Poll now closed. Results below will be submitted to ARCUS on Sept 1st.
Once again, I’m going to give WUWT readers an opportunity to make a forecast for submission, based on voting. See the poll at the end. I’m late getting this online this month as other things took precedence.
For reference, here’s last months forecast poll and the final submission with all other forecasts from other groups. The final forecast poll you can participate in follows.
The value used by ARCUS in the forecast is the NSIDC value as they say here:
The sea ice monthly extent for September 2010 was 4.9 million square kilometers, based on National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) estimates.
So don’t 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.
Right now the NSIDC value is about 5 million square kilometers.
[ UPDATE: NSIDC’s Julienne Strove from NSIDC writes in comments:
“Note, the NSIDC value today is 4.66 million sq-km.”
Of course NSDIC doesn’t publish the daily values like JAXA does, so we all have to guess since we aren’t privy to that information.
The 5 day average graph is all the public gets. And of course, any estimate is hampered not only by the average, but also by those coarseness of the Y axis. I’ve asked before for NSIDC to publish the daily value and the response has been that they have more important issues to attend to. However, clearly the ARCUS forecast group is watching this number and it is important to the final forecast done by over a dozen groups now. So you think it would be valuable to post the daily data. -Anthony]
Here’s the latest JAXA graph:
JAXA AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent -15% or greater – click to enlarge
Here’s the poll for the ARCUS August outlook, it will run until Sept 1st at midnight PST.
(NOTE/UPDATE: This poll was originally exactly like all the others done over the last several months, but one snarky commenter (the first one) complained that I was a “manipulator” because it didn’t have more lower values. Of course he never bother to ask why or look at the history of the other polls.
I had considered initially adding those lower values for this poll, but then figured I’d be derided for changing the poll and not being consistent with the other polls. In retrospect, I’ll be criticized no matter what I do, so within 20 minutes of it going online, I decided to extend this poll with 0.1 million km increments down to 4.0 million kilometers. I’ve also removed the options for voting 5.5 to 6.0 (which existed in prior polls) since they are outside the current bounds of possibility based on previous September history. – Anthony
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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?
Michael, the start date of 1979 is used because that’s when the modern satellite data record came on line. The 2000 end point was initially chosen to examine how 2002 compared to the longer term mean (1979-2000). However, I think the mean should now be 1979-2010 since we’ve just completed another decade of observations. In any papers where I discuss anomalies/trends I use the longest time-series possible for that and not the 1979-2000 baseline.
It would be interesting to see some research on how much of the ice is weather dependent and how much is climate.
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.”
======
A trend is your friend, till the bend.
Prove otherwise.
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?
if i may use bowling for illustration purposes…..does the individual games bowled have an impact on the average? of course they do because the average is simply the total games bowled divided into the total score to get an average per game……but does the average have an impact on any individual game? NO the average suggests what usually happens but has ZERO control over what IS/will happen.
the climate is that bowling average and the weather is the individual games in my illustration…..simply put the climate IS nothing more than the average weather over a given period of time(most often 30 years), so the weather in reality controls what the climate will indicate BUT just like in bowling the average had NO impact on the next single game.
just like the racing form tells you what the horses did in the past it does NOT tell you which horse will run fast TODAY.
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?
Looking at everything, sea levels, ice extent and temperature, it really does look like we have entered a plateau and may be heading for another decline. This has been predicted and the last century of data displays it rather well. We have a sine wave going up at an angle of around 1C per century since the LIA.
I just hope this CAGW scare-fest has been killed and buried by the time the upswing starts again, and that we don’t get another ‘the ice-age cometh’ scare-fest in the mean time!
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.
frivolousz21 says:
August 31, 2011 at 1:11 pm
“Since 2007 the role of AGW has likely went from 30-40% of the ice decline from 1990-2006. And Temperature feedback has gone up exponentially.”
See Rigor and Wallace 2004 with updates
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/research_seaiceageextent.html
“This animation of the age of sea ice shows:
1.) A large Beaufort Gyre which covers most of the Arctic Ocean during the 1980s, and a transpolar drift stream shifted towards the Eurasian Arctic. Older, thicker sea ice (white ice) covers about 80% of the Arctic Ocean up to 1988. The date is shown in the upper left corner.
2.) With the step to high-AO conditions in 1989, the Beaufort Gyre shrinks and is confined to the corner between Alaska and Canada. The Transpolar Drift Stream now sweeps across most of the Arctic Ocean, carrying most of the older, thicker sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean through Fram Strait (lower right). By 1990, only about 30% of the Arctic Ocean is covered by older thicker sea ice.
3.) During the high-AO years that follow (1991 and on), this younger thinner sea ice is shown to recirculated back to the Alaskan coast where extensive open water has been observed during summer.
The age of sea ice drifting towards the coast explains over 50% of the variance in summer sea ice extent (compared to less than 15% of the variance explained by the seasonal redistribution of sea ice, and advection of heat by summer winds).”
Rigor updated the accompanying video again at the end of 2009
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.
For comparison with the other readers here, I’m predicting 4511297 km^2 for the NSIDC monthly average extent. Note that this value is derived from my JAXA daily minimum extent of 4463881 km^2…I do all my analyses using JAXA daily values for the regressions, but it shouldn’t skew the conversion to monthly NSIDC too much.
Note – my methods are statistical and combine CT’s daily area numbers with JAXA’s daily extent numbers. JAXA daily is already below 2010’s value (due to taking a huge beating the last two days), and the CT area dropped below both 2008 and 2010 several days ago before rebounding back (noisier data). I’m putting odds of a record low area ~50/50 with maybe a 25% chance of record low extent (both of these are daily records I’m talking about). That 25% number is just a guess…I didn’t run any confidence intervals.
-Scott
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.
Why be sorry? That is excellent news! As we keep trying to tell you people, warmer is better than colder for most living things, and we are in favor of life!
Please be sure Ol’ Sol gets the memo, as well as the oceans.
If you want to see the NH sea ice extent in an historical perspective, here is the cycle by day from 1972 to today – along with the anomaly versus the 1972 to 2010 average.
While there is a small decline, I think the disaster projections by some are shown to be greatly exaggerated with this chart.
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8826/dailysei1972aug3011.png
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?
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?
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.
I thought this was the original data:
MASIE NSIDC/NIC Sea Ice Product G02186 – Daily Ice Extent by Region in Square Kilometers
2011239, 5086116.56,
2011240, 4931552.16,
2011241, 4889458.95,
2011242, 4872569.48,
Am I missing something?
I originally had 4.8/4.9 to 5.1 MKm^2, so now it can be 4.4 to 4.6
What really bothers me is not the fact that the Arctic Sea Ice is going to parallel 2007, but the fact that too much heat energy is being transported there and escaping out to space. That’s gotta hurt the Oceanic Heat Content.
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.
Sticking with my previous prediction 4.6 to 4.7 Million km2….. low.
From May, “The Dinostratus crystal ball is starting to uncloud. It’s looking like a bad year for icers. It could be worse than 2007.”
Not bad for an amateur.
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.
Me too! Tropics From Pole To Pole (TFPTP) However, it’s becoming more and more obvious that CO2 just isn’t getting the job done as we (TFPTP’ers) had hoped. It’s time we employ more potent climate change agents. We will be holding our annual meeting at the predetermined secret location, please come prepared to propose alternatives to CO2.
For a moment, I thought your “snark” comment was referring to my post on July 28th at 1:53pm. Snarky comments are unbecoming, but I am happy to see the improved resolution in the poll.
There’s more ice in the Arctic now than there has been for most of the last 9000 years. Funny that anyone would be alarmed somehow thinking there is too little ice there.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/23/surprise-peer-reviewed-study-says-current-arctic-sea-ice-is-more-extensive-than-most-of-the-past-9000-years/
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