Neven, I want to join the others who have expressed their thanks for all you have sacrificed, personally and financially to provide this platform (ASIB) and the Forum (ASIF) for the sharing of knowledge on all things Arctic. We would also be remiss not to thank your wife and daughter for sharing you with this helterskelter community. Your insight and witticism be sorely missed. I am very proud to say that I was one of the first members of the forum when it was launched almost 4 years ago. It has become a very valuable source of information. BTW, I threw a few more Euros your way, knowing that continuing this site and the Forum will still require financial support. I hope others will do the same!! Sincerely, OLN

Happy New Year!! Special thanks to our host Neven for maintaining this most important and valuable blog and forum. 016 is certainly going to be a very interesting year in the Arctic as well as globally. The impacts of unabated AGW/CC will bring even more catastrophic surprises.

Fascinating video. Thanks Neven.

Neven, Thanks for posting this. I'd often wondered if anyone had quantified the obvious increasing temps in the Arctic during the dark months. It will be interesting to see how much the current El Nino will impact temps in the Arctic this next winter. If so, will these temp increases have a noticeable impact on ice regrowth in any, or all, of the metrics we use. Might lead to another exciting melt year in 2016.

Quoting Chris Reynolds: "Is anyone else really enjoying this melt season?" Haven't had this much fun since 2012. I keep learning how many more things I need to learn more about. I'm at the age that I'm supposed to be getting forgetful....not smarter. Anyway, I'm struggling how to predict the September minimum while there is so much ice remaining in the Hudson & Baffin bays.

Would someone be so kind as to inform our illustrious "Arctic Scholar" Cincinnatus to read about Thermal Equilibrium before he make claims about how thick the ice is just based on the winter temperatures. DUH, I've only been studying what's happening in the Arctic for 3 years and I believe I'm a few semesters ahead of our dear friend.

Jdallen, My intuitive side agrees with you as I can see a plausible path for that to happen. However, the engineering side of my aging grey matter is still embedded with caution when asked to prognosticate publicly. On a side note, if Cincinnatus reads the Racing Form with the same acuity he reads the climate charts here on the ASIB, he'd probably bet on an aging brood mare in a race against Secretariat.

Some Horse Race!! The horse is the declining sea ice. Humankind is the jockey. CO2 is the drug being injected to cause the horse to run/decline faster. Current odds are as follows for September of 2015: 400:1 Continuous ice from NW Passage to Siberia 200:1 Ice remaining in Hudson Bay 12:1 2015 Extent lowest year on record 8:1 2015 Extent within lowest 2 years on record 5:1 2015 Extent within lowest 3 years on record 3:1 2015 Extent within lowest 4 years on record 2:1 2015 Extent within lowest 5 years on record NOTE: Race will be cancelled if Krakatoa, Pinatubo and the Yellowstone Caldera all erupt within the next few weeks!

Quoting Neven "Either the max is and remains mad, or we get this spectacular late ice growth snap which covers over 300k km2 of Bering Sea. It seems Arctic aficionados can't lose. :-)" Barring the massive Burp of IJIS Extent of more than 432K Km2 that occurred last year between March 9th and March 20th, the current Max is probably safe. But then again, this is the Arctic. http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1112.msg46972.html#msg46972

March MAX Madness I can appreciate Neven's reticence in calling the IJIS Extent maximum for 2015. Although many of us, me included, have gotten excited over being 1M Km2 below 2012 at this time, the big question remains as to whether that lead can be maintained until the end of April when insolation becomes a serious player. While developing my homemade model of sea ice extent decline I've had a chance to seriously look at the detailed IJIS/JAXA data in past years performance. March is one month filled with surprises, with significant up/down fluctuations. This makes predicting the ice extent at the end of April about as foolish as predicting where a hurricane will strike the Atlantic coast the minute a tropical system leave the coast of Africa. Three recent years, 2010, 2012 and 2014 all had extent gains greater than 300K Km2 during the first half of March. In the the last half of March only 2010 had a net gain (139K Km2). The next week or so will be very interesting to watch!!! The one nice thing about being retired is that if at any point I am forced to eat crow stew, it won't affect my paycheck. I'll still dabble with projections and occasional prognostication, but I'll save that for the Forum discussions.

Before we get into the news about the PIOMAS update, I'd like to throw in my thoughts about the idea for the novel. When I read the concept for an object placed in the Polar ice, I had a 50+ year flashback to a movie we were shown in the 4th Grade. At that time my family was living in Duluth, Minnesota and the St. Lawrence Seaway had just been opened for international shipping. Yes, that belies my age. The movie started with a small child placing a small toy sailboat into a river which entered into Lake Superior, somewhere along the North Shore. The movie continued with brief vignettes of the little sailboat, bobbing down the river, floating in the Great Lakes, going through the many locks between the lakes and then bobbing along the St. Lawrence river until reaching the Atlantic Ocean. For the novel to have meaning, the object placed in the ice must have it's own character that compels the reader to follow the journey and learn upon the way. Just my thoughts.

Neven, This recent post of yours is one of your better written essays. I've never thought you to be an "Alarmist." I do believe that you are an "Alarmed" (and well-informed) citizen making a valiant effort to communicate your concerns to a broader audience. I've always thought of "Alarmists" as those who were over-hyping their concerns, no matter how legitimate their cause might be . I can think of very few of the regular contributors to this Blog or members of the Forum who I would consider to be overly "Alarmist" when it comes to the topic of AGW. I believe that we are a collective of "Concerned" citizens who are aware that the consequences of unmitigated AGW pose an existential threat to the vast majority of humanity. As to the previously posted "gibberish" that the earth's carrying capacity is in the hundreds of billions, I have no comment that could be made without using vulgar language. Secondly, it's too early in the day to start drinking!

Thanks Neven for posting this informative, yet very alarming article. Also thanks to Chris Reynolds for providing supporting evidence as to how these changes in the Arctic are already influencing global weather patterns. If the recent decline in the Arctic's Albedo, due to Sea Ice loss, is already responsible for 25% of recent global temperature increases, what will happen when we reach the point of ice free summers in the Arctic?? I can appreciate the difficulty in developing models for predicting future changes in the global weather patterns. Most climate models use a 30 year average as a baseline. However, events "on the ground" are changing the baseline every few years? I shudder at the thought of what the Arctic Albedo will be after a summer that sees 2-3 months of an ice-free state.

Just by the volume of traffic on the forum, in the Consequences and Policies & Solutions categories, I would say that the more people learn about what is happening to the Arctic Sea Ice, the more they begin to understand the linkage with Northern Hemisphere weather patterns. I'm glad that a sociologist like Larry Hamilton is contributing to this blog. In the not to distant future, the sociological implications of unfettered AGW/CC may be as harmful to societal cohesion as the anticipated impacts on the weather.

Neven has certainly brought attention to the declining Arctic Sea Ice and the global implications of this decline. I also hope that the many contributors and readers of this blog are as generous with their euros as they are with their compliments. The ,"DONATE" button is at the upper right corner of this page.

Should we consider calling this storm Arctic Cyclone "HADES". What's happening in the Arctic regions this year is certainly Hellish: multiple cyclones, raging wildfires, spewing methane seeps and a broken Jet Stream to name just a few of this year's anomalies. That coupled with how many of the brightest minds, here and elsewhere, seem to be asking more questions than providing answers.

I do not like the idea of naming a storm after any of the "Deniers". They get far too much attention as it is and it just may inflame them into to more destructive activities. I have a strong feeling that using Inuit names is the way to go, however, a courtesy call or letter to various tribal councils is recommended. Therefore, while we are waiting on a response from the Inuits we name the first storm Arctic Cyclone NEVEN. I say this because no one person on this planet has done more to bring the world's attention to the demise of the Arctic Sea Ice than Neven has! He deserves the tribute.

The combined work of the many "amateurs" on the ASIB and the ASIF is truly impressive. These many animations bring the Arctic to life. Sadly, it is a life that is going through death throes. Every time I look at the daily HYCOM animation of ice thickness, I feel like I'm watching a sonogram of a dying heartbeat!

Unless there's a pretty radical change in ice behavior soon, it seems possible that WUWT's June prediction (4.8) will be more accurate than our August one. That would be a bit embarrassing. In the last 21 days alone, IJIS Extent has dropped almost 2.4 Million Sq Km. Since much of the remaining ice is very vulnerable, I find it inconceivable to lose less than 4.0 Million Sq Km in the next 6-8 weeks. 2007 is fair game and 2012 is threatened.

3.1 I've moved up a notch since last time. My approach is primarily heuristic, however, I use statistics and trend analysis to establish upper and lower limits as to what could be realistic projections. In looking at the past decade, years that had an up-tick, did not have dramatically big increases. Whereas, years like 2007 and 2012 had dramatic losses from the previous year. Therefore, I think an increase of more than 10-15% is unrealistic. On the lower limit, I can not envision two successive years of dramatic losses like last years. During the February/March fracturing event, I thought for certain that the stage was set for massive losses this year. Then the slow start of melting and low DMI temps began to indicate that we may not break any records this year. PAC-2013 has certainly done a great deal of damage to the integrity of the ice cap, and now the meteorological conditions are ideal for rapid melting. Every year is a new science experiment in the arctic. The lessons we learn this year will be valuable in helping to understand what is happening in the few remaining years of summer ice.

Quoting Neven: "There is a fine section on the ASIF where a couple of folks are having great discussions." In addition to the topics Artful Dodger mentioned in the Politics and Solution Category, Ww have a long running discussion about the "Global Impact (Economic & Societal) of Declining Arctic Sea Ice" in the Consequences category, with over 200 comments and 7,000 page views. There are many very important issues raised in the above posts and I would hope that these discussions are carried over to the ASIF. I may, as time permits, copy and paste many of them over to the Forum, myself, so that these thoughts are not lost forever. However, I don't want to be like an editor trying to decide which comments are the most relevant. So please come on over and join the conversation about the multiple ways we are destroying the planet!! https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,30.0.html

Re: U-Hamburg amsr2 concentration error. The error was corrected, I have started updating my maps and area/extent calculations. That's great news Wipneus. THANKS!!

Neven, For someone whose first language was not English, I continue to be amazed at your fluency, particularly when it comes to all things "scientific". After 33 years of working with scientists and engineers in the Defense Industry, there were few native born Americans, in the fields of engineering or science, that had your grasp of the English language and the ability to communicate complex topics with ease. After the ice melts, you might consider a second career teaching American engineers and scientist how to write coherently and fluently. BTW, congratulations on the Forum surpassing 1,000,000 page views in less than five months. A remarkable achievement indeed!!

A-Team, Thanks so very much for those animations of export through the Fram Strait!! For the past 3-4 days when I've been flipping through the various Rorcshach Tests available here on the ASIG, my eyes were trying to tell me that there was a lot of ice flowing through the Fram, and my brain was having trouble accepting that information. Not the first time by brain was wrong! My retinologist will be so pleased to hear this.

A-Team, That certainly is a fascinating and alarming animation in your last post. That fact that you have some amazing image processing skills as well as your references to living in Tucson made me think of something. To the best of my knowledge, there are only two employers in the Tucson area that have employees with in-depth knowledge of image processing. I retired from one of them. Obviously, image processing was not one of my skill sets. Just wondering.