There might be El Niño in the making: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html?entrynum=2635

But how about happy thoughts: Maybe ice free Arctic will provide more snow fall to Greenland, the mass balance will go positive and Happy Times will be here again? Or maybe ice free Arctic will provide massive warm rain fall to Greenland, the cold base glaciers will turn temperate and flow away as from broken honey jar. Fortunately we have had comments from real glaciologists the latter would be most improbable outcome.

For glacial rebound to happen, asthenosphere must flow underneath the sank plate. That movement is measured in millimetres per year. Yes it is slow in human time scale. Parts of Scandinavia and North America are still rising (less than 1 m/century from some 7 metres immediately after deglaciation) even as the ice sheets disappeared over 10 000 years ago.

Philip, that's the theory. But has there been any empirical evidence of surface water salinity decrease around Antarctica? One day I looked for the stuff, but didn't find anything. SSS maps didn't show any trend at first glance neither.

Forbes used not to be a bad magazine. But it leans to one side of political spectrum. Sorry state is, that an issue of science has become a matter of political stance. And in this I accuse the domestic politics of United States to affect discussion all over the world about a process (artificial climatic change) which should be separated from minor issues of a single nation -- however superpower that nation happens to be.

And in the lighter side, as I've been reading various articles about science communication. How to deliver a message: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V06qgl2w4zM

So, will CT area go below 2? Probably not, but a few years ago most of us thought this wouldn't be a relevant question in our life times.

This might be a duplicate, but I haven't noticed these links before. English language pages about the trip to the Arctic by the icebreaker Oden. Official LOMROG III expedition pages: http://a76.dk/greenland_uk/north_uk/gr_n_expeditions_uk/lomrog_2012_uk/index.html A blog by Swedish researchers: http://www.geo.su.se/index.php/re-search/expedition-logs/528-lomrog-iii

You needed some volcano to suddenly rise from 2km deep :) I suppose the quake was quite an ordinary event on a strike-slip fault by the mid ocean ridge. Not Greenland glacial rebound. Yet.

I stumbled into this pearl! Let I introduce to you, The Great Northern Sea Route (1947): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLu6JyPjClM

One anecdotal evidence is German cruiser Komet's passage of NSR in August 1940. It was done with strong help from Soviet icebreakers. There was also some traffic there during the war onwards, but AFAIK it was never such a continuous support route, as those infamous convoys over Barents to Murmansk. If feasible, it could had been practically enemy free route from Western US to the Eastern Front, I'm sure there would be plenty of information about ice conditions up there during 1850-1990 in Imperial Russian/Soviet naval archives.

More disturbing graphs. This time from SkepticalScience: http://skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1589#84063

AlRodger: Most BBC radio programmes can be listened overseas, TV broadcasts are restricted to UK. I know, because I've listened Melvyn Bragg's In our Time for years. Great show.

To paraphrase one former American President: "This sucker could go down."

The good audience of Wunderground is very devoted in following tropical patterns. I hope they'll put some eye (pun intended) on this arctic cyclone as well.

Oden, the Swedish ship, is at 87N now. They're reporting 0C temp and 97% humidity, so I think it's raining up there. http://www.smhi.se/klimatdata/2.1090

Maybe we are rushing a bit here. But due all logics arctic could be moving towards a new phase, where vast ice cover no longer could stabilize the region.

In tropical areas we have huge amounts of latent heat, which is released when the air rises and condensates. But in the arctic (not antarctic, the landmass writes the rules there) we could have plenty of warmish water surrounded by cold areas covered by ice. Maybe there could be a process comparable to tropical cyclones, which could emerge from extreme high temperature and moisture gradients on upper latitudes?

This might be OT, but as main discussion has moved under an other post, I want to remind here, that NASA's new rover managed to land. ("to mars"?) Awesome! That skycrane thing looked so weird when I heard it first time few years ago. But apparently it worked. Planetary sciences in extreme, I would say. Then you could wonder, what science we could do on Earth with those billions. But let's not compare apples to potatoes.

Charles, Fennica is something called "multipurpose ship" -- it acts as icebreaker on Baltic Sea during winter, but in summer months, it's rented as support vessel mostly for oil companies, is there ice or not in target area (Alaska, Brazil). I think one of these is now in Mediterranean. This business model was developed some twenty years ago, when the state owned company operating Finnish icebreakers noted that it was a bit counterproductive to sit hugely expensive old fashioned icebreakers in harbor most of the year.

Good ole Coriolis... force... eh, effect... eh, something: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wda7azMvabE

New 30 day ice forecasts issued by Environment Canada: http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/app/WsvPrdCanQry.cfm?subID=2008&Lang=eng If I read correctly, they are predicting open water or "open drift first-year ice" along the whole route about mid August.

Kimura? Nice ice drift maps with vectors paralleling isobars. This different paper (Kawaguchi and Mitsudera 2008, not behind a paywall) about ice divergence under low pressure systems looks promising. Looks also long and exhaustingly technical: http://journals.sfu.ca/coaction/index.php/tellusa/article/download/15308/17138 We have found a characteristic length scale, r∗1 , based on the influence of the Coriolis term. Near the centre where r∗ < r∗1 , the outward radial velocity, which causes the divergence and SIC reduction, quadratically increases with distance. In contrast, where r∗ > r∗1 , the increase of ur∗ gradually becomes gentle, and consequently, ice-drift divergence assymptotically approaches a constant value. As a result, SIC reduction is largest at about r∗ = r∗1 . Eh, right.

I suppose, in strictly engineering point of view Dutch are right. The levees and flood control mechanisms could be upgraded to cope sea level rise and future storm surges. If the rise is somewhere around one meter during the century ballpark. But, say in Bangladesh, the gap between needs and resources available is overwhelming. No way. Ever. Or the lower Mississippi area, where there are resources, but also multitude of problems. Even without rising seas the geological future of New Orleans seems bleak. Lost wetlands, ever rising river, probably increase in rainfall and intensity of hurricanes. What you need is record flood, saturated levees and Cat 4 landfall... And whatever USACE manages to do, eventually the river will break to Atchafalaya, ruining the economy if climate change won't. Oh, and in Finland we quite often forget the Baltic Sea is still a sea, connected to the ocean, and not an oversized lake. If you put half a meter more water on it and good westerly gale for a week, the life around the Gulf of Finland will be interesting say the least.

And about the Kimura et al. 2000 paper. There it is stated, that: Concerning the turning angle 0, almost all areas have ranges within 4-10 degree. This result implies that sea ice moves nearly parallel to the geostrophic wind. Nearly... practically parallel... But around a low, a little bit outward :)