The Arctic sea ice extent forecasting contest is on again. As before I’ll allow readers to submit their best estimates in a poll, and I’ll submit those results as we’ve done in the past two years. Last year, the forecast submitted by reader poll was a bit high, probably due to optimism that abounds here as opposed to the gloomy outlooks submitted by others.
This year, due to the near normal excursions, it might be tempting to again submit a significantly higher value than 5.0 million square kilometers, it might also be tempting to “pull a Zwally” and declare the sea ice will be gone entirely. I don’t recommend either forecast.
Here, you can read the post season summary from 2011.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2011/summary
And here are the guidelines for 2012 submissions.
From http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/guidelines
The SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook organizers are now soliciting pan-arctic and regional outlooks for the 2012 season. We encourage past and new contributors to participate.
The 2012 Outlook season will be a transition year to an expanded Outlook in 2013; this year, we would like to focus on expanding discussion of ice thickness, expanding discussion of the relative performance of different Outlook techniques, and improving access to relevant outlook data (see “Data Resources” webpage at: http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/data.php). So in addition to the pan-arctic and regional outlook contributions, we invite any information or input to those topics as well.
JUNE REPORT (using May data). Deadline for contributions:
4 June. Publish reports online: 11 June.
JULY REPORT (using June data). Deadline for contributions: 2 July.
Publish reports online: 10 July.
AUGUST REPORT (using July data). Deadline for contributions: 2 August.
Publish reports online: 10 August.
SEPTEMBER REPORT (brief updates based on August data). Deadline for contributions: 4 September. Publish updates online: 10 September.
MINIMUM ANNOUNCEMENT. Based on the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s
(NSIDC) announcement for minimum.
POST-SEASON SYNOPSIS (exact dates dependent on when minimum is reached).
Deadline for contributions: early October. Publish post-season synopsis: late October.
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Consider and study the current situation at the WUWT Sea Ice reference page.
I’ll put up the poll in a few days for the June 4th deadline and WUWT readers can make the collective forecast then.
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LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Reality: The WUWT result was based off of the mode of the responses on this site. Had the mean or median been used instead, the WUWT results’ accuracy would have been near the middle of the pack and considerably better than those models. But I guess that’s just what happens when poll results have a bimodal distribution and are used that way…
-Scott
Well, I won’t give a number, but my guess is below 2008 and 2011. Might even break the 2007 record low. I hope I’m wrong, but the ice thats up there is mighty thin and will disappear very fast. Very little multi-year ice left, and more of it is disappearing every summer.
Kelvin Vaughan says:
May 23, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Looking at Cryosphere Today’s comparison with 2007, it looks like it’s melting a lot faster this year!
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Yup. It was down for a long time, but it’s back up. When I took a look I said yikes! And it’s still only May. The thin ice up there is going to disappear like fog on a lake when the sun rises.
OT but judging by this animation we could be seeing the inception of La Nina part III
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/global_ncom/glb8_3b/html/anims/eqp/sst30d.gif
Is it just me or is NSIDC diverging significantly from JAXA and NORSEX lately on 15% extent?
Richard says:
May 24, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Kelvin Vaughan says:
May 23, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Looking at Cryosphere Today’s comparison with 2007, it looks like it’s melting a lot faster this year!
———————————————————————————————————
Yup. It was down for a long time, but it’s back up. When I took a look I said yikes! And it’s still only May. The thin ice up there is going to disappear like fog on a lake when the sun rises.
I wouldn’t read too much into the appearance of the CT images (2007 and now) on any given day since you will notice – if CT stays up – that there is quite large variation in the colour map of ice thickness from day to day. It might be useful if they could make an averaged colour map over several days. I suspect their increased resolution has increased noise.