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)
Bill Illis says:
August 12, 2013 at 11:53 am
“The September 1964 sea ice extent was estimated at 6.9 million sq kms from the satellite pics (versus the previous estimates of 8.28 million). 6.9 million is not that much different than this year’s number around 5.0 million.”
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That is a huge reduction from initailly 9.2 to 6.9 mill km2.
6.9 mill km2 equals the average of 1990-2000 and also the value of 2001.
And according to the old estimate, some years around 1964 appear to be even lower by about 1 mill km2.
Then, variation in pre 1979 has been MUCH larger than previously assumed.and there appears to be nothing to see until perhaps 2006.
And even the lower 2007 and 2012 values may appear totally unexciting if we consider that the 1920-1940 melt with the low 1930s values had a larger ice volume to start with.
Has anyone noticed that the DMI dropped the selection of ice charts back to 1958? Use to be to the left of the current chart.
Selection of charts back to 1958 removed – What a shame!!!
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Dumbed down replacement
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
From Mel Byrd on August 13, 2013 at 7:26 am:
Says on that page:
The data are provided by National Snow and Ice Data Center’s web site (NSIDC).
If those charts were based on NSIDC info, guess you can now go straight to NSIDC for the info.
You know, the only thing the warmists can really point to as confirming global warming is the decline in Arctic sea ice. [Maybe sea level increase as well but the overall rate seems to be similar to the 1800s number and what would be expected given an interglacial will continue melting the marginal glacial ice which exists anywhere, mountains and southern Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula for example and this will continue as long as we are in an interglacial which might last as long 125,000 more years. This marginal glacial ice will have been melting regardless of the GHGs added to the atmosphere assuming an interglacial was in effect].
So this year, 2013, it looks like there will be a very significant recovery in the Arctic sea ice. Temps across the Arctic basin right now have fallen to levels that might actually stop the melt in its tracks. They are actually low enough to do this right now. Only one other year was like this, 1980, which was the highest sea ice minimum on record and the earliest sea ice minimum on record; in late-August. This year, the temps are probably even colder than they were in 1980 right now.
We need to keep watching the numbers and be ready to make sure the media reports this recovery. Because it is the only aspect of the climate that the warmists can use now to keep the theory going. At some point, everyone needs to recognize the theory was just a theory that did not pan out in the real world. This year’s Arctic sea ice extent might go a long way to helping that message along.
Looks like the Arctic has lost over 700,000 square kilometres of ice in 24 hours. Magic!
milodonharlani says:
August 12, 2013 at 9:05 am
🙂
Yes, I couldn’t agree more…!
@Bill Illis. Thanks! I’ll dig through your post when I have a bit more time.