That Watts blog prediction might out do this blog from last year. The ice in a bad way currently. Worse then most realize.

In the next 4-5 days at least the Laptev and ESS get totally smashed. The GFS smashes them up hardcore for the next 7-10 days. The Euro is less invasive but messes them up something fierce. Lot's of off shore flow with highs in the 60s to near 80F in places with lows in the 40s and 50s. I guess that would be like highs in the 17-25C range and lows in the 5-10C range. The open water area which is already huge will get larger the fast ice will turn blue and start showing fractures and stuff. Or just get really dark with the melt being so off the charts.

Are we talking about modeled loss? That seems pretty crazy given the amazing difference in total surface insolation by July 30th.

-180K today on CT area. Essentially tied with 2010 and 2012 for dead last.

The ice is already -600K below 2013 on CT and -300K below 2013 on Jaxa.

It's crazy how much the -PDO period in the mid 1940s to late 1970s coincides with major nuclear testing. I am not saying there is any correlation but damn. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.B.gif Looking at GISS temps drops right at the start of outdoor nuclear testing. Obviously we would presume that they are took weak to cause cooling but the tests did get stronger. Then right after the biggest outdoor test ever with the TSAR bomb temps drop of substantially. There was also a long term rise in sun spot activity peaking in the 1950s while temps dropped and GHGs kept rising. Global nuclear testing tapered off big time during tne 1960s. The coincidence is quite note worthy but could just be completely coincidental.

what happens with the ice this summer will soley come down to weather. If the weather is like 2013 the ice retreat will be like 2013 versus 2007-2012

The Euro has backed off big time now keeping a PV anomaly over the Beaufort/CAB the next 10 days keeping the warmth well confined to parts of the ESS and Laptev. Huge change from a day ago. Models are so worthless past day 4 in the arctic region. The Euro had the same solution for like 3-4 days then right when the event is expected to be underway it changes so much. So unreliable.

we are entering unprecedented territory and the worst is still to come. We haven't seen anything yet. So far this is all wind driven and solar maintained. Solar prevents freeze up but the melt hasn't really started on the Russian side. But that is about to dramatically and radically change. Oh and the winds are expected to continue to blow the ice towards the Atlantic. I have zero doubt if this dipole continues into mid June this year will be like 2007 was in it's time.

Cryosat appears to be having issues with resolving the effect snow cover has on estimates. 2013 has very high snow cover all over the arctic basin. One buoy shows almost 1 meter. 2011 had little to none. Look at how thin the CAB was on Cryosat. I highly doubt that is accurate. Even though there was a lot of thinning there.

There is no ice in the Hudson Bay. There is no refreeze North of Svalbard.

I still think we will drop to around 2011 on jaxa. Very strong winds are pounding the ice on the Eastern side centered over Franz Josef Land. This is foreasted to continue for days on end. The ice edge has already been nailed back to near 84N. 3-4 days in a row of long fetch warm Southerly winds will push it back close to 85N and it will meet up with the large open water areas and allow further encroachment of the warmer water that is right up against the ice sheet. The ice in the Laptev region is all toast there is a large area of open water in the middle of it that has been skewed from the sensors quite a bit. The ice is a wreck all the way up to the ESS and Chuchki essentially along the PM through the pole. With high pressure forecast to sit over the Laptev and ESS the next 7-10 days I think we will see steady opening of water here. Winds are forecast to blow hard from the Chukchi through the Southern half of the ESS and push the ice in the ESS towards the Russian coast where there is warmer water. The winds will be blowing off of even warmer water in the 2-6C range. Essentially three sides of the ESS is exposed to open water that will help aid in melt when the ice is being shuffled that hard around in it.

Guess he has never heard of up-welling.

I think we still drop over 2 million in extent. Maybe up to 2.5 mil. I have been holding on to 4.4 mil jaxa min and 2.9 mil CT min. I am feel comfortable holding there. There is a lot of thin ice to go. Lot's of whispy ice still being counted over the pacific side. The Beaufort/CAA is about to be torched big time. But a lot of cold air is forecasted to be over the central basin into the ESS. While it's in bad shape. It may not all melt out. At this point to reach the blogs consensus we need a miracle.

I am going with 4.65 million. Even that will take either the largest drop on the NSIDC extent charts from this point on or close to it. The Weather models show compaction picking up a bit soon but are still really cold for most of the arctic. The Beaufort gets torched good. jaxa is sitting at 6.98 mil while NSIDC single day is at 7.15 million. I can't see anyway over the next 5-6 weeks the rate of extent drop per day will be near 100,000K to reach the blogs consensus.

Potential major pattern change. But more-so the Atlantic side(Nansen Basin) get's smoked and then smoked harder and then harder by incoming warmth and sunny skies.

The computer models out through the first few days of July are very favorable for protecting the ice. The euro even forms another powerful cyclone. So more cold temps and clouds. More snow. If the folks thinking its causing bottom melt are right it may be a huge coup. If not the ice will be well protected from the mega torch in NA and Parts of Eurasia. Obviously the models could be wrong

GFS still bringing the basin wide melt.

Open water all the way to Greenland is a big commitment.

So most of you expect all of the FYI to melt and at least half of the MYI? all in roughly 80-85 days? Even though SIV is higher than 2012 and 2011 and the weather so far has been much better for ice preservation? Why didn't this happen in 2011 or 2012 during more ideal melting conditions?

That buoy is wrong. The other ones next to it do not show that

To match 2012 we will need some epic weather and epic melt rates going forward. To go past 2012 double up the epic-ness. To get to the 2-2.9 mil Sept min we will need a all out 1030HP Dipole parked over the Beafort/CAB/Central Basin for 40-50 days at least. To get under 2 million call in an act of God. Or a few small thermonuclear fission explosions within the ice pack to incinerate and obliterate it.

I give myself a 4. I have looked at the arctic weather everyday since early 2011. Followed others since 2008. Spent 500-1000 hours at least reading literature on the hardware(remote sensing, ITP's, computer algorithms) Countless hours reading papers. Countless hours scouring the WHOI site and past buoy data. I have learned that weather supersedes all. Albedo is next... ice thickness is next. I predicted 4.5 mil km2 preseason for 2011 min. And busted with 4.3 mil preseason for 2012. The only region I have ever read or seen that can melt out ice above 5CM per day for any length of time is the Beaufort where Bottom ice melt + Top melt can = 20CM+ per day. Just because the ice is fractured doesn't mean bottom ice melt in the central arctic basin is going to be enormous. So far I have seen an incredible utter lack of respect for the weathers impacts on solar insolation. So the cyclones/cold atmosphere have wasted thousands of W/m2 of incoming solar energy this melt season. The Beaufort has barely even begun to melt. Snow is finally melted and it's already peak insolation. This buoy shows no ice melt in the Beaufort: http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/irid_data/2012H_thick.png This one shows top melt and a tiny bit of bottom has started: http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2012L.htm North Pole has upwards of 20-30CM of fresh snow still no ice melt http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2013E.htm

2013 isn't going to blow by 2012 this week or next week. http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/irid_data/2013B_temp.png Still below freezing near the pole. The Beaufort is still full of ice. The Kara is still way behind 2012, 2011, and 2010. The pattern is still not great for ice loss.

Looking at these predictions I am clearly not being ridiculous. So people know that solar insolation has been way low this year vs the 2007-2012 period so far. They know more snow exists on the ice than in those years so far. They know a big contributor to the epic melts was heat in the water. Do you know how far behind this year is? Yeah, soooooo far! 2013 had higher volume as of the last piomas update over 2011 and 2012. It's all but certain the next one will be double that in terms of difference or even higher. It's taken a JJA NAO pattern like we have never seen back to at least 1895 to make this happen. We can attribute some of it to feedback's but we don't know how much. but we know a positive or neutral NAO = more ice. p://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.sprd2.gif It's June 15th. Basing the sea ice min on the most recent year's is over. We are a quarter of the way into the melt season. And it's been a complete 180 of recent years. if 2012 started like up to this point and still had the same weather after wards it would of came no where close to the record low it got to. I don't have to pretend otherwise I can chop off a quarter of the melt season and know that a whole lot of melt now has to be crammed into a smaller time frame that will have to be like 2007 to get back to 2012 or below. There isn't a magic energy tree coming to shake some energy here and there to play catchup.