Thanks Sleepy - I've saved that.
Two opposing forces
- increased cold fresh water from increased melt of the AIS and shelves,
- increased ocean warmth (e.g. Tealight's AWP graphs) and atmospheric warmth.
and
- Loads more energy and water vapour in the system.
- so increased mass from loads more snowfall, and loads more melt at the surface and below.
The sleeping giant of Antarctica awakes?
meanwhile.....
JAXA ANTARCTIC Sea Ice Extent - 5,423,435 km2(December 31, 2018)
Extent loss of 194k , 13 k more than the average for this day. The loss is again more than that on this day in 2016, the year of the record low minimum.
Extent is lowest in the satellite record for this day, 134 k less than 2016 on this day, and 1.065 million km2 below 2017. Extent loss from maximum is 1.108 million km2 (10.3%) greater than average so far, with on average 71.7% of extent loss for the season done and on average 50 days to minimum.
The average remaining melt from this day to minimum would produce a minimum of 0.89 million km2, 1.26 million km2 less than the record low in 2016-17.(
Note that a minor correction to the spreadsheet made -change of year glitch). A reducing proportion of the remaining ice is at low concentration. With that low concentration ice mostly gone the remaining solid ice close to the coast will likely slow melt down further to a crawl. Nevertheless, a record low minimum, the first below 2 million km2, is still my guess for the 2019 minimum, continuing the loss of Antarctic sea ice over the last three years.
All models have limitations. The first table attached shows that remaining melt in two of the previous years would result in an extent minimum of less than zero, an impossibility. Nevertheless, that is useful in that it shows how much extent this year is below that of the years to 2015.
Being in the Austral summer, low extent and area means with insolation high, albedo warming potential in the Antarctic is also high and well above average. - see Tealight graphs at
https://sites.google.com/site/cryospherecomputing/awp/antarctic-graphs