"Adam Lea" wrote in message
...

If it is reducing in January, surely that isn't directly related to the
temperature, it should be well below freezing up there now. It is not
something to do with the synoptics, maybe storminess leading to breakup
and advection of sea ice (I haven't checked this out so am just
speculating)?
==========================

I think it's all of those things. There's a fairly detailed day by day
commentary if you're interested on arctic sea ice forum at eg:

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/ind...1611.2250.html