There is nothing more important then speculating on the the weather attm. Why on Earth would we ignore 10 days guidance just because it's validation sucks?
This is how sea ice tracking has always been everywhere it's tracked. How can one expect to be a better forecaster if they don't speculate. There are threads for folks who want numerical analysis in real time only and want to project off of that.
If that is what the folks here want then we can stop speculating on the weather and create a new thread.
But I guarantee this thread will die and everyone will post in that one even if they say they don't like medium range weather talk.
It's a bit funny because the highlight of following the arctic sea ice for most of us was the 7-8 day lead up in early August 2012.
That powerhouse vortex showed up on the GFS and Euro over a week out. And it was pushed back 2 days at least while the models continued to build it up and starting throwing out a mega cyclone.
The gratifying part was that if you followed the weather all summer you had a gut feeling that this was going to be different and then we saw the most incredible cryosphere climate change event so far in modern human history unfold in real time with a 7-8 day lead up.
Well we are not talking about this dipole being here in a week It's here right now. The arctic has already started to rapidly clear and temps are starting to warm quickly.
There is going to be consequences at least some what of a plummet even if there is a model reversal(not gonna happen). It's only May 31st.
I know I am not the only one who checks all the model runs everyday to watch the patterns unfold and try and predict what happens next.
As well as check modis, jaxa concentration graphs, ssts, buoys, regional numerical analysis and so on.
Oh not to forget snow cover, ice albedo(modis).
Anyways this reminds me of 2012. There was a big vocal group who thought us doomsday folks were full of it. Then the bottom dropped out.
This year the ice was primed by flushing not melting. It was some very well timed flushing the ice replacing the 3-4Meter MYI is 1M or less FYI. The Laptev is pretty much chocked with it out to 80N now. We have a huge ass open hole of water over there and it's not been that warm. There is a reason.
Now the ice is on the move as you all can see. I think you can imagine the open water about to open up as the ice pinwheels around the ESS but doesn't get pressed back into the Laptev while large parts of the Beaufort all the way around the coast is about to quickly open up.
Oh and look at the Hudson there is nearly no open water. Finally today some is appearing by Churchhill.
Look at that weak Kara and Barents ice. Yeah it's trash. The ice is all trash. The 5 year old ice in the Beaufort is under 2 meters thick in spots. you know what that is?
Look down the North Atlantic. That is some heavy real estate down there. That ice is still funneling all the way to 55N. It's toast it's almost transparent all over and now it's getting torched as of right now. 
We are 400K+ above 2010 in the Barents/STLSEAWAY and 200K above it in the Beaufort.
That ice is not only guaranteed to melt it's going to vanish rapidly while the dipole/ridging rages in the basin = plummet.
The end of line.
The only positive is higher than normal snow cover. But what will that do when it gets belted by the sun every day from now till whenever the ridging stops? How much water should we gather is going to be trapped on top of the ice gathering precious heat crushing the albedo. How big will those melt ponds be around large ridges and wet snow banks?
Are we going to see some mini melt lakes on larger floes this year in the Beaufort where the snow is up to 1M thick in spots still? Holy crap that is a ton of water that has to go "threw" or "around" the ice below when it's warm enuf to melt the ice as a great transmitter of energy.
I guarantee the topic within 3 days will be the huge drops on CT and Jaxa.
