Comments 1 to 11:

1. Tom Curtis at 15:50 PM on 24 December, 2011
   And for the Land down under: (Original map from wikipedia) The shaded area is actually 3,740,000 km^2 (give or take)or about 4% oversize for the comparison. {That's the disadvantage of not having nice small states like Texas for fine tuning ;)} The area of lost ice represents 47% of Australia's territory including Tasmania, but not the Australian Antarctic Territory.
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2. Tom Curtis at 16:12 PM on 24 December, 2011
   For further comparison, that is: 8% of the area of Asia, or equal to the combined territories of India, Nepal, Bagnladesh and Buhtan; 31% of the area of Africa, or equal to the area of Sudan, South Sudan and Libya; and 20% of the area of South America, or equal to the combined areas of Brazil and Colombia. Sorry, no maps.
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3. Doug Hutcheson at 18:47 PM on 24 December, 2011
   Good visualisation of area lost. What about mass lost? Presumably this would be even more dramatic.
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4. Daniel Bailey at 01:49 AM on 25 December, 2011

   @ Doug H The mass loss is indeed dramatic. Being volumetric (non-existing in 3-dimensions), it is more difficult to make that volume loss relational. Here are 3 attempts:

    

   

    

   

    

   Note that this final graphic reveals that Arctic sea ice volume has declined in every month of the year, not just the summer minimums.

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5. muoncounter at 02:51 AM on 25 December, 2011
   Less technical, but more tasty: Late 1970's minimum volume ~16k km^3, on the left; current minimum volume ~4k, on the right: Our Arctic ice is now 'pint-sized.' Apologies to you metric folks; there are 2 pints in a quart and 2 quarts in a half-gallon.
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6. arch stanton at 05:23 AM on 25 December, 2011
   Great graphic, thanks. On the picky side: I find 1980 to be a poor choice of start point as it is the highest summer ice area on record and therefore leaves the graph open to the (barely valid) criticism of being cherry-picked. Better IMO to have used 1979. The graphics would not be much different and the choice could be defended in 2 ways: 1979 was the first year available, and 1979 was closer to (only slightly less) than the average summer area from the first 10 years available. A similar comment applies to the choice of 2007 v 2011 as an end point. No point in giving the contrarians a valid but insignificant angle to exploit. Happy Holidays to everyone. arch
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7. shoyemore at 08:07 AM on 25 December, 2011
   Happy Christmas to the Skeptical Science team !!! [Ok, its off topic, but stretch a point :)]
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   Moderator Response: [DB] 'Tis the season...Merry Christmas to all!
8. jimspy at 08:53 AM on 25 December, 2011
   I liked the explanation in that article of how arctic ice loss affects the jet stream and hence the climate AND weather in the mid-latitudes. Another arrow in the quiver...
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9. Daniel Bailey at 09:30 AM on 25 December, 2011
   @ arch stanton One can go much further back in time than 1979: Red is September min, blue is March max (From the Walsh dataset, courtesy muoncounter) Or this image from Cryosphere Today: And the following graphic from L. Hamilton shows area and extent declining in every month of the year (back to 1978), again:
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10. Doug Hutcheson at 10:53 AM on 25 December, 2011
    Wow! Great graphics. Thanks to all who contributed to furthering my understanding: the picture is clear and frightening.
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11. arch stanton at 04:39 AM on 26 December, 2011
    DB (and mouncounter) @9 - Thank you, I had not seen the Walsh dataset before.
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