That is one hungry looking polar bear!

To me there seems to be a disconnect between the thickness/age models and the reality I am watching in the current observed images.

and now the last of the large(50km)floes in the Beaufort has broken up. Still asking! If there is so much multi year ice in the Beaufort sea why is it breaking up so easily? The ice in the centre of the NW passage is at least 2 years old and presumably also thicker than one year ice and yet here we are with the whole length of the NW passage broken up in spite of the fact that that ice was linked to land on both sides.

can you set up a like button on this blog Neven? there are times when a like would be appropriate response to a comment.

Sorry I missed out some words in my last post and it does not make sense. here is the amended first part of the post. " If we look at a MODIS image for 31st July we can clearly see a maximum of 10 (probably less) distinct floes (and largest 3 or 4 being 50km in cross section) surrounded by what to my eyes looks like a mix of much smaller material and open water in the Beaufort sea."

I have a question. if we look at a MODIS image for 31st July we can clearly see a maximum of 10 (probably less) distinct floes (and largest 3 or 4 being 50km in cross section) surrounded by what to my eyes looks like a mix of much smaller material and open water. the same is depicted on the university of Hamburg red and blue more graphic depictions of the ice. so why is it that there is an insistence on calling the blue ice melt ponds and apparently trying to down play the state of the ice? In the NW passage it is also clear that the ice has broken up into mostly small floes which are covered in melt ponds. to me it seem clear and obvious which are melt ponds and which areas are shattered ice which may also have melt ponds. Surely if the ice is so easily shattered into small pieces it is highly likely that the claims of thick multi year ice are at the very least flawed. I am unpleasantly surprised at how much melt there is this year I did not "expect" it for another two years. MASIE has dropped a million km2 in the last nine days. Cryosphere today are reporting that more or less the only places with extra ice this year are in the peripheral seas. Greenland, Hudson bay and Baffin bay. There is an awful lot more blue this year in Beaufort Chukchi and East Siberian seas . I think a nasty surprise is now possible.

A one day drop on MASIE of 279,000 km2 does not look like a slow down to me.

at this stage of the season I do not see the area minimum being higher than 3 million and quite possible as low as 2012.

North West passage now more or less broken up from end to end we must be days away from transport.

Calling 2013 and 2014 rebound years implies a reversal of climate please point to one single piece of evidence that supports that idea. there is clear evidence that this was in both cases a weather event superimposed on the ongoing trend. why is it that so many people go charging off searching for unicorns when there is a bloody great elephant in the room?

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html shows how much both 2013 and 2014 were weather events and not long term climate. both had an anomalous long pause in the melt beginning at about day 200. this has not been seen in any other year in the satellite era if my reading of the graphic is correct.

i do not often comment as I do not have any expert knowledge to impart but I think that it is worth observing that this year will not be the next new record minimum that title will probably go to September 2017. I think that too much emphasis is being placed on the three most common metrics for measuring the state of the ice in a time when they are no longer as important as they once were. I think that focusing on these things tends to blind people to the real world. since a significant part of all sea ice is now first year ice which breaks up easily exposing any chunks of older ice to nice warm water is it not likely that the Beaufort sea will melt out more or less completely. Look at its visibly shattered state rather than thinking about its theoretical thickness. Sea ice area is going to drop to 3.1 million km +/- a margin for a weather event with an appropriate extent to match. here is today's AMSR2 graphic. ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/AMSR2/Arc_latest_yesterday_AMSR2_3.125km.png if you compare this with the same graphic for similar dates for the last 2 years this year is significantly more blue. It is my opinion that there is an approximately five year cycle superimposed on the downward trend in sea ice extent/area.This is what my brain sees when I look at graphs of recent years. I would put money on 2017 being the next record unless it is interrupted by a weather event, such as that which created 2014.

sorry poor wording, I mean the edge of the unbroken ice has moved south by 200km and it looks as though there will be more breaking up in the near future significant cracks even further south.

the ice in the north end of the North West passage seems to be breaking up quite dramatically at the moment the fixed ice front has moved south by about 200km in the last week or so.

mark the thing you need to know about the Antarctic is that it is melting rapidly and that is a bad thing. As a trivial side effect massive land ice loss is contributing to a significant but trivial increase in sea ice area.

Mark there is no evidence that the ship sailed to that location.it is quite likely that it drifted there locked in ice. it certainly died there locked in ice. only fantasy writers think the NW passage was open in that era. If it had been open they would not have died. Neven MASIE is still dropping as of day 262 dropped over 45,000 sqkm from day 261. almost 379,000 drop in the last 10 days.

comedy central:- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html anyone for some cherry picking?

yes but why is this year so dramatically different to previous years on area when extent is dropping "normally". the areas of bluing ice seem to be getting bigger not smaller. the North West passage is showing signs it may break up, which earlier in the season I would have bet real money was not going to happen this year.

help me out here guys what am I not understanding. this graph. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html is showing area melt almost dead stopped with a drop of only a little over 100,000km2 in the last 11 days. MASIE is showing a drop from 7363030 to 6282898 in the same period. this >>> ftp://ftp-projects.zmaw.de/seaice/AMSR2/Arc_latest_yesterday_AMSR2_3.125km.png is clearly showing continued melt and thinning ice and the Laptev bite is getting closer and closer to the 85th parallel. closer than I recall it being before. I am confused.

Hans Gunnstaddar referring to and citing web pages like that one about Fukushima give you no credibility at all. worse gossip than you read in women's magazines. just one example of spurious linking is the sea star issue. here is a link to reality >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_wasting_disease the idea that a tiny event like Fukushima could have significant effects on the Pacific ocean is laughable and defies all logic and common sense. do you have any idea how big the Pacific ocean is and how small the radiation leak is by comparison? you are more at risk eating a banana picked anywhere in the world than you are at risk from eating Pacific fish. no more comic book sources please.

http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/Arctic_r03c03/2014194/Arctic_r03c03.2014194.terra.250m.jpg Nares is still hanging in there but should be open in a day or two. the ice is thicker assuming that PIOMAS is right but area is not playing ball at this point in the year. still tracking close to last year which was not significantly higher than the previous low years 2007 2011 and 2012. the big event still to come is what happens at day 205.http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html last year was clearly an outlier in that, that area remained basically static for ten days. by my eyes this has not happened before in the satellite era at this time of year. so unless we get another "outlier" year I expect this summer to follow closer to 2011 than 2013. I expect that the next record minimum will be in 2017 and probably not before that but maybe one year later. it is my opinion that there is a five to six year cycle in the minimum with a downward trend.

your research on where China stands in this issue is a little off base. China currently plants 3 billion trees per year and has the largest man made forest in the world. 500,000 sq km. China is already in the process of replacing its public transport buses with ones running on LNG. in my city about half the fleet is running on LNG right now. the same applies to taxis. do not assume that China is behind the West it is a long way in front in many ways. the USA burns more coal per head of population than China does. China is building more bigger infrastructure than the USA in any field you care to research. the nuclear power station building is going on now as is other renewables. it will also be the Chinese fishing fleets that rule the waves not Japan.

the author is writing fiction. why complicate matters by being to rigid in sticking with the facts. since he wants events to have taken place before there is a record of anyone being at the pole it is all poetic licence anyway.

we have all been looking in the wrong place for answers. :) http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/geoengineeringwatch-org-weather-update-january-12-2014-2/ a little light comedy for a wednesday morning.

Jai Mitchell try doing a little research before posting conspiracy theories. I live in China and no one is going to be doing any significant cloud seeding, there are no clouds at this time of year to seed. this is the dry season and has been for two months. the local government has a truck fleet that spends 12 hours a day 7 days a week watering the public road side trees and plants. When it last rained it rained continuously for 48 hours and that was a whole months rain. the average in this part of China during November/December is 2in per month. I never dreamed that I would be praying for rain but I am, the pollution sucks and it is far worse in the north. there is talk of cloud seeding in 2 years time but is is just talk.