Great stuff as usual, Neven. This really is a captivating blog - almost addictive. I really don't know how you find the time to post as you do. Small question - in your table "If 2010 loses as much sea ice extent as..." you have the same expected outcome for the 2007 and 2008 scenarios. I admit that it's possible, but to three significant figures it seems unlikely that two consecutive years had the same melt in the closing stages of the season. Is this correct?

I'll echo AD's thanks - it really has been a pleasure following this blog's evolution. One thing I'm curious about, if anyone has any thoughts: Up here High Pressure usually leads to hot days and cold nights. In the Summer the former is dominant, but in the other seasons it is the other way round - from (approximately) September to April we can expect daily average temperatures to be lower than normal during a high pressure event. Clearly the Arctic has been cloudy for most of July - and this had an impact. If it continued to be cloudy during the next couple of months, would this still have an impact? I suspect not, but this is just a "gut feeling" - so any pointers would be appreciated.

"It's pretty chilly in the mornings up here, about as cold as it would be in Scotland at this time of year..." You can easily tell the local kids from the tourist ones on the beach up here (just shy of 58ºN) in July & August. The locals wear wetsuits. Watts & his pals were recently crowing about how many people were wearing woolies and coats during the British Open a couple of days ago. I guess that none of them have been to St. Andrews in July. :)

I've been reading this blog for about a month now, since Gareth gave it a plug - and thoroughly enjoyed it. I've learnt a lot from it (both from the posts and the comments). I do hope that if you don't want to continue with it next year that someone else will pick up the reins. L Hamilton - I'd like to use your graphic as well. It's kind of chilling (sorry, that sounds like a bad pun) that for most of the year ice extent is now about a month behind where it was at the start of the record - you don't get that perspective from the normal trend graphs. I like to credit my sources - do you have a blog or some such, or would "L. Hamilton" do? I'm a little curious as to why you didn't include September in your graph, though.