By Joe Bastardi and Anthony Watts (based on an email exchange)
This is interesting. NOAA is forecasting the months of August, September, and October of 2014 to have above normal Arctic Sea ice extent. As readers know, late September is typically the time of the Arctic Sea Ice minimum, and this year the NOAA forecast has it slightly above normal. Here is the NOAA forecast graph:
UPDATE: I no more than finished this post and NOAA had a new updated forecast for May 23rd, added below. (h/t Ric Werme)
For the last three May 12th forecasts, this year’s forecast for summer is the highest of them.
Source: http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
Notice how much higher this is than last years forecast at this time:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2_fcst_history/201305/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
And also higher than in 2012:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2_fcst_history/201205/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
The CFSV2 forecasting model was not on line before that, but if we then go to the Northern hemisphere sea ice plot from Cryosphere today we can see how significant this would be if summer came out with a positive anomaly.
![seaice.anomaly.arctic[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/seaice-anomaly-arctic1.png?quality=75)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
It appears that all summers since about 1996 have not had any positive anomalies. (see magnified view below)
At the very least if we get it positive and the melt season is the lowest since the AMO went warm it will be something that goes right at the heart of the arguments that recent Arctic sea ice deviations are entirely human caused.
In addition, given the Southern Hemisphere continues with well above normal sea ice, if it continues, it gives us a shot at a record breaking global sea ice in the satellite era.
On the other hand, it is a model forecast, and may not come to be. It will be interesting to watch though.
As always, check the WUWT Sea Ice Page for the latest information.
Here is the background on CFS:
The NCEP Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2)
The CFS version 2 was developed at the Environmental Modeling Center at NCEP. It is a fully coupled model representing the interaction between the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land and seaice. It became operational at NCEP in March 2011.
Please reference the following article when using the CFS Reanalysis (CFSR) data.
Saha, Suranjana, and Coauthors, 2010: The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 91, 1015.1057. doi: 10.1175/2010BAMS3001.1
Please reference the following article when using the CFS version 2 Reforecast model or data
Saha, Suranjana and Coauthors, 2014: The NCEP Climate Forecast System Version 2 Journal of Climate J. Climate, 27, 2185–2208. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00823.1
Without looking at their models, this would be due to a large extent to the development of larger areas of multi-year ice. This reduces the area of thin ice for melting by late summer. The low multi-year ice of recent years is responsible for the skipping-rope ‘sag’ in the plots as we go into the summer season. We have a noticeable increase in 3 to 5m+ ice in the Canadian archepelago that isn’t going anywhere this year and beyond. Indeed, let me forecast with very high confidence that there will be no sailing through the NW passage this summer. It currently has substantial stretches of 3-4m thick ice that isn’t going to melt. This will be added to next year and I’m afraid we could have no such adventure for a generation.
The Ship of Fools may be the last frivolous romp to Antarctica for a long while as well. This will be because of the increasing summer ice, the highly publicized idiocy of the Fool’s voyage to witness global warming there, the cost to and outrage of legitimate polar researchers who were interrupted in their work and the increase in cost for such ventures following the fallout and insurance costs. Maybe we should also add the weather forecasting assistance to the Russian ship captain by hated skeptics Anthony Watts, John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo that was spot on an opportunity for escaping the ice. Look for a tripling in chartering costs and bigger ice class ships.
Anthony – Check the NOAA link now – the anomalies have gone higher with the 13 May – 22 May data! 0.2 to 0.4 million km^2 for the three months.
http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
Winters will get much warmer in the Arcitc with global warming. The US government’s top science advisor has told us so. If this is the best that the United States of America has got to offer as the governments chief science advisor then you are in deep trouble.
Dr. James Hansen did come close in absurdity when he said that the oceans would all end up in the atmosphere. He later recanted when he realised he as mad.
Sorry, the sources for my last quote is below.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/02/complete-barking-madness-from-john.html
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20090119_10989.mp3
Advance congratulations to Joe, who predicted this earlier. OK, well it does have to be confirmed by observation, but current trends have Joe looking pretty golden.
Higher ice than “normal” forecasted. Lower number of TS in the Atlantic forecasted. What will they forecast next?
Jimbo says:
May 23, 2014 at 4:35 pm
And here is something for those obsessed with an ‘unprecedented’ ice free Arctic – it’s not unprecedented at all. (Go to Jimbo’s link).
The recent study by a Danish group of the perennially ice bound north coast of Greenland found driftwood, sandy beaches with ridges raised by pre-historic wind pushed ice – typical of an open coastal water environment.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/08/inconvenient-ice-study-less-ice-in-the-arctic-ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/
Anybody with a brain could see year after year that ice melt was a combination of winds pushing/pulling ice this way and that, and warmer incoming currents from the Atlantic. The only way CO2 could have been involved was if it was sentient.
There’s a whole site worth of NOAA/CFSv2 forecast data, start at http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/
The forecast anomaly and extent for September (with 13 May – 22 May data) is at http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/npsSIChMonL3.gif
Extra ice north of Russia and on either side of Greenland. Less ice north of Alaska.
Looks like the northwest passage may be tricky this year.
July is interesting too, see http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/npsSIChMonL1.gif
So they are forecasting that extent will [be] at the values it was in 1999 and 2000.
20 months ago the CBC told their audience that the arctic would be ice free 4 months from now.
And finally, here is the previous Arctic Warm Period which began around the early 1920s – not as ‘warm’ as today apparently. Nature at work not co2. Ocean currents, wind and soot do their thing. If not then expect Antarctica to be a hot tub soon – it too is a polar region for CAGW effects.
Since that email the anomaly forecast has increased even further!
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
I have been emphasizing in weatherbell.com posts this is not yet the real deal.. that will occur when the permanent flip of the AMO occurs in a few years. It does show though what others have championed, that the arctic sea ice is a function mainly of the amo, ( it is now cooler, I think only for a year or two as its not yet ready to flip completely.. I trust Bill Gray on these matters) and certainly not co2 or the ideas the warming crowd is trying to advance.. pollution, etc. If so, why did they not warn us that the death spiral was alot of nonsense and that in 2014 there would be enough of a flip in the amo to offer this chance.. which until it happens, is really only what it is, but even that is noteworthy given the hype of tripe we have had to put up with!
There is far more multi-year, thicker ice in the Beaufort Gyre this year. Multi-year, thicker ice typically survives the melt season in the Gyre.
There was increase last year as well which lead to the recovery in 2013. Based on the continuing increase in the multi-year thicker ice going into 2014, this year’s extent should be quite a bit higher than last year.
Joe Bastardi says:
May 23, 2014 at 5:20 pm
If the period 2013 to 2046 reverses the trend of 1979-2012, CACA is in deep doodoo. The heat must be hiding in the ice.
I may be missing something from Anthony’s post, but how good were NOAA’s forecasts the past two years? Has someone done an overlay of the forecast on the actual to see if they have any skill? Looking just at the anomaly forecasts for 2012 and 2013 they are pretty flat and don’t seem to reflect the actual numbers shown in the lower figures, but the scales are way off so I can’t eyeball it.
“… even [the above prediction] is noteworthy given the hype of tripe we have had to put up with!”
Joe Bastardi at 5:20pm
Indeed. NOAA is just sick and tired of being wrong — all — the — time, lol.
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@ur momisugly Pamela Gray — “sentient” — lol. Yes!
And a mind of its own…, not listening to the High Priest’s of Climate-Baal even though they daily dump their rotting sacrifices of junk science on Climate-Baal’s altar. Maybe, they’ll start cutting themselves with knives (a la the prophets of Baal in I. Kings 18 (see vv. 27-29 esp. “At noon Elijah began to taunt them. ‘Shout louder!’ … So they shouted louder and slashed themselves … and they continued their frantic prophesying until it was time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, … no one paid attention.”)
Sounds familiar.
Listen to us! Listen to us!!! CO2 does things!! IT REALLY, REALLY, DOES!!! Our models can predict…. uh….. the weather …. 3 days in advance, so….. we know EVERYTHING!”
Face the cold hard facts, O Climate-Baal Priests:
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
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(Hey, Hollywood! YOU ARE MISSING A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY FOR COMEDY, HERE! — the Envirostalinists (“scientists,” journalists, politicians, etc…) are a laugh-a-minute! The stuff writes itself!)
Bill Illis says: May 23, 2014 at 5:24 pm
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – click to view at source[/caption]
Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
There is far more multi-year, thicker ice in the Beaufort Gyre this year. Multi-year, thicker ice typically survives the melt season in the Gyre.
Yes, Beaufort Sea Ice appears quite resilient this year:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"]
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"]
@D.I.:
It is the average of a xx-year base period.
It actually depends on the month. You make the xx-year average for January, February, …
For January months, you subtract the January average. For February months, you subtract the February average.
Anomalies are a standard way of removing yearly seasonality.
So , since the missing heat is hiding in the sea ice we can expect greater ice extents. Which requires CO2 driven CAGW to provide the needed energy transfer to cause the accelerated formation of “Hot Ice” at both poles. Global Warming will with 99% certainty cause harsh NH and SH winters for a period after which all the “Missing Heat” will pop out of the Deep Oceans and “Hot Ice” and everything will melt and civilization located below 100ft will be inundated with boiling ocean water. How’s my soft science doing?
sarc/
“The North Pole has NEVER been ice free before. It really is much worse than we thought. LOL.”
Gosh sounds like the stupid mistake Goddard made here years ago.
Here is what ice free means : extent or area less than 1 million sq km
Ice free at the north pole is nothing unique and its not an object of scientific study. ice extent in the ENTIRE BASIN… that’s of interest.
North pole: uninteresting
Entire basin: interesting
Write that down and tell goddard
Also, Central Arctic Sea Ice looks solid:
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – click to view at source[/caption]
Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"]
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="578"]
I bet they are wrong in their forecast. 97% chance they are wrong. I see it being around 4.8/4.9 in September
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/multi-year-ice/
“2011’s vomiting cow doesn’t look all that smaller (the brown colour represents the multi-year ice), but this year’s genetically modified mouse is still a tad bigger, with a large bulk of multi-year ice taking up position in the Beaufort and even some of the Chukchi Sea. Whether this will prove to be a protective barrier, as witnessed in 2010 and 2011, remains to be seen.”
The back peddling has started. It’s here or almost here. The start of global cooling.
It will be interesting to hear the excuses and creative theories to explain away significant, unequivocal cooling. The question is not if there will be cooling but rather how much and how rapid. Based on what has happened in the past – paleoclimate record – (there are for example 342 warming and cooling cycles recorded in ice cores from the Antarctic peninsula in the last 240,000 years with a mean time between cycles of 1500 years and 400 years) when there was a Dansgaard-Oeschger cooling event due to a special Maunder like minimum change to the solar magnetic cycle, the warming in the last 150 years will rapidly reverse.
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
Davis and Taylor: “Does the current global warming signal reflect a natural cycle”
The high latitude regions will be significantly colder than the 20th century average (reversal of the regional warming we saw in the last 70 years) and there will be less frequent and lower magnitude El Niño events, both changes will cause the global temperature anomaly to be less than the 20th century average.
Nir Shaviv’s conservative estimate based on past climate cycles is that almost 60% (0.47C of say 0.8C) of the warming in the last 150 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes. Based on my understanding of the mechanisms Shaviv’s estimate is too low. Roughly 90% of the warming (0.7C) in the last 150 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes.
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/articles/2004JA010866.pdf
On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget
“CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19C, while
the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes.”