Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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Many scientists' eyes are on the Arctic Ocean to see how much of the ice cap melts this summer, following last summer's extreme melt-off to more than 1.8 million square miles below normal.

Currently, there is a wider expanse of Arctic ice than there was at the same time a year ago, about 300,000 square miles more. But studies have found that much of that ice is relatively thin. The most rapid melting period is from now through September.

Long-term planetary warming, widely believed to be related to greenhouse gases released by human activity; natural climatic oscillations lasting many years; and year-to-year weather variability all play a role in how much Arctic sea ice melts in the summer.

Connecting the dots between Arctic ice expanse and weather patterns is difficult. Last year's melt-off was followed by an unusually cold winter in the Arctic Circle and the widest snow cover expanse on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

Also, oddly, the record low ice expanse in the Arctic occurred at the same time as a record large ice expanse in the Antarctic. The Antarctic record was by a razor-thin margin while the Arctic record was a runaway. Satellite ice coverage records date only to the late 1970s, however.

Buoyed by lingering sea ice around Antarctica, total global sea ice briefly peaked at more than 600,000 square miles above normal early this year, its largest expanse relative to normal since 2001. Since then, it has dropped to about the same margin below normal.

Go on the Web to the University of Illinois' "The Cryosphere Today" at arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ to see easy-to-read charts and graphs concerning polar ice concentration.