The disaster loving crowd is in hysterics about my June sea ice forecast of 5.5 million km^2, which was 11% too high. What they wanted to see was this :

Sadly for them, they didn’t get their record low. The graph below shows how my forecast error (green) compared to the PIOMAS forecast error (blue.)

But the big story is that there is likely to be a significant increase in 2011 multi-year ice relative to spring 2010. The maps below show why :

2009

2010

There is more multi-year ice this year and it is located further from the Fram Strait. Also, Arctic temperatures are much lower this autumn. Disaster lovers are probably going to be very disappointed next year.