On The 2017 melting season thread, there were a series of posts on "extent" as the predominant measurement utilized to summarize the state of the sea ice. As was pointed out in a number of posts, "extent" by itself does not provide a very good indication of the state of arctic SIE at this time of the year. Neven pretty much put an end to the conversation with a post summarizing a number of the metrics available to use in considering the state of the sea ice, with extent being just one of them. But IMHO, the "annual minimum" SIE is a single metric that does a reasonably good job of summarizing the state of the sea ice. But that raise the question, is "annual maximum" a measurement receiving far more emphasis than is appropriate? A Google search for "arctic sea ice minimum" and "arctic sea ice maximum" shows 1,290,000 and 1,340,000 results, respectively. Does "annual sea ice maximum" provide a decent indication of the state of the ice, or is just a metric that is easy to display, easy to understand, and easy to access through the NSIDC website, and thus gets more attention than is appropriate?