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Normally I post here the sea ice cover for Arctic summer (September) or Antarctic summer (March). This graph is total global ice cover, both poles,updated for this month. Remember, where’s there’s ice on the water, sunlight is reflected back into space (the summer pole) or the warm sea is insulated from the cold air (winter pole) So this metric affects the entire planetary energy budget. Check the link above, there are many more graphs and data, plus commentary. We don’t talk much about this any more, but that doesn’t mean the problem is going away. On the contrary…

This is starting to become an annual tradition, here on the Arctic Sea Ice Blog. Just like last year and the year before that, the record for lowest global sea ice minimum has been broken. The lowest global sea ice extent minimum on record (NSIDC and JAXA) was reached two weeks ago. I wanted to wait a bit and see whether the record for NSIDC global sea ice area would be broken too, but it wasn’t, although the minimum came in at a solid second place, practically on a par with last year.

Here’s the graph, as provided by Wipneus:

http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b01b7c95297c9970b-pi