Shades of Zwally – Vision Prize calls for 'ice free Arctic' predictions – cast your vote

Would that be ice free or “ice free = less than 1 million square kilometers of floating ice”?

Looking at their pages – and mainly at the page with results from the previous round (http://visionprize.com/results) I actually believe they have no problems with openness. Looking at the answers, I find them surprisingly un-alarming. There’s even a funny discrepancy where most people believe earth will warm up by 2-3°C at 550 ppm CO2, most people believe 550 ppm CO2 will be reached around 2050, and yet most people believe Earth will warm up only 1.5-2°C till 2050. But that’s actually perfectly normal in the world of statistics.
I don’t like the selection of questions, in my opinion they could have picked better ones – but that’s actually not very important.
The purpose of this site is clearly not doing science by vote. I believe they will have no problems with publishing results of further rounds even if they were totally skeptical towards AGW (current ones are skeptical enough IMO although many people here won’t agree). Most probably they don’t actually care what selections people make, what they care about is how their opinions change over time.

I was “approved” in about 5 seconds. I wonder what their criteria are?

Does anyone have a link to the entire statement made by Zwally? I’m actually quite interested in reading all of what he said. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!

I say it will be ice free in the summer some time in the next 1.5 million years +/- 250,000.
Larry

Does anyone have a link to the entire statement made by Zwally? I’m actually quite interested in reading all of what he said. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!
Sure. There’s a link at the top …. This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.
Now, he was writing at the end of the 2007 ice melt season, when the ice extent fell precipitously.
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20071001_septembertrend.jpg
Zwally was observing that, should the summer ice cover continue to decline at that rate every year, then a nearly ice free Arctic was just 5 years off. We now know that the 2007 decline was an outlier, helped along by anomalous wind patterns and the rate of change has actually reverted back nearer to its long term trend, in other words the decrease has not continued at that rate, although last year’s minimum was within the error bars of 2007.
So Zwally included 2 conditions – IF the rate of change in 2007 was repeated Then the Arctic COULD be nearly ice free in summer 2012. His condition has not been met and so we will not see the second half of his prediction transpire. All reasonable stuff from a reasonable scientist, but my prediction is we will see a big and unjustifiable FAIL! around here come September …..

2,225 years into the next Interglacial Period. What are the prizes again?

Mike Lewis says:
July 19, 2012 at 10:58 am
Smokey, Smokey, Smokey… Everyone knows that heat rises, therefore all the extra heat in the atmosphere and oceans is rising to the top of the world and melting the Arctic ice.
————————-
….. and there was I thinking it was because CO2 is upside down in the Southern Hemisphere, thereby causing cooling. Silly me.

Given the Vostok cores I’m going with 102,001 AD

Phil Clarke says:
July 19, 2012 at 11:32 am

“Zwally was observing that, should the summer ice cover continue to decline at that rate every year, then a nearly ice free Arctic was just 5 years off. […]
So Zwally included 2 conditions – IF the rate of change in 2007 was repeated Then the Arctic COULD be nearly ice free in summer 2012. His condition has not been met and so we will not see the second half of his prediction transpire. All reasonable stuff from a reasonable scientist, but my prediction is we will see a big and unjustifiable FAIL! around here come September …..”

So we can conclude
a) That’s only one condition. But then, I’m also convinced that there’s only one Kilimanjaro.
a) we need highly paid government scientists to do linear interpolation. Layman can’t do that because they’re not climate scientists.
b) Just as he has explicit preconditions in his prophecy, the warmist scientists in general have an implicit precondition in their prophecies: IF our models have predicitive skill. Notice that this already failed for the observed timeframe.

We have a drought on par with the mid 1950’s I suspect we will have Arctic ice like in the mid 1950’s . Now where are those submarine pictures from the mid to late 1950’s showing very little ice at the north pole ?

It might be helpful in such an important debate if the people contributing actually looked at the data. Most people contributing to WUWT and other similar sites don’t seem interested in the evidence.
Cryosphere Today is reporting that currently (July 19th 2012) arctic sea ice is over 2 million km2 below the 1989-2008 mean.
Arctic sea ice area this year is already lower than almost all the September minimums at the start of the satellite record in the 1970s and 1980s.
The anomaly this summer has now been at or below previous record levels for nearly 2 months.
Looking at the NSIDC September plot from the start of the satellite record, on the linear trend line they use, the arctic will be largely ice free in September in about 2065;
on the current rate of decline (tangent to the curve) by about 2030;
or if the acceleration in decline seen since the late 1990s persists, by about 2019.
So take your pick.
The evidence points strongly to a major change taking place in the arctic. Whether its “alarmist” to think this is serious is subjective.
The point is, it is happening. The arctic is warming faster than any other region on the planet and the most likely cause of that is climate change caused by increasing CO2 levels.
Both a rapidly warming arctic and a generally warming world have been predicted as a consequence of a major rise in CO2 concentration since the 1970s and before – long before the media got hold of the issue and even longer before the climate change sceptic community got going.
Forget dodgy models, who said what, leaked e-mails and all the other guff. Look at the data.

James Abbott says:
Forget dodgy models, who said what, leaked e-mails and all the other guff. Look at the data.

Good idea! If only we could, because apparently the scientific method of openness and a federal law about freedom of information don’t apply to certain climate scientists.

My crystal ball is in the shop this week…

Climate Forecast:
To achieve an ice-free planet will take a while. It won’t be this century
but soon after the solar system leaves the Orion spiral arm which
should be in about 27 million years time (give or take a few million.)
There may be a GCR reduced area about half way through to give a
brief very warm spell but it won’t last.
As for this century, it will become colder, so more ice rather than less. Coldest time
will be about 2030 and it should start warming again about 2050 or so. For an idea
of the weather: read Charles Dickens (any books should do) to see what it will be
like (pretty similar to 1790-1840 during the Dalton Minimum).
Any local Super Nova will invalidate this forecast completely.

Speaking of Antarctica, here’s the current temperature at Vostok Station.
-87F (Real Feel -115F).

From MikeP on July 19, 2012 at 11:02 am:

I was “approved” in about 5 seconds. I wonder what their criteria are?

The automated process (partial):
Initial name checking subroutine (partial):

1000 Name_Check:
1010 if NAME in consensus_list then goto Approve
1015 if NAME in fossil_shill_scum_list then goto Timeout_Reject
1020 gosub Google(NAME)
1030 goto Hold
1040 end Name_Check
1100 Hold:
1110 if denial_site=1 then goto Review
1120 goto Approve
1130 end Hold
1200 Review:
1202 "flag mention(s) of NAME at denial site(s)
1203 " for content checking by human
1210 gosub Add(NAME,review_list)
1220 review_list.NAME.wake_user=0
1230 review_list.NAME.allow=0
1240 goto Timeout_Reject
1250 end Review
1500 Timeout_Reject:
1510 gosub Send_Wait_Message(NAME)
1520 end Timeout_Reject

review_list gets periodically checked. If review_list.NAME.allow=1 then goto Approve and gosub Remove(NAME,review_list). If review_list.NAME.time>=86400, that is the wait timed out, and review_list.NAME.allow=0 then gosub Send_Slapdown(NAME), gosub Add(NAME,watch_list), gosub Remove(NAME,review_list).
BTW, review_list.NAME.wake_user is just for administrative purposes, to verify those “fact checkers” the temp agency sent over are bothering to do something. Gee, you’d think they’d be grateful to show they can get paying work that’s at least somehow related to their PolySci, Literature, or “Environmentalism” degrees, but nooooo…

Hello James Abbott
RACooke never mentioned which temperature series he used to draw the conclusion that worldwide average global temperatures have been steady for the last 15 years. He was probably thinking of HADCRUT v3 rather than the GISS product.
Funny you should do exactly what you accused him of doing!

James Abbott says: July 19, 2012 at 5:05 pm
You also state “during the 15 years since worldwide average global temperatures have been steady”…
Hi James. FYI, the last 15 years steady meme comes from fitting a regression line to temperature data and noting it is close to flat. What is always ignored is the biasing effect of outliers (notably the 1998 El-Nino) near the ends of the regression fit. Escpecially ignored are the implications of Foster and Ramstorf 2011 (http://www.skepticalscience.com/foster-and-rahmstorf-measure-global-warming-signal.html) or John Neilsen-Gammon’s approach (http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/04/about-the-lack-of-warming) showing that the underlying temperature trend is consistent at ~0.16C/decade for the last 30 years (and near identical when calculated across the last 15 years).

DR says:
July 19, 2012 at 8:08 pm
Thanks DR. Here is PIOMAS
PIOMAS is a computer code for simulating arctic sea ice changes. A computer code. Numerical modeling. Not data (though it does do hindcasting).
I also did not see the words “crushing blow” in any of the online links, but then I just skimmed them. Let me know if anyone finds the words “crushing blow”. Thanks.

Frank K,
I guess the point I was stressing is what about Cryosat? Why no updates we were told that would track the monthly death spiral?
Inquiring minds want to know.

William Astley says:
The warming in the Arctic is due to changes in planetary cloud cover (less cloud cover).

Do we really know the Arctic is warming? I was under the impression that very few, if any, weather reporting stations existed up there and that the “warming” was mostly due to interpolation of data from stations 1500 km away. How many weather stations are up there, actually?

Hello Billy Liar
You say
“RACooke never mentioned which temperature series he used to draw the conclusion that worldwide average global temperatures have been steady for the last 15 years. He was probably thinking of HADCRUT v3 rather than the GISS product.”
Hello Ammonite
You say
“Hi James. FYI, the last 15 years steady meme comes from fitting a regression line to temperature data and noting it is close to flat. What is always ignored is the biasing effect of outliers (notably the 1998 El-Nino) near the ends of the regression fit. Escpecially ignored are the implications of Foster and Ramstorf 2011 (http://www.skepticalscience.com/foster-and-rahmstorf-measure-global-warming-signal.html) or John Neilsen-Gammon’s approach (http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/04/about-the-lack-of-warming) showing that the underlying temperature trend is consistent at ~0.16C/decade for the last 30 years (and near identical when calculated across the last 15 years).”
One of the problems with the analysis of temperature is that there are several data sets and of course it is possible to do various mathematical interpretations on each, so just about everyone can find an argument to suit.
NASA GISS is one of the recognised data sets and is perfectly valid.
But in any case HADCRUT v3 does not show a 15 year standstill. It shows warming until the early 2000s then a slight decline.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif
I certainly did not “ignore” 1998 as implied. It was obviously an extreme year. Which is why a 5 year running mean is useful as it smooths outliers and gives a better medium term trend line.
It is also worth noting that in terms of individual years, every year since 2001 has been warmer than every year in the 1990s except 1998.
I think the main point arising from this exchange is that there is no smooth change in the record so we should not be looking to find such a fit. As would be expected from a dynamic system with complex forcing mechanisms, there is variation between years and cycles on medium timescales, etc. Thats obvious looking at the trend lines – for example the dips in temperature in the early 1980s and early 1990s (influenced by Pinatubo). It did not mean that long term warming had stopped then, just as it does not mean it has stopped now because the trend line has been broadly flat since 2003.
One forcing mechanism with a good correlation to annual variation is the El Nino/La Nina oscillation. When we move to full El Nino, we should see new record warmth. 2011 was the warmest recorded La Nina year.
We are currently in a neutral phase but appear to be moving to El NIno and that shows up in the monthly trend. June 2012 was the warmest on record for both the Northern Hemisphere land and ocean average surface temperature and the globally-averaged land surface temperature.
But time will tell.

Hello Beng
Its arguably not a case of bad or good. There has been more ice and less ice before, especially in the last 3 million years, changes which have been associated with the Croll-Milankovitch Cycles caused by periodic oscillations of the Earth’s orbital eccentricity, tilt and the precession of the pole.
The point now is that humans are the likely cause of major change in the arctic through global warming caused (largely) by fossil fuel emissions. So the relative stability that has likely existed in sea ice for the period of modern settled communities (last few thousands years), may be ending.
So if we get an ice free arctic in the summer (it won’t be in the winter unless temperatures reach levels that the worst-case models predict) we will get accelerated warming in high northern latitudes due to greater absorption of solar radiation which in turn will accelerate melting of land based ice, which in turn will accelerate sea level rise. For example, if half the ice in the Greenland ice cap melted (which would take many centuries) then sea level would rise about 3m – very bad news for the large coastal and estuary cities (ie London, New York) and for huge areas of low lying productive farmland. It might be possible to defend some cities, but not entire coastlines.
An early impact could include major disruption to arctic flora and fauna. As you say, the polar biosphere would be more productive but that would be due to invasion of species from the south at the expense of what is there now.
A largely ice free arctic in the summer would result in inevitable commercial exploitation – including yet more fossil fuel extraction – the oil companies are already getting into position for this.
On the “plus” side, tourists could go to the north pole on a cruise ship.

***
James Abbott says:
July 20, 2012 at 7:44 am
***
Hehe. You must take me as a neophyte. Thanks for taking the bait.
The point now is that humans are the likely cause of major change in the arctic through global warming caused (largely) by fossil fuel emissions. So the relative stability that has likely existed in sea ice for the period of modern settled communities (last few thousands years), may be ending.
Stability? The Arctic sea-ice is the epitome of transience. In the order of a mere 6 months it changes on the scale of a continent. The Antarctic even more — all the sea ice vanishes at it’s minimum. And how are modern communities going to be affected by not having their shores encased in ice? Sea-ice melting doesn’t affect sea-level, remember?
So if we get an ice free arctic in the summer (it won’t be in the winter unless temperatures reach levels that the worst-case models predict) we will get accelerated warming in high northern latitudes due to greater absorption of solar radiation which in turn will accelerate melting of land based ice, which in turn will accelerate sea level rise. For example, if half the ice in the Greenland ice cap melted (which would take many centuries) then sea level would rise about 3m – very bad news for the large coastal and estuary cities (ie London, New York) and for huge areas of low lying productive farmland. It might be possible to defend some cities, but not entire coastlines.
Greenland’s already pretty much ice-free in summer around its periphery except the north shore. You really think briefly-opened Arctic waters that are barely above freezing (and not even necessarily upwind) can significantly melt Greenland? Alotta free-wheeling extrapolation/alarmism there.
An early impact could include major disruption to arctic flora and fauna. As you say, the polar biosphere would be more productive but that would be due to invasion of species from the south at the expense of what is there now.
More unfounded alarmism? As I said, there is already a massive 6-month change in the sea-ice coverage. Life there is already adapted to those conditions (or it’d be extinct). Whales moving into newly opened, now plankton-rich waters hurts exactly what? Polar bears survived the recent Holocene Optimum & the previous, warmer interglacial. Nuff said.
A largely ice free arctic in the summer would result in inevitable commercial exploitation – including yet more fossil fuel extraction – the oil companies are already getting into position for this.
Environmentalist drivel (using the word-speak “exploitation”). I’d say it’s a good thing.
PS Now are there any serious responses?

[Snip. Accusing readers of being in “denial” violates site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]

From Steven Mosher on July 20, 2012 at 12:42 pm:

However, if you believed PIPs ( a model ) and used a model ( linear regression of the last 10 years of data) to predict the time when september volume reaches zero. it would be 2026.

You got a link to where you got that PIPS data? Because all us non-Navy people can get is the maps. Goddard used to catch flak for pixel counting, but how else do you get the info?
In any case, 2026 doesn’t sound as bad as it could be.
Since self-flagellation until exsanguination is frowned upon in these prudish times, instead I took the PIOMAS v2.0 daily results and shoved them into a spreadsheet for analysis. Isolating the September data, placing equations just right to keep the graphs lined up… Sure got my ration of Friday fun.
All September daily numbers for all completed Septembers, linear regression, the Arctic will run out of ice before 2034 is halfway done, translate as 2033 will still have some ice in September but 2034 will run out.
But as we’re worried about when it crosses the zero line and September does have some variation, I worked with the minimums on the days they occurred. (The same minimum showed up twice on two successive days so I went with the first day.)
Effectively the same results, zero was crossed at the end of January 2034.
But then I worked with the last 10 years (2001-2011) as you mentioned.
PIOMAS v2.0 says there’ll be no remaining September Arctic sea ice in 2017.
So if the New Improved PIOMAS is correct and the linear fit is valid (R^2 by the minimums is 0.946, damn good for climate science), the ice will be gone nine years earlier than your 2026 figure.

So, like I said. 2020 is the over under line for Ice free ( area in sept < 1million sq km)

Well since PIOMAS says there’ll be zero remaining km^3 of ice in 2017, seems it’d be a safe bet there would be be zero km^2, which is less than 10^6 km^2, of ice area three years earlier than that.

I wonder about why the Arctic has selective ice melt. Using Mosher picture above I see that most of the ice is to the West of 45W meridian line and its compliment 135East meridian. There is
relatively little ice on the other half of the arctic ? This leads me to my other questions, how much ice disappears due to sublimation versus how much due to melt ? Is there an equivalent process in the below sea surface where such activities may also happen ? Ice melt and sublimating into the ocean water ?