Great work Neven. "In recent years, the Arctic has dodged bullets and cannonballs. It looks like this year, it may have to dodge a nuclear bomb." I have been following your coverage of Arctic's melting season for almost six years now, but it is the first time I noticed such 'alarmist' language from you Neven. It really means that things are far worse for Arctic than it looks. Recent century drops in extent confirms that view.

Thanks Neven. I generally resist to comment on ASIF, if I do not have anything useful to say, but this time I just couldn't believe the 'scary' outlook. It really feels like a scene from a climate apocalypse movie. Your post does put things in perspective and shows how rare current events are, even when compared to past four or five years. If current trends continue, I guess that would prime ice for building 'THE' melting momentum we have even seen.

Thanks Neven for the post. One benefit of such drastic changes is that you no longer have any difficulties in reading such charts,as every year is competing to become an outlier. I remember that last year too the FDD chart looked very similar and it felt like 2016 was way off. But, now when compared to 2016-2017, it feels like 2015-2016 was not "abnormal".

Thanks Neven and Hans for clarification. I thought drainage was from right to left. Therefore, i got confused. If you watch it for the first time, it looks like May7th had a loss and 1st June, things returned to normal.

Neven, I think date on the second image is incorrect. It shows May 7th 2014. I don't know if time also got scared of climate change and started moving backwards. :)

Hey Guys You might find this video interesting. It talks about ice dynamics of polar ice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8ntyZh0vbY

Hey Rob, I am a newbie. So, this may be stupid question. Should you not use 'area' instead of using 'extent' here. " Extent - Arctic sea ice area". Wouldn't Area be a better indicator? Should it not be: Snow + Area - (Extent - Area)

2 million km2 or below. Its my intuition based on ice volume trend provided by PIOMAS. However, March cracks/Beafort gyration have redistributed the ice. So, ice is thicker at places where it melts anyways. Therefore, there is a higher chance that it will melt this year at places which had thick ice until last year. http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/04/20122013-winter-analysis.html Again, I also read in a blog posted on this site that there is no longer a barrier to prevent warm pacific ocean from getting into arctic ocean. So, based on above factors, my intuition is that the ice will melt extensively this summer.