Right now, i am sitting in my appartment 1 km from Moscow, Russia. It is anomalously cold outside for the season: +2°C. We had many days way below average for the season, past month here. There is no snow for weeks, already. It's a sunny day, and again, we had several sunny days recently. Trees are still standing in their winter mode, no leaves.
How this relates to the Arctic melting season, you'd ask? Quite much.
I can't help but to think that all the cold we have here comes from the Arctic. Naturally, with the Sun shining like that, there is no other place for the cold to come from. So that means, huge mass of air came all the way from the Arctic down here, 55th parralel. And then obviously, up there in Arctic, some _other_ air took the place of the mass which came to Moscow; where would that "came to the Arctic" air come from? Inevitably, it'd come from somewhere which is not Arctic. Means, it was quite very warm air coming to Arctic, in huge amount. Not good for the ice.
And then there is even more. Now that that enourmous mass of air which cools down central Russia for weeks arrived here, - it's warming up. Fast. No snow and sunny days means low albedo and high insolation. No leaves on trees only further increases speed of that process. Lots and lots of heat is being stored into this air i got right out my window. And inevitably, some of that air will end up in Arctic once again, part of athmospheric circulation, - carrying some of heat it absorbs today right up there, to the ice in Arctic.
It doesn't feel good.
P.S. As visible from the forecast in the post just above, Scandinavia and much of North America landmasses are currently doing about the same thing, and will keep at it at even bigger negative anomaly than central Russia for the next few days: "stealing" cold from the Arctic, and warming all the air up extra fast whereever there is no snow cover already.