there is some recently updated data form gravity field measuring satelites (like the GRACE satellites) or something similar out there. Especially data giving a more detailed picture of the greenlandic ice volume. Does anyone have a link.

I just started to wonder how above average temperatures over the main ice cap effect the PIOMAS numbers compared to how it effect the SIA and SIE numbers. I would guess that PIOMAS numbers are more affected, but is there any real difference? Also, during the next ten days it is predicted that the air temperatures, above much of what is left of the ice cap, will stay 5-10 degrees celsius above normal. Will that alone have a signifacant impact on any of the numbers, or is the sun and wind conditions much more important in September?

"But ice loss has progressed at such speed that scientists now think 2030 might bring the first ice-free Arctic summer" This is the kind of prediction one can not trust. As mentioned in the text, this prediction has allready been revised from "the end of the century", but because they have used much of the same moddels, only with different numbers, it is no reason to belive this new prediction is more accurate. My guess is that the sea ice will probably be gone within 2016 and almost certainly within 2020. The sea ice might allready be gone next year if we see another 2007-like melt season. And dont forget that IPCC and other scientists have said that the greenlandic ice sheet wont be gone before the end of the millenia. Is there any reason to belive this prediction is more accurate? Absolutely not, we shall be very happy if not most of the greenland ice sheet has dissapeared in 2100.