Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly in response to global anthropogenic warming. However, climate model simulations consistently predict lower rates of Arctic Sea ice decline than observations, even though there have numerous efforts on improving the models' capability on the simulations of positive feedback processes such as sea ice-ocean coupling, surface radiative forcing and sea ice-albedo. Here we present several evidences on the accumulated impacts of extreme events in the Arctic on the sea ice variability during the global warming. We show that for the lack of simulations of extreme events in the Arctic Ocean, climate models are difficult to capture their cumulative effects on the sea ice retreat. Our results suggest the need to enhance the ability of climate models to simulate or parameterize extreme events to improve the ability to simulate the rapid retreat of sea ice.