No one is arguing that the system has been unchanged for 40 years. Every piece of data points to declining sea ice. The question is whether Tamino’s graph of two relatively stable system with a sharp intermediate decline is supported. Your data suggests that it is. What he did is not cherry picking. Rather, he is showing that the data supports a two-tiered system better than a straight line decline. Basic statistics. Whether this holds in the future is uncertain (due to the relatively short time frame), but denying the trend exists in the data is poor science.
I did not interpret your earlier post to say that the system has been unchanged for 40 years. What I did hear you saying is that current evidence indicates that for now at least the ASI appears to be in a period of equilibrium.
My point in repeating oren's data (not mine, I just updated the re-post of oren's chart to give proper attribution) was to show that the recent number of record low days does NOT support the idea of a system in even a temporary state of equilibrium. Oren just made that same point in a post today.
I think you are misinterpreting the great Tamino (long may he live). He did not say that the slower rate of decline in annual ASI minima after a period of accelerated decline indicated a new stable state.
I agree with you that "Whether this holds in the future is uncertain (due to the relatively short time frame),". I disagree with your inaccurate representation of what I said, or that what I said was an example "poor science". (I also do not appreciate the personal attack, but I'm not interested in one of those tedious ASIF dogfights, so let's stick to the data and interpretations and leave personal attributes out of it).
If you meant that I was denying the appearance of a new trend of stability since the end of the 2003-2007 acceleration, you are correct. I deny that the data since 2007 indicate a period of stability in the ASI. And so did Tamino. In fact, that was the whole point of his analysis at https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/arctic-sea-ice-more-than-just-the-minimum/
Tamino (in October 2018):
"We have data for each day over nearly 40 years, we have annual averages for 39 years, and both yearly maxima and minima for 40 years. But for some reason, some people (as in, most climate deniers) only want to talk about 12 minima. Why do you think that is?"
"Since 2000, the situation didn’t get better. It got worse. Yet climate deniers only like to talk about the minimum values since 2007, and they love to declare a “recovery!” "
"There’s definitely no improvement since 2000."
"Here are the yearly average values: (Tamino chart shown below)
"Again, no improvement, no recovery. The two lowest values are in the last two years, the three lowest values in the last three years. It’s not better than it would have been if it had followed the pre-existing trend; it’s worse."
I wish I could agree with you the ASI data suggests a possible stabilization. But that isn't how it looks to me. And it didn't look that way to Tamino in October 2018. And oren's histogram of low record days per year does not show evidence of stabilization.
My interpretation of oren's chart is that the number of new record low Extent values is higher in 2016-2020 than in 2004-2015. And that the rate of decline (as measured categorically by the number of days with new record and near-record lows) has been fairly stable since 2016. Saying that the rate of new record lows being acquired is stable is not the same as saying that the ASI is in a state of stable equilibrium.
First off, let me apologize for what was taken as a "personal attack." It was not intended as such. Sorry.
Secondly, it appears that such terms as "stable" and "equilibrium" have drawn the ire of some posters here. I never said that it was in a state of equilibrium, rather that perhaps we are approaching such a state. Crandles plots do indicate that is occurring, although neither of us are convinced of that. Perhaps simply a new "system" or "regime" would suffice. Whatever we choose to call, I think we can agree that recent years (timeframe is somewhat dependent on the dataset chosen) have differed from the immediately preceding ones in that the rate of decline as diminished.
I will make one last statement concerning oren's graph in an attempt to illustrated my point. The graph of daily new lows supports either a system in decline or a system in equilibrium [after a steady decline]. Any year prior to the last year of decline is much less likely to reach as many daily new lows, simply due to the declining nature of the system. That is precisely why the last five years have more new lows than the preceding years. Additionally, the data would support a system in decline better if the highest number of daily new lows was in the most recent year (2020) and not the earliest year (2016). The data supports either, but as I mentioned previously, the timeframe is too short to make any definitive claims (to which you agreed).
I have never stated that the situation has "improved." Arctic sea ice is not increasing. However, the situation is not as dire as it was a few years ago. Looking at gerontocrat's data over on the sea ice threads, both area and extent were only 10th lowest at the end of January, and higher than the average over the past decade. Of course it is lower than the preceding decade, but that was the decade of largest decline. Perhaps you prefer the term "decelerating." All of this is just an exercise in semantics. Regardless, it took three decades of rapid sea ice loss for the minimum extent to decline from 7 M sq. km to 4. The current rate of decline is less than that, so I suspect that the time required to decline a similar 3 M sq km (the threshold definition for ice-free) would be longer.
All the graphs of arctic sea ice point to a period of relative stability (or flatness) following by accelerated ice sea, and now a deceleration in that loss. The data supports, and I agree, that the ice loss is not a linear function. Gerontocrat's most recent graphs point that out. His volume graph (and extent and area are not much different) shows that the first years fall far below the linear trend. For the ensuing 20 years, all but one year falls above the trend line. This is indicative of a system with accelerating losses. The inflection point appears to be around 2007, as the next period shows eight years without a single point above the trend line. The last eight years are fairly evenly distributed. This again supports a Tamino-line two-tiered system of losses.