Hello, my first comment here in about a year of lurking around. Thank you @neven and everyone else over here, for the great blog and discussions. It has helped mi to further map the extent of my ignorance wrt to the world I live in. Am too much of a noob to be making any kind of a serious observation, but the melting in Greenland just spiked again. Of course completely in line with the energy moving across GL towards the pole. http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ In the last year I have gathered that the subject is too complicated to be simplifying to such an extent. But the late high percentage melt area could be pointing to what @kate was alluding to up thread, what if the melt season lasts longer? @kate "what if...instead of day 261 being the melt end date like 2012, the end date was say 270? What would happen then?" One of the biggest challenges that I think the scientific community is facing with climate change is the speed. Say 20 years back, one outlier data point meant nothing because the rate of change was slow and you could treat that outlier as a freak event (excuse the simplified language). But now that the rate of change has gone exponential each outlier needs to be taken seriously it could be pointing at a faster rate of change. Similarly, for the entire hemisphere consolidating into one cell (dunno if I am getting this right). Such an idea 10 years back would have been taken as science fiction. Now, if something like this were to come about withing the next few years it would not really be a surprise. Optimistically speaking, my apprehensions grow about how much ice will be left at the end of this melt season and how that will effect the weather around the world. Pessimistically, I am reminded of 'Day After Tomorrow'. Aand my mental conditioning kicks in, science fiction I tell you... pfft.. nothing to worry about... back to lurking...