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?
Once again I’m inviting readers to submit their best guess, best SWAG, or best dartboard result to the poll for the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook. Deadline, according to the recent announcement I posted on WUWT from ARCUS is close of business Friday June 7th.
Of recent interest has been the recent tendency for the current data to hang between the 1990’s and the 2000 normal line.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) – International Arctic Research Center (IARC) – Click the pic to view at sourceWe 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 to be a tough challenge at this stage.
I’m going to give WUWT readers an opportunity to make a forecast for the ARCUS SEARCH sea ice contest 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 for judging the contest is the NSIDC value in square kilometers. The object is to guess what the September minimum will be.
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 the June 2012 forecast submission reports looked like:
The archive of the 2012 contest is available here: http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2012/summary
For a complete overview of Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice, see the WUWT Sea Ice Reference page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Here is the forecast poll, deadline is Friday June 7th. Bear in mind that traditionally, forecasts in June have been too high. Last year’s minimum was 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles) at its lowest point on 16 September, and in June, WUWT readers forecast 4.9 million sq kilometers.
Note: The mean is the monthly average in sq km2 for September, which is what the contest is looking for. It is not really as interesting as the minimum, but that’s the number ARCUS is looking for. Given that many of the June forecasts are too high anyway, shooting for the minimum rather than the mean might be just as good.
Note: The POLL HAS CLOSED, and I’ll be submitting the forecast to ARCUS – Anthony
I’m basing my predictions totally on two plots:
1) The plot for Yearly Minimum Sea Ice Extent from your sea ice page: NORSEX SMMR/SSM1 which gives averages for Yearly Maximum, Yearly Mean, Yearly Minimum as well as Change per Decade for each.
It seems to me that the later data in the Yearly Minimum extent curve would be fit better by an exponential than a linear trend – which is why I looked at ice volume next.
2) A plot of PIOMAS Yearly Minimum Arctic Ice Volume which includes an exponential curve fit which gives an estimate of when volume reaches 0. See:
Another version of this plot indicated the 95% confidence interval on the curve is roughly +/- 1 year.
So:
PIOMAS volume curve fit says 0 ice volume in 2015 so I extended the Ice Extent plot based on this. Didn’t look that unreasonable as curve is taking sharp turn down. alsUsing a sophisticated graphing technique of tracing on paper over computer screen I get:
2.7 for minimum for 2013.
As a bonus, this technique also lets me give estimates now of 1.2 for 2014 – and of course 0 for 2015.
Really makes the 97% bunch look bad if this comes true. They were predicting 2050 to 2100 for this to happen. Talk about blowing a prediction. Reality can really suck.
I expect a recovery similar to the one we saw in 2008 from 2007 levels, i.e. around 600,000 km2 more than last year, or 4 million km2. But I went conservative with an estimate of 3.8-3.9.
I’m staying with original prediction made at begining of year NH ice will stay within normal SD (although I don’t even trust the way mean ice was calculated. NH wsa ICE free in the 1900’s see Goddards site BTW
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Unfortunately, even if Arctic ice stays within SD, we probably will not be allowed to see it. From past experience (and records have been kept.),,.you really cannot trust warmist site arctic ice data such as CT and others because I don’t know how many times they have “adjusted” always “down” They fiddle the borders of each section of ice in the NH.to suit the AGW agenda They cannot do that with Antarctica (one block) and as you can see totally different scenario there
Agree with JTF. If you just select the most common bracket WUWT will be way off the mark. Best to hide that.
CheshireRed says:
June 6, 2013 at 2:24 am
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=30&fy=1984&sm=06&sd=01&sy=2013
If 2012 was an outlier, and if the cold NH temperatures continue, and considering that the Russians just drove 2 trucks over the North Pole to Canada, I’m guessing that the ice will return to 2011 levels. So 4.5 -4.6
People should keep in mind that the storm last year had a couple of effects. It piled up ice on top of itself making it thicker in some places. I also broke off big chunks that floated around but were not counted in the numbers. Hence, there really was more ice than was claimed. This will have a positive influence on the amount of ice this year.
With that said, it will all get down to wind patterns over the next 2-3 months. If the circumpolar winds continue like they have this past winter I expect something around 5.0. If they start blowing the ice out into the AMO warmed North Atlantic, then the number will likely be closer to 4.0.
I’m with Brooks Bridges here – less than 3m sq km – but for totally different reasons. I am extrapolating the 2011-12 trend in the sea ice extent graph above, on a wild presumption that the reason that global ‘temperatures’ have recently been flat could be because the rate of excess heat accumulating in the system has not abated, but is being taken up instead as latent heat of fusion used in melting that additional arctic (and other) ice. Nothing like nailing your colours to the mast and getting yourself shot to pieces!
It is interesting to see how many people are betting high, on an Arctic ice minimum-area recovery. Presumably they consider the flattening of global temperature to signify an abatement of excess heat (or of heat retention), which of course it might be..
I have a sister living at Port Carlisle on the Solway Firth in the north of England, who just rang me here in Australia to complain that their first day of summer had only reached 9*C. She was feeling rather jaded, having been promised a future of barbecue summers luxuriating on the Costa Del Blackpool. I suggested that it could be all that Arctic melt water, dribbling down the North Atlantic and getting in the way of the Gulf Stream. But then spoiled it by telling her how terrible it was down here in Perth, where we’d just endured the chill of a blue-skyed, 22*C sunny winter’s day.
The Solway Firth has always been appallingly cold though. In 1881 the Solway Viaduct, carrying the railway across from Bowness in England to Annan in Scotland, was unceremoniously demolished by six-foot thick ice floes, heading out to sea on the falling tide. Not that anybody has even bothered to replace it.
I always find that sea ice extent isn’t really a useful measurement. Because it doesn’t show whether the ice is 1/4 inch thick or 14 feet thick. It simply counts coverage. This was as good as we could get up to a few years ago since satellites were taking the data without an ability to get accurate sea-ice height data. Since the new satellite cryostat-2 can now get this information and get an accurate measurement of sea ice volume, this is a much more reliable measurement for what is really going on up there.
I’ve been desperately trying not to say “highest in years at this time” because the pattern from the last few years suggests the bottom is about to drop out. I’ll take a new record low, shortly followed by waves of alarmism for $1000, Alex.
I am with konrad and handjive: zero ice. It has been predicted for the recent few years, by “scientists,” so it must happen soon.
2007
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/01/al-gore-said-north-pole-would-be-ice-free-this-year-guess-not-huh/
2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-scientists-warn-that-there-may-be-no-ice-at-north-pole-this-summer-855406.html
2008
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080620-north-pole.html
I predict the warmers will weep & wring their hands come September. Whales & others feeding in those open seas, not so much.
Re: JTF and Ryan.
A weighted average, 1st moment mean, will “hide” data. It is quite possible that a bi-modal distribution will result in a mean value no one chose.
What is to stop WUWT from submitting a First mode, Second mode and third mode as separate values?
BTW, mine is 4.15. from 2007 to 2008, the low point recovered less than 0.5 million.
Several years ago, during debate on this topic amongst knowledgeable people, a person argued for a low minimum with the statement “the buoys are streaming out” the Fram Straight.
This year, the buoys are not streaming out – the relevant figure on the WUWT SEA ICE PAGE is the Arctic Sea Ice Speed & Drift. Also relevant are storminess, as mentioned in a previous post, and the SEA ICE PAGE “Arctic Temperatures Daily Mean Temperatures North of 80 degree North” from the DMI.
Naturally, these conditions could change in the blink of an eye; they provide little predictive value.
My question, of those who have watched these things closely, is: how much longer do those pro-ice factors need to persist in order to essentially rule out a new record minimum? A week? A month?
Thanks in advance!
4.5-4.6.
Both 2007 & 2012 lows resulted from unusual August storms, although the deniers are now trying to deny this fact.
I haven’t noticed before today a 30-day (and 365-day) animation GIF set for the NRL charts.
I bring to your attention the 30-day animation of Ice Thickness. Check out the location 80N 140W where it goes from a relatively think 4 m to 1.5 m thanks to a few days of easterly winds.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticict_nowcast_anim30d.gif
(which I knew the URL to the dated archive file)
Poll results so far look suspicious. I hope nobody’s trying to make fun of it.
“Of recent interest has been the recent tendency for the current data to hang between the 1990′s and the 2000 normal line.”
Happens regularly sine 2007 but doesn’t seem to affect summer minima.
“But don’t vote too low either, or it will look like WUWT is acknowledging that the climate in the Arctic is changing due to global warming. Which is nonsense, of course, and if it isn’t, it’s a natural cycle.”
by all means use politics to decide your estimates
REPLY: Mosh, FYI that’s a troll comment from “Gunther Kirschbaum” aka “Neven Acropolis” out of Graz, Austria, who thinks his opinion is so important that he has to create fake names and fake email addresses to get it across. Pay no attention to him. – Anthony
Stephen Rasey says:
June 6, 2013 at 8:40 am
(which I knew the URL to the dated archive file)
Try here for snapshot archives:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/arctic.html
If these polls are easy to set up, maybe consider setting some up for antarctic maximum ice and global total estimates.
‘My question, of those who have watched these things closely, is: how much longer do those pro-ice factors need to persist in order to essentially rule out a new record minimum? A week? A month?
Thanks in advance!”
Hmm. looking at the record it is rare to see 4 years in a row with a falling minimum, so some folks are estimating no new record this year. On the flip side the mechanical integrity of the ice has suffered considerably in the early part of the season with big cracking events and a persistent cyclone over the area, so there is an outside chance of a complete wipeout of the record. That’s another way of saying that the ice in its current state is much more susceptible to weather than it has been in the past and consequently less predictable.
Last year the average for sept was
“The average arctic sea ice monthly extent for September 2012 was the lowest observed in the satellite era at 3.6 million square kilometers, based on National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) estimates—50 % lower than the 1979-2000 average of 7.0 million square kilometers.”
based on no particular data I’m down for 3.6 again this year. 5% chance of a huge blowout.
I wanted a nice memorable number out to the number of digits that various sources always report their data on the ice. I had a hard time deciding between 2.8571428, 4.2857142, or 5.7142857. I’ve used the middle value in the past versions of this so i decided to stick with it. I will leave it to the audience to determine the highly scientific methodology I used to smoothly extract these values from my anal orifice.
Take 1964 loss and subtract it from this year’s peak.
Please could someone explain to me why we are worrying about how much ice there is on an uninhabited part of the world for two months of the year?
Oh sorry I forgot the eskimos…