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Above: a new animation of Arctic sea ice from 2000 to May 2009, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and KlimaCampus of the University of Hamburg in Germany. It accompanies their first contribution to this year’s sea ice forecasts — and they put the odds of a new record minimum at either 28%, or with an enhanced model that takes better account of current ice conditions about 49%. Close enough to my gut feeling of 50/50 to allow me a little confirmation bias, I think… The press release is here, and the full forecast here (pdf). The AWI modelling is part of the Search forecasting exercise I mentioned last week. The full set of forecasts should be out in the next week to ten days, according to project co-ordinator Jim Overland, and I’ll cover them when they become available.