Bye Bye Arctic Sea Ice!

From here. The lowest level on record with a couple weeks left in the melt season.  More room to drill, I suppose.

While Anthony Watts Blithers

...and attempts to out-wonk McIntyre, Arctic Ice remains near the record lows of 2006-2007.

Arctic Sea Ice Recovery Stalls?

Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about this. We are quite certain that the almost complete lack of increase in ice extent since about December 10 is real. Satellite-derived ice extent from the SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwaver/Imager) used to create the time series on our website was checked against extent based on the AMSR (Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer) instrument. AMSR shows the same pattern. This gives us independent confirmation. The past 10 days has seen a very unusual atmospheric pattern. It has been very warm over the Arctic Ocean, and wind patterns have favored a compact ice cover. While the lack of increase in ice extent is certainly quite unusual as well as interesting, we would not read too much into it right now, at it is just weather. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.

The graph is from a couple of days later than the comment, so it looks as though coverage has begun to increase once again, although it has turned far lower than the long-term average. See here for more.

Shipping In An Ice-Free Arctic

Given the expected timeframe for the clearing of traffic routes [2013], the important policy questions are not restricted to how this might be prevented or reversed. Countries like Denmark, Russia, Canada and the United States are are already starting to grapple with what policies need to change when shipping changes routes, requiring people, ports, defense and security in places where virtually none of these (and almost as few people) have been for a while.

Original story here.

Arctic Ice Starting To Melt Again

...and the anomaly is increasing rapidly (bottom graph). Will it reach last year's record lows? The betting is on.