What are the poles doing?

Just a quick update about the sea ice. The Arctic Ocean has reached it's minimum sea ice for the summer and made a remarkable rebound from last summer in extent and thickness.

What does this mean for our winter? Well, it's still hard to tell. Many different factors go into a winter forecast but with the current ice extent it would increase the odds for a colder snowier winter in the northern hemisphere (not region specific).

Now looking at the Antarctic ice extent we can see clearly that over the last 30 years it's been growing and still holding very strong despite theories of global warming.

While my confidence in the winter forecast is becoming slightly clearer, it's going to be another month before I issue any kind of preliminary monthly forecasts.

*All images from http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/