In April the ex­tent of Arc­tic sea ice was back to where it was in April 13 years ago, and most has been at least two me­tres thick

In­evitably, when even satel­lite tem­per­a­tures were show­ing 2016 as "the hottest year on record", we were go­ing to be told last win­ter that the Arc­tic ice was at its low­est ex­tent ever. Sure enough, be­fore Christ­mas, a re­port from the US Na­tional Oceanic and At­mo­spheric Ad­min­is­tra­tion was greeted with such head­lines as "Hottest Arc­tic on record trig­gers mas­sive ice melt". In March we had the BBC trum­pet­ing an­other study that blamed van­ish­ing Arc­tic ice as the cause of weather which led to the worst-ever smog in Beijing, warn­ing that it "could even threaten the Beijing Win­ter Olympics in 2022".