The Arctic Sea Ice Blog has been my go-to for cold hard facts about the arctic. The main author of the blog has been quite a bit less active over the last year, but his data aggregation page[2] is still alive and ticking.
For example, I can see from the DMI (Danish Met Institute) Daily Arctic mean temperatures north of 80N graph that area-averaged temperatures in the farthest north have been well above average all season.
There is also a plot of the total freezing degree-days over the entire winter season, and its anomaly relative to the past several decades. From there, I can see that while this season has been far less cold than average, it was not nearly as warm as last year.
Last year's winter season set a new minimax record for arctic sea ice coverage over the winter, but that didn't turn into a minimum coverage record over the summer.
It looks like the total arctic sea ice extent is currently setting a minimum-coverage record at this date, but its too early to tell if it will set another minimax record. From the regional graphs page[3], it looks like most of the anomaly is coming from the Bearing Sea.
For example, I can see from the DMI (Danish Met Institute) Daily Arctic mean temperatures north of 80N graph that area-averaged temperatures in the farthest north have been well above average all season.
There is also a plot of the total freezing degree-days over the entire winter season, and its anomaly relative to the past several decades. From there, I can see that while this season has been far less cold than average, it was not nearly as warm as last year.
Last year's winter season set a new minimax record for arctic sea ice coverage over the winter, but that didn't turn into a minimum coverage record over the summer.
It looks like the total arctic sea ice extent is currently setting a minimum-coverage record at this date, but its too early to tell if it will set another minimax record. From the regional graphs page[3], it looks like most of the anomaly is coming from the Bearing Sea.
[1]: http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/
[2]: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
[3]: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/regional