Arctic sea ice update; NSIDC.

[Paul Garvey]

The final September ice extent low will depend on the Arctic weather between now and then. Low pressure over the central Arctic created cloudy and colder than average conditions, especially over the Beaufort Sea and slowed melt for a while. Melt has accelerated again in late June/July. 

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ 

[xmetman]

I was looking at the latest sea ice figures yesterday myself and noticed that in the Arctic 2016 had closed the gap on the year 2012 since the start of June by a large amount, so much in fact that for the 14th of July, 2016 has now slipped to the third lowest sea ice extent (82.3% of the LTA for this day of the year) behind both 2011 and 2012. If 2016 is to set up a new minimum this year, then it has to keep up a fair old rate of loss even just to keep up with 2012. In May I believed I thought that 2016 would be a racing cert to set up a new low, but at the moment its neck and neck with 2012.

[Paul Garvey]

It is always down to weather conditions during any individual melt season, Bruce. I urged caution about predicting s new record in May, as we had no idea what the weather in the Arctic would be and I said so. Lo and behold; low pressure and cloud for a month straight after that.

None if us know what conditions will be experienced between now and September. Calm, sunny conditions and we'll have a new record. Not do and we may not.

Underlying the weather, what is making a new record more likely each passing year is global warming. It is virtually inevitable that will continue. We'll thus have a series of new record lows over the coming years until the summer Arctic is virtually ice-free. We just won't be able to predict in which years those records will occur, even in May of each year. 😀