Looks like the pros have called a bottom to sea ice extent, ...

[CRH]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/19/arctic-ice-shrinks?newsfeed=true

~~
Sea ice in the Arctic shrunk a dramatic 18% this year to a record low of 3.41m sq km, according to the official US monitoring organisation the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado.
~~
"We are now in uncharted territory," said Nsidc director Mark Serreze. "While we've long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic, few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur."
Julienne Stroece, an Nsidc ice research scientist who has been monitoring ice conditions aboard the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise, said the data suggested the Arctic sea ice cover was fundamentally changing and predicted more extreme weather.
"We can expect more summers like 2012 as the ice cover continues to thin. The loss of summer sea ice has led to unusual warming of the Arctic atmosphere, that in turn impacts weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, that can result in persistent extreme weather such as droughts, heatwaves and flooding," she said.

end

Looks like the pros have called the bottom.

[XemaSab]

1. I'll believe it when I see it.

[heaven05]

7. look

at thom hartmanns guest scientist from Cambridge university speaking on the loss of sea ice. 18percent in one year, can you see that? can you believe that? This is no chicken little stuff, it's for real. You will see it and believe it

[XemaSab]

8. You misunderstood me

I meant "The ice looks so terrible that I could believe that it will keep going down," not "Lulz, climate denial, Al Gore is fat, the ice is recovering, climate denial."

[CRH]

2. Yeah the more I view the daily ice patterns, ...

to me the ice pack appears very unstable. The satellite modeling is all over the place with different densities at different locations. One thing is obvious, the temps above and below the ice are not yet supporting a dense pack. The next few weeks should tell as the Arctic moves from twenty four hour sun to strong twilight on the 24th of September.

[hatrack]

3. NSIDC News 9/16 said something to the effect of "we'll know in the next 3-4 days"

Still waiting for confirmation on that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Yes, they have now explicitly called it a minimum ("likely" in the text, on Sept 16)

19 September 2012
Press Release: Arctic sea ice reaches lowest extent for the year and the satellite record

BOULDER, Colorado—Arctic sea ice cover likely melted to its minimum extent for the year on September 16, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Sea ice extent fell to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles), now the lowest summer minimum extent in the satellite record.

“We are now in uncharted territory,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze. “While we’ve long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic, few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur.”

Arctic sea ice cover grows each winter as the sun sets for several months, and shrinks each summer as the sun rises higher in the northern sky. Each year, the Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum extent in September. This year’s minimum follows a record-breaking summer of low sea ice extents in the Arctic. Sea ice extent fell to 4.10 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles) on August 26, breaking the lowest extent on record set on September 18, 2007 of 4.17 million square kilometers (1.61 million square miles). On September 4, it fell below 4.00 million square kilometers (1.54 million square miles), another first in the 33-year satellite record.

“The strong late season decline is indicative of how thin the ice cover is,” said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier. “Ice has to be quite thin to continue melting away as the sun goes down and fall approaches.”

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2012_seaiceminimum.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. For area (not extent), it looks like it probably has hit bottom, to me

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html

day 253: 2.31535
day 254: 2.26206
day 255: 2.2398
day 256: 2.23401
day 257: 2.26485
day 258: 2.27992
day 259: 2.24444
day 260: 2.23793
day 261: 2.30315

So, in the last day given, it's more than any time in the week before that.

[XemaSab]

6. I could buy this as the bottom

Now the question is what the other half of the curve is going to look like.

The refreeze is typically steeper than the melt, which is good, 'cause otherwise we'd be looking at 3.2 m on October 20th, where in 2007 it was 5.5 m.