It seems the conditions for Fram export are getting worse, both for ice coming from the Siberian and the Greenland side. But is there actually such a data trend, or is it just born from the fact that the Arctic Ocean used to be frozen further to the South compared to now?

Now the question is whether this will remain an isolated phenomenon or help putting the Fram into export mode during the melting season...

I've just looked at Wipneus' graphs with the February numbers already in them. It appears another cannonball like last year is heading our way. Last year we dodged one due to low export, but now?

And this year, there's more ice on the Atlantic periphery than 2012. I think it would tend to be 'easier' than ice in the CAB.

The mid-month data looks like there's more ice volume now than in 2012 in Barents, Kara and Laptev, while there's less in the Central Arctic. That could still mean less ice in the end, as it would mean more energy would go into melting the ice and less into warming water far away from the ice. We'll have to wait and see...

@navegante "Eastermost" as in "next to the CAA"? But even then, it wouldn't be protected by a strong barrier that used to be there, it would be the remnants of such a barrier.

I have not much hope that a new record low volume can be avoided this year. But I see a good chance that next year won't be this bad, just as 2013 and 2014 stalled the downwards trend after the record low of 2012. Of course, in the long or even medium term, the arctic ice will continue to shrink, but maybe the politicians have fully woken up to this development until then. Oh... and I found these 2 pieces in the 2012 soundtrack (in the June 2012 blog comments): Bright ice "Is it a kind of dream, Floating out on the tide, Following the river of death downstream? Oh, is it a dream? There's the Sun over the horizon, A bright glow in the sky, And nobody seems to know how far it will go, And what does it mean? Oh, is it a dream? Bright ice, Melting goes higher. Bright ice, How can you crack and fail? How can the ice that seemed so mighty Suddenly seem so frail? Bright ice..." Blue ice "Blue ice Arctic's got blue ice Like a deep blue sea On a blue blue day Blue ice Arctic's got blue ice When the morning comes It'll melt away And I say Blue ice melting in the sun Melting in the rain Arctic's got blue ice And it is gone, and it is gone again"

According to Wipneus' graph for monthly average ice volume, the May trend curve fell below the March trend curve sometime around 2010. So it has been in the cards for some time that there would be an earlier volume peak.

Wipneus already has the new numbers. It looks like those who said that the exponential volume trend line from 2012 was highly irregular and should therefore be disregarded were wrong... PIOMAS volume is now below that old trend line again.

Is the ARC-HYCOM ice thickness map trustworthy in general? Although the other values (ice volume, area, extent) point to another rebound or at least remaining at 2013/2014 levels, the map shows less ice that's thicker than 2 meters (some of that had just thinned drastically in the Beaufort). If thick ice is waning, wouldn't that mean the arctic still becomes more vulnerable to weather events?

Well sometimes you can't change and you can't choose. And sometimes it seems you gain less than you lose. Now we've got holes in our hearts, yeah we've got holes in our ice. Well we've got holes, we've got holes but we carry on. (I'm generally speechless about the "winner" idea and let the song speak instead)

Chris, I think SH was not arguing that an ice-free September wouldn't come soon, but that an ice-free March would rather take decades than years.

Is it just me, or is this winter's not-freezing (or melting, or cracking) ignoring the peripheral seas (that will melt anyway) and going straight towards the central arctic via Fram and Bering?

This winter's sea ice area maximum seems to have stayed below the minimal winter maximum so far. Also, the areas where the ice is "under attack" seem to be not just the periphery but rather the ice in the Svalbard and Bering areas. Or am I misreading this, and this situation is more common than I think and doesn't point to a new minimum in September?

It's a rather amateurish interpretation. I just thought that Beaufort and Chukchi were the areas where the ice broke apart in winter and froze together again (with the interim open water contributing to areas with thin ice cover). And ice would have only compacted if pushed against land, be it islands or the coast (or the MYI, which leans against Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago), and the yellow areas seem not too far away from those areas now (months after the supposed formation). But I'm curious about what the experts will say.

So the orange areas are the MYI remnants, the yellow ones are compacted FYI, and the rest is more or less rotten ice?

I think 2.8 for PIOMAS minimum. Extent and area are much less certain, since there will be likely a lot of thin ice at minimum which could also melt. But I'll make a blind guess at 2.8 mio km^2 extent.

At first glance, the area and extent numbers don't look bad. Unfortunately, all the other news and images more than makes up for that. And it's only the beginning of melt season... o/~ My feelings can't reach you, Our bonds being torn apart The clouds drift away regardlessly on a Grey Wednesday Now, remember the spectacular past When everything was bright, when you fell in love Now, remember the time we loved each other When we stared into each other's eyes Now, remember the spectacular past When you lived for a dream, when you loved each other o/~

More rain doesn't automatically mean more farmland. There are several stages in between until the ground would be fit for farming. If you want to speed that up, maybe the best fitting word for what is needed is not just "irrigation" but rather "terraforming".

And as Wipneus shows, for 2013 zero is within the error range for the volume minimum... (although it takes 2 or 3 more years for zero to become likely)

I think certain people just don't want to listen. You will probably have the best chance to get to some of them if they're not from fossil-fuel-rich regions and tell them temperatures are going up, and it's best if they start developing green technology because in the future everyone will want them, and they'd get lots of jobs if they've got the best green technology. If you like this petition, sign it and spread the word: http://wh.gov/Xg5R (Does not contain secession!)

Espen, it looks a bit like a man with wings... Icarus flew too close too the sun and his wings melted, so he fell to his death...

@21:54 Translation: Black Swan: an anomaly, followed by a return to the old normal. Dragon King: may look like an anomaly at first, but is a paradigm change, a switch to a new normal.

Exponential and gompertz curves barely differed at all for the past, only really diverging in 2011. So R^2 values would naturally be close as well. I clearly favor exponential only because I see the point where all ice has melted not as a wall (from which you can only go backwards to having ice again) but as a borderline between icy seas and warming seas.

http://iwantsomeproof.com/extimg/sia_10.png (forgot to include the graph, sorry)