Final Arctic Sea Ice forecast poll

With all due respect, its amazing how you have no time for this even though Jaxa just dropped to 4.8 milkm2 on August 30th. and Bremen has plummeted below 2007 near 4.5-4.6km2.
Do you have anything to say about your 5,750,000km2 prediction?
Do you have no shame in what you are doing here? Any? Does a human being actually exist inside you? What convenient excuse are you going to throw out there? How long will this shame last? Long enough to make money? Fame? What are you going to do as this goes on?
Good Luck.

Hey! it looks OK to me.
Looks like it will parallel 2007 with a larger area. But? what is the average thickness? Area means very little without thickness.
(This is probably hidden sonewhere on the site where I can’t find it).

NSIDC is between 4.8 and 4.9km2.
You predicted 5,750,000km2 minimum for this year.
Please be accountable for that.

REPLY: Again you are incapable of reading. I made one prediction personally this year, 4.9 million sqkm seen here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/31/sea-ice-news-arcus-forecast-from-readers-submitted/

“My choice for my own personal vote was 4.9 to 5.0 million square kilometers.”

If you read the ARCUS forecasts, you’ll also see others that predicted initially high values, even last month there were two other groups predicting higher values than the WUWT reader poll:

Of course, since your interest is clearly all about denigration, none of that will matter to you I’m sure. But its all there in all the reports open for anyone to look at. Just search for ARCUS in the search box and you’ll see all the polls and reports over the last few months – Anthony

Are you blind, you wrote in the paragraph that it was for 2011?
REPLY: It’s a quote from Pierre Gosselin’s No Tricks zone, embedded, note the italics. I don’t put my own words in italics.
As proof, read the exact same words here:

http://notrickszone.com/2010/09/19/arctic-sea-ice-has-grown-since-september-1/
Your next comment will be interesting – Anthony

I apologize for not understanding the blog post better since that paragraph was cut off from the beginning by the large image. If that was you it would have been very disingenuous. Which is why I was very upset about that.
REPLY: Thank you for your apology – Anthony

August 30 2011 the Sea Ice Extent was 4,803,438 km2. So all the above predictions are already wrong.
I hope it will break the record extent of 2007. And it looks like it will if I compare the trends from the other years in the graph. The trend is still down for the other years during September.
So also Bastardi’s prediction from January 2011 was totally wrong. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAjE7NViElA
Wake up people: Arctic sea ice volume is dropping almost year by year. Extent says nothing about the condition of the ice. The volume trend is down. So stop using this nonsense as if there is nothing happening.
There is a difference between a thickness of 1 cm or 10 cm of ice on a lake. It means the difference between skating or no skating in my country. In either case the lake is covered with the same ice extent. The same is true for the Arctic Sea Ice extent.
But is it unprecedented as many alarmists claim? That’s another question!

I still think it’s going for lowest or second lowest.

5 – 5.1 Same as I have guessed/voted all season. It’s cold up there 8)
Having fun with metrics. Snickering at doom-mongers reasons for why an ice free Arctic is “important”. ROFL at first poster. (At least he stuck around and apologised after dropping his truthbomb)

I will stick with my original guess of 4.7 – 4.8, which I said at the time I was adjusting down. It now looks to me like it may be optimistic (if just slightly). We’ll know in a month.

I voted 5.0-5.1 million and now I’m going to be wrong for a whole year. Another poll won’t help ease my (very minor) pain.
I’m more interested why WUWT readers were the third most likely to vote high. Wishful thinking? A natural defense mechanism against the warmist crowd? Or did something happen in the Arctic that lowered otherwise more accurate predictions?
Stubbornly not going to vote again.

Anthony, Can you help me with a discussion on a local blog. Someone made the comment that you have never been published either as an author or co-author. Can you set the record straight?
REPLY: In climate, I have two publications:
1. Watts, A. (2009), Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, 28 pp.,
Heartland Inst., Chicago, Ill. ISBN 13: 978-1-934791-29-5 ISBN 10: 1-934791-26-6 (PDF at this link http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf )
2. Fall, S., A. Watts, J. Nielsen-Gammon, E. Jones, D. Niyogi, J. Christy, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2011: Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 116, D14120, doi:10.1029/2010JD015146.Copyright (2011) American Geophysical Union. (PDF at this link http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/r-367.pdf )
– Anthony

Chris:
August 31, 2011 at 12:56 am
Sorry you don’t have a life.

Kevin MacDonald
You must have missed all the debate over PIOMAS. It’s not an interesting topic anymore. Add PIOMAS to the sea ice page? It’s like saying the Mann Hockey Stick graph should be added to the Global Climatic History Page.

DCA says:
August 31, 2011 at 6:03 am
Anthony, Can you help me with a discussion on a local blog. Someone made the comment that you have never been published either as an author or co-author. Can you set the record straight?
Are these people concerned if Bill Nye, Bill McKibben, or Al Gore have published?

As a non-expert, I’m going to make a prediction for next year that we’ll be below the 2007 Sea Ice Minimum, approx 4 x 10^6 km^2.
But that’s just me. What do I get if I win?

Here we go again with comments like Robbie’s at 3:10 AM. Beginning in 2007, the Serreze gang began predicting that Arctic summer ice extent would continue its downward spiral. Now, four years later, 2007 has proven to be a floor, not the ceiling they prophesied. To compensate for their failed predictions of a continued “death spiral, folks like Robbie now move the goalposts, bleating about volume, or MYI. They also point to sceptics failed predictions of an immediate and large recovery as if that somehow vindicates their four year failure of a continued decline. Well, as been pointed out here, it’s not clear anyone has a handle on an accurate volume measurement, so that’s kind of a red herring, and MYI seems to be stabilizing.
I’m a “denier”, and predicted 4-4.2 million sq. km. summer extent this year. That probably won’t verify, but i believe we’ll see a choppy summer extent rise over the next 20 years to 1970s extent levels. 2007 was a floor. Summer extent has been bottoming out, and as cycles of climate drivers change, we’ll see a recovery of Arctic ice. Bastardi and co. predicted it way too soon, but it will happen.

4.6 – 4.7, same as the last times.
But it’s a crapshoot for all of us, considering how much weather affects the final coverage year to year.
I would like to repeat my request for a detailed look at sea ice during this later part of the melt season, like we had the last few years with a number of posts per week.

Any ideas why NORSEC is showing more sea ice than NSIDC et al? Divergence is recent and appears to be widening.
Bill

That should be “recovery”, not “discovery” I need an editor

My original guess was 49. to 5.0. I am dropping it to 4.7 to 4.8, although the winds seem to be pushing the ice away from the Fram strait. The ice could flatten out pretty quickly.

If the current value is at 4,9m sq km, the minimum can’t be above that. Even if the ice extent were to recover from now on, we’d have reached a minimum below 5,0m sq km. Of course, since the goal is to guess specifically the _September minimum_, I should retract my remark.
But in my opinion, the minimum for a specific month or week or date is not nearly as interesting as the absolute minimum of a melt season.
So, to me, it seems completely absurd to expect a 5,1m sq km “sea ice minimum”.

Rate of Change: http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/2131/20110831.png
Chocolate pipe wrench currently says 4.3 +/- the icing sugar.

I didn’t vote because it’s only weather. The minimum ice extent will depend on factors like wind strength and direction, water temperature and cloud cover. In other words it’s a weather forecast. Fun as it is, I think you are only guessing unless there is a basis for your forecast – such as more or less of the driving factor(s). Has anyone looked for correlations between year on year ice extent and weather patterns? I think it be interesting to explore that.

>>Julienne Stroeve says:
August 31, 2011 at 6:58 am
Note, the NSIDC value today is 4.66 million sq-km.<<
Julienne (or others), what is a link to the daily values? I can only find the monthly averages. Thanks.

REPLY: I have asked NSIDC (via Walt Meier) several times to post the daily values, and the response has been that they have more important things to do. Here’s a good example of why they should. People are using the graph ad I did to try to get the current daily number, and the X-axis is so coarse you have to guess. – Anthony

I find it interesting that since Aug 24, there appears to be very little change to the ice extent on the Cryosphere today comparison plots (yet ther other graphs on the sea ice reference page are still going down . . .). There is a little reduction in extent towards the top of the plot, but it doesn’t look like it should be sufficient to warrant the decrease seen in the extent of other plots. Perhaps just a difference between systems and how it is measured . . .?
YET the concentration sure is getting greater in the ‘center’ of the plot. Even if the extent ends up close to 2007, still no ‘death spiral’. And the next few years will be interesting to watch ( . . .with the low solar activity, and any PDO/AMO/EL Nino/La Nina changes . . . ).

Hi Rod, one thing to note is that the ARCUS forecast is for the monthly mean for September, not the actual minimum value. So keep that in mind when choosing your value.
The 4.66 million sq-km value of today is the actual value, not averaged over 5-days which is what we show in our time-series plot that Anthony references in this blog. The reason we use a 5-day running mean is to filter out noise from weather effects. I wasn’t aware that Anthony had asked Walt several times to post the daily values. I suppose one problem with that is what values to post, the actual daily values or the 5-day running mean with the understanding that these values change? I would have to check in with Walt though to better understand why the daily values are not publicly available. Of course you could derive them yourself, since the actual gridded data are available via ftp, and using the data together with the area-per-pixel files we provide, anyone can compute their own ice extent numbers.
REPLY: You can’t figure out which one to post? Ummm how about the one you just cited, the data set that yelds 4.66 million sq-km? If it is good enough to embarrass me here wit in comments, then surely it must be good enough for public consumption. Obviously you had that value at your fingertips, why can’t the taxpayers of the United States you serve get it? JAXA does this, why can’t NSIDC? – Anthony

My guess was 4.6 and I might as well stick with it, but 4.3 seems likelier.

Thanks for the information Julienne. I’d forgotten that you’re with the NSIDC. My apologies.
I guess, though, that I’m with Anthony on this. If all the data is there for us to derive the daily extent, which I haven’t looked at, but I assume consists of hundreds, if not thousands, of individual grid stats, then how much more difficult can it be to add a file that lists the derived daily result, exactly as JAXA does (with whom my only complaint is I wish they’d add the new result to the top instead of the bottom so that I wouldn’t have to scroll down every time I look at it)? In fact, doing so increases the odds that errors will be more quickly uncovered in either data collection or calculation, because others are checking the figures daily.
As to which result, obviously the daily result is most useful as it’s trivial to then compute a five-day average, whereas it takes a bit of work to re-engineer the daily result from the five-day average. But then, given what is already available, why not just post both?
Seriously, Anthony has a point. And as another taxpayer, I would like a clear explanation why this information is being withheld when I’ve paid for it and since it’s of obvious interest and would be so trivial to add to the site. I mean, it’s not a “Call your Congressman” issue, but why post all the data except the final calculations? Seems silly to me.
Besides, dribbling it out like this is just confusing. Is the 4.66 for “today” a number for yesterday 8/30, or is it really the result for today (8/31) and therefore one day ahead of the JAXA number? In either case, it’s low enough that it gives me more comfort in my 4.2-4.3 forecast, so thanks.

Bremen Prelim map is out and shows another massive loss day coming. After tomorrow this will slow down a lot and we can go from there. This one is going to be huge though, maybe record setting if it was September But August is going out with a bang. Likely 100-150K on all three major reporting places.
As for thickness. Buoys and ships both say thickness is at all time recorded lows. We can either pretend this data doesn’t exist or accept it and make better predictions on it. This is clearly backed up by the thousands of photographs taken by Polarstern, Healy, and the Laurents.
There is less measurements in the Southern Canadian Basin. However this buoy is close:
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2011D.htm
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/2011C.htm
The thickest ice stil resides near the Greenland coast towards the CA Islands but since nearly the entire CA Islands have completely melted out with only winds pushing ice back into that area recently the old storage of thick ice is completely gone.
Most of this came from bottom ice melt. I have a feeling those computer models that track thickness do not do well with that or even cover it. But real time analysis shows incredible ice loss from this feedback.

@Martin Clauss
Concentration gets better because melt ponds freeze over as well as small cracks…OBS show thickness over most of the ice pack is low. Cocentration would be 100 percent if the entire arctic was covered in 10Cm of ice with no cracks.

Back at the beginning of the melt season I predicted the min at 4.285714 Mkm2, fully expecting to be on the low side, but since my estimates of 5,714285 Mkm2 for the last several years had been on the high side I was hoping to bring my avg prediction closer to the avg observed number. In case you’re wondering, my habit of making predictions out to 6 decimal places is meant to be a subtle jab at the tendency of most of these clucks to log their data out to the nearest km2 when their supporting documentation usually indicates that they’re probably only good for the nearest 0.2-0.5 Mkm2. The need for a semi-random looking but easily memorable 7 digit number has lead to my highly scientific methodology for smoothly extracting my predicted value from my anal orifice. Looking at the numbers should give the more arithmetically astute among you a strong clue as to what that method is.
You may have also guessed that I don’t take any of this crap very seriously. In that you would be correct. Having inquired on numerous occasions as to what exactly is the catastrophe that is supposed to occur if and when the sea ice in the Arctic should go to zero at the minimum, the only answer that has ever been suggested is enhanced ocean warming from the sunlight falling on the expanded areas of open water. My response, since at least ’08, has been to suggest that low solar angles, and the albedo of ocean surfaces at such angles, and rapidly dwindling daylight in the month of September when such a zero point would likely occur, suggest that phenomenon, should it occur, is unlikely to be significant. Indeed we have been experiencing expanding areas of open water in the Arctic for more than two decades now and if anyone can provide a link to some negative climate phenomenon that is well correlated to that expansion I would certainly appreciate it, because my own efforts to find one have so far been entirely unsuccessful.
A few weeks ago I suspected my low ball estimate might actually turn out to still be too high, but just in recent days both the CT and Nansen graphs of sea ice area are suggesting an early bottom, though it’s way too early to say at this point. BTW, does anyone else find it curious that CT’s number for SIA has been close to a million km2 smaller than any of the others that track that metric for at least two seasons now? WUWT?

Can I start by echoing Mr Watts’ frustration with the non-availability of daily (or 5 day averaged) SIE data from the NSIDC. As mentioned, Jaxa do this as a matter of course, as do CT. The historic month-end averages are of course available from the NSIDC at…
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
Having to try and extract numbers from a chart is rather like placing a horse behind the cart. (Reversal of an old proverb – justified on grounds of poetic licence.)
However, and this just could be my 122 year old eyes (between them) playing tricks, when I extend a horizontal onto the y-axis of the above NSIDC chart (for 30th August) it looks a lot closer to around 4.7 – 4.8 million sq km than it does to 5 million. Julienne indicated that today’s (31st Aug) figure was 4.66, so that would seem to stack up.
I know a couple of people have tried to answer Merrick’s question about the September (yep, that’s the key word) average and how some people can by still sticking with a number that has already been passed for the daily figure. Lacking access to the NSIDC historic daily data, is a bit of a pig, but one can at least get a feel for things by using the Jaxa CSV file. If one looks at this, there have indeed been 2 occasions on which the September average ended up being higher than the daily figure for the last day of August – namely 2002 and 2004.
Mr Watts also wisely warns against over reliance on Jaxa daily figures to help predict the equivalent NSIDC monthly average. The Jaxa versus NSIDC September averages over the 9 years since they both became available are a bit lopsided. From 2002 until last year, the figures in millions of sq km (with the Jaxa numbers shown first) are as follows…
(2002) 5.89/5.96; (2003) 6.13/6.15; (2004) 5.96/6.05; (2005) 5.53/5.57; (2006) 5.91/5.92
(2007) 4.38/4.30; (2008) 4.84/4.68; (2009) 5.38/5.36; (2010) 5.10/4.90
The reason for splitting these comparisons into two batches is that the ratio crossed unity. For each of the years between 2002 until 2006 the NSIDC figure for the mean September SIE exceeded the Jaxa figure by an average of about 46,000 sq km. However, for each of the last 4 years, the Jaxa figure has been higher, and has averaged around 110,000 above its NSIDC equivalent.
How will they compare this year – I’ve no idea.

Hi Rod, errors in the daily data (either from us or from JAXA) will result from (1) weather effects, (2) land-contamination, (3) missing swaths (or delay in getting all the swaths), (4) geolocation issues (the near-real-time data we get has not gone through the rigorous geolocation/calibration as our “final” data set does). We are well aware of these errors, which is one of the reasons why a 5-day running mean is used on our ASINA page. But another important thing to note is that after we receive the better quality-controlled brightness temperatures from RSS, all the data is once again reprocessed. So when you go to the Sea Ice Index (ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/) for the monthly data you will notice that there are final #s (the Goddard ones), preliminary #s and the near-real-time #s, and these will eventually be updated.
Thus I don’t agree with your statement: In fact, doing so increases the odds that errors will be more quickly uncovered in either data collection or calculation, because others are checking the figures daily.
The data providers (NSIDC, JAXA, Bremen, etc.) are well aware of the potential errors in the daily #s. We worry that others won’t be.
But I agree that it would be a good idea for NSIDC to make the daily #s available though (with all the caveats clearly stated).

Bill, some of the historical daily extent data is here: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/seaice/polar-stereo/trends-climatologies/ice-extent/
there you have access to both the “final” NASA Team and Bootstrap #s.
Thanks for the JAXA/NSIDC comparison, that is interesting and I’m not sure why the differences between the two data sets change after 2006. The 2008-2010 #s from NSIDC will still change though after the NASA GSFC folks send us an updated data set.

Chris Biscan (@Frivolousz21) says:
August 31, 2011 at 11:22 am
@ Dave Wendt
CT Uses a 6.25km grid resolution.
Jaxa uses 12.5km grid resolution.
Norsex uses 25km grid resolution.
Thanks for that. Interesting that a 12.5 km gr change between JAXA and NORSEX yields not much difference, but an extra 6.25 km gr change yields such a dramatic difference.

I learned something today.
I had always thought, as a non scientist, that these ice prediction threads were a bit of fun. A humerous diversion from the front line, like soldiers playing laser squad.
The vitriol in some of the comments has made me think again. It’s nasty out there!
why did science ever come to this ? It’s a crying shame
EO

it isnt “science” the politics are NASTY and have nothing to do with science which is impersonal and impartial.

Forecast interval categories of 1/4 standard deviation are pure roulette–if you happen to “win” with such a play, it is pure luck, not any skill whatsoever.
I’ll stand by my prediction your May poll: 4.5 or less, for the same reason I did then.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/19/sea-ice-news-call-for-arctic-sea-ice-forecasts-plus-forecast-poll/#comment-665723
Back then, ~85% of Wattsers polled felt it would be higher than it is now. ~20% of Wattsers overpredicted by more than ten times the spread. I wonder what this set of dart throws will show.

Looks like we’re going to settle in somewhere between 2007 & 2008, so around 4.4 million sq. km. More important though is of course sea ice volume, and in this category, even by conservative estimates, we’ll have far and away the least amount of arctic sea ice by total volume. Sorry skeptics, but no sea ice recovery in sight, and in fact, quite the opposite. Expect 2007’s record low extent to be beaten by 2015 at the absolute latest– New Little Ice age is postponed indefinitely.

Michael Twomey says:
August 31, 2011 at 10:04 am
Has anyone ever looked at the 1979-2000 baseline to determine whether it is a good basis for
comparison? Were the AMO and/or PDO in positive or negative phases during that time? Is it a
representative period?
I’ve answered my own question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg
Since the AMO was in a positive phase for almost all of 1979-2000, it seems misleading to use that for a baseline against which to compare today’s negative phase temperatures. Or, is that the point?

It would be interesting to see some research on how much of the ice is weather dependent and how much is climate.

Chris Biscan (@Frivolousz21) says:
August 31, 2011 at 10:51 am
As for thickness. Buoys and ships both say thickness is at all time recorded lows. We can either pretend this data doesn’t exist or accept it and make better predictions on it. This is clearly backed up by the thousands of photographs taken by Polarstern, Healy, and the Laurents.
If you go around the Arctic chopping the ice up with ice-breakers is it surprising that more of it melts?

Could it be that the small increase in the trace gas, with which, in recent times, we have been so concerned, is making the nice white stuff go all melty-melty?

R. Gates says:
August 31, 2011 at 1:24 pm
“New Little Ice age is postponed indefinitely.”
GOOD! You think anyone wants it to be cold? Bring on the warm, bring on the CO2, a more stable and productive biosphere would be a wonderful thing for humanity.

Here’s my prediction.
There will be ice.
The Warmists will say it is less in area than it should be.
Or thinner.
Or more fragile.
Or pinker.
Or the wrong sort of ice for polar bears.
The sceptics will say it isn’t.

Dave Wendt says:
August 31, 2011 at 4:05 pm
—————–
Thanks, Excellent animation of the observation period but the time scale for multi-year ice is confusing. As I understand it, multi-yeat ice is 2 years or more. The white in the animation refers to ice that appears to be much older (likely produced at the bottom of the cycle prior to 1979)?
Since the observation period started at the bottom of the cycle (around 1979) and currently only reflects half of the cycle (assuming that is a valid statement), is the animation reflecting what will occur again as we complete the next cold phase (final half of this cycle) as we once again accumulate more and more multi-year Arctic Sea Ice?

R. Gates says:
August 31, 2011 at 1:24 pm
……”Sorry skeptics, but no sea ice recovery in sight, and in fact, quite the opposite. Expect 2007′s record low extent to be beaten by 2015 at the absolute latest– New Little Ice age is postponed indefinitely.”
Hahahaha — surely you jest? Here I sit, summer 2011, last day of August and I’m typing this dressed in three layers of clothing, in order to keep warm.
Apologies to Anthony for voting on the high side early on and by so doing leaving him open to the slingshots of the troll-like. However, In truth, rather than, as a skeptic, wishing for more ice – I’d have loved, as a skeptic, to have voted for a negative number of Millions of km2, as that is the kind of insane leap that AGW alarmists make. Sadly Anthony, being sane, failed to include negative numbers in the poll..
In fact, for a bit of fun, I hereby prophecy that some spokesperson in the AGW alarmist community will in the not to distant future make an announcement that ice has been reduced (over the last few decades ) by an amount that would leave a negative result. Would anyone like to bet against me ? R.Gates perhaps ?
Anyway – our lack of TRUE scientific knowledge of the world we live in continues to fascinate me.

Not all sceptics expect there to be lots of ice. It depends on what exactly you are sceptical of. It is only the sceptics who would like to doubt that the world has warmed at all who find low ice levels a problem.
Personally I have no doubt that the world has warmed. I also have no doubt that CO_2 levels have risen, and this will have contributed to warming to a small extent. However I am sceptical that this has been the controlling factor. In my opinion negative feedbacks predominate, so I would expect sensitivity to be less that 1C per CO_2 doubling, which means natural factors are mostly responsible for recent warming. I am also extremely sceptical of claims that warming is a problem.
To a sceptic of my ilk, low ice levels are expected. My prediction is for around 4.1 million sq km. I see no signs that the ice is freezing up earlier than normal. Looking at the satellite pictures the ice this year looks particularly weak, especially around the edges of the pack. I give us a 50/50 chance of breaking the 2007 low this year. I don’t see diminishing arctic ice as a problem.
I would expect ice levels to recover again next year but to maintain a generally steady or negative trend over most of this decade.That is because I see sea temps as the main long term driving factor for sea ice and sea temps respond slowly to change, so we are still be seeing the effects of late 20th century warming. I wouldn’t be surprised to see ice levels below 3.5.
I wouldn’t have a problem with an ice free arctic, however sadly I don’t think that will happen. The sun seems to be trying to stuff us back in the deep freeze again. I expect we’ll hit a minimum sometime around 2017 and then ice levels will start rising again.
Predictions:
1. Low ice this year – 4.1 million sq km.
2. Continued downward trend over the next few years.
3. Ice levels down to 3.5 million sq km sometime in the next decade.
4. Downward trend to stop around 2017 and upward trend to start.

This time I predicted a 4.1 to 4.2 as the expanded option was available. My previous was 4.0 to 4.5.
I am expecting the trend post 2007 to continue.
The daily ice extent from JAXA was less than 2007 for 16 days in 2008, 23 in 2009, 133 in 2010, and so far 144 days in 2011.
Thanks for putting more choices in this poll.

If there’s still more than 4 million square kilometers of ice around the pole how come six British rowers were able to row through the ice?
Lewis Smith of the Independent says “Rowers reach ‘impossible’ North Pole, thanks to global warming”
The Independent wouldn’t lie would they?
/sarc

Ian H says:
August 31, 2011 at 6:03 pm
The heat loss of the ice melting from below, unless it is due to undersea volcanoes, indicates a problem coming down the road. The atmosphere isn’t very good at holding heat energy, the ocean is. We need the oceanic heat energy to moderate Winter, not wasted on melting renewable Arctic Sea Ice.

I don’t think that the Arctic sea ice looks any different this year than it did last year I am comparing this year and last year using Nansen Arctic Roos as I always have.I think that we are in a no win situation with regard to the annual summer ice extent,if it goes up it means nothing but if it falls it is then significant, the warmist have nothing to lose and if they don’t get what they want this year then there is next year.I could say that we should look at the Antarctic as well or that it is not important that sea ice has declined but warmists take the same attitude to global temperatures and global temperatures in some way determine how we calculate co2 sensitivity.I think that what will happen over the next decade is that Arctic sea ice extents will recover and global temperatures will fall(Joe Bastardi and Joe D’aleo) i expect this will happen for the reasons they have given.

I’m still amazed people are picking values 5.4-5.5 as the average for September. It’s likely to go down a bit more yet before increasing and it is already at about 4.7 according to Julienne.
REPLY: I think these are people who don’t like WUWT who are trying to screw up the poll. They’ll be considered outliers though in the submission. – Anthony

Interesting graphic for comparison purposes:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20071001_extent.png
“Cool Hat” Hansen must be getting ready to hit the barricades again is my guess.

Actually, the polls here are a great example of the value of concensus.
When summer arrives, snow is usually a thing of the past, and when winter gets here, you’ll wish you had enjoyed the weather you had.

R. Gates says:
August 31, 2011 at 1:24 pm
– New Little Ice age is postponed indefinitely.
I do hope you are correct, otherwise the implication for humanity are appalling.

All good fun, I suppose.
Yes, there may be many on here that predicted high.
But my guess is that they are far more fearful of the endless and boring cacophany of alarmists trumpeting doom and crowing that it somehow proves that the “Science is Really Settled” than they are about the prospect of a completely ice free Arctic.
I commented somewhere on WUWT a couple of years back (one of Goddard’s posts?) that I promise to sit up and take notice when the Arctic is ice free in February.
Until then, I’m much more worried about sitting shivering in the dark here in the UK. Thanks, not least, to the fraudulent and incompetent Thermogeddonists and their political stooges.

Pamela Gray, do you want to comment ? Do you want to ‘screw up the poll’ or ‘ picking the highest number in hopes that will be the top vote getter’ as Anthony suggests ?

“Reality of sea ice is starting to bite”
“a little reported story about the way increasing sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere has resulted in Sweden withholding an icebreaker from US use in Antarctica. After increasingly bitter winters that have resulted in more iced over navigation passages, the Swedish government wrote to US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to announce that the icebreaker Oden (pictured) will be kept at home and not be made available to support the work of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) in Antarctica, for the first time since 2006.”
Read it all including a copy of the letter at Autonomous Mind (h/t Bishop Hill)
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/reality-of-sea-ice-is-starting-to-bite/

Guys, bets are off. http://www.barentsobserver.com/gazprom-ready-to-melt-icebergs.4953429-116321.html
No wonder the ice is melting faster than ever

steven mosher says:
September 1, 2011 at 12:12 am
“Making out like someone is a fool if a prediction isn’t correct is just absurd.”
Wise advice. Remember that when we talk about Hathaway on sunspots and the IPCC on warming, and serreze on the death spiral. Allowing people to make mistakes is something we seem to have forgotten.
I’m perfectly willing to let people indulge in whatever folly turns their crank. I only get excited when they start to demand that the world transform itself in incredibly destructive ways on the basis of those highly dubious follies.

John from CA says:
August 31, 2011 at 5:09 pm
John from CA says:
August 31, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Dave Wendt says:
August 31, 2011 at 4:05 pm
————–
An interesting follow up question, is there any evidence multi-year ice prior to 1979 in the Arctic was older than 15-20 years? If no, the question is solved?
I’ve posted that link to R & W a number of times, mostly to point out that what has happened in the Arctic over that last 20-30 yrs can be accounted for largely without recourse to anything anthropogenic. AFAIK the authors have made no projections on long term developments into the future.
As to the age of the ice prior to the sat era, there is a piece at Rigor’s site
http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/
Look in the sidebar under Some Research Highlights for Arctic Perennial Sea-Ice Reduction
He discusses data back to the 50s based on Drift-Age Model derived from buoy data.
I recall reading a piece several years ago which claimed ice had drifted up on the coast of the UK back in those days which had tags placed by researchers in the Arctic which indicated it was much more than a decade old, but I never was able to confirm that story.

Not that IT prog’s anything …

Henry,
it’s not the sun.
As you prefer to use only temperature data post 1975, here is a plot of the solar index and global temperature from 1976 to 2008. The time period is selected with the solar cycle phase equivalent at both ends of the time series so that the trend derived is not an artefact of the phase. The sun has been trending cooler while the globe has warmed.
Regarding our past conversations, I found a number of assumptions you worked with were completely untenable – like positing that temperature records from a handful of weather stations (less than 10) faithfully represent global temperature trends. We were unable to come to mutual ground for a useful discourse, though we both tried as best we could. I am sure that situation has not changed. I wish you well.

Scott,
thanks for pointing out the new Tamino post. I don’t think he is making the prediction you cited – that was only half way through the post. He concludes;

What’s the bottom line? If I had to bet (which thank goodness I don’t), I’d say the odds are just about 50-50 that this year’s NSIDC September extent will set a new record low.

As he doesn’t give a final figure, I’d guess that his central estimate is equal to the NSIDC 2007 September minimum, 4.3 million sq/km.. But I’ll ask and see if he quantifies.

Rod Everson said Regarding the 5.3-5.4 and above 5.4 discussion, there’s probably two things going on. First, no doubt some anti-WUWT contributors are trying to mess with the poll. It would be amazing if they weren’t given the nature of the web.
Second, this is a monthly average we’re being polled on. Those who, like Pamela Gray perhaps, think that we will get an early freeze-up might think that 4.6 or so will be the low but that by mid-September we will be back over 5.0 and headed higher, so that a 5.3 average is possible, as it is.
I agree Rod. WUWT readers are known to vote unrealistically high. If I recall the May projection where a whopping 113 voted above 5.5 million (20% of the total). And even in the June projection, 54 votes above 5.5 million (7 % of the total) even all through May and June 2011 was below the record 2007 graph.
Reasons why WUWT voters vote unrealistically high vary, and often seem emotional rather than rational (like the poster on the May projection stating “Just to be a bit contrary”), but reasons are stated. In the case of Pamela, she indeed was pretty clear as to why she expected a 5.3-5.4 minimum and I think you summarized her opinion very well.
Which is why I was surprised to Anthony’s rather extreme statements. As I tried to post before
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/2848/wuwtsept1shot.jpg
(but somehow got moderated out)
Anthony, your readers cast their vote, and many of them (like Pamela) have the courage to state their reasons for their vote. I feel that it is at least inappropriate for you to judge your own readers as wanting to screw up the poll or picking the highest number in hopes that will be the top vote getter.

Caleb…have a look at this paper on the effect of lunar gravity on Artic ice formation. A 74yr cycle is involved which is beginning to bottom out – so I expect to see some increases in ice cover over the next few years.
http://icejms.oxfordjournals.org/content/63/3/401.full

barry says:
September 1, 2011 at 10:42 pm

thanks for pointing out the new Tamino post. I don’t think he is making the prediction you cited – that was only half way through the post. He concludes;

What’s the bottom line? If I had to bet (which thank goodness I don’t), I’d say the odds are just about 50-50 that this year’s NSIDC September extent will set a new record low.

As he doesn’t give a final figure, I’d guess that his central estimate is equal to the NSIDC 2007 September minimum, 4.3 million sq/km.. But I’ll ask and see if he quantifies.

Hi barry,
I did mention his 50-50 comment in the third sentence of my post. I see you’ve confirmed that as 4.3 million km^2 in his comments section. So whoever has read my above post, please disregard it and change the 4.17 number to 4.3. Though I do wonder why he chose 4.3 when his analysis of NSIDC data gave 4.17 and he’s consistently used NSIDC in the past…
-Scott

SteveSadlov, yes you are right. Since the radiative balance turns negative in the Arctic this time of year, top-freeze (of melting ponds), and subsequent snow deposit is unavoidable. Note that snow and freezing melting ponds only occurs where ice is above the surface, and will show up as increased concentration. Although this results in increase SIA (sea ice area) (and it already did) it will leave SIE (sea ice extent) relatively unaffected. SIE is going to be determined by bottom-melt, largely caused by wasm ocean water, which will knock out more ice until sea surface temperatures reduced so much that open ocean starts to freeze over in a week or two. And that will be the minimum.

Rob wrote One reason for this may be that Anthony put the realistically most likely 2011 outcome (4.4 – 4.5 million km^2) bracket in the one but last slot in the poll, with the (eventually chosen, and very unrealistic) bracket of 5.0-5.1 being right in the middle.
I’m sorry guys. I was looking at the end-of-July post when I compiled this. In this latest (end-of-August) post, the bracket with the most votes is currently 4.5-4.6 which is definitely more realistic.
I’m glad that WUWT readers came to their senses.

Rob says:
September 2, 2011 at 10:50 pm
I think Anthony’s comments on the dilemma of keeping the poll options consistent, or altering them when the situation changes, are perfectly reasonable. Any choice he made would have attracted critics.

This blog out of the main places for Sea Ice talk seems to ignore all of the real time data that showed 2011 would end up like this. What is even more ridiculous us how horrible winds have been for flushing. While this has been a DPA year based on surface pressure, very little ice has been flushed out the North Atlantic, Barrents, and Fram.
The opposite has taken place for the most part and the models still show warm water/air being pumped into the arctic through the Barrents which is still torching as well as the rest of the arctic waters. The bottom melt is now where near over. What is worse is the coldest 850s will sit right on top of the ice pack now. Which is still under going bottom melt until October this year because of the torching SSTs, some places on the edge like the Beaufort, ESB, Barrents will have bottom melt till November and December in places on the far edges, that is insane.
We might see a slow methodical melt with larger days here and there the rest of the month. Just eyeballing the Euro/GFS we can easily lose another 250,000km2 the next 7 days. If so we will sit right at the record on Bremen and NSIDC while around 4,400,000km2 on Jaxa.
Given the torching SSTs, it won’t be suprising seeing the edges of the ice melt out.
I havent seen one link on these comments to modis. anyways…
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r03c03.2011246.terra
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r03c04.2011246.terra
The ice is in shambles. I don’t think it has sunk in to many who just can’t see pass there heart and where they wish it was on how it really is. There are to many people out there preying on there bias to give them the real story, very sad.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/newdata.htm
There is a thin pancake ice sheet out there. Lets hope we can get some of that volume back soon, or well I think we know whats coming.