Edit: I'm not chiming in like this to be offensive: I just think it's important we hold our own predictions to account just as much we do the protestations of "It's all normal" from the other side.
So what? At least I have the nads to speak up.
As do I. In each of the prediction threads I've given my opinion which is simply that when you look at recent years, 2013 was most similar to 2009 and that therefore 2014 is likely to be similar to 2010. I would now update that to say that since we didn't get the catastrophic early melt onset and rapid spring volume loss that we saw in 2010, we're now likely to come in a bit above 2010, and probably not that dissimilar to 2013 itself.
In the Beaufort, the ice edge did retreat quite rapidly for a while but has since come to more or less a hard stop. Looking at the animations from HYCOM (with due caution) and also the Maslanik graphs of ice age, it looks as though the ice has melted back to the edge of the multi-year cover and then stalled. It remains to be seen how much of that we lose, but from the IJIS graph it looks as though the stall in extent loss is earlier and more pronounced than 2013.
Yes, there's a lot of rapid melt in the Laptev this year, which bears watching, but I don't think it'll go that much further. Last year, while there wasn't such a lot of open water per se, there was a lot of loose and low concentration ice in the northern Laptev (and in the Arctic Basin north of Laptev/Kara). It didn't melt out, probably because there just isn't enough heat input at such a high latitude to melt through even FY ice.
So overall my prediction is for a final figure similar to last year. Possibly even higher than last year if things turn really bad/cold up there. The state of the ice in northern Beaufort is currently no worse than last year, and in the East Siberian Sea it currently looks better than it did at the same time last year.
You think it's important to push your agenda. I don't care if I am wrong about a prediction. If I was always right I would be a God and they don't exist.
Having been intermittently banned from various denier sites for arguing with them, I'd be interested to see what you think "my agenda" is. In my day job I'm a molecular biologist. Unlike you, I do care if I'm wrong about a prediction. Not that I take it personally or see it as some sort of moral failure: but if I've made a mistake I want to look into why, and then maybe change some of my views depending on the new evidence as it comes in. If
almost all my predictions start coming in wrong, then maybe I have to change something more fundamental. Maybe the tools I'm using (in your case this would be the 5-10 day weather forecasts) just aren't useful for the hypothesis I'm testing?