chubbs

Just have to avoid unusually strong storms like 2012 or prolonged storminess like 2016.

There was a publication last this year. I don't have a reference - it was a relatively obscure journal the Asia Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. The article was mainly material from Spencer's initial blog post on UAH6. edit: found it https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13143-017-0010-y

Mears has a published a FAQ on the RSS update including a comparison with radiosonde data showing less bias than UAH6. http://www.remss.com/blog/faq-about-v40-tlt-update

July often reverses the June 500 mb tendency in the arctic with 2009+2015 being recent high height years in July and 2010+2012 relatively low.

That is my guess - there is less volume to lose late in the melt year. On a percentage basis, the volume anomaly is largest at the September low.

Hopefully not the sun.

Interesting charts. Highlights the difficulty in predicting sea ice, particularly a record low, with any lead time. Note though that the trend in 925 mb temps is upward so the dice are slowly being loaded.

PIOMAS is out for June. As expected volume loss was slower in May and June than 2012 and other recent big melt years, but 2017 has retained the lowest PIOMAS volume, not far from 2012 in the last week of June.

The SIPN June predictions have a median forecast a little below last year but well above 2012. Forecasts are for the average monthly extent in September with 2012 at 3.6 M. https://www.arcus.org/sipn/sea-ice-outlook/2017/june

Below is GISS with a 5-year and a 15-year running mean. The 5-year running mean rises in a series of stair steps, while almost all natural variability is smoothed in the 15-year mean. I would also expect a relatively flat "tread" in the 5-year mean when the current "riser" ends. However we probably should wait for a change in the 15-year running mean before getting too excited one way or the other.

RSS TLT has updated to version 4 - with more warming, in-line with the surface temperature series now. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0768.1

I couldn't disagree more. There are diminishing returns in weather forecasting while our entire environment is being impacted by climate change increasing the need for research and we'd be getting much more value for our climate change research if the findings weren't ignored/discounted.

There is no significant lag to a change in solar forcing but luckily solar forcing doesn't change very much. Solar irradiance varies by 0.25 Watts per square meter from the peak to the bottom of a normal solar cycle. Despite the current weak solar cycle, the earth's energy imbalance due to GHG has stayed around 0.8 W per square meter. In addition GHG forcing is increasing by roughly 0.4 W per square meter per decade, so even a repeat of the Maunder minimum isn't going to have much impact on the warming trend.

Wipneus' daily sea ice volume anomaly chart updated through May. The volume gap between 2017 and other years narrowed in May due to a relatively slow start to the melting season vs recent years. Melting accelerated though in the second half of May leaving a record low well within reach this year depending on the weather.

UAH6 spiked up to 0.45 in May. Noisy, but on average still running above the pre-nino values - 2017 mean 0.31.