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Pointing to any natural factors is frowned on by climate alarmists. But these factors have always been in play and always will be, and some researchers at least will find and discuss them.

By Paul Homewood

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php

Most of us are probably familiar with the pattern of Arctic sea ice decline between 1979 and 2007, followed by a period of relative stability. Most of the decline took place after the mid 1990s.

The decline is nearly always explained away as the result of global warming, but a couple of old studies show this not to be the case.

In 2011, Robson & Sutton found that the sub polar gyre underwent remarkable and rapid warming in the mid 1990s, and that this was linked to changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00443.1