Only tangentially related to this post, but what do folks here make of the blog post below? Is this storm "freak weather" or does this have long-term climate implications? Also, what does the extreme temperature anomaly imply for next year's melt season? http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/27/warm-arctic-storm-to-hurl-hurricane-force-winds-at-uk-and-iceland-push-temps-to-72-degrees-f-above-normal-at-north-pole/

Slightly off-topic -- Looking at today's images at http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/index.html , I notice significant melting in the CAA straits & waterways. Is this typical for this time of year? I seem to recall melting in this region only occurring at the end of the melt season, not in spring. Not an encouraging sign if this is new behavior...

Sphaerica: I agree in principle that melting should slow down as we approach the minimum, as this is historically what has happened. However, just as a minor reminder of planetary geometry, the sun doesn't set north of 80 deg N until very close to the equinox, so that region is still getting 24 hours of sunlight! Qanaaq (77N) sees its first sunset of the season on the 22.Aug, and the "sunset line" move northward daily as we approach the equinox, reaching 90N exactly on the equinox. This means there's still plenty of solar input available to fuel melting.

I'm looking at today's UBremen SSMIS map (at http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/index.html) and wondering how long it will be before we have no areas with 100% coverage. We still have 2-3 more weeks of high summer before melting slows down...