Ostepop: "We have seen 18 years without a rise in global mean surface temperature." Speak for yourself. Where did you "see" it, and in what record? I went here and did an estimate of global temperature trend since 1996. http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php It told me that the average rate of global temperature rise was 0.106C per decade. If you are making expansive claims, cite your source.

Interesting (looking at the IARC-JAXA figures just out), 2013 is marginally behind 2010, by about the equivalent of an average day's melt. It is ahead of 2009 by about 5 average day's melt. In 2010, the IARC-JAXA minimum was 4.81m km^2, in 2009 it was 5.25m km^2.

I have stuck with 4.5m km^2 all summer, but that now looks unachieveable. I suppose ~5.3m km^2 is a good number, but I would still not be surprised by a dip below 5m km^2,

John_Mann, Same story in Ireland, we had a scorcher in July, very high temp for >3 weeks (pretty long for us) but no records broken. August is pretty acceptable - overall best summer since mid-naughties. Like yourself, I reckoned on a 4.5m m^2 this year - it may still squeak down to that, but I am reckoning on a 4th or 5th lowest ever. A pallid "recovery" like 2008 and 2009, but ultimately only a dead cat bounce. This year has shown the Arctic has more resilience and variability that we thought, though not as much as deniers have been claiming.

Neven, Kudos. A well-justified piece by John Abraham. One climate hero salutes another. PS There would be a usual Gish Gallops no matter what the minimum is.

Henry, Michael Mann himself was once a huge supporter of sun/climate driver. Michael Mann changed his mind, so how can his former opinion be evidence for your current one? If Mann is your authority, then you must be wrong. Oh, never mind, I won't be feeding this troll either.

Henry, I'm not sure how many realize that our prediction from this site has a great chance to be a laughing stock at the end of the season while denier blogs like WUWT end up way closer on their predictions. I also lurk here with distinction, but cannot remember any instance of laughter at inaccurate predictions. Every year has had its lemons, and I don't think anyone is worried. What did draw snorts of derision, justifiably IMHO, were specious claims of a a full scale "Arctic Ice recovery" in 2008 and 2009.

Kevin, What you are saying is that the increasing variance is an artefact of the data collection because it has become harder to measure the extent of daily breaks due to the altered nature of the melting pack, itself a function of global warming. It is increased variance due to increaesd observational error, and not the variance of the melt itself. Sounds reasonable to me.

I have been downloading the IARC-JAXA record for a few years, and this year and last year saw double century breaks (>200,000 km^2)with the larger one this year, on 3rd July (208,281 km^2). However, it is clear that the range of breaks (max size - min size) has been increasing - the variance of daily breaks is now larger, making the daily melt more inconsistent and much less predictable. There are more large daily breaks, but possibly also more small ones (while the trend is to inceasing melt). Would anyone with a better grasp of ice melt dynamics be able to comment on that?

I'm sticking with a cautious 4.5 million km^2. No reason other than my gut.

4.5 million km^2 Just a generous "dead cat bounce" & a feeling that the slowness of the melt might persisy.

4.0 Guessing really, a "dead cat bounce" from last year, but not above the former record.

Are we seeing more "century breaks (>100,000 km^2)" this year than ever before (on JAXA, at least)? The "ups and downs" of this year look qualitively different than other years. There seem to be more large daily melts, and more smaller ones as well. Or is that just a new satellite, or a policy shift by the scientists?

And then there's this: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/08/11/294403/arctic-ice-thinning-4-times-faster-than-predicted-by-models-semi-stunning-m-i-t-study-finds/

Greg, Unless my old eyes are deceiving me, another lead is opening up North of Ellesmere Island. It is big enough to be visible on MODIS images, though not on Cryosphere Today. Any thoughts?

Sorry, in my last post I said PIPS when I meant the new model pictured above.

What I don't figure is that just north of the Canadian Archipelago, if you look at the Cryosphere maps or MODIS images, you will see melting, even open water, where the ice is at its thickest according to PIPS. Does this mean the PIPS model is out of date? Or is something else happening?

The map does not show the Baltic - I think that is Novaya Zemlya where the ice is at 2m thickness. You can just see the top of Scandanavia at the bottom of the map, above & to the left of the letters CPOM etc. I think I also boobed above ... of course the ice should be thicker in March because that is the maximum.

Compared with Neven's analysis is March, this map does show thicker ice in comparable places - but this map is earlier, for Jan-Feb. http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/ice-thickness-models.html However, I take Daniel's point that it is early days. Great to see this product .. I have been looking forward to this for a year. Looks like a winner!

Great blog, great times ... Thanks for making it such fun.

Thanks for the Ronnie O'Sullivan video. Never saw it before. Brilliant!

PIPS is up again with most of the arrows gone into reverse or disappeared. No exit at Fram Strait. I guess that's bad for compactification?

Like eveyone else, I've taken note of teh uptick. However I notice on the University of Cologne weather chart that High Pressure seems to be on the way back into the Arctic, and the PIPS displacement arrows are increasing again. Does this mean a few decent days of compactification coming up?

"... clouds on the horizon". Very tantalizing, Neven, do tell.

~59,000 gone last night, though there may be a correction to that! If this continues, extent will drop below the 5 million km^2 mark tonight. And it looks like it will. UofB chart of the rate of decline shows it upping slightly. My own "personal" prediction of 5.1 is well shot :))