The race to forecast the minimum is on again. Will it be another Serreze death spiral media opportunity? Or will it be ho-hum- nothing to see here, move along?
Once again I’m inviting readers to submit their best guess, best SWAG, or best dartboard result to the poll for the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook. Deadline, according to the recent announcement I posted on WUWT from ARCUS is close of business Friday June 7th.
Of recent interest has been the recent tendency for the current data to hang between the 1990’s and the 2000 normal line.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) – International Arctic Research Center (IARC) – Click the pic to view at sourceWe are in that time of year when all of the years converge into a tighter grouping. This makes judging where the current year is going to be a tough challenge at this stage.
I’m going to give WUWT readers an opportunity to make a forecast for the ARCUS SEARCH sea ice contest submission, based on voting. See the poll at the end.
I’ll run this poll each month in the week before the deadline, and we’ll see how we do as the minimum approaches. The value used by ARCUS for judging the contest is the NSIDC value in square kilometers. The object is to guess what the September minimum will be.
I suggest that you should not be using the JAXA graph to forecast minimums, though it it useful for determining short term trends as it is more responsive than the NSDIC graph below, which is averaged.
Here is what the June 2012 forecast submission reports looked like:
The archive of the 2012 contest is available here: http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2012/summary
For a complete overview of Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice, see the WUWT Sea Ice Reference page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Here is the forecast poll, deadline is Friday June 7th. Bear in mind that traditionally, forecasts in June have been too high. Last year’s minimum was 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles) at its lowest point on 16 September, and in June, WUWT readers forecast 4.9 million sq kilometers.
Note: The mean is the monthly average in sq km2 for September, which is what the contest is looking for. It is not really as interesting as the minimum, but that’s the number ARCUS is looking for. Given that many of the June forecasts are too high anyway, shooting for the minimum rather than the mean might be just as good.
Note: The POLL HAS CLOSED, and I’ll be submitting the forecast to ARCUS – Anthony
5.931415929
i needed to incorporate ( approximate ) the number Pi in my prediction somehow – other that that the base ( 5.9 ) is simply ( i think it was a critical constant + or – 90 % ) ) from a model i have developed and revised, predicated upon an earlier algorithm that solves level 37 in candy crush saga, using a minimum number of moves.
5.931415929
I needed to incorporate ( approximate ) the number Pi in my prediction somehow…
Yes, but pi ≈ 3.1415926… Hence your otherwise solid model’s prediction is likely too high by ~3000 m2. Roughly 2 NHL Hockey rinks.
5.82
Licked finger. Stuck finger in the air. Plumped for 4.8-4.9. At this stage of the game it’s as good as anything else.
Wanting to one-up the geekiness of Steve’s post: 5.85987448204884, π+ℯ…
*wanders off, humming the Irrational Number song… three, two, seven, nine, five oh two eight eight four one, nine, seven, one… six, nine, three nine nine three seven five one oh, fight, eight two, oh nine seven four nine four four, five nine, two three oh seven eight one six four, oh six, two eight six, two oh eight nine nine*
4.6 to 4.8 as it has the biggest spread of all
Am seeking a spot of guidance if anyone can help? I’m looking for those images that compares an up to date satellite shot of the Arctic with the same views from 20 and 30 years ago.The ones where there’s a pair side by side for easy comparison. (I saw something along these lines recently but can’t find it, not sure if it was on WUWT or Steve Goddard’s site) I’ve also been on the cryosphere today site but for my sins, find it incredibly confusing. Thanks in advance.
Judging by state of the North Atlantic currents as a possible driver of ice melting
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ArcticSeaIce.htm
it looks like about 3.75 million km2, not a prediction but an estimate from the available data.
But don’t vote too low either, or it will look like WUWT is acknowledging that the climate in the Arctic is changing due to global warming. Which is nonsense, of course, and if it isn’t, it’s a natural cycle.
REPLY: Pay no attention to the butt cheek. This is just another fake comment from “Günther Kirschbaum” aka Neven, in Graz Austria, who can’t handle different views on sea ice, so must revert to childish personas with fake email addresses. – Anthony
That’s a typo in the ballot that should be corrected to read: “4.6 to 4.7 …”
Tez: I would think greater than 6 million is the largest spread if you want to change your vote 🙂
James
Ice free surely? Polar Bear cubs just aren’t going to know what ice is!
Judging from the lack of polar bear deaths I’m going for record sea ice. It’s what the polar bear models predict, and the polar bear models accurately account for their numbers in the past, so we can be confident they will be accurate in the future, despite some polar bears deaths currently hiding in the deep north.
You can show me all your graphs & stuff, Mr Watts.
I’m going with the “settled science” and the 97%.
Dana Nuccitelli says, “The last time CO 2 exceeded 400 ppm, some 3 million years ago, sea levels were 50 feet higher and humans did not exist.”
Obviously all the ice will melt in the next four months and we are all gonna die from rising sea levels as co2 is now 400 ppm.
The amount of ice is zero.
I can’t vote for zero!
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/06/05/5471547/climate-debate-is-settled-carbon.html
.
I’ll be collecting my winnings after the apocalypse.
Guesses are all over the ballpark. Interesting.
I went with 4.1-4.2 and was worried about that being too high. Astonished to see if anything I’m one of the lowest. Expecting ice to recover from last year, but not by a lot. Ice is still thin and it will be stormy up there again. Expect global temperatures to continue to fall and ice levels to continue to consequently rise and eventually get back to 20th century norms. But ice always lags. I’m not expecting to see a dramatic rise for another three or four years.
Anthony – you might like to consider presenting the poll options in the reverse order from coldest to hottest next year, with the previous year’s minimum marked. That might make it clearer to some of the extreme ice optimists just how massive a jump they are predicting.
Steve and Max are wrong.
After detailed mathematical analysis, I determined that it will be much simpler – just 2 x e = 5.43656365691809
My first guess was 5, but taking to heart the warning that June guesses have been high, I averaged that with last years’ low, coming up with 4.2 to 4.3.
Lot of real revenue under that sea ice. I remember start of freeze last year causing projects to be abandoned. Wouldn’t be surprised if the ice breakers make an appearance soon. If that happens all bets will be off.
I’m going with 4.1-2.
With the number of 6+ votes, does anyone suspect SkSotage?
WUWT readers were pretty far off the mark last year but personally I reckon on this being the turn around year. Arctic sea ice, I believe will start slowly but erratically recovering from 2013 for at least another 20-30 years, eventually getting back to something close to the 1979-2000 average. My estimate for this year then will be consistent with what was predicted last year – 4.9 million. My reasoning for this is that already this Spring there has been a relative cooling of the Arctic and moderately good N. Hemisphere snow cover. I personally suspect that we will not see the melt line graph continue to plummet nearly as late into the season as we did in 2012. As for death spiral – not a chance! Recovery impetus yes – albeit fairly moderate this year.
Barents Sea, in particular needs to catch up winter ice growth. This has been the one area contributing most to lack of ice over the past few years. My real objection tho’ is to the farce of the summer minimum. Really the year’s average mean should be the question. Also, NW passage may not open up this year – another good yard stick, as is the NE passage. Areas of extensive open sea where ice is just one winter thick will be more vulnereble – as ever. We shall see!
“After detailed mathematical analysis…”
I would have said
ice=299792458*2.71828 i = 814920391 i
m/sec? Ah well, it’s only imaginary.
Richard111 says:
June 6, 2013 at 4:05 am
Lot of real revenue under that sea ice. I remember start of freeze last year causing projects to be abandoned. Wouldn’t be surprised if the ice breakers make an appearance soon. If that happens all bets will be off.
Well the Yamal is already on its way to evacuate the Russian polar research station because of breakup of the ice that it’s on.
The Arcus sea ice forecast is for the September monthly mean not the minimum.
handjive says:
June 6, 2013 at 3:54 am
You are obviously having a laugh aren’t you?
“The amount of ice is zero.”
Yeah, right!
Hello Anthony
I suggest a change in our poll calculation methodology this year. Historically we have submitted the bracket that receives the most votes, i.e. 2011:
This year, I suggest that we change the methodology to take the midpoint of each temperature bracket, weight each bracket by the number of votes it receives and then calculate a weighted average across all brackets that receive at least 1 vote. I believe that this methodology will be a more accurate reflectection of the WUWT community’s opinion at large, versus the previous methodology which simply reflects the most frequently selected bracket.
JTF