this is a very optimistic ( ice friendly ) prediction IMO, almost looks like what we see today extent wise. i expect much less extent that in that image by the end of august ( i consider 22nd of august end of august )
I'm with the late Slater on this one.
I don't think 5.22 for Aug 22 is unrealistic. It's a bit more than 2015 and a bit less than 2010.
Slater et al's method works off ice concentration, and it just happens that ice concentration has been pretty high over the past month (few melting ponds). NSIDC also came in with pretty high June 'area' numbers.
And at risk of going off topic for this thread, albedo feedback has been very modest this summer, with a whopping 4 million km^2 land snow cover anomaly.
Besides, we have seen two periods of high pressure over the Beaufort (resulting in ice compaction) in June, so I don't think 'extent' is a good measure for the state of the ice.
So I'm optimistic this year.
[Edit 5/17: Removed quote after Jim's remarks about nested quotes below]