Arctic ice extent bottomed out in 2007, and has recovered the last two years as shown by this graph from the University of Illinois Cryosphere.

It has returned to very near the 1979-2000 year average (NSIDC). Had NSIDC used the entire period of record as their base period (1979-2008), we would be at or above the average.

The most competent polar scientific organization, Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St. Petersburg, Russia published recently 3 books summarizing scientific results of climate changes in the Arctic region for the last century. One of it dedicated to Arctic climate. Based on the results obtained they forecast coming temperature and sea ice cover area changes in the Polar seas for the next 10-20 years.
Anomaly of mean annual air surface temperature 1900-2006 in the zone of 70-90 N and its predicted trend (I.E.Frolov et al. Scientific research in Arctic. Vol. 2. Climatic changes in the ice cover of the Eurasian shelf seas. -SPb.: “Nauka”, 2007,158 p).

See large image here.

The authors showed that Arctic climate change is natural in origin and several orders of magnitude greater than the level of anthropogenic impact on the climate. Estimates of possible changes of Arctic air temperature and ice cover propagation area for the 21st century are given on a basis of the revealed stable cyclic oscillations of 10, 20 and 50 to 60 years. Read more here.

The IJIS JAXA AMSR-E data shows we are running higher than any of the years since 2002.