Summer Ice

RealClimate has an interesting post on arctic sea ice from Dirk Notz at the Max Planck Institute, which discusses (among other things) the obsession with the summer minimum extent. He adroitly points out several interesting points. One is that weather conditions strongly affect the summer minimum, so it’s really too early to know whether this summer’s minimum will be a record-breaker or just ho-hum. Another is that the decline in arctic sea ice thickness is where the real story lies, but for the moment thickness is not nearly so well-observed as extent so it’s extent that captures the most attention.