Had a quick look after Espen's heads up and I'd have to agree that Petermann looks a little changed at either side.

As a completely amateur lurker, I rarely comment, lest I make a complete fool of myself. However, I can't resist noting the apparent havoc that the recent persistent low pressure systems seemed to have wreaked on the pack, all the way from the Laptev to (what remains of) the Beaufort Sea. Looking at today's MODIS image appears to show holes and low concentration all the way around the arc on the Pacific side. It this normal (at least for the recent past) at this time of year? And what does it portend? Can we now expect to see a fairly rapid clearing of the E Siberian, Chukchi and Beaufort, with the lows continuing to drag ice away from Russia and towards the very warm Beaufort? Time was, lows would be bad for ice loss, though it doesn't seem that way just lately. And if so, what then? With the outside ice lost, does the rest get whisked across to the Atlantic side with nothing left to replace it? The current glops of MYI exiting the Fram must be hurting volume a little, so I dread to think what would happen if a strong DA should take hold for any appreciable time. Since we are at this point so early, with a seemingly vulnerable pack, it seems that this year has extra time available over 2011 to make this eventuality come about. Are my fears likely, or am I being too alarmist, do you think?

Nice to see the news has at last hit the mainstream, with it being the number 1 read item on www.bbc.com just at the moment.

I was thinking that was just an overlapping cloud ... but it did have be going for a minute. I'm sure we shall all see very soon.

The low SIE reductions of the past few days are noteworthy and it may well be that we are seeing the end of the melt, however that might not be the whole story. For one thing, there's a lot of marginal ice around, with large areas hovering around the 15% cut-off level and only a little bit of additional melt in these areas (or wind-driven clearing, for that matter), could change matters significantly. Then there are the interesting states of affairs of the coast of Greenland, where large chunks of land-fast ice just keep dropping off and melting in the Greenland Sea, reducing the formerly ice-free area there. There is also a large blob of multi-year ice entering Fram Strait from Northern Greenland and occupying formerly clear ocean of the polynia there. Lastly, there is the interesting large triangle of thinnish (but probably >15% concentration) ice floe just to the right of that, also entering Fram Strait. So, IMHO, whilst it might be "all over,rover", there could equally be a few surprises to be had yet.

Yes it does, and to my untrained eyes, far more volume is being exported than through Nares St. I wonder how many weeks this situation will remain in place and what scale of effect this will have on the remaining multi-year ice?

The remaining large chunk of landfast ice in NE Greenland has suffered another large-scale collapse according to this latest MODIS image ...http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c03.2010222.terra.250m