"John Hall" wrote in message ...

If the amount of Arctic sea ice is reducing in JANUARY, even if it turns
out to be only for a day or two, that seems remarkable and really brings
it home just how far global warming has gone.
======================

This is for extent, which AIUI is more liable to error, as a parameter
rather than area but interesting nonetheless. But if you look at the NSIDC
extent chart at:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

you'll see that there was a also a brief net melt in November 2016 and
certainly a stall if not a technical dip in December and again in
mid-January.

What seems to be concerning the experts more than the relatively low current
area/extent values is that a substantial proportion of the arctic ice is
thin; while this will certainly still contribute to the area/extent values
as if it were traditional thicker ice, it will also be easier to melt out
once the spring/summer thaw starts in earnest. So arctic ice _volume_ is
potentially a more interesting parameter, though one tricky to estimate and
not updated publicly on a daily basis AFAIK. So it will be interesting to
see the PIOMAS end-January volume estimate when it hopefully gets released
in around a week's time.