Some interesting commentary here (Science Progress, “The Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral Continues,” by Joe Romm).
Arctic sea ice volume by month in cubic kilometers (with simple quadratic trend lines projecting to zero volume, details here). The bottom (red) line is September volume.
A couple of interesting statements included,
In November, Rear Admiral David Titley, the Oceanographer of the Navy, testified that “the volume of ice as of last September has never been lower…in the last several thousand years.” Titley, who is also the Director of Navy’s Task Force Climate Change, said he has told the Chief of Naval Operations that “we expect to see four weeks of basically ice free conditions in the mid to late 2030s.”
Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School has “projected a (virtually) ice-free fall by 2016 (+/- 3 yrs).”
While I don’t think this means we won’t need new icebreakers, it may mean we will need Arctic Patrol Cutters sooner than we think.