Sea Ice News Volume 3 Number 6 – Sea Ice Outlook forecasting contest for 2012 is online

First some news on the status of the WUWT Sea Ice Page. The JAXA imagery, which has been DOA ever since the failure of the AMSRE instrument on the AQUA satellite is now operational again. The plot is below:

JAXA AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent -15% or greater – click to enlarge

In addition, they have a new product, which combines the averages with lowest extent years for comparison:

And our final bit of news on the replacement satellite is from Dr. Roy Spencer, who reports that:

The AMSR2 Antenna has been Successfully Deployed

May 18th, 2012 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

UPDATE: AMSR2 has been successfully spun up to its initial spin rate of 4 rpm (it will later be spun up to 40 rpm for normal operations). It will take 45 days for the Shinzuku satellite to be maneuvered into the A-Train satellite constellation; about 3 months for complete instrument checkout.

Now this is a real treat…the first on-orbit image I am aware of taken from the spacecraft of an Earth-observation instrument ON the spacecraft itself (all imagery courtesy of JAXA).

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That said, not much else of note has been going on in the sea-ice arena, as happens every year, seen in the JAXA plots above, we are in that time of year when all of the years converge into a tighter grouping. This makes judging where the current year is going a tougher challenge.

But as usual, the race to forecast the minimum is on again. Will it be another Serreze death spiral media opportunity? Or will it be ho-hum- nothing to see here, move along?

Anyone can submit a forecast to ARCUS, all you need is a rationale and you have to put your name on it. Even “SWAG” qualifies as a rationale, though there are many who will use models and statistical techniques to try predicting the sea-ice minimum.

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’ll run this poll each month in the week before the deadline, and we’ll see how we do as the minimum approaches. The value used by ARCUS is the NSIDC value as they say here:

The sea ice monthly extent for September 2011 was 4.6 million square kilometers, based on National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) estimates. This was the second lowest extent behind 2007 and 2.4 million square kilometers below the 1979 to 2000 average.

I suggest that you should not be using the JAXA graph to forecast minimums, though it it useful for determining short term trends as it is more responsive than the NSDIC graph below, which is averaged.

Here is what past forecast submission reports looked like:

Figure 3a. Distributions of Outlook estimates for September 2011 arctic sea ice extent based on May data.

Figure 3b. Distributions of Outlook estimates for September 2010 arctic sea ice extent based on June data.

WUWT readers came in a bit overly optimistic last year, as they did the prior year. Take that into consideration in your forecast for this year.

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.

ALL Outlook submissions should be sent directly to Helen Wiggins, ARCUS, at: helen@arcus.org, with the following subject lines, as relevant:

PAN-ARCTIC OUTLOOK – [YOUR LAST NAME]

REGIONAL OUTLOOK – [YOUR LAST NAME]

OUTLOOK FOR BOTH REGIONAL AND PAN-ARCTIC – [YOUR LAST NAME]

An MS Word document is preferred for ease of formatting to PDF files and extracting images for the website – we will not edit your individual submission and will not post your Word documents.

SUBMITTING A PAN-ARCTIC OUTLOOK

Pan-arctic Outlook contributions should include:

1. Extent Projection

   Provide a sea ice projection for the September monthly mean arctic sea ice extent (in million square kilometers).

2. Methods/Techniques

   Provide the type of estimate (heuristic, statistical, ice-ocean model ensemble runs, etc.).

3. Rationale

   Include a short paragraph on the physical rationale for the estimate.

4. Executive Summary

   Provide a short paragraph that summarizes your outlook contribution in two or three sentences.

5. Estimate of Forecast Skill (if available)

   If possible, please include any estimates of forecast skill, uncertainty, or error associated with your prediction. This year, we will add error estimates to the summary bar chart of outlook estimates, as appropriate.

We would also like to expand discussion of ice thickness in the monthly reports, so please include any relevant information on ice thickness (or age), if available.

Submission deadline: Monday, 4 June 2012.

All Outlooks should be sent to:

Helen Wiggins, ARCUS

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The forecast poll, pick a value:

Note: the poll is setup to prevent vote stuffing, you can only vote once.