2019 was only the 2nd year on record to go below 4 thousand km³. Chart shows we could still beat 2012! More on this in my Sep 26 Season Summary video for the Arctic sea ice.

Q: Where’s the data source for this plot?

A: Here: Arctic Sea Ice Volume for August 2019 from PIOMAS

Q: Why only 5 years and why these particular years?

A: Elementary. These are the 5 years on record that came closest to a Blue Ocean Event.

UPDATE Sep 15: On the 15th, sea ice volume continued to drop according to the Frozen Earth Algorithm, and by twice as much as the same day 2012 melt. Hopefully, we’ll have fresh ‘real’ data from Wipneus in a day or two, as we are now in mid–month. Just let me emphasise that Wipneus is a Dutch sea ice hobbyist, and his mid–month updates are based on graphic files uploaded by the U of Washington PIOMAS project, which doesn’t publish any raw numbers in the middle of the month.

While sea ice extent figures are published about 300 days a year by the Japanese JAXA space agency, PIOMAS, in fact, only publishes sea ice volume figures about 10 days per year. Yes, you read that right: Only about 10 hours out of a year are spent uploading Arctic sea ice volume numbers to the Interwebs, and according to a tweet from one of the U of Washington PIOMAS scientists, these 10 hours every year are more or less spent in pyjamas in the sofa with a cup of coffee and an iPad. So it’s all on a hobbyist basis, done in their spare time, often in weekends, as these scientists are not supposed to do this most important work during office hours. (It’s even unclear if they get paid for uploading the actual numbers, and editing the 1–2 paragraphs of text — they don’t publish a new article or post — required on their decades old ice web page.) But of course there is a Donate Page, so you can send some money to these government–paid climate scientists.

So, as I was saying, in a day or two we may have more ‘official’ sea ice volume numbers, not just those turned out by the Frozen Earth Algorithm, but these ‘official’ numbers will be published by the Dutch hobbyist Wipneus (he uses a pseudonym for this work), provided he’s not ill or on holiday somewhere, offline. The University of Washington does not itself upload any numbers in the middle of the month, except when they are late at publishing the figures for the previous calendar month.

(In parenthesis, of course, it can be said to be an absurd situation that the most important data — volume — for the arguably most important aspect — Arctic sea ice — of the most important challenge facing humanity — global climate collapse — are entirely published by hobbyists working in their spare time, often in a pyjamas. Still, if you’re not born yesterday, you’ll have noticed that much of the rest of the so–called ‘Adult World’ is equally absurd: It’s like we humans have no compass whatsoever for what’s important and what’s not. Maybe that’s why our civilisation is collapsing?)

UPDATE Sep 17:

UPDATE Sep 18:

UPDATE Sep 19: