Pay attention Robert....

That would be because:

1. I was quoting sea ice EXTENT and you are quoting sea ice AREA


2. I quoted the 1979-2000 mean - you are referencing the Cryosphere site which has moved to the 1979-2008 mean.  Because so much ice has been lost since 2000 the mean has dropped

Apart from that....

Within the Arctic basin, ice extent is up on last year.

It is down in Baffin Bay, but looking at these temperatures, I would expect some quick recovery here.

What do others think?

http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWarctis.gif

Let's hope so. We're only around 5% (450k) sq km below the 2002-2009 norm for mid-November so it wouldn't be impossible to recover to something near to the 'new normal'. 

I will put a lot of money on there being no chance at all of getting back to the norms of the last quarter of the 20th century in the near future or at all.

Indeed, looking quite good to me.

Twisted viewpoint, graph above shows more ice than last year, not indicative of decline and thinning.

Ignorance is no substitute for knowledge Four.

That graph shows a very specific subset of the Arctic region - I assume from your comment that you haven't grasped that point.

I suggest you do try to work out for yourself why there should be such a rapdid increase in ice.  This is an area which used to be much more substantially ice covered so there would not have been that rapid increase.

Think about what is happening up there for these results to be occurring.

Or maybe another dismissive ignorant one-liner would be easier.

The other point being , G.T.W., the Basin is now near full.

is the other sea ice areas that make up the bulk of the maximum ice area so maybe folk should be looking/comparing how they are doing compared with previous years;

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html

click your way through the list and note:

How many are showing a neg. anom. compared to the 79-08' mean

How many areas are currently 'growing' so slowly they are increasing their neg anom.

How many areas still have little or no ice.

Why do a dismissive one liner when you can do it in 10 eh GTW.

The argument you are using is like saying recent ice low points are only happening because it was too high before.
Every last thing has to somehow be twisted so it can be claimed as further evidence of catastrophic change.

Well, I prefer to give support to my views.  That takes more than an ill-considered one-liner, doesn't it?

Sorry, I don't follow that logic at all.

The argument I am using is that the area shown by the graph used to have much greater ice cover before, which was the norm - nothing to do with it being 'too high' before.

I am twisting nothing, Four, merely reporting the facts and offering an explanation for the trends.  I would be interested in an alternative explanation, please, if you have one to offer?

There is a new NASA study about the loss of ice through melt and lost through transport out of the basin.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/seaice-melt.html

It looks like melting is a major factor, which is contributing to the thinning and loss of multi-year ice.

How thin is the ice this year compared with the last few years?

Hi Michael

This is the latest (updated as of Sunday 7th)

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png

Recovering quite well in recent weeks but still at an all-time low.  Assuming the trend continues it looks like it will continue to recover but I don't know if it will pass the trend line.

It is not an area which used to be "much more substantially ice covered": this sub-area is always completely covered in the winter.

That says more about extent/area than volume though IMO and is at odds with other satellite data which show the lower extent but greater thickness.

Yes, but it's the nearest data I can find.   In theory you could overlay the volume and area data and work out the average thickness change.  Assuming you have the time to find the underlying data and do the sums.

The volume recovery looks like about 25% since the trough.  Based on the Cryosphere chart the ice area seems to have doubled since the trough.   What does that say?  I don't know....

G.T.W., I think you have a job figuring the loss of volume through southern Beaufort/Greenland and Canadian Archipelago. The Prof Barber witnessing of a multi km , multi meter floe collapse into 100m slabs (which would then turn and find it's new equilibrium by laying flat and covering more 'extent' than stood upright in a floe) shows the kind of volume we lost (in situ) both before ,and after,07'. We know that the 02'-08' ICESAT/Cryosat2 gave a 3m average for the pack but what of the piled up /ridged Paleocrystic ice? how much of that was in the 'mix'?

I think the loss of that 'Rind' of thick ice ,along the northern shores of Alaska/Canada/Greenland, will have put quite a dent in the 'volume figure' that you may be figuring?

Ice thickness today.....

All the talk of thinning Ice is just a waste of Co2...

Cherry picking again.

Shall we try to focus on the long-term trends?   Ice volume shows a clear downward trend.

I had a look a the site the bob gets his data from - I can see why he only went as far back as 2008, it suits his ill informed argument that the ice isn't thinning.....here's 2007 for example.