While news regarding the Arctic's sea ice has been mostly bleak, a particularly cool summer in 2013 is giving environmental scientists good news.

According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience determined the sea ice bounced back by a third its total mass due to cooler temperatures in the summer of 2013. They also determined this resilient bounce back carried over into

the next year and made up for loss from the last three years with growth to spare.

"The summer of 2013 was much cooler than recent years with temperatures typical of those seen in the late 1990s," study lead author Rachel Tilling, a PhD student at University College London's (UCL) Earth & Planetary Sciences Centre for Polar Observation and Modeling, said in a press release. "This allowed thick sea ice to persist northwest of Greenland because there were fewer days when it could melt. Although models have suggested that the volume of Arctic sea ice is in long term decline, we know now that it can recover by a significant amount if the melting season is cut short."

That is not to suggest the long-term pattern of sea ice loss will be broken, BBC News noted. The Arctic's sea ice extent is still down 40 percent over the last 35 years, according to satellite data.

"Understanding what controls the amount of Arctic sea ice takes us one step closer to making reliable predictions of how long it will last, which is important because it is a key component of Earth's climate system," study co-author Andy Shepherd, a professor of earth observation at UCL and at the University of Leeds, said in the release. "Although the jump in volume means that the region is unlikely to be ice free this summer, we still expect temperatures to rise in the future, and so the events of 2013 will have simply wound the clock back a few years on the long-term pattern of decline. Our goal is to make sure we do not lose this unique capability to monitor Arctic sea ice when the mission ends."