Dramatic Arctic Warming captured with ice extent and temperatures: Area under the DMI 80 temperature curve biggest in 2016 in direct relation to substantial daily open water area.

Average Arctic Ocean surface temperatures have a close relation to either sea ice or open water total areas.  

These three measurable geophysical parameters are inseparable,  they cause and effect each other to vary.   The easiest one to immediately visualize is open water,  dark, but warm especially in winter.

Sea ice extent variations by Cryosphere Today depict a steady
downward trend,  except of course for 2016 with numeric data calculation problems.
Obviously absent sea ice is replaced by open sea water.   The large 2007 and 2012 variations depicted above are largely due to favorable melt or compaction conditions as caused by Arctic Dipoles or rather large Cyclones mixing sea ice with already open water huge sea waves.  

    Visualize the graph year by year,  mentally calculate the area under the red curve with respect to green,  I calculate every year above 0 except for 2004.      

The period of greater demise for Arctic sea ice started in 1998,  if we integrate the space under the DMI 80 N temperature red curve vs average in green,  we may get a correlation with respect to open water extent.  Note 2013 the last year with expansive sea ice after minima, the red closely hugged the green more often.  Note the years 2016, 2012, 2007 and 2006 being particularly ocean blue with a largest integrated temperature areas matching open water extent  or are very well reversely proportional with their lowest sea ice extents.  2004 temperature area integration is close to 0 which coincides with 2004 ice extent being pretty average.   The pre 1998 curves appear to have a consistent integration much closer to 0 or less:

      The integration of the space under the red DMI temperature curve with respect to the average should be close to or below  zero for every pre 1998 year,  considering when temperature is below average the calculated area is negative.

        What we may conclude from these mental integrations: there's a hard road back to normalcy for sea ice to rebuild,   if not an irreversible downward extent trend particularly demonstrated by a very large,  the largest under temperature curve integrated area in 2016,  indicating much more open sea water,  it is exceptionally foreboding.  WD December 13, 2016