"Arctic sea ice at fifth lowest annual maximum

April 2, 2014

Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent on March 21, after a brief surge in extent mid-month. Overall the 2014 Arctic maximum was the fifth lowest in the 1978 to 2014 record. Antarctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on February 23, and was the fourth highest Antarctic minimum in the satellite record. While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.'

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

How close will the summer ice minimum be to a record this September? As the article says, that is very hard to predict, but it will be far lower than any ice minima recorded in the 80's and 90's. There is a little more multi-year ice ATM, as 2013 wasn't close to a record minimum, but it would only take a summer of settled weather to melt that out again. Last year was a very unusually stormy year in the Arctic and that caused ice not to melt as quickly as in recent years.