The arctic ice sheet continues to NOT shrink! For the last eleven years arctic ice sheet extent has been stable.
On September 13th the extent of the arctic ice sheet reached its annual minimum at 4.64 m Km2. This is the eight (8th) lowest on record and 1.25m Km2 (37%)above the all time low of 3.39m Km2 recorded in 2012.
Here is a graph of arctic sea ice extent over the last eleven years. The higher three years are 2009, 2013 and 2014.
The lowest horizontal line is 3m Km2, rising in increments of 0.5m Km2. The 2017 line is the blue line (or green depending on your eyes / screen) that finishes in mid-September.
For the last eleven years the arctic ice sheet has been stable at 4½m Km2. For the last nineteen years global temperatures have been stable. It seems that it took some eight years for the arctic ice sheet to catch up with the 0.4oC rise in temperature that occurred between the late 1970’s and 1998.
Figures for annual minima are:
| Year | m Km2 |
| 2007 | 4.16 |
| 2008 | 4.59 |
| 2009 | 5.12 |
| 2010 | 4.61 |
| 2011 | 4.34 |
| 2012 | 3.39 |
| 2013 | 5.05 |
| 2014 | 5.03 |
| 2015 | 4.43 |
| 2016 | 4.14 |
| 2017 | 4.64 |
There is no trend here. You can inspect my graph here.