Steve McIntyre on Climate Audit brings our attention to an interesting sea ice extent forecasting “contest” conducted by the Study of Environmental ARctic CHange (SEARCH). With the end of the Arctic melt season likely just a few days away, it appears that the experts have a lack of forecasting skill for the subject they are experts in.
SEARCH writes:
We received 13 responses for the September Outlook based on July data (Figure 1). Estimates for September sea ice extent are in a narrow range (4.2 to 5.0 million square kilometers), as were the Outlooks based on May and June data. As the submitted uncertainty standard deviations are about 0.4 million square kilometers, most of these Outlook expected value estimates overlap. All sea ice extent estimates for September 2009 are much lower than the past climatological extent of 6.7 million square kilometers.
Here’s the SEARCH graph (Figure1 PDF available here) showing forecasts from several well known Arctic experts and organizations. I’ve added the most recent available data, the September 6th ice extent from IARC-JAXA of 5,345,156 square kilometers in magenta for a current reference.
While we can’t be certain what nature will reveal as the final number, it is likely that the end number will end up somewhere between 5.1 and 5.25 million square kilometers. What is most interesting is that it appears that all of the Arctic experts overestimated the amount of melt back in August, using July data as a forecast basis.
McIntyre made his own prediction two weeks before this report was published saying:
2009 is now slightly behind 2008. My prediction is that 2009 will end up over 500,000 sq km behind 2008.
His wording is a bit confusing, but what he means is that the final number will likely be about 5.15 million square kilometers.
As Steve McIntyre writes:
That prediction didn’t look all that great a couple of weeks later, but right now it looks pretty much right on the money. As of today, 2009 is 470,000 sq km behind 2008 and the chances of 500,000 seem pretty realistic.
That my guess was so close was due more to good luck than acumen, but there were some reasons for it. Canada has some exposure to northern weather and it has been a cool summer here and very cool in northern Ontario. 2008 had not been as big a melt as 2007 and presumably there was presumably a bit more two-year ice in 2009 than in 2008. While 2008 and 2009 were about even at the time, the trajectories looked different and it seemed to me that 2009 might stabilize at a higher level than 2008.
And yet in early/mid August, these factors didn’t seem to be on the minds of the official agencies since, as noted above, EVERY official agency substantially over-estimated the melt.
Back in early March 2009, I asked WUWT readers what they thought the 2009 Arctic sea ice extent would be.
With 67% saying then that the 2009 extent would be greater than 2008, and with McIntyre’s forecast also, it appears that bloggers and laymen just might have have a better handle on sea ice extent than the majority of Arctic experts themselves.
The next few days will be very interesting.
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33 people who voted are jokers or maniacs
its worse than we thought….
i guess when you are prompting AGW and arctic melting, i guess you will be high in your estimates.
I have a lot of difficulty with the use of the word “normal” in this sort of thing just as I have difficulty with the use of the word “normal” in reports of temperature. The implication is that any small deviation is “abnormal”, when nothing could be further from the truth.
I also have difficulty with using the word “anomolies” when showing what is quite obviously nothing but natural deviations.
Anthony, are you saying they are estimating from July data- 5 or 6 weeks ago? I think this low-ball on extent might be a useful index of the over estimation of global warming. Hey, and they have the benefit of my two year forecast I made and emailed to them based on snow in South Africa and Argentina in summer 2007 as a forecast for the NH and the rapid freeze up after Sept 2007. I emailed them at NSIDC again in Sept 2008 after they reported a 10% increase in summer ice survival and told them to expect an added 15% for ice survival after the 2009 melt and more in the coming years. I was peed off by the “analysis of ice conditions” they gave at the time that was grossly slanted toward global warming.
The ice has increased two years in a row.
Therefore the Earth will be covered by ice by the year 2050.
Really should be 90%, if you want to include the 23% who said it would be “normal”. IMHO, they took the safe bet (and I would have voted thusly).
Anyway, this is apples and oranges, it would be interesting if your poll would allow your astute and erudite readers to make actual value predictions rather than just asking them to hedge their bets. With that data in hand, then you could make an educated comparison between the two. Maybe next year?
In other words, it’s more difficult to guess the actual temperature tomorrow with any accuracy instead of saying if or not it will break a record.
I don’t believe that the Arctic will be ice free in 2009, but it definitely will be in 2015. I know this because various scientists, journalists and newsreaders have said it will be. And everything you read in the papers and on TV is true isn’t it? Apparently it has something to do with the magical properties of a trace gas called CO2 which stops the planet from cooling down when its atmospeheric concentration is increased from 0.0285% to 0.0385%.
The ‘Arctic warming faster than at any time for 2,000 years’ is doing really well over here in England. The BBC have run with it (of course) and ordinary folk have swallowed it whole because it has been on the radio too. Even my wife’s uncle (who isn’t a Warmist) thought that it was true because he heard it on BBC Radio 4. Oh dear! There’s still not a month goes by when someone here on TV doesn’t say, “The ice caps are melting”. Seriously. As a sceptic it actually makes me want to give up trying to tell people the truth. People don’t seem to want to know the truth. We have many nutters here who think 9/11 (actually here in England it’s 11/9) was one huge conspiracy. Sometimes I despair for the human race, I really do.
Interesting. The same group, using June data, mostly predicted MORE ice, than the predictions using July data.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/07/when-two-month-sea-ice-projections-vary.html
I called it between 5.0 and 5.3m about 11 months ago – I mused to a skeptic as to whether scientist would put their reputations on the line as I did?
Sure I don’t have a reputation to defend professionally, but if an expert’s opinion is worth anything, it’s because they are better at this sort of thing than the rest of us.
If they aren’t, then isn’t there a question about just why we are funding their research?
On the graph, 4th from the right, it says Stern,
Please tell me it is NOT the economist!
Thanks
ALL professional model’s didn’t include NAO, what most likely is the main driver, while man people on this website did.
new knowledge can’t pass peer review, if science settled – i.e. disfunctional
Of course, that is better than the June predictions. One group was down for 3.2 M km2.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2009_outlook/report_june.php
We’re absolutely confused!, how many polar bears have passed away?
This is merely a weather event. Should the ice cap go back to shrinking next year, then we’ll be back to climate change.
The data here:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
indicates that the minimum could be this week. If so, 5.2-5.3 million km. sq. will be the final answer (using JAXA numbers). That would make this year’s increase even greater than last year’s and the total recovery a million km. sq.
“…appears that bloggers and laymen just might have have a better handle on sea ice extent than the majority of Arctic experts themselves.”
Yeah, but our predictions don’t make for sensational headlines. Science is so boring.
I think they were all using Catlin Arctic Survey data for inputs That’s the most likely explanation for all 13 of them coming up short ;o)
Pierre Gosselin (12:50:12) :
I sincerely doubt it. One look at that spotless record for 2009 and I have to say it’s not going there. The DMI, as Frederick notes above, is the telling story.
Gee.
These “scientists” are so accurate – less than 1/2 year in the future – that they not only could not even guess whether 2009 sea ice level would be greater or less than 2007 that they missed hether it would be greater or less than 2008. Much less (now) almost 30% greater than 2007’s minimum.
This same graph – of wrong predictions by “sea ice experts” – was up for a while at the http://global-warming.accuweather.com/ blog earlier this summer. Then it was quietly superceded by other stories. Today, they too are running a similar version of the Arctic icecap changes.
/sarchasm – the gaping whole between a liberal ecotheist and the real world.
But they can project even more accurately the next four hundred years.
Do not let anyone forget Al Gore’s prediction for 2013 is zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. No ice nowhere, no-how. No Christmas, no Santa, no presents, no reindeer and most of all no ice.
Oh yeah, and no polar bears either.
REPLY: I’ve already written my post for September 30th, 2013 – A
Go Toddler Ice, Go.
I lucked out and got on the public record in the Spring of ’08 predicting that sea ice extent at minimum would not break the record of ’07. I’m also on the record early this melt season predicting that this year’s minimum would be more extensive than last year’s. I based these guesses on the temperature peak around 2004-2005, the movement of the PDO to its cooling phase and the fact that there is a lag as the heat engine that is the earth pumps heat poleward. Now, I consider myself lucky, because I know that the vagaries of wind can affect minimum ice extent dramatically, but still, there it is. Right X 2. I’ll predict right now that next year’s minimum will have even greater extent than this year’s.
Sure, I may be wrong, but if the Arctic alternately freezes up and melts again on a 60 year cycle, then we’ll soon start seeing minimums above the 1979-2000 average.
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On their opposite flank, these “experts” are no doubt frustrated by the halt–and even reversal–of the rise in global mean sea level over the past 2 or 3 years.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Is this the minimum extent for September or the average extent for September?
Are the predictions based on the JAXA numbers or someother estimate?
Everyone knows it is getting colder. In south Florida the pool water is way colder this September than last. It’s not magic.