Hi LRC,
As I see it, there's not much point in discussing heat loss to space over the Arctic during winters' darkness.
The heat loss can't be as strong as it used to be. There's a blanket of greenhouse gases, and it is most effective over the Arctic.
FI, ASLR placed some nice pics of methane content on different heights in the atmosphere.
Concur mostly with caveats. Loss out of the atmosphere is a fixed value derived as a function of temperature. The higher the "pressure"(temp), the higher the flow of outbound radiation.
What *IS* relevant is how that heat is supplied.
Normally, that heat is supple by local air masses which are heated conductively via transfer from the ocean and phase change of water into ice. Currently, that heat flow is stopped, and actually reversed (!... 0-1C air vs -1.8C seawater). The heat being radiated is coming from warm moist air imported from the south. That's a big, big problem as no heat flow out of the water means no ice formation.
Even limited flow is a problem as the ice as it thickens becomes a better insulator, which with a lower gradient in temperature will radically slow heat loss.
I've previously posted an ice melt study which evaluated melt in CM/day based on water temperature. From that and evaluating heat flow through the ice itself, I get a rule of thumb for ice formation; that is, given sufficient time at temperature, you will get about 0.1M of ice per degree below freezing. The only way to get thicker is ridging.
The anomalies we had last year can I think be considered directly responsible for the anemic max. The same will be true again this year if it continues. Add to this a highly active Fram export pumping 2M+ thick ice out of the basin at 8-10000 KM2/day, and I think we will have reason to conclude last years record will be threatened. Volume similarly will not recover.
The Arctic, suffice to say, has my attention.