Pretty amazing: average thickness gained 15 cm compared to last year. If another 15 cm is added this year arctic seaice wil be back to 2005-thickness.

"set the blogosphere ablaze in coming days" This kind of research will always heat things up, it will never cool things down, if you catch my drift. ;-)

"Ice Breaking ships are a main cause of Arctic sea ice loss is my feeling." Well,... I guess they contribute a little bit. Anyway, it costs a lot of diesel fuel to break up Arctic seaice. Peakoil will also mean peak-icebreaker. ;-)

Arctic Oscillation forecasts are dead in the water / sitting ducks. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_ensm.shtml All quiet on the Northern Front.

SSTs between 50°N and 80°N are starting to rise in the first week of June: http://goo.gl/8fCNt Just like last year. SSTs will max out in August

Seasurfacetemperature between 50 and 80°N is just above normal, as in May 2011 and May 2012. Usually June and July show a stron warming over the seasurface above 50°. http://goo.gl/DopQ8 Let's see what happens this year.

It will be a miserable summer in the Netherlands, Neven. North Sea SST is still more than 1°C below the 30-year average for the last week of May. It will take a lot of sunlight to bring the temperature back to normal.

Like your paraphrase of Joe Bastardi's "Enjoy the weather". Slow start of the melting season is something to be cheerful about, I guess. The longer than usual winter in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere may be a factor in the slow start.

Neven, if the relation between summer Arctic sea-ice-extent and AO is real, we can use the minimum-sea-ice-extent of 2013 to predict the value of the AO in the winter of 2014. Less sea-ice could mean a more negative Arctic Oscillation, couldn't it? ;-)

BTW it is an unreparable pitty we still need such studies - by this time we should have been ALL massively involved in decarbonisation of our society - forever. Ac A: Decarbonisation has already started. The process is picking up speed and may be happening a lot faster than you'd like. Ask the Greek and the Spaniards. If you want to stay informed on the decarbonisation check the Post Carbon Institute-website and Gail Tverberg's weblog Our Finite World.

Neven, I'm puzzled by the lag of 4 months or more between the Arctic summer-melt and the winter-cooling of Eurasia. I can understand that an icefree, warm Arctic Ocean causes more snow in October, November and December. But now can the ice-covered Arctic Ocean still influence weatherpatterns in February and March? Maybe 2013 is just a freak anomalous winter like 1963.

@Chris Reynolds + Arnd Bernaerts: North Sea surfacetemperature is on a downward trend since 2006 http://cassandraclub.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/noordzeeapr2006apr2013maand.jpg It is not a temporary cooling

@Steve Bloom: thanks for the nudge in the right direction. More about SSW's: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121081051.htm and http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/researchhighlights/SSW/

R. Gates: thank you for your comment. But we still don't know what causes SSW's and what we can expect for the future.

Neven, between 1987 and 1996 the AO was more often positive than negative. Between 1996 and 2008 longterm AO-average was around zero (neutral). But since 2008 the AO-average is heading towards the slightly negative value seen between 1950 and 1985. http://cassandraclub.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/ao19502012.jpg What could have caused the positive AO between 1987 - 1996? What is causing the AO to return to the normal 20th century pattern? By the way, the NH-snowcover is still way above normal. http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/nhtime-4month.png

Thank you, Neven, euros for your thoughts

Neven, do you have any ideas what is causing the atmospheric blocking and the deeply negative AO? Is it just greenhouse gasses or can we blame the low solar activity as well?

Shell is temporarily barred from drilling in the Arctic. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/15/shell-barred-drill-oil-arctic Statoil has postponed expolaration in the Chukchi-sea. http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/03/05/statoil-may-abandon-us-arctic-drilling-leases/ Sell your car en stop flying: peakoil is upon us :-)

Make that giant leap for mankind and STOP DRIVING

C: Don't go drilling in the Arctic. Just say no. Indeed. Just ask Ben Bernanke to print those huge returns. The FED is already laundering $80 billion of "bad debt" every month. Why bother with drilling and extracting oil, if you can simply make money out of thin air. ;-)

Hot or not: Christmas 2012 is whiter than usual. Nothern Hemisphere snowcover is way above the normal for december. http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_daily.php?ui_year=2012&ui_day=360&ui_set=2

In a high-pressure system skies are clear and thus a lot of heat gets radiated, lowering surface temperatures. Neven, I think that the air in the high-pressure-area is very dry and the lack of watervapour also facilitates cooling. I'm a novice in weathersystems can you tell me whether the high-pressure-area is the result of cooling or is it the cause of cooling?

I'm still reading the part about Northern Hemisphere snowcover. 'Till lured by sirens' cry.'

We have already given up on space-exploration. We see that manned space-expeditions are just a waste of energy and resources. Polar expeditions are becoming very expensive. We will soon realize that polar expeditions are also a waste of hydrocarbon fuel. The title Last Ice Expedition may be a bit premature. But sooner or later mankind will stop travelling tot the Southpole. Peakoil is a bitch.

@Tim: I wish you would take me a little more serious. The bottomline for the use of methane-hydrate will be the EROEI, the Energy Return on Energy Invested. If the EROEI is 5 or lower (comparable to tarsand-oil and shale-oil), then methane-hydrate has no place in our current society. Maybe it can be used locally so the Alaskans don't have to chop up so many trees.