@Neven: I'm confused about these two polls. There are a few reasons - to do with titles, Attention notices, acronyms and definitions - but, as explaining all of that is wordy and somewhat confusing itself, I'd be grateful if you could clear up the core issue for me first. :-) As I understand it, the September minimum is the lowest daily extent in September. This is a "Highlander" value - there can be only one. The September average would be the average daily extent for all of September. Nothing to do with minimumity. I've got no idea what a September average minimum is. What set of minima gets divided by what length?

@Bill: That form of response wording, especially given the verb re-use minus the original negation, is not generally indicative of agreement. I agree. Jim: Not sure how what he said was in disagreement However, I also agree with this. ;-) Jim: I'm not convinced the low extent this year will be in September. [..] The only question being which year the end of Summer Melt is pushed into the polar night. Jim's statement is about the period in which the minimum may be found. He reckons that it will be extended to allow for an October minimum. Wayne: The latest little cyclone causing such damage so easily should do some convincing. Unless I'm mistaken, this isn't about the period necessarily ending in September. Whatever damage may occur due to cyclones, heatwaves or even mythical giants throwing rocks, Jim's suggested SSTs could still take that and push the minimum into October. So, while the tone of Wayne's response is contrary, what he said isn't. Hence the polite Not sure" in Jim's "Not sure how what he said was in disagreement". My impression is that Wayne saw an assertion about the minimum itself rather than the month in which it may occur. And still no big deal. I just find this kind of thing interesting. :-D

@Jim: Trolling ... inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages. Facts and truths are inflammatory on a Denial blog. ;-) - - - @NickWhalenMP: Curiosity about an MP interested in Arctic sea ice (sadly, not a British one) led me to http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nick-whalen-eye-roll-1.3535248 Priceless! :-D

@AbbottisGone: The grey area in the graph at the top of the page shows 2 standard deviations around the mean but each year obviously has its own idea about how much to conform. http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/files/2015/01/GrnToday_20Jan2015_Fig3.png 50% is rare but 2011 got there, as did 2015. http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/files/2015/10/GrnToday_15Oct2015_Fig1b.png El Nino and record temperatures contributed to an early spike in April. That prompted journalistic cries of "alarming", "record-smashing", even "catastrophic speed" - high expectations - but it's been a surprisingly lacklustre year as far as surface melt is concerned. Even the NSIDC article on their Greenland page talks about a "surge to rival 2012" and "extreme spikes" but, while 2016 is a bit more impressive than 2014, it's nowhere near 2012 so far. That multi-year graph above is a bit messy but there's a clearer graph for 2012 in a fuller article on that year's melt. The peak was one spectacular day with melting even at the highest altitudes. That gave a coverage of 97%! http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/2013/02/greenland-melting-2012-in-review/ You can see how unimpressive the 2016 surface melt mass-balance has been on the Danish Polar Portal. It shows 2016 jumping back and forth across the mean. However, whereas the plot of the mean starts rising about now, 2016 decided to go exploring and has suddenly dropped well below. There's still time for 2016 to live up to expectations. http://polarportal.dk/en/groenlands-indlandsis/nbsp/isens-overflade/

@wayne: In Blighty, bottoms and monkeys get spanked while asses, donkeys and horses get flogged and sheep and carpets provide a good shag but it's an arse that gets kicked, especially a lazy one. ;-)

@D_C_S: It's poorly explained on the terminology page .. https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/data/terminology.html .. where no mention of a threshold is given in the text and the example of extent/area/concentration mentions a threshold for extent (a hypothetical 30% for the sake of illustration) but not for area, and gives a value for area when the concentration is under the extent threshold. However, on the FAQ page .. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#area_extent .. they explain it more fully and give an example that discounts area of below-threshold cells. Area takes the percentages of sea ice within data cells and adds them up to report how much of the Arctic is covered by ice; area typically uses a threshold of 15%. So in the same example, with three 25 km x 25 km (16 miles x 16 miles) grid cells of 16% ice, 2% ice, and 90% ice, multiply the grid cell areas that are over the 15% threshold by the percent of sea ice in those grid cells, and add it up. You would have a total area of 662 square km (255.8 square miles).

The limerick version is good but I have to say that I like the extended verbal canter of "I conceded the chance of a summer titanic", so here's my verdict: An unorthodox poet called Chris, Wrote a rhyme wot Humanity dissed, When he said of the form, It's not true to the norm. But a limerick-like doesn't miss. :-)

The limerick version is good but I have to say that I like the extended verbal canter of "I conceded the chance of a summer titanic", so here's my verdict: An unorthodox poet called Chris, Wrote a rhyme wot Humanity dissed, When he said of the form, It's not true to the norm. But a limerick-like doesn't miss. :-)

The question for us is the sea ice extent. Whether two-oh-one-six, so heated, is meant To exceed the ice losses of twenty and twelve, Or stall (from thick ice on Siberian shelves?) Chris Reynolds thinks not and so does Doc Schroeder, They predict a good melt but not much too further, (In terms of a record to wake up the world) Despite north-bound heating that El Nino's hurled. Neven, our Hero! - oh go, be kind ;-) Thought it good for a record but changes his mind. Which means that he's not the most dogmatic kind, For he follows the data, not wishes opined. The bunny (iceBunny, not Eli the Great) Is too much a novice to say what the fate Of Arctic sea ice might be, later this year, But next year, perhaps, an opinion you'll hear?

@Sarat: IceBunny technically you are correct... That's good to know, although I must admit that, having enjoyed a chuckle at Neven's humour, I was aiming less for technical correctness than for smiles on faces. "Never let reality spoil a joke", is one of my mottos (although, in practice, it's best applied as the far less pithy "Don't worry too much if reality doesn't quite match the joke but avoid it if possible"). :-D .. but we may also end up with a situation where extent is low but the volume is relatively high (as only the thickest ice remains). This would result in an above average raise in PIJAMAS come September. Indeed, and the graph does show Neven's PIJAMAS occasionally attempting some modesty, pulling up slightly in September, before significantly drooping to about thigh level by the last week of October. Bottoming out, one might say. ;o) The September rise must be extent falling more quickly than volume, at least in some years, but the plummet in October, which is post-minimum, is extent rising more quickly than volume, ie. new, thin ice. The major rise starting towards the end of October is presumably some balance point where the ice, especially the new ice, is thickening up more than further new ice is being created. It's interesting how linear that rise in PIJAMAS is from November to mid-May.

I divide PIOMAS volume by JAXA sea ice extent to get average thickness that I can then compare to previous years. I've decided to use a serious acronym this time: PIJAMAS Continuing the serious outlook, if we see PIJAMAS dropping to the floor then we'll have a naked Arctic Ocean but even halfway down would result in an alarming exposure.

@P-maker: If you go to this site: http://ocean.dmi.dk/satellite/index.uk.php and choose ‘Two days before Tomorrow’ (i.e. yesterday), you will get something like an observation-based SST anomaly map for the Arctic... Unfortunately not. DMI has unfortunately decided to extend their anomaly scale to the extremes of -50 deg C and + 20 deg C It's the same scale as the SST maps and that's because SST maps are shown instead of anomaly maps. In fact the anomaly map is the SST for the day after the given date. http://ocean.dmi.dk/satellite/plots/satsst.arc.d-04.png http://ocean.dmi.dk/satellite/plots/satanom.arc.d-05.png

@P-maker, I hope you won't mind me taking the liberty of building on your poem. :-) __________ A smallish low in the sea of Beaufort Created strong winds and sent an onslaught Of swells towards a township in fear. It got all our attention this year. On their way, the swells broke multi-year floes, as if they were icicle fingers and toes, Then battered the coastline of Barrow-IN-Sea. We are excited yet anxious at how they will be. __________ Q. The people or the floes? A. Both! :-D