Thanks a lot for keeping an eye on those buoys, Rob. Somehow I must've removed them from the ASIG, although I also had a look at them during and after the cracking event. People who are following the ice break-up in the NWP need to switch tiles on the Arctic Mosaic tomorrow.

Wow, that's just as warm as it was in Austria today. Luckily, we only have that two weeks at most per year.

I just wanted to ask, you may know, if there's a simple map somewhere that shows if it's gonna be sunny here, cloudy there ..., a prediction map just like the one the tv meteo guy shows, but for the Arctic. Doesn't sound very serious I guess... Ulises, I usually look at the ECMWF weather forecast on Wetterzentrale (click on N.-Hem. and then the days - 24, 48, 72, etc - next to 500 hPa, SLP). The position of the highs and lows tell me approximately where it will be sunny or cloudy, and which way the winds are pushing the ice. Check out my ASI update videos, where I will regularly talk about the things I do to watch the ice.

I don't think Neven is excited about the melt. I'm excited and worried at the same time. I wrote about these mixed feelings 3 years ago. There's a link in the right hand bar under 'Best of Blog' leading to a blog post called 'To Melt or not to Melt'. In a nutshell: I'm very worried about what's going on in the Arctic (though not depressing me or anything, I can separate those things with my very own denial mechanisms). At the same time, it's a bit surprising/depressing/mindboggling how last year's record smasher didn't make much of an impact, not in my own social surroundings nor in the world at large, I believe. Apparently it needs to get worse. So let it get worse. But no, I don't want that, because that will probably mean people will die, and living standards will go below the minimum for a lot of people. That's the dilemma. I'm open about that. Don't want to give the climate denialists anything that they can grab hold of to attack the excellent work that you & so many of your colleagues are doing. I wrote about this very thing a couple of days ago on the forum. I don't take my own credibility so seriously. It's up to other people to judge that. All I can do, is be as transparent as possible about what I do, why I do it and what I stand for. I'm not interested in controlling the narrative out of fear of some backlash by fake skeptics. They will lash out anyhow, if they get the opportunity, as they're not happy about what events in the Arctic are doing to their narrative. Their silence (total lack of analysis or showing the whole Arctic picture) is deafening, except around the maximum, of course. In fact, last year I did try to control the narrative somewhat by not giving enough lower options in polls, figuring that a lot of people would vote very low and that it would make the ASI Blog look bad. What happened, was that 2012 totally smashed all the records. So I'm not going to worry too much about this aspect of appearances, unless a lot of people go all out alarmist on me. Then I will say something about it. Very simple, actually. Solvitur ambulando...

For some strange reason commenter Philip OnFire can't comment from China where he lives, and so I'm putting this one up on his behalf: the thing that I find most profound about this new map is how dramatically it draws attention to the system change we are seeing in the northern hemisphere in just one season. yes there is a big chunk of extra ice extent. but look where it is. down on the far south east of Greenland. down in the far south of the sea of Okosk (sp?) landfast ice against the Siberian coast where there was none or much less last year and far down the labrador sea and the south end of Baffin bay. but the central arctic is just gravel. I know it is very large gravel but more than half of the arctic basin is fragmented. all that lower latitude ice is going to melt and the scen has been set for a crash in the middle. if we do not have an ice edge at or near the North pole this year I will be amazed. it suggests to me that the cold weather we had in europe and norht America has frozen the sea in a band of cold below 80 degrees north and that relatively the central arctic has been warmnone of tha tlow latitude landfast ice looks thicker than tissue paper anyway. I am betting on back to back record years unless things change in ways I can not see. MASIE has dropped close to 1 million km2 in the last 12 days. the melt is on!

IMHO, when I read some of the predictions being made on this site, it seems to me that there might a reality gap. I agree up to a point, but I thought the same thing last year (not giving enough options on the polls for instance, because I thought they weren't needed), and then came the big record smasher. The 'alarmists' were much closer to reality than the realists or the reticents. This is not your father's Arctic, as they say, and I really believe that 2013 will end way below 2009, regardless of the weather. The question that I'm interested in right now is: will 2013 go below 2007/2011? The weather is changing, the ice pack is looking very patchy. Everything can look completely different in two weeks, despite the worst start to the melting season in at least 10 years, I believe.

Phil, personally I believe that chances of 2013 reaching a minimum in the vicinity of that of 2009, are about as big as chances of the Arctic being ice-free (below 1 million km2) come September.

Question to Neven: jaxa, dmi.dk and norsex deliver quite different values for the same year. Which will be the reference for our guesses in the end? "The next SIO deadline is early July. You are all invited to submit, as comments to this post, your best guess for the mean September extent of Arctic sea ice (NSIDC)."

Oh, and the Forum, of course.

Just to be clear: Comments are for predictions only (with a bit of explanation). For further debate of the methods/data/observations various people use for their prediction, and their criticism of those of others (which I find mightily interesting and stimulating, so please continue), I urge you to use the latest SEARCH post. Or one of the ASI updates.

Right now I'm thinking of something right between 2007 and 2012: 3.95 million km2 for the September mean sea ice extent. But it's very difficult. On the one hand I agree with Chris Biscan that precious melting time has been wasted. A good start is half the work, as the Dutch say. On the other hand it's just mid-June and considering the awful weather for ice melting so far, 2013 isn't doing all that bad. And everything that happens in the Arctic, always has two faces. That persistent cyclone might not have caused much of a direct extent decrease, but it definitely has had an unprecedented effect on the ice pack, from the Central Arctic to the Siberian coast, that could make a difference in August. I've been doing a bit of research yesterday, looking at previous blog posts from 2010 and last year, and one stroke of weather that is good for melting, will put 2013 firmly in second spot, I believe. But it will take a long period of that to catch 2012. I might go for a lower number next month, but right now I'm sticking to 3.95 million km2. September minimums for the last 7 years (million km2): 2005: 5.57 2006: 5.92 2007: 4.30 2008: 4.73 2009: 5.39 2010: 4.93 2011: 4.63 2012: 3.61

Wow, that's impressive. Thanks, Veritascatch. Looks like Yamal should indeed not have come much later. For others wanting to view that image: right-click it and pick "view image". Edit: I've added it to the post. Thanks again, Veritascatch. Good catch of veritas you have there. :-)

Great post, Larry, thanks a lot. I was just a tad later with the SEARCH 2013 Sea Ice Outlook: June report blog post, but I'm keeping this one at the top of the main page.

OK, enough about flatulent penguins, already! Back to Russian scientists in trouble, and ice conditions in the Beaufort Sea where icebreakers get where they want to go twice as fast as expected.

David, I'll see what I can do. At one point I, of course, will mention Greenland.

Oh, and forgot to say yesterday: Ice arches at both ends of the NWP are breaking up.

O-Buoy 7 also has a webcam, but are those real time?

There might be some way for Neven to change the widths off the three columns -- there certainly was with html 1.0 frames. Better to have allowed widths more like those in the forum. I've tried this before, but couldn't get it to work. I'll have another look. I'm also under the impression that less comments are getting caught in TypePad's new spam filter system.

And who knows, maybe Atlantic waters are warmer, making the ice edge retreat somewhat.

For myself; I'm not sure if we'll beat 2012, I think we will beat 2011/2007. But either way, it's going to be an 'interesting' season. My thoughts exactly.

Might not happen, but what if it did? Like I said: If this is real... :-) It's very interesting. The ACNFS model keeps us busy like never before.

Like the Spanish would say: Bery interesting. Gracias.