Considering the global and the warming and all.
Because of the way ice melts we are much more concerned with the thickness of the ice than with the extent. However, because volume is a combination of the two we will start there. From the Danish Meteorological Institute:
The ice is at a five-year high for volume, and is at the 2004 - 2013 average. One of the reasons for this is the second-year and multi-year ice, ice that didn't get flushed out of the Fram Strait (between Greenland and Svalbard) over the course of the melt season. And in large part that was because the ice in the Bering Sea, Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea grew and held together quite well last summer.
Here's the current thickness map from the DMI, there are three areas of concern:
First off, the ice along the Russian coast top right is thinning, pulling away from the coast and developing those purple colored thin spots.
Secondly, although the northern reaches of the Fram Strait are frozen enough for polar bears to walk over to Longyearbyen should they so desire—they don't, but they could, just to bug the Norwegians—that ice is okay but the winds have shifted and are now blowing through the Strait from the south, something that can be plainly seen at Ventusky.
Finally, the center of Greenland, which last week was approaching -50°F is now in the -25°F to -29°F range. Again well visualized at Ventusky. I'd embed the Northern Hemisphere wind and temperature map but it takes so many resources on this blogger platform that all the posts preceding this one are moved back to the archival "older posts" at the bottom of the page. Do click through though, it is an amazing app.
