I've been wanting to crunch some numbers, having followed gerontocrat's informative calculations for a while now, to try and correlate between extent loss and low July volume. It is quite difficult as the ice regime has changed over the years (loss of MYI), volume distribution matters a lot, extent depends on dispersion, day of minimum matters a lot, PIOMAS has some error margins, and in addition, the correlations are not very strong.
So I made the attached table, sorry for the lack of annotation, but it takes the years 2010-2016, looking at losses of volume and extent from last known date to day 250 (Sep 7th) and comparing to the average of those years. I did not calculate correlations (though they exist), but instead here are some thoughts on why 2012 was a freak.
2012 on day 203 had a low extent - but 2011 was lower.
2012 to day 250 lost a good volume figure - but 2015 and 2016 lost much more.
2012 had a low volume on day 196 - but 2011 wasn't far behind.
On the other hand, 2012 had a low volume on day 250 - with no other year coming close. And by some miracle, it also produced a freak extent loss.
So maybe current extent isn't such a good predictor, and current volume can't make a strong case, but when absolute volume falls below a threshold, extent crashes?
Speculating: If 2011 had lost an above-average amount of volume in this period, it might have finished as 2012.
If 2016 had entered day 196 with a low volume figure, it might have finished as 2012 or below (as it was area did crash, but extent didn't).
More speculation: the last volume is in the highest latitudes, therefore harder to melt, so having a low volume in July could cause a low loss of volume later. (But a GAC can help bring the volume loss numbers back up.)
My unscientific conclusion - starting with lower volume than 2012, this year needs just an average loss of volume so it might crash in extent. Will an average volume loss happen? I give it 40%. Will this actually crash extent? I think it a serious possibility. So a 20% chance for an extent record seems reasonable.
** Why day 250 - to avoid the effect of early/late minimum, which adds the noise of weather and the distribution of open water latitudes.
Why from 2010 - looking at their volume numbers I believe 2007-2009 were much too different.