People who have strong feelings about something ought to back them up with something. That at least would demonstrate the level of strength behind those feelings. I am not a fool, and I don’t intend to put my house up or in fact any money whatsoever, to back what I am going to say here. And I am fully aware of the possibility this could go very wrong. But, whatever the case, I am going to predict the extent of Arctic sea ice as at the close of Summer 2025, foolish or not. I have spent a lot of time studying this over the last few years, and I reckon there is some basis for being able to make loose predictions of this sort. Over the next six weeks or so, we will see what happens. The superficial odds are heavily against this, but there are good, though not necessarily sound reasons, for going against those odds. And I will lose no honour or prestige, no matter which way the result unfolds, since while I consider myself to be an honourable person, any accumulated prestige I may have is not very high in the first place.
So, while this will be based on some logical, perhaps even intuitive reasoning, and on not entirely reliable data of the recent and not so recent past, and on data not yet available but which will accumulate over the next 6 or 7 weeks, I feel it is a worthwhile exercise in testing these ideas – if only to establish their level of reasonableness (or otherwise).
Take a look at the current picture, given in this chart (from specific selections in the NSIDC Charctic Sea Ice Graph). You can see the years and averages I have chosen to show in this exercise as they are shown in bolded text in the legend to the right. They include the five years of the current decade, plus the climate alarmists favourite of 2012 – the lowest extent year of recent times. The averages show the extent lines for the previous two full decades of records. My overall prediction (made early in 2024), which is not part of this exercise, is that by the end of the current decade (in five years time), the new decade avarage for Arctic sea ice extent will be similar to the one for 2011-2020 (smoky blue line) or even slightly above that level. I leave you to decide for yourself what that would mean.
The first prediction I am going to make is that come 1st September we will see a positive result in the current decade average. In other words, the average remaining sea ice extent as at that date will be higher than the smoky blue line, i.e. more than 4.702 million Km2. That, incidentally, is almost guaranteed. The Sep 1, 2025 end of month point has only to be higher than 3.9 million Km2 to achieve that.
I will go further with my next prediction, by saying the actual level for Sep 1, 2025 end of month point will be close to the 2021/2022 (burgundy and brown lines) result than to the 2023/2024 (orange and green lines) result. In other words, around 5 million Km2. I believe that to be entirely feasible.
An average July ice melt level is around 3 million Km2. This year it was only 2.8 million. In other words an underachieved melting month. August usually averages around 2 million Km2 of ice melt. So I am predicting a markedly underachieved month – or something around only 1.4 million. This despite what I am sure will be described yet again somewhere as being another ‘hottest year on record’.
And so to September, which depends entirely on the state of the August results. September usually accounts for less than half a million Km2 of ice loss, and generally (2024* was an exception) finishes with more ice extent than when it began, due I think to an extended later end-of-Summer in the previous two years, by around 1 week. This produced a slight negative 1 October result last year. So it will be ‘touch and go’ for what happens this year. Nevertheless, I am going to say it is likely to return to being positive this year. But it depends on whether there is still an extended Summer or not. Either way, the 1 October five year average will not stray far from that of the previous full decade.
* Correction: Sorry, that should be 2023.
Well, there it is. It could be a mid-decade achievement marker, or something of a flop. We will see.
Not Something Else 
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