I think 2.8 for PIOMAS minimum. Extent and area are much less certain, since there will be likely a lot of thin ice at minimum which could also melt. But I'll make a blind guess at 2.8 mio km^2 extent.

At first glance, the area and extent numbers don't look bad. Unfortunately, all the other news and images more than makes up for that. And it's only the beginning of melt season... o/~ My feelings can't reach you, Our bonds being torn apart The clouds drift away regardlessly on a Grey Wednesday Now, remember the spectacular past When everything was bright, when you fell in love Now, remember the time we loved each other When we stared into each other's eyes Now, remember the spectacular past When you lived for a dream, when you loved each other o/~

More rain doesn't automatically mean more farmland. There are several stages in between until the ground would be fit for farming. If you want to speed that up, maybe the best fitting word for what is needed is not just "irrigation" but rather "terraforming".

And as Wipneus shows, for 2013 zero is within the error range for the volume minimum... (although it takes 2 or 3 more years for zero to become likely)

I think certain people just don't want to listen. You will probably have the best chance to get to some of them if they're not from fossil-fuel-rich regions and tell them temperatures are going up, and it's best if they start developing green technology because in the future everyone will want them, and they'd get lots of jobs if they've got the best green technology. If you like this petition, sign it and spread the word: http://wh.gov/Xg5R (Does not contain secession!)

Espen, it looks a bit like a man with wings... Icarus flew too close too the sun and his wings melted, so he fell to his death...

@21:54 Translation: Black Swan: an anomaly, followed by a return to the old normal. Dragon King: may look like an anomaly at first, but is a paradigm change, a switch to a new normal.

Exponential and gompertz curves barely differed at all for the past, only really diverging in 2011. So R^2 values would naturally be close as well. I clearly favor exponential only because I see the point where all ice has melted not as a wall (from which you can only go backwards to having ice again) but as a borderline between icy seas and warming seas.

http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/sia_10.png (forgot to include the graph, sorry)

Jim Williams: I thought this graph by Jim Pettit shows that the year-to-year loss of ice volume is caused much less by the melt seasons getting stronger (maximum-following minimum) than by refreeze seasons becoming weaker (maximum-previous minimum). Does that count?

A4R: I think Espen was not announcing that, but was wondering how soon it would be announced.

I think it's more like a Gaia principle, but rather a weak principle: Gaia is indeed a system, but it only continues to harbour life in recognizable form because the system's reaction to crises were coincidentally such to keep life alive - if not, we wouldn't be here. Life will probably be kept alive in the future as long as the future crises are just repetitions of the old ones and the old solutions are still available and still work. If the crisis is new (like global nuclear war) or the old solutions no longer work (because humans interfere with the self-regulation mechanisms) we're in unchartered territory. However I think Gaia as a whole (life on Earth) is currently not in danger, as the planet already had been through near-snowball and through iceless greenhouse eras and is currently far from either extreme. However, mankind has evolved as a species during the current icehouse climate of glacials and interglacials, and civilisation and agriculture during the current interglacial - could human civilisation adapt fast enough to climate changes toward a greenhouse?

Early Eocene had CO2 levels of 3500 ppm and high methane levels, too. All of that ended with the Azolla "event" (the length of which was still several times of man's written history) when Azolla plants consumed the CO2 from the atmosphere and then died, the remains falling into a dead sea without decay, resulting in a permanent loss of that carbon to the atmosphere.

Djprice537: I think what is meant is an ice free Arctic Ocean. The land will cool out faster without sunlight, with snow and everything, but if the sea has enough heat in it, it will eventually remain ice free.

Artful Dodger: You definitely shouldn't mess with ents. They take their time to react, but when they do, it's devastating.

which means the Central Arctic Basin is at about 60% of its usual ice area.

Jim Pettit: Very interesting volume loss graph. People tend to assume the loss happens by growing melt during the melt season... while the graph shows the large majority of it happens due to waning refreeze.

Who ordered that??

We just never see the ice drift past the Fram since whenever it gets there it's melting quickly.

DMI's graph seems a bit odd to me... when all the other graphs are moving downwards, DMI seems to stand still, and then jerks down the double amount on the next day. Is the movement really just too small too see, or is it zero because when adding up the numbers those numbers weren't updated yet?

I would think we're in bottom melt season now... the poleward ice may be getting significantly less sun, but the heat that's already in the sea will continue to gnaw at the edges and between the floes, while area loss may slow down sooner since around the center of the ice holes will freeze over when neither sun nor water have enough heat to prevent that. So I guess we'll have volume melt for the next 3-4 weeks, even if an area minimum is reached earlier.

It's less than 1K over 2007, and just over 15K over 2011...

I think Tor Bejnar was referring to the anomaly of the Central Arctic Basin alone, not that of the total Arctic Seas.

I've just looked at the area records again. Around this time of year, 1979 (and 1996) went below 6m, 2004 went below 5m, 2009 went below 4m and 2012 is going below 3m. You can see the melt speed up in the PIOMAS volume record, but it also clearly shows in area now.

Wizard of O2C?