The blob of thick ice that seems to have detached from the Canadian Archipelago and started moving west. Normally this is the thickest patch of ice in the arctic and last bastion of safe ice. At 5m thick it will likely survive the summer, but once adrift in the Beaufort, it will eventually melt out (in 2016?), leading to a significant drop in volume. Another sign in my opinion that 2015 is preconditioning us for a bad year next year. Check out the dark blob west of the 100 meridian: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn/nowcast/ictn2015072318_2015072400_040_arcticictn.001.gif

Is there a new link for the IJIS data?

Ghoshmm, they are there, but the link from the graphs page is out of date. This year's data is at: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot_v2.csv

Sounds like the Iqaluit storm is pretty spectacular: From http://robsobsblog.blogspot.ca/ "That Iqaluit storm is one of the most intense storms I've ever seen in my 30 years following meteorology. To give you an idea how intense this storm is.. a meteorological "bomb" is defined as a storm which exhibits explosive deepening at the rate of 24 mb within 24 hours. The pressure at Iqaluit has dropped 36 mb within the past 12 hours.. so it's intensifying at 3 times the rate of a bomb. I've never seen a storm do that to that degree. Absolutely jaw dropping stuff. I suspect this may be the worst storm on record for Iqaluit with lots of damage."

More winter weather weirdness: near hurricane strength blizzard in Iqualuit. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iqaluit-blizzard-brings-winds-up-to-135-km-h-1.2486725

Here in Winnipeg, it got down to -38 C yesterday, which is cold. But I am not sure I buy the relation to sea ice. Currently, Arctic Sea Ice is not much below normal, and last summer was one of the highest levels in a few years, so why the record breaking weather now? Shouldn't the effect of sea ice melting be more pronounced in the late summer/fall when the anomalies are greatest?

Arctic sea ice area is now the 9th largest "country" in the world, dropping below Argentina in area today. Kazakhstan is next in line. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_countries

Never wrote: It's good to keep in mind that all those years had a lot more easy ice to melt. Would not the low average thickness this year as given by the Piomas/CT ratio imply that there is even more "easy ice" this year to melt, even recognizing that some of it will be at relatively high latitudes?

Great job William. I think that there was discussion on the issue of aveage thickness earlier, but this graph really demonstates how the average thickness has declined. Through much of last fall/early winter, average thickness of the ice was under one meter. Your chart shows this to be a new trend.

From the table Gas Glo, it seems there is a pretty good correlation between Jan 20 under 1.31 m and growth of greater than 1 million km2. That would make sense that years that start out exceptionally slow, tend to catch up to the average. This does seem like a small sample to draw conclusions from. 2007 is the odd year out, but then, that was an exceptional year in many respects in terms of extent.