The ducks are being lined up for 2016/7 record summer minimum as we speak.

My thoughts exactly Daniel followed by a 3 to 4 year slight recovery as in 2008-2010 and then a new low again. extent area only of course. general downward path of volume is a given unless something jumps out of the magicians hat to cause a big general freeze. the cold winter on the Pacific side of the Arctic is no big deal in my opinion. we get weather variability every year. there was about 5x as much ice in the Baltic this time last year for example. guess based on MODIS.

you only have to look at that russian map to see the possibility of an ice retreat back as far as the north pole leaving only the Greenland/Canadian side covered in ice. My gut feeling is that we will come close to or surpass that this year. If not then next year.

just shows you how thin the ice is even at its thickest. that area near the north pole is probably well under 2 meters thick.

You still have MASIE, MODIS and U Bremen Neven. still a lot more than scientists had ten and twenty years ago is it not? does anyone have the credibility to ask CT to send the daily data as an email until the site issue is resolved?

"Interesting that PIOMAS has actually increased year on year" I think it might be more accurate to say that the peak volume occurred a couple of weeks later. having been lower than last year during the previous month. besides the difference either way is trivial and observations suggest that that volume was only achieved due to late extent increase of tissue thin ice in low latitude areas where it is almost irrelevant it will melt so fast.

I think the methane issue is far bigger than is currently being admitted. I think that there is a huge amount of methane currently being released which is directly being consumed by bacteria and directly heating the sea.both on the Siberian continental shelf and also in the Hudson bay area. the Kara sea this last winter strongly suggests this. or some other thing has changed significantly this last winter. look at this graph. almost the same every winter for 30 years until this last winter. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.7.html

and ice melting temperatures forecast for the next couple of weeks Kris.

Idunno they are having a server issue. Neven posted about it a couple of days ago, do try to keep up :). http://www.accuweather.com/en/ca/moosonee/p0l/may-weather/1185 going to be even warmer on James bay. Hudson bay is going to see some open water.

I think it has more to do with the late season freeze than with the total area. total extent at this point is trivia, thickness is far more significant. specifically thickness in the main arctic basin. Hudson bay, SOO and Bering sea are side shows.

I was commenting on the speed of the loss more than the total area compared to previous years which I do not observe to be of special interest. Not a unique event but notable. Especially when you consider how much thin ice is still in the wings waiting to melt in May. I anticipate another month of rapid extent loss. Especially in the SOO.

the Barentsz sea coastal ice was never going to last long. none of it was more than a month or so old. north blowing winds kept blowing the ice out into the atlantic currents where it melted and was replaced near the coast with new thin ice. a repeated pattern all winter.

While ice conditions approached the 1979 to 2000 average levels for this time of year, the high ice extent will have little influence on how much ice melts this summer. Much of the ice cover is recently formed thin ice that will melt out quickly. Research has shown that sea ice extent in spring does not tell us much about ice extent the following summer. More important to the summer melt is the thickness of the ice cover, and summer weather. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ April report is up

Ice what ice? MASIE day 123 13787039, day 116 14798959 which comes to a drop of 1011920km^2 in seven days.

MASIE day 121 14,148681km^2, day 113 14,990231km^2. unless there is something horribly wrong with my maths that equates to an extent drop of 841,550km^2 in eight days.

http://www.accuweather.com/en/ru/okhotsk/288431/april-weather/288431?monyr=4/1/2012 http://www.accuweather.com/en/ru/yuzhno-sakhalinsk/290280/april-weather/290280?monyr=4/1/2012 http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/mekoryuk-ak/99630/april-weather/336698 not exactly tropical I know. but not cold enough to keep freezing the sea.

"Arctic seaice extent is still very close to the normal for 1979 - 2000" Hans Verbeek ther is a huge difference between the meanings of average and normal. the size of the average woman in the UK is now close to being clinically obese. welcome to a new "normal". the reality of course is that the new normal is fat. the same applies in the artic. To suggest that the average figure represents normal is suspect. Even if this year is close to but below being average then it is still in the bottom 50% of all years included in the average. there appear to be 1-2 million square kilomeres of ultra thin ice spread around the arctic. nominally first year ice but in truth only days or weeks old. there is your illusion of extent. And that will vanish in the Arctic sun.

Misfratz the temperatures in the SOO and Bering sea have been warm during April. the kind of temperatures that melt ice while the Kara sea has not been that warm and is further north. Things appear to be happening pretty much as one would expect. South Kara sea has fresh very thin ice near the coast and the whole of the south Kara is going to start melting very soon. when that happens the extent will drop like a stone. Greenland sea is doing what one would expect with a thinner more mobile pack and stays at a high extent. the Barentsz costal ice has melted off and the northern Barentsz ice is being topped up from the movement of ice from the central arctic. All very normal and predictable. the Bering sea and SOO ice still visible is very shattered and thin looking for the most part. huge extent drops on the way in May.

ance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?project=other&subset=BeringSea.2012117.aqua.250m and here is where half of that ice vanished from. very pretty picture of the Bering sea full of crushed ice.

MASIE drop from day 115 to day 117 is over 325,000 km^2. that is a lot of ice cubes!

Bah brain turned off I obviously meant MASIE didn't I! lovely clear picture of the shattered ice moving through the Bering strait on MODIS today. Beaufort sea also looks more broken up than at the same time last year. I see nothing anywhere to suggest that the high maximum was anything other than a localised weather outlier within the downward trend. we are heading for 2007 levels at minimum.

MODIS showing a drop of over 115,000km^2 mostly in the Bering sea.

John Cristensen I do not think that there is any merit to making a link between current ice area and ice arches at the north ends of the Baffin and Bering seas. in both cases the ice within the sea is very fragmented and mobile so the only thing preventing the ice arch moving is the ice arch itself. My eyes tell me that all the low latitude ice is greyer than last years ice which suggests to me that it is thinner and more transparent. Land snow cover in Alaska looks thinner in some areas than at the same time last year. The Baltic has far less ice than last year. the current fairly high levels of ice in the Greenland , Kara and Barentsz seas are all attributable to ice moving out of the central Arctic not new ice forming in those areas. of course new ice has formed in the central arctic but so what? a 100,000 km^2 of thin ice filling leads isn't going to be consequential down the line and the current situation means that older ice moved to a lower latitude where it is going to melt sooner. That huge polnya in the Bering is soon going to connect to the open sea and Bering sea extent will drop. SOO is dropping nicely and is at expected levels. we are all on track for the big melt unless we get a random local weather event to hex things

the Baffin bay ice looks greyer this year.

http://www.accuweather.com/en/ru/ust-kara/291508/april-weather/291508 seems to suggest things are not going to be that warm in the Kara for the next 2 weeks.