As a brief distraction from you-know-what, tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon EDT there will be an on-line press briefing by sea ice experts from NASA and NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center). This is a rare opportunity since the public can listen in!
The 2008 story so far: The sea ice is much more primed for melt than it was last year at this time. There's very little multi-year ice left and the (thin) first-year ice is acting very mobile. I'm guessing that this situation is the reason for the press conference.
The audio stream will be here. One hour beforehand the briefing packet will be available here. I don't know if the audio will be available afterward, but the packet will be.
Links to some interesting graphics below the fold:
Compare the ice today with one year ago. Note the lack of an intact thick pack (red to green) in the central Arctic sea, and that the relatively thick part (paler blue) of the first-year ice has passed over the north pole (apparently for the first time).
The life cycle of the pack ice is to rotate around the Arctic Sea one to several times and then to flush out through the strait between Greenland and Iceland. What we're seeing now is most of the ice passing out on the first rotation. The very thin ice (1 to 2 meters, shown as darker blue to purple) tends to melt early in the season, so when viewing the plots pay attention mainly to the thicker stuff.
This page has an animation showing the mobility of the ice over the last few months in one of the areas that's thinned the most. In December a scientist on an icebreaker there described it as "styrofoam in a bath tub."
The big unknown is whether atmospheric conditions (reduced cloudiness and increased air temps) will aid the melting as they did in 2007. If they do, expect a big melt beyond last year's. I hesitate to say that a complete loss is possible, but based on the present conditions we could well see the main pack split in two for the first time.