We are closing on the Arctic sea ice minimum. 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, is Monday August 12th, 3PM PDT or 6PM EDT.
Of recent interest has been the slowdown in ice loss, most prominently seen at DMI:
Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) – Centre for Ocean and Ice – Click the pic to view at source
I suggest that you should not be using the DMI graph to forecast, 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 2013 forecast submission (which we participated in, but not the July contest due to scheduling issues around July 4th) reports looked like:
WUWT’s submission (average of the top five) was. 4.8 million square kilometers)
The archive of the 2013 contest is available here:
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2013/june
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 3PM Monday August 12th. Bear in mind that traditionally, forecasts in June and July 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 million square kilometers for September, which is what the contest is looking for. It is not really as interesting as the absolute minimum, but that’s the number ARCUS is looking for.
Choose your value: (for the record, I am choosing 5.5 – Anthony)
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The magnitude of oscillation between winter and summer has increased in recent years (near the turning point in multi-decadal cyclic trends), despite 2011-2012 having more arctic ice extent than some years in the early 1990s. So focus on what the minimum would be, at the single month of minimum, is unfortunately unintentionally doing just what the alarmists want by being highly misleading. For a less misleading look at the annual average in contrast, see the plot within http://s23.postimg.org/qldgno07f/edited4.gif
5.5 baby!!! .. first year of a multiyear comeback!! 🙂
The original estimate of 4.8 looks spot on to me.
I just voted 4.5
Greater than 6 million sq/km
Units read out as “squares per kilometer.” That’s a lot of squares.
Question: with at least 15% sea ice or with at least 30% sea ice?
I’m sticking with my earlier 4.2 prediction.
That is a busy poll 🙂
I’m in at 5.9
The ice extent minimum in prior years was primarily derived from sea temperature and currents during the summer. It seems a disconnect to forecast this years minimum without any real information on either of these factors.
As a blind guess, 5.0.
It’s great to see the Met Office down at the left end of the graph, poised to make fools of themselves again.
Going with 2005-6 numbers.
For a WAG, I’ll go with 4.2.
Going with 2005-6 numbers
I’ve been [too] optimistic in past polls, so I’ve got 4.0 this year. I’m expecting some storm activity will move the bits around.
(mod, please make that “I’ve been too optimistic” and thanks!)
Although we’ve got another Arctic cyclone this year, it’s intensity is not as strong as last year’s record storm that lasted 15 days.
Since the DMI Arctic temperatures show show temperatures north of 80 latitude already below zero, I think sea water will reach -2C (temperature at which sea water freezes) will occur about 2 weeks early so I put the Arctic minimum at 4.91 million KM^2.
I think this would set a satellite record for the largest year-on-year Arctic Ice Extent recovery.
I doubt the MSM will even mention this record if it occurs as it doesn’t fit the CAGW narrative they try so desperately to maintain.
Which graph are you using? They all are different. I voted for 4.3…
Value: 5.5
Method: Dartboard
Precision: +-0.8
4.9
In support of:
J. Philip Peterson says:
August 11, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Which graph are you using? They all are different. I voted for 4.3…
William: Hello, best wishes. I had have the same comment. I voted for the 15% sea ice coverage. My voted was 6 million which is high for 2013 and likely low for 2014.
The DMI graph is 30% sea ice coverage and the National Ice and Snow Data data center Boulder Colorado graph is 15% sea ice coverage.
I see no reason to change my june forecast of 5.2 m sq km. Almost all of the multi-year sea ice with high levels of embedded black carbon has melted out. So we should see steady increases from now on.
What’s Kenji’s forecast ?
…. and whatever it is, what’s the chance that the Met Office will be closer ?
.
.
…. besides zero
Well, the more things change, the more I remain convinced – it will be 5.9 +/- Pi ( 3.1415929 ), so OK, my update is most likely a minus. I would like to take this opportunity to counter the snarky feedback I did receive on my earlier post. Just because I referenced my generation of this number using skills I refined while attacking a certain level of Candy Crush Saga should in NO way give cause for scorn or mocking.
Error bars be damned ! And to ice the cake I’ll have you all know that my resume includes considerable software programming for a certain UN agency, which shall remain anonymous, w.r.t. climate modeling. And this is state of the art stuff, VAX hardware, fortran and pascal code – with absolutely no comments and a fair amount of go tos just to make things rather obscure in case any of those pesky non believers get their mits on some leaked code.
Speaking of which, I seem to have left some 8 inch floppies laying around and can’t locate them now, has anybody seen …
I 2 have been optimistic, so I ended up #31 with Dr Deanster.
It may be like in 2009, with 5.1 at minimum.