" we might expect sea ice in the Antarctic to actually increase as the ice cap gently melt".
Actually, that has been mostly the case until about the beginning of this Antarctic Summer. But this year, the sea ice in the the South is disappearing just like it has in the North. Total sea ice, N + S, suddenly started dropping like crazy in 2016. Is this just a fluke, or have we crossed some inflection point, some "hocky stick" curve?