Don’t look now, but…:

Sea ice in the Arctic shrunk a dramatic 18% this year to a record low of 3.41m sq km, according to the official US monitoring organisation theNational Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado.

Scientists and environment groups last night said the fall was unprecedented and the clearest signal yet of climate change.

The data released showed the arctic sea beginning to refreeze again in the last few days after the most dramatic melt observed since satellite observations started in 1979.

This year’s sea ice extent was 700,000 sq km below the previous minimum of 4.17m sq km set in 2007.

“We are now in uncharted territory,” said Nsidc director Mark Serreze. “While we’ve long known that as the planet warms up, changes would be seen first and be most pronounced in the Arctic, few of us were prepared for how rapidly the changes would actually occur.”

The Guardian goes on to quote one of the world’s top experts in Arctic sea ice predicting the “complete collapse” of Arctic summer ice in the summer by 2015 or 2016.

Hey, we’ll set up a tiki hut there! They got surfin’ too?

I shouldn’t kid. We’re in for more scorching summers, droughts, and suchlike. And none of us will do much of anything about it.