Warm air intrusions into the CAB will keep slowing this down, and if the GFS models are correct, it will impact ice in the Hudson Bay as warm air streams north over the Eastern US later next week.
Here is an example of today:
How reassuring (o.O)
Note the SST anomaly near Svalbard. It has been around for *months*, and I think may be playing a part here.
polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png
And to think that, today, sunlight was only present in Svalbard for just over an hour and by the end of February that will have increased to over 7 hours/day. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Arctic, the slush in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsz is already being bathed in 8 hours/day of sunlight. And then there's the CAB where the DMI temps are currently 15
o (C) above normal. And according to the charts provided by A4R, more warm air will be flowing into the Arctic basin in the next few days. There don't seem to be many venues for Extent to increase substantially in the very near future.
The "engineer" part of my brain doesn't want to predict what will happen in the next 3-6 weeks, however I can't help myself from playing with some of the number of what has happened in the past 10 years. I've calculated the Extent gain, from today's date, until the annual maximum for each of the past 10 years. Taking those 10 annual gains, I added those values to the current IJIS Extent for February 12th, 2014.
In 3 cases, the 2014 Extent maximum would be less than 13,900 km
2.
Another 4 cases, the 2014 Extent maximum would still be the lowest on record.
In 2 cases, the 2014 Extent maximum would be the 4th lowest on record.
In 1 case, the 2014 Extent maximum would be the 5th lowest on record.
FYI, the average daily Extent loss, in the past 10 years, for the last 2 weeks of February is just less that 16K km
2/day, however the standard deviation on that would be very, very high!!
Under no circumstance is the Arctic Sea Ice undergoing a "Rebound", much to the chagrin of Watts & Company!!