Interesting how there's a retreat on one side and an advance on the other. Could it be that this is due to an 'abnormal situation' in the Atlantic acting one way and a similar event in the Pacific acting the other?
The 2005 and 2011 maps compared show that there's more going on here than a steady decline. How does similar data for the summer minimum compare? I may have to do some climate change reading any ideas for a starter?
Ice extent is pretty fickle as it depends on which way the wind has been blowing. Ice volume is much more difficult to measure but seems to have been steadily declining from year to year, with a greater extent of one-year ice and less older (and thicker) ice.
One of the major factors impacting ice extent are the direction and type of winds that effect the area. The winds are of course caused by the anti-cyclonic and cyclonic pressure systems that develop in the region. Ice can be pushed by the winds, causing build-up of excess ice in one area and a deficit in another. There is plenty of information on the net about this subject.
And we think we have problems with snow sometimes!
This weather pattern also brought moist air from the Pacific Ocean to the southern Alaska coast, helping to explain record snowfalls in towns such as Cordova, Alaska, which received over 15 feet of snow between early November and mid-January.
I become ever-more convinced that we are in much more immediate climate trouble than most people think we are. I think the existing models have under-estimated the relevance of the positive feedback mechanisms, and especially the way they are likely to exacerbate each other. I honestly believe we have already passed the "point of no return." I think that even if we did everything believably possible to limit further greenhouse emissions, it is already too late to stop a 7 degree (or more) rise.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
That makes rather scary viewing even to the uninformed eye. Have you a similar graph for the winter maximum?
I'd have thought that less ice in summer would mean more heat into the exposed ocean and thus an accelerated decrease in winter volumes as well. But maybe not...
Once it reaches 12,000 cubic kilometers in September, there is no more sea ice.
[edit] If this level of anomaly is sustained until September, then it fits well with the exponential plot above. In fact it would be slightly ahead of the curve.
Well I'm convinced something out of the ordinary is happening. Comments elsewhere about the southerly drift of the jetstream make sense to me.
UE may well be right and a point of no return, even if localised has been reached. The best we can hope is that it bottoms at about 3 and is more linear than exponential for a couple of years, at which point it's gone
