By Steve Goddard
On June 28, I generated a forecast projection for Arctic ice during the remainder of the summer, seen below.
So how is it doing so far? The image below shows that my forecast has been too conservative. The actual JAXA path (red) is above my forecast (dashed.)
Does this mean that I need to increase my forecast minimum to a higher number?
No, I don’t have any plans to do that, because I expect melt to occur faster during the remainder of the month. NCEP is forecasting warmer temperatures over the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas for the next two weeks.
We are already seeing evidence of this in the DMI graph of 30% concentration ice.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
I expect to see that JAXA will move closer to my 5.5 million km² forecast for the summer minimum.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Hey Steve!….are you “The Spy who came from the cold”? Brrrrrrrrrrrr!
My guess is 5.65 M km^2
Anothony, how did you come up with your forcast? It seems that you are implying you have some model or at least a data based projection but I have not seen any equation. My ‘prediction’, i.e. 5,3001,000sqkm, is entirly data based. I made plots of dA/dt vs. A, looked at multiple years and determined that the average gradient, when the extend goes from 10e6sqkm to 8sqkm, correlates to the minimum. I didn’t propose a mechanism. I’m interested to see if you have some quantitative mechanism.
Dino – maybe this prior post will help you understand his forecast method…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/07/take-a-right-turn-to-ice-station-zero/
I have a very scientific forecast :
Take all SEARCH june forecasts. Correct them using the same error ratio they demonstrate in 2009 june forecast.
The result is 5 627 000 km²
The details are available (in french) here : http://www.lepost.fr/article/2010/07/16/2154103_surface-de-la-banquise-une-approche-originale-pour-la-prevision.html
Anybody who want to PROVE that I am wrong will have to wait until mid september.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-20/arctic-ice-melting-fast-may-reach-all-time-low-this-year-russia-says.html
don’t you folks listen??? there is funding to be had…. scream and be rich..
regards
PapyJako, statisticians would love your method. It forms an important component of statistical models.
I hope you are wrong, Steve. 🙂
Again, I’ll call anything above 5.5M km/2 a victory for my prognosticating skills, as that puts me (just joe sixpack on the internet, paying moderately close attention) closer to reality than the median guess of the panel of 16 experts. And actually, that’d be two years in a row, and thus a trend! Who knows, if I hit, maybe Dr. Walt will ask me to participate in next year’s panel. He certainly *should* ask you.
I am one who has said your 5.5M km2 is on the conservative side.
My bad.
Two cubes in mine Steve, and have one yourself. Thanks for dishing up the good cheer.
Anyone else try looking at the DMI Website ? ?
Steve: Everyone will expect you Photoshopped out 2010 regaining 2nd Place BUT … I expanded your version of DMI’s Chart, Steve – – you have all the lines “Dashed”
— well, DMI don’t do dashed lines.
The tiny gap wipes out Today’s vertical drop.
MAYBe it’s an artifact of your image system. But if you consult JAXA data, you find 2010 just had a 100,000 day (first in weeks). Gee, even yesterday was higher than its been in weeks – -beat 2007 for the second day in a row. Guess we are in for some SUNSHINE. And Pips 2.0 Displacement Chart, shows the near-random Drift of little tiny arrows has gone to good-sized ones — and MAYBE is sorting out into a pattern similar to 2007’s. Or Maybe NOT.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Displacement&year=2010&month=7&day=21
Note if you put 2007 into the web address instead of 2010, 2007 had a few days wandering, but the next 8 are Heavy Melts.
Don’t sweat the Daily Up & Down, Steve – – it’s the WEATHER.
PS: If You are Me, of course, with the POSSIBLE DOOMSDAY FORECAST
( e.g. see hot-topic.co.nz/arctic-sea-ice-projections-6-billion-dead-within-a-year-it-really-is-grim-up-north/ )
… being right or Wrong might be FATAL – – so I always hope I’m wrong.
Current Odds I give for 300 mph winds … are 10% and dropping every day.
But I still sweat. A lot.
Have you looked at the buoy temps?
07/20/1800Z 86.516°N 0.212°E -13.4°C 1011.3mb
07/20/1700Z 86.518°N 0.228°E -13.0°C 1010.9mb
07/20/1600Z 86.520°N 0.243°E -13.8°C 1010.1mb
07/20/1400Z 86.526°N 0.255°E -12.6°C 1012.6mb
07/20/1300Z 86.528°N 0.249°E -11.5°C 1012.5mb
OMG
JHwa
Jhwa says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Have you looked at the buoy temps?
07/20/1800Z 86.516°N 0.212°E -13.4°C 1011.3mb
______________________________________________________________
Jhwa, is that a dash 13.4°C or is it negative 13.4°C?, yeah I know a dumb question but please answer anyway.
It looked to me as a -XX.XDeg C
Is far as i’m concerned there is no such thing as a dumb question.
Steven Goddard, I am impressed, to say the least, of your work.
Is it a coincidence that your surname is the same as a certain rocket engineer who was ridiculed for so long by, was it the NYT?
Anyway, hopefully it will show young, inspired, wannabe scientists, how to approach a “problem”, instead of just being a parrot. I dont like parrots.
Let’s hope that you’re estimate turns out to be conservative, Steve. We can only imagine the cries from the warmistas if we approached or shot past the 2007 low, no doubt accompanied by a flood of tears for the poor polar bears.
Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100720/ap_on_sc/lt_brazil_dead_penguins
Seems like global cooling is killing the unfortunately less adorable penguin: “Scientists are investigating whether strong currents and colder-than-normal waters have hurt populations of the species that make up the penguins’ diet”
Can we ask to come out of retirement and predict the ice?
…err, that hyperlink was supposed to be titled “Paul the octopus”
Paul the psychic octupus predicts 5,602,287.23705km2 +/- 18 km2.
The preliminary JAXA figures for 7/20/10 show 132k sq-km lost in a single day. 2009 had 5 days in a row like this starting on 7/21/09.
PIOMAS volume anomaly shows a slight uptick: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php
Frederick Michael says:
July 20, 2010 at 8:36 pm
“The preliminary JAXA figures for 7/20/10 show 132k sq-km lost in a single day. 2009 had 5 days in a row like this starting on 7/21/09.”
But 2009 didnt have the extent of early season ice loss that 2010 has experienced. It was still losing ice in Hudson Bay during the latter part of July, although the July ice loss in the East Siberian and Kara seas are probably looking fairly similar.
Much will depend in the next 7 days on whether the rate of loss in those areas matches what happened during the same period last year. If so I think we will end the year with a similar extent to 2009.
I dont think the ice loss is likely to exceed what happened last year for this period but I think there’s still a possibility the loss could be slightly lower given the Hudson Bay ice is already gone.
“The ice may melt fully in summer and freeze in winter,” Frolov said. “This is one possible scenario.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Maria Kolesnikova in Moscow at mkolesnikova@bloomberg.net,
What other scenarios spring to mind? Ice freezing in summer & melting in winter?
What other scenarios spring to mind?
Actually I think he might be putting the idea that there will be no winter ice into the minds of readers. Which would just be ridiculous.
As you say Perry, his “possible scenario” is the only possible alternative to what we have now.