We are closing on the Arctic sea ice minimum. 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, is Monday August 12th, 3PM PDT or 6PM EDT.
Of recent interest has been the slowdown in ice loss, most prominently seen at DMI:
Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) – Centre for Ocean and Ice – Click the pic to view at source
I suggest that you should not be using the DMI graph to forecast, 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 2013 forecast submission (which we participated in, but not the July contest due to scheduling issues around July 4th) reports looked like:
WUWT’s submission (average of the top five) was. 4.8 million square kilometers)
The archive of the 2013 contest is available here:
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2013/june
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 3PM Monday August 12th. Bear in mind that traditionally, forecasts in June and July 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 million square kilometers for September, which is what the contest is looking for. It is not really as interesting as the absolute minimum, but that’s the number ARCUS is looking for.
Choose your value: (for the record, I am choosing 5.5 – Anthony)
The magnitude of oscillation between winter and summer has increased in recent years (near the turning point in multi-decadal cyclic trends), despite 2011-2012 having more arctic ice extent than some years in the early 1990s. So focus on what the minimum would be, at the single month of minimum, is unfortunately unintentionally doing just what the alarmists want by being highly misleading. For a less misleading look at the annual average in contrast, see the plot within http://s23.postimg.org/qldgno07f/edited4.gif
5.5 baby!!! .. first year of a multiyear comeback!! 🙂
The original estimate of 4.8 looks spot on to me.
I just voted 4.5
Greater than 6 million sq/km
Units read out as “squares per kilometer.” That’s a lot of squares.
Question: with at least 15% sea ice or with at least 30% sea ice?
I’m sticking with my earlier 4.2 prediction.
That is a busy poll 🙂
I’m in at 5.9
The ice extent minimum in prior years was primarily derived from sea temperature and currents during the summer. It seems a disconnect to forecast this years minimum without any real information on either of these factors.
As a blind guess, 5.0.
It’s great to see the Met Office down at the left end of the graph, poised to make fools of themselves again.
Going with 2005-6 numbers.
For a WAG, I’ll go with 4.2.
Going with 2005-6 numbers
I’ve been [too] optimistic in past polls, so I’ve got 4.0 this year. I’m expecting some storm activity will move the bits around.
(mod, please make that “I’ve been too optimistic” and thanks!)
Although we’ve got another Arctic cyclone this year, it’s intensity is not as strong as last year’s record storm that lasted 15 days.
Since the DMI Arctic temperatures show show temperatures north of 80 latitude already below zero, I think sea water will reach -2C (temperature at which sea water freezes) will occur about 2 weeks early so I put the Arctic minimum at 4.91 million KM^2.
I think this would set a satellite record for the largest year-on-year Arctic Ice Extent recovery.
I doubt the MSM will even mention this record if it occurs as it doesn’t fit the CAGW narrative they try so desperately to maintain.
Which graph are you using? They all are different. I voted for 4.3…
Value: 5.5
Method: Dartboard
Precision: +-0.8
4.9
In support of:
J. Philip Peterson says:
August 11, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Which graph are you using? They all are different. I voted for 4.3…
William: Hello, best wishes. I had have the same comment. I voted for the 15% sea ice coverage. My voted was 6 million which is high for 2013 and likely low for 2014.
The DMI graph is 30% sea ice coverage and the National Ice and Snow Data data center Boulder Colorado graph is 15% sea ice coverage.
I see no reason to change my june forecast of 5.2 m sq km. Almost all of the multi-year sea ice with high levels of embedded black carbon has melted out. So we should see steady increases from now on.
What’s Kenji’s forecast ?
…. and whatever it is, what’s the chance that the Met Office will be closer ?
.
.
…. besides zero
Well, the more things change, the more I remain convinced – it will be 5.9 +/- Pi ( 3.1415929 ), so OK, my update is most likely a minus. I would like to take this opportunity to counter the snarky feedback I did receive on my earlier post. Just because I referenced my generation of this number using skills I refined while attacking a certain level of Candy Crush Saga should in NO way give cause for scorn or mocking.
Error bars be damned ! And to ice the cake I’ll have you all know that my resume includes considerable software programming for a certain UN agency, which shall remain anonymous, w.r.t. climate modeling. And this is state of the art stuff, VAX hardware, fortran and pascal code – with absolutely no comments and a fair amount of go tos just to make things rather obscure in case any of those pesky non believers get their mits on some leaked code.
Speaking of which, I seem to have left some 8 inch floppies laying around and can’t locate them now, has anybody seen …
I 2 have been optimistic, so I ended up #31 with Dr Deanster.
It may be like in 2009, with 5.1 at minimum.
I hear it’s the second largest gain in ice on record. It might become the largest.
I believe in the hockey stick and it has turned so I am going for greater than 6.0 based on my best tree ring proxy I could invent … sorry study 🙂
Never very sure about how wuwt’s value is chosen as the result of this poll.
Is it the mean, mode or median?
Three techniques:
1) Look at the year that the iceloss chart most closely matches (2006?) and copy that.
2) Follow the mean curve shape from the place where we are now.
3) Realise that it will be affected by the weather and so will be inherently unpredictable thus just go down a round number from where we are now.
I chose option 3 – with very little confidence.
From philincalifornia on August 11, 2013 at 10:52 pm:
I checked his Instagram feed, he’s holding up one paw. That’s 4 claws plus 1 dewclaw.
Kenji predicts 4.5!
Henry Clark says: http://s23.postimg.org/qldgno07f/edited4.gif
The Met Office graph you found on webcitation.org there is a killer.
http://www.webcitation.org/6AKKakUIo
This so different from what CryoToday are putting out it looks like some serious revisionism is going on thought the CT graph does not even say whether it is plotting area or extent.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
Satellite data is great but it all relies on who and how they interpret the reflected microwave signal, and like all things this relies on models and interpretation of what is water, ice or a melt pool covering ice. As we’ve seen recently these “pools” can be lakes.
“Note: The mean is the monthly average in million square kilometers for September, which is what the contest is looking for. It is not really as interesting as the absolute minimum, but that’s the number ARCUS is looking for.”
Well it may not be as “interesting” but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than talking about the daily minimum. That is just the alarmists game. Look at one day’s data out of 365 and either scream disaster of keep quiet as required.
Greg Goodman:
.
Indeed.
So the Met Office, with all of their Computing power, Models, Scientists and Funding predict sea ice this year will be somewhere between 1.9 and 4.9. What a load of cobblers! That is worse than any prediction by anyone else. BUT they will be able to say that they were correct or almost correct whatever the actual sea ice extent will be! What an absolute waste of money.
since the ice is all rotten, i’m going with ) 0.0, because that’s what i read in the newspaper it was going to be.
confidence: 100%, because why would they lie to me?
(in reality, i’ll take a SWAG and say “2006, all over again” %-)
I predicted 7 months ago that it would not go outside the SD2 limit nearly right except for previous month. Go for 5.9 and forecast greatest NH gain extent in century that will go above average! (based on current continuously below average NH temperatures)
Form of the short term variations seem closest to 2010, so that’s my guide to any estimation that does not attempt to remove it.
Since there is a small but significant pseudo cyclic variation of about 14 days, it makes a lot of difference to the one day min. how this aligns with the annual min around the 21st of September.
If we want to see the interannual progression we really need to use at least a 20 day low pass filter. Running averages don’t count since they introduce spurious errors and don’t smooth properly.
Henry Clark says:
August 11, 2013 at 7:32 pm
The magnitude of oscillation between winter and summer has increased in recent years (near the turning point in multi-decadal cyclic trends), despite 2011-2012 having more arctic ice extent than some years in the early 1990s. So focus on what the minimum would be, at the single month of minimum, is unfortunately unintentionally doing just what the alarmists want by being highly misleading.
=====
As Henry Says, this is playing to the ‘natural climate change deniers’. Arctic ice extent really doesn’t matter. In any case, the ice area being quoted as “extremely small” or “vanishing” is around the area of all the major states in the US combined . This is a diversion in the same way that the betting between groups on the number of named fish storms there will be in the Atlantic is a diversion. The climate is a chaotic system with multiple oscillations. In the exceedingly brief period that mankind has been able to quantify the overt effects of these oscillations some of them appear to repeat, but we have no idea which Poincare Section or which part of a Poincare Section we are looking at or how many attractors there are for the systems to orbit and what will influence a change in attractor.
The fact that international meteorological institutions and academia can be drawn into this kind of ‘pretense’ speculative behavior is professionally disappointing and displays a staggering ignorance of even recent recorded history, to the extent that their behavior looks to be calculated to be deliberately misleading.
It’s looking like a 2010 kinda year to me. I went for 4.0.
4.2
Looking at the Arctic Temperature I think its going follow a similar track to 2006. I went for 5.5
The Met Office have used their Super-multi-Trilobyte computer and come up with last year’s extent for this years prediction. It’s a bit like forecasting the weather by looking out of the window and comparing it with yesterday. Brilliant :thumbsdown:
The facts mean nothing , all that matters is ‘its worse than we throught ‘
From Greg Goodman on August 12, 2013 at 12:21 am:
In Henry Clark’s linked graphical Ode to Svensmark, it suggests of dark revisionism by warmists resulting in the WebCite-linked graph being deleted from here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/charts/NHEM_extanom.png
It showed “Northern Hemisphere Sea-Ice Extent Anomaly (10⁶ km²) for 1973-6/2012”.
But a few clicks and some URL-shortening later, you find the plausible reason here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/
The graph was in error as it showed a continuous record, when the discontinuity was acknowledged. The Met Office deleted the erroneous graph.
Henry Clark’s source whispers con-spir-a-cy, and Greg Goodman was impressed by the evidence.
O-kay…
What happened to that storm which was supposed to destroy the ice? Some people sure got real quiet about that real fast.
Perhaps of interest to some here the Guardians ‘consensus’ blog has a new post today by Abraham on Arctic ice. He takes a less optimistic view.
When I looked the post had 8 comments of which 4 were deleted!
Ian W says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
August 12, 2013 at 1:22 am
I wish I knew why my comments are put in the ‘penalty box’
WUWT readers are always very optimistic with these forecasts 🙂 I’ll stick with my 4.3 which would not be a disappointment and anything above will be a bonus to waft in the alarmists faces. ( added to the Antarctic increases also )
Of course there could always be a late storm that breaks up the leading edges of the ice. Much of the ice remains of course but as it’s no longer connected to the main body of ice it seems certain observers are quite happy to consider it disappeared.
Does anyone know of an index that tracks the amount of soot (or the emmissivity or albedo) on the arctic ice? I wonder if the link between soot and ice melt is considered anymore, or if people just assume CO2 effects are melting the Arctic.
Sea ice is in balance and doing quite nicely in the southern polar region.
One thing, historically the sea ice of the Arctic has been lower than the 1979 – 2012 running average, why do the pedlars of world catastrophe scenarios get so hot under the collar about it? Could it be, merely man made alarmist bunkum…………
Now lets see here, remember what they said about the icy peaks of the Himalayas? All gone by 2035………………..Ganges runs dry – whatever.
You couldn’t make it up but they [IPCC/WWF/New Scientist] do.
Arctic basin, its all in the oceanic currents. Man made CO2: is nothing to do with it.
I made a comment earlier about the current ‘consensus’ post by Abraham on Arctic Ice (this is in the UK Guardian and he shares this blog with Dana of SkS)
What I have just seen on his blog defies belief that a once proud and distinguished newspaper could have let itself sink so low.
I posted this on Bishophill a few minutes ago:
“An interesting deletion by guardian moderators on the current Arctic post by Abraham.
A comment by tswash with over 50 recommends has now been deleted!
It contained no expletives or adhoms but provided links and informative background about Arctic conditions in the Holocene!
The deletion of this comment is an absolute disgrace even by Guardian standards.
What the #### has happened to British journalism?”
Here’s the link if you want to see censorship at work.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/12/global-warming-arctic-armchair-scientists
(Apologies in advance)
KDK says:
But a few clicks and some URL-shortening later, you find the plausible reason here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/
08/MARCH/2011. The switch of satellite source data at the start of 2009 introduced a discontinuity in the fields of sea ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
The graph was in error as it showed a continuous record, when the discontinuity was acknowledged. The Met Office deleted the erroneous graph.
===
Thanks for the additiional information. Perhaps now you can explain why there is no “discontinuity” in the archived graph at 2009 and how such a supposed “discontinuity” accounts for the continual rise in ice coverage from 2007 to 2010 being turned into something almost flat.
I’d seen the satellite change comment from M.O. before and taken it at face value but now having seen the data they produced prior to the change, it does not match what they claim.
Surely the met office doesn’t want to be so far back in the pack this year. The arctic N of 80 is freezing up early – even this should reduce the possibility of break up by a storm if it continues to cool.
RoyFOMR –
The Guardian blog praises the sea ice blog of ‘Neven’, so I thought it worth a look. I found it difficult to read past the the first two paragraphs of the report for Aug 4th 2013, because the adjectives immediately indicated the doomster nature of Neven who really seems to want the ice to melt as rapidly as possible, e.g.(emphasis mine)
‘the weather really did switch from the IDEAL set up for ice decrease………to…..the NEXT BEST for ice decrease’
and,
‘this (lack of ice loss) is SO CRAZY that I hardly have words for it’.
Perhaps ‘unprecedented’ would be a good one from the CAGW lexicon
My pick is a consensus pick. I showed the chart to our Scottish Terrier, our Cairn Terrier, and our two Ragdoll cats. The cats looked at the chart for a nanosecond, saw the lines going everywhere, thought I had the laser out for playtime, and slapped their paws on where they thought the line was going; 5.2. The Scotty was excited by the prospect of some cold and went with 5.5. The Cairn was hoping for a little more warmth and went with 4.4.
Hmmm…. what to do. Well, I added up their estimates, divided by the square root of the number of fleas present, minus a stray tick, and came up with 4.9. (They say animals can sense the way the weather is going, right?)
@KDK:
03/DECEMBER/2010. The SSM/I satellite that was used to provide the data for the sea ice analysis in HadISST suffered a significant degradation in performance through January and February 2009. The problem affected HadISST fields from January 2009 and probably causes an underestimate of ice extent and concentration.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/the-mystery-of-the-disappearing-graph/
Rather than correcting and posting the updated graph plus a link to the old one for sake of verification and transparency, they have just pulled all graphs and gone silent on the issue.
Data is still available in a rather complicated gridded fromat so it will now require quite a bit of digging even to get a graph to compare it to. The fact this is no longer visible in the public climate fodder presentation suggests that it may still be telling a different story to NSIDC.
More time wasting required to see the data they don’t want the public to see.
My prediction is a good chance to be 70% below normal for the base period with minimum extend between 4.2 and 5.46. I am using the National Hurricane Center method of making a large enough spread to almost always be close.
It confuses me as to why so many people are so interested in the “accordion metric” sea ice extent. A metric where 100 km2 solid ice would be reported as 100km2 extent and the same ice spread out evenly would be reported as 667km2 extent, and again, if compacted by the wind would be reported as 100km2. Does not anyone report on sea ice area? Is there a good reason I have missed? Btw. wasn´t the criterion for sea ice extent changed from 10% to 15% not too long ago?
4.8 but last year I predicted I would be wrong this year. If the extent stays above 4.8 it will be interesting to see how quickly the ice extent recovers (as I recall a discussion about lower ice extent results in quicker recovery). And I wonder how the UK Met Office will explain their 3.4 prediction.
I voted 5.5.
Is it just my imagination or have Al Gore and James Hansen been kinda quiet these days? I think Hansen got out just at the right time.
Friends:
I would welcome a clear explanation of the purpose of this poll.
Nobody has a model of the ice formation which includes prediction of all significant factors (e.g. occurence, magnitude and geographical site of future storms). Hence, every suggestion in answer to the poll is a guess.
In a few weeks we will know the reality of measured minimum 2013 Arctic ice extent, and we will be able to compare it to the guesses. But, so what?
Please, will somebody tell me the value of any such guess and/or guesses. I don’t see it.
Richard
Can’t this number be “adjusted” so it fits the model output? Lower this years, and go back and raise the ice area in the 1930’s. Or maybe just announce that it is all gone, regardless of measurement. …… 4.4 x10^6 sq. kms.
Anthony, I think the DMI wants you to use this chart, not the one at the top of the post:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
richardscourtney says: August 12, 2013 at 5:01 am
It’s a bit of fun Richard. Or does everything have to be ultra ultra serious, and scientific? Lighten up.
I will gently remind everybody that:
1,000,000 sq km of sea ice corresponds to entire area between the north pole an 85 north latitude.
1,000,000 sq km also just happens to correspond to what the CAGW-industry has decided to claim has an “ice-free Arctic” and thus meet their need for catastrophic … something.
2,000,000 sq km covers everything from the pole down to just at 83 north latitude.
(3,000,000 sq km gets you all the way down to a “cap” over the pole down to right at 81 north latitude. In reality, the actual Arctic ice cap is a bit skewed to the south towards the Bering Strait, and its southern edge is actually closer to the pole on the UK-Iceland arc, but a symetric cap is accurate enough for almost all calc’s. )
For reference with respect to that much-touted “24-hour-per-day” solar exposure: By Aug 21-22, the sun will set for latitude 78 north, which corresponds to a sea ice extents of right at 5,500,000 sq km. That would leave one full month of ever-increasising solar night hours for anybody handicapping an area between 5.5 Mkm2 and 4.0 Mkm2
Still haven’t quite figured out what will be catastrophic about an ice-free Arctic Ocean in mid-September since the numbers show that at late-August on – essentially from now until next May – open Artic ocean water at the edge of the sea ice loses more heat through evaporation and increased radiation losses than it can gain through absorption of solar energy into the exposed ocean water…..
But, they need – desperately “need” and crave their Arctic sea ice loss. It is the one remaining threat in their arsenal of propaganda and extrapolation.
What happened with the storm that just ended?
Hi Richard,
Always appreciate your comments on a range of threads and your focus on the science. To me, the purpose of this poll is to demonstrate that curve-fitting guesses by the layman are no worse than any apparently-sophisticated model run on a taxpayer-funded supercomputer. In other words, just as you suggest 🙂
In demonstrating the inadequacy of the official, sophisticated guesses on Arctic ice extent, the poll and its final results offer the opportunity to reflect on whether the suite of models used by the IPCC AR5 are any better at predicting something much more complex, like multi-decadal global climate.
My original prediction is still in the cards (4.9). This was based on sea ice friendly wind conditions. Up until the last couple of days those conditions persisted. However, the recent switch could be quite significant given the sea ice is thin and fractured making it easier to push out into warmer waters. If this continues the colder air in the Arctic won’t save the ice. The water temperature is much more important. OTOH, if these winds are temporary then the colder air will restart the freezing process earlier than normal and even my guess will likely be too low.
I’ve crunched the numbers here (I have a big database of all the numbers going way back).
If the NSIDC sea ice extent continues the trend from its 1981-2010 average climatology, the (monthly average for the) September Minimum will be 5.26 million sq. kms.
In practise, the last few years have seen a greater-than-average melt up to the end of September and the ice is not as solid as it used to be, so the Minimum could be closer to 4.9 to 5.1 million.
Nice Zoom-in of the NSIDC sea ice numbers here which should allow one to really nail this down.
http://s8.postimg.org/nindwvsed/NSIDC_Sept_Min_Proj_Aug11_2013.png
Hi Brad,
Looks from the Navy loops of ice concentration as though it may have whipped up the area of lower-density ice between the pole and the Laptev Sea sector a little more. This area was previously ripped up quite a bit by a storm in mid-late May. Thus far, the Canadian archipelago seems not to have been particularly affected.
This section of ice may now be more susceptible to melting, but probably more likely from underneath by the water now than from above by the sun. I doubt there’s enough time left for a large area of <15% concentration to develop, so the "ICE-FREE NORTH POLE!!!" headlines will have to wait.
If someone can give me a rough estimate of the number of times the Ice breakers will plough back and fourth to the pole between now and the expected minimum I might be able to come up with a number.
“Steve from Rockwood says:
August 12, 2013 at 4:43 am
4.8 but last year I predicted I would be wrong this year. If the extent stays above 4.8 it will be interesting to see how quickly the ice extent recovers (as I recall a discussion about lower ice extent results in quicker recovery). And I wonder how the UK Met Office will explain their 3.4 prediction”
They will wheel out the usual garbage that the ice extent changes are entirely consistent with their recently revised computer models.
Come on chaps we all know it will be 5.5, well that’s what I have voted anyway.
Mr Watts,
Apparently they have a bet going at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
Says the center’s senior research scientist, Mark Serreze, “We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is ‘does the North Pole melt out this summer?’
Of course, i will be only taking my advice from the experts.
Only a fool would ignore this advice and a fool and their money is easily parted:
“They predict that in September, there is a good chance that the ice will be gone on the pole.”
From Robert E. Peary to recent solo explorer Wave Vidmar (pictured), many have travelled to the geographic North Pole to view the icy spot.
However, photos like this may soon be a keepsake, as the North Pole ice is melting like ice cream in the summer sun, and may be ice-free as soon as this year.
Not above a bit of scolding of global warming skeptical, Serreze says, “It’s a situation where we hate to say we told you so, but we told you so.”
So, no ice this year.
Oh, wait, this prediction is dated 2008. Can I have my money back?
http://www.dailytech.com/Global+Warming+to+Melt+North+Pole+Ice+Cover+For+First+Time+in+Recorded+History/article12218.htm
Oh dear, it seems I had experienced cranial cavitations when I typed my pick prior. Please permit me to correct it. 4.9 not the prior. Darn preview bar distracted me 😉
It’s 2013 and last night for the first time in living memory my rum and Coke went ice free. Probably swirled it too much creating cyclonic conditions. But it was scary to see alarmist predictions come true, nonetheless.
Given the ranges some of the predictions give themselves, you would think this would tell them that they don’t have any real understanding/predictive ability of the process/event.
Given that, and based on my recognized lack of any knowledge of the process, I’ll predict between 4 million and 6 million.
Maybe 5.1 msk, I had thought 4.1 earlier in the year but it is improving.
Note it has been a difficult year for ice formation with very thin ice at the start of the year that was going to melt rapidly, then the ice was all cracked up everywhere for 2 months by -A team et al and just as it survived this it was hit by incredible arctic hurricanes that had never happened before in the Arctic. Not to mention the fact that the measurements are now not reliable due to the overcast, cloudy arctic weather this year.. ………
I voted 4.3, but that was before I learned how Kenji had voted….
Consensus (and myself) picked 4.2
I guess there’s no need to measure it now!
/sarc off
RACookPE1978 says:
August 12, 2013 at 5:19 am
I will gently remind everybody that:
1,000,000 sq km of sea ice corresponds to entire area between the north pole an 85 north latitude.
And a gentle reminder to you that 1,000,000 sq km of sea ice extent could be as little as 150,000 sq km of ice.
A semicircular ice pattern would be more likely between 30ºE and 150ºW and 75ºN on the Beaufort side and 80ºN on the Atlantlic side.
I think I have already made my SWAG; but again 4.2 – 4.8 million km2
4.8
Over 5.0
From Ian W on August 12, 2013 at 2:44 am:
Your 1:22AM post had the D word, den****, which automatically flagged it for special review.
Rather than a WAG here is a SWAG: Being an old old retired EE I entertain myself by collecting assorted data daily and one of those spread sheets contains 12 years of JAXA NH ice extent data. The JAXA data seems to conform well to NSDIC chart. So I have averaged the daily change in 11 years of ice cover for each day of the year. Then I sum these daily averages for each day from 12 Aug thru 31 Aug then add it to 11 Aug extent of 6.27 Million sq Km; 31 Aug extent will then be 5.36 million sq Km.
Then sum the daily change for the month of Sept and find it equal to a plus 312k sq Km. Sept has about 18 days of increasing daily Avg coverage rather than decreasing coverage. Then divide 312k by 30 and add this number to 5.36 for each day of Sept. Each day of Sept should increase by about 10K to 5.675 sq Km by 30 Sept. Now avg the daily coverage for Sept.
And the Number is 5.52 Sq Km!
Looking back, I see that I voted 4.2 -4.3 in June. The way I came up with it was that my first guess was 5.0, however I took to heart the warning that WUWTs guesses had been high, so I averaged that with last years’ low. I’m sticking with 4.3, even though that’s looking a bit on the low side now.
Patrick, you should think about using the same approach the climate scientists use and offer a prediction of “between 3.173 million and 7.019 million.”
short storm right now is going to expose more water to wind and freezing air temps…
small jog down…followed by a huge jump up in area
Above, kadaka responded to
Ian W on August 12, 2013 at 2:44 am:
I wish I knew why my comments are put in the ‘penalty box’
First, it is not actually a “penalty box” – consider a change in viewpoint.
A few days or weeks back, our host – name can’t be written here but it begins with an A – explained the need for certain things to be moderated or flagged. One, of course is something addressed directly to the host. A mod or the host has to decide if a response is required. However, I recently wrote this (with the name spelled out):
Good job on this one, A . . ..
It was sent to moderation. Lesson, relax.
Guys, there is just no point guessing.
Look how this guy fared (and he says he is studying for a PhD in ‘Abrupt Climate Change’)!
http://www.sierraclub.ca/en/AdultDiscussionPlease
Nowhere to hide now, chum… 🙂
Over on the Arctic Sea Ice blog Neven states that ‘I don’t know what is going on over at Cryosphere Today, but the melting has come to a complete standstill. In the past 10 days the ice pack has not lost, but gained 20K km2! That’s so crazy for this phase of the melting season that I barely have words for it. It’s unique as far as the record goes………….Like I’ve been saying for weeks now a new record is a very difficult proposition. But even ending below 2007, 2010 and 2011 will be quite a feat, and that’s something I didn’t expect. At least not like this. I’ve seen slowdowns before, but this is out of this world.’
Given that Neven is a dyed in the wool believer in what is sometimes known as ‘consensus’ I’m inclined to think there is something odd going on and guess somewhere around 5.5 or even greater.
Bill Illis says:
August 12, 2013 at 6:15 am
———————————————
Bill, is the daily temperature and daily ice extent available to the public from the late 1950s onward? I’ve always suspected the correlation between the two was low but never had access to the data other than to view the graphs.
@Bill – should have clarified “digital data” and not just the graphs.
Arfur Bryant says:
August 12, 2013 at 8:56 am
From Paul Beckwith, quoted in your link:
“For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean.”
It might be well for PhD students in “abrupt climate change” first to study “human history” before issuing pronouncements upon the subject.
A sea-ice free Arctic Ocean has happened many times before in human history, including as recently as about 5000 years ago, if not since then. It was more common than not for summers during the long Holocene Climatic Optimum, from c. 8000 BP. When & if it ever happens again, it will hardly be unprecedented.
4.4
Apologies that this is a bit off topic but I’ve done a little bit of private analysis of the AO since 1851. This graph shows the accumulated -ve or +ve value of the AO. If it is -ve I use -1 and +ve then 1 otherwise 0. Then I accumulate the -ve and +ve values to see how it trends, 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 – 1 = 2 etc to see if it is predominately -ve or +ve. The more it is -ve the graph goes -ve same for +ve. http://tinypic.com/r/9tfgir/5
According to accepted AGW lore man made global warming started about 1940 but as you can see in the graph the tendency for predominately -ve AO started around 1900. Add a little latency to whatever was causing this and you an even earlier data. Now this cannot be man made according to accepted theories.
Looking at the 11 year running mean for sunspot numbers here http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/lrsp-2013-1Color.pdf it could be that the two graphs are inversions of each other. But then again I may have found nothing. Any comments?
Phil. says:
August 12, 2013 at 7:14 am (replying to)
RACookPE1978 says:
August 12, 2013 at 5:19 am
Hmmn. So, let us agree then that the use of “sea ice area” then precludes any arbitrary assumption of a sudden loss from 1,000,000 to 150,000 of potential reflective area? Sea ice area, is after all, what is displayed for the Antarctic Sea Ice +
Odd thing that: My globe shows nothing but water from Greenland’s north tip (Oodaaq Island) at 83-40 to the pole. Do you wish to claim that the (admittedly small but present) SW offset of the polar ice cap makes a significant difference to the 24 hour total of absorbed energy of solar energy at 85 north in September? (What is further south on one side of the polar cap will get slightly more energy for a few hours of the day, but the other edge will be even further north than “average” and so receive even less.)
I forgot to say that -ve AO means the Arctic weather pushes further south leaving the Arctic to warm and melt.
One thing that should definitely be emphasized more by climate realists is that the ice this year, strong as it is, is also in a position perfect for building and preserving multi year ice. Although 2008 was hyped as a recovery year, a lot of the surviving ice was on the atlantic side and therefore got flushed relatively quickly out the fram. The same can be said about 2010 and 2011, and to a lesser extent 2009. This year is unique in that a large portion of the ice will be caught and sustained by the Beaufort gyre and therefore retained for years to come.
Not having ice at the North Pole is no big deal. It is a single physical point in the bowl. For those who think it is nuts to say such a thing as “there will be no ice at the North Pole in September” you should be aware of this: Be careful the pea under the three nuts. Slight of hand may be at play here, using words instead of nuts.
4.452M.
rogerknights says:
August 11, 2013 at 8:53 pm
It’s great to see the Met Office down at the left end of the graph, poised to make fools of themselves again
The UIK Met Off never did need any help to make themselves look stupid after all they have Slingo the imaginary Dr.
My guess is somewhere above the UK Met Off, which we know will always be wrong, and somewhere below Shaw*
I picked >6.0 last time, which is sure to be too high, but it seems poor sportsmanship to change my bet mid game. So when it hits the low at 5.1, I will have been off by 900,000 sq km’s.
richardscourtney says:
August 12, 2013 at 5:01 am
Please, will somebody tell me the value of any such guess and/or guesses. I don’t see it.
I think the point is Richard as a world we have spent Billions on climate change way more than say the LHC. How do you think the public would react if after spending that amount of money we announced we didn’t do our homework and background properly and the LHC can’t really see any particles very well but we are going to have a consensus view that the Higgs exists.
This is not dark matter or something really difficult to even get a measurement on it’s a simple slightly chaotic natural system and you have a really big picture target namely artic sea ice. In LHC terms it would be like saying the LHC couldn’t see a football sized object.
Now I even accept global warming but from my hard science background it blows me away you can spend this much money and still be no better than a layman guess which is sort of the point.
I have heard all the excuses but I am sorry they are just that excuses and we wouldn’t accept non results out of the LHC and we certainly shouldn’t accept less from climate science.
rogerknights says:
August 11, 2013 at 8:53 pm
It’s great to see the Met Office down at the left end of the graph, poised to make fools of themselves again.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////
This is too easy: Just look at what the Met Office does and vote for the exact opposite.
Then you’ll be spot-on.
I am going with 3.975 with the minima being reached on Sept 16th
Gee! this is like betting on the Nenana River ice-out, which I believe set a 97-year-old record this past May 20.
LdB:
Sincere thanks for your reply to me at August 12, 2013 at 10:05 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/sea-ice-news-volume-4-3-2013-sea-ice-forecast-contest/#comment-1387705
It includes this
Thankyou. Yes, I can see that point. It does answer my question.
Richard
What a change from 11 hours ago. When I voted 5.5 that became #1 with 5.0 one vote behind. This was with about 360 votes placed. My thought was that the sea ice will drop close to 5.7 by Sept 1, then drop close to 5.3 before finishing the month at 5.6.
Steve from Rockwood says:
August 12, 2013 at 8:58 am
Bill, is the daily temperature and daily ice extent available to the public from the late 1950s onward?
————————————————————
I don’t put much faith in these older estimates. It seems reasonably clear that the historic sea ice extent was greatly over-estimated.
For example, in April of this year, Walt Meier (from the NSIDC and semi-regular responder/poster to the WUWT) reconstructed the September 1964 Arctic sea ice extent from old recovered Nimbus satellite pics.
The September 1964 sea ice extent was estimated at 6.9 million sq kms from the satellite pics (versus the previous estimates of 8.28 million). 6.9 million is not that much different than this year’s number around 5.0 million.
http://nsidc.org/monthlyhighlights/2013/04/glimpses-of-sea-ice-past/
Having said that, Walt’s most-up-to-date previous numbers (with Julienne Stroeve) are available here (make sure to note the acknowledgements at the end of the paper just before the references).
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/6/1359/2012/tc-6-1359-2012.pdf
Daily NSIDC numbers here.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/
Going back to 1972 here.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/nsidc0192_seaice_trends_climo/esmr-smmr-ssmi-merged/
Sea ice area and seasonal extents back to 1870 here from the University of Illinois Bill Chapman.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/
A late collapse: 3.9 m. Will keep the alarmists squealing a bit longer.
Arctic temperatures above 80N below 0C 2 weeks early (Danish Met Office). There will be further erosion in the Chukchi and Beaufort as the easterlies disperse the lower concentration pack ice. There is a lot of 3/10s or less that will get dispersed. But the Western Arctic is going to get significantly colder beginning this weekend.
Final number: 4.5
A log of hand-wringing and angst at the Arctic Sea Ice Forum. Sort of comical.
I’m going with 2010.(4.0) The ice extent and 80 degree latitude temperatures this year are very similar.
http://mainstreamlastfirst.com/
He He
From Greg Goodman on August 12, 2013 at 3:29 am:
This is why I wonder if you have an innate inability to properly reason, as you are asking me to explain WHY the Met Office screwed up on the erroneous graph they deleted.
I do not handle ISO 9000 compliance for the Met Office, nor do I have any thing otherwise to do with their Quality Control efforts to prevent such mistakes, save for rare public complaints about their free products. I have even less insight into the Met Office inner workings than many of the regulars here. Why would I know why they screwed up that graph, and why should I care?
2007-2010 continual rise?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:1978.99/to:2006.99/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:1978.99/to:2006.99/trend/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:2006.99/to:2010.99/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/from:2006.99/to:2010.99/trend
Working with whole years, from start of 2007 to end of 2010 the Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent dropped at nearly EIGHT TIMES the rate as start of 1979 to end of 2006. Where’s the continual rise?
But you’re using anomalies, for which the monthly real amount is subtracted from the average climatology period amount for that month. Cryosphere Today uses NSIDC data (among other sources), NSIDC has changed to 1981 to 2010 inclusive (30 years) as their new baseline (the climatology). So I’ll grab the needed NSIDC raw data from WoodForTrees and shove it into the wonderful and free OpenOffice, er, LibreOffice, for processing into anomalies.
1979-2006 (inc), loss of 46,300 km²/yr.
2007-2010 (inc), gain of 15,000 km²/yr.
For a period too short to be meaningful, only four years, the trend was a rate of gain of ONE THIRD the previous rate of loss, per NSIDC data. But only by using anomalies, with an obvious cherrypicking of starting with the ultra-low 2007.
EXCEPT, you specified a “continual rise in ice coverage from 2007 to 2010” on the deleted graph.
Going by the red smoothed line, the “continual rise” is from the bottoming-out in September 2007 until perhaps February 2010. Outside that range there is dropping.
Thus the entire range of your concern, your ‘proof’ of shenanigans in the ice record, is less than 2 1/2 years.
And although it may be hard to tell on that Cryosphere Today chart as it lacks a similar smoothed line, when zoomed in and eyeballing that range, it very much is showing a rise, and definitely not “something almost flat.”
So, AGAIN, you’re asking for something mystifying that’s ultimately unanswerable, as it’s based on something that just ain’t real.
LOL! With your permission I will be using that term a lot in my ICT related work when clients boast about how powerful their computers are.
-2 standard deviations… so about 4.9.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389895/Climate-change-shortcut-Chinese-cargo-ship-attempts-sail-China-Europe-Northeast-Passage.html
How can we follow the progress of this voyage? Will it make it? Any bets on this as well as on the sea ice extent?
a conservative 5.3 from me. talking about bets,i recently offered to bet my house against the house of a warmist that the ice extent does not drop below 1 million square kilometres in the next 10 years,the thread on the forum the offer was made on has now gone quiet 🙂
I’ve gone with 5.8 because I don’t think there will be a significant melt or flushing for the rest of this season. Possibly optimistic.
I went with Kenji’s prediction, since he looks smarter than the average Arctic sea ice expert.
Who the heck is that “Shaw” who absurdly guessed the minimum would be 6 million?
He just might be right, considering refreezing is already starting in places as obvious as the “North Pole Camera.” http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/north-pole-camera-one-pictures-polar-bear-tracks/
Who is that guy? I researched the guy. He’s nothing but a goat farmer. If that absurd dude beats Climate Scientists, the situation will be embarrassing to all involved.
Does anybody or any organisation map the temperature and direction of waters entering the Arctic via the Bering Strait etc?
As the temperatures in the Arctic seem to have been cooler than many previous years, one would expect the ice melt to be less, IF it is the air temperature mainly responsible for causing the melt.
However if the melt is affected also by the seawater around it, (like ice in a gin and tonic!), then the sea temperature should have a significant bearing on the ice melt.
Bill Illis says:
August 12, 2013 at 11:53 am
“The September 1964 sea ice extent was estimated at 6.9 million sq kms from the satellite pics (versus the previous estimates of 8.28 million). 6.9 million is not that much different than this year’s number around 5.0 million.”
——————————————
That is a huge reduction from initailly 9.2 to 6.9 mill km2.
6.9 mill km2 equals the average of 1990-2000 and also the value of 2001.
And according to the old estimate, some years around 1964 appear to be even lower by about 1 mill km2.
Then, variation in pre 1979 has been MUCH larger than previously assumed.and there appears to be nothing to see until perhaps 2006.
And even the lower 2007 and 2012 values may appear totally unexciting if we consider that the 1920-1940 melt with the low 1930s values had a larger ice volume to start with.
Has anyone noticed that the DMI dropped the selection of ice charts back to 1958? Use to be to the left of the current chart.
Selection of charts back to 1958 removed – What a shame!!!
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Dumbed down replacement
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
From Mel Byrd on August 13, 2013 at 7:26 am:
Says on that page:
The data are provided by National Snow and Ice Data Center’s web site (NSIDC).
If those charts were based on NSIDC info, guess you can now go straight to NSIDC for the info.
You know, the only thing the warmists can really point to as confirming global warming is the decline in Arctic sea ice. [Maybe sea level increase as well but the overall rate seems to be similar to the 1800s number and what would be expected given an interglacial will continue melting the marginal glacial ice which exists anywhere, mountains and southern Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula for example and this will continue as long as we are in an interglacial which might last as long 125,000 more years. This marginal glacial ice will have been melting regardless of the GHGs added to the atmosphere assuming an interglacial was in effect].
So this year, 2013, it looks like there will be a very significant recovery in the Arctic sea ice. Temps across the Arctic basin right now have fallen to levels that might actually stop the melt in its tracks. They are actually low enough to do this right now. Only one other year was like this, 1980, which was the highest sea ice minimum on record and the earliest sea ice minimum on record; in late-August. This year, the temps are probably even colder than they were in 1980 right now.
We need to keep watching the numbers and be ready to make sure the media reports this recovery. Because it is the only aspect of the climate that the warmists can use now to keep the theory going. At some point, everyone needs to recognize the theory was just a theory that did not pan out in the real world. This year’s Arctic sea ice extent might go a long way to helping that message along.
Looks like the Arctic has lost over 700,000 square kilometres of ice in 24 hours. Magic!
milodonharlani says:
August 12, 2013 at 9:05 am
🙂
Yes, I couldn’t agree more…!
@Bill Illis. Thanks! I’ll dig through your post when I have a bit more time.