Arctic Sea Ice melt is rapidly approaching zero and it is only day 242.
Yesterday Arctic Sea Ice Extent only lost 24,000 sq km. (Red is ice loss, blue is ice gain. Click for bigger)
By my calculations, the earliest Arctic minimum was day 245 in 1987. The latest minimum was day 265 in 1989 and 2005. in 2012 it was day 260.
sunshine hours 
It was 260 for 2012, perhaps?
Yes. Thanks.
For comparison, NIC ice charts show that the 8/10th ice extent has stopped reducing as of Sept.1, while the marginal ice extent is still going down slightly. All in all, the ice melt this year looks much like 2011 with a little excess ice.
I appreciate your contribution, but this year I only have time to run my already written [R] scripts and fiddle with them a little. I’d like to delve into the NIC data/charts when I have more time.
Ola! Sunshinehours,
I take your point, Already the arctic ice levels are higher this year than last year by 5%. The Arctic melt is slowing down and there is more ice in the Arctic now than there was in January.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/image…
This is because global temperatures are stating to cool down.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/dia…
Does this mean that there will be more ice in the Arctic this year than last year?
All the Best