Unless a massively anomalous ridge of high pressure blows up and parks over the CAB,CAA, and GIS for the next 5 weeks there is zero chance for record low extent or area this year.
Volume is already past any chance for record lows
Who are you? and what have you done with our Frivolous?
Friv is just saying it as it is. NSIDC Extent crossed 2012 today and is sitting on top of 2010. In the next 2 weeks, barring some significant melt, 2018 is going to drop to about 5th or 6th place in extent stakes.
Were it a case that the entire pack was massively fragmented, with very extensive melt ponding, it would not really be something to talk about. But that is not the case this year.
Of course there is a very real chance that things will all go for a radical melt year, but the environment is currently against it. We dropped into Solar Minimum about 6 months earlier than I expected last year but we are bouncing along the bottom. That means that all the energy which hits the arctic is slightly less. It means all the energy from the entire planet, to be advected into the Arctic, via storms and pressure systems, is less.
Not a lot less but, perhaps, enough.
CO2 has jumped the largest we have ever recorded in the decade from 2008 (close to 23ppm). The Ice is thinner and the volume is significantly reduced from a decade ago.
So significant melt is always to be expected. What is not to be expected, given the start of the season and how it is melting now, are records.
Of course, given the >400ppm CO2, the state of the ice and the change in the weather bringing more storms, there is absolutely no certainty, but it really does not look like it.
