I just can't see extent falling under 3 million, it would take unprecedented ice losses to even break the record nevermind going that low. Also the Beaufort ice will probably remain stubborn especially as the Beaufort high is looking very short lived, a common theme this year.
I never look past three days for arctic forecasts, and I don’t see anything in the near term that destroys the remaining ice. I agree that the ice in the Beaufort looks like it will last. That will be the difference between this year and 2012.
However, it is important to remember that the ice in the Beaufort right now is the last of the old thick ice, and it is in a terrible place. Even if it does not melt this year, and we don’t hit No. 1 on extent, it is not going to last much longer.
People get hung up on the extent metric without remembering it is based on grid data with the 15% rule. It does not really tell us how much ice is there. It tells us where the ice is located.
The papers Vox posted today in the temperature, salinity and waves thread are very important for this melt season. The death to the ice will ultimately come from both above and below. The halocline is getting thinner.
If we do get a strong storm with some really good mixing, we can still beat 2012 this year. But, that is weather dependent.
The bigger issue is that each year we have less ice during the high solar radiation periods, and the ice we do have gets thinner and more fragmented allowing for more input from shortwave radiation and more mixing of Atlantic waters.
No matter what the final extent numbers end up being this year, it has been a terrible year for the sea ice, the subsea permafrost and the land based permafrost. All of those sources of ice are important to the cryosphere.
Our air conditioner is broken!