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
Here’s what may be the biggest whopper of arctic ice forecasting.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/01/arctic-sea-ice-decline-in-the-21st-century/
The ending is just rich.
“5) Have we crossed a tipping point?
I don’t think we have yet. If we fix the greenhouse gas and aerosol levels at year 2000 values and run the model into the 21st century, the sea ice retreats for only another decade or two and then levels off (some of the ensemble members even recover a little bit). So according to our model, the sea ice does not appear to have passed a threshold yet. We have not done an exhaustive study of any years beyond today, so unfortunately we cannot say with certainty that no tipping points exist. The bottom-line: The retreat can be surprisingly rapid even without clear evidence of a tipping point.”
How are they/you predicting this? Is the ice that much thicker than usual for this time of year?
Or is it strictly the northern Atlantic/Pacific temperatures are cooler?
Looking at the sea ice graphs, I’d say it could be anywhere between the 2012 and 2013 minimums…
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
LOL.
Would you please redefine poverty so I don’t have to pay taxes.
Steven Mosher says:
May 23, 2014 at 6:29 pm
“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
Soon after the IPCC AR4 Himalaya Fiasco a group of Climate Zealots ganged up and called themselves “Climate Rapid Response Force” or some such nonsense.
No doubt the Zealots will demand that NOAA “adjust the data accordingly” so that a big negative anomaly in September is maintained for the sake of the precious bodily fluids of Obama.
Ha ha
From Dr. Strangelove 😉
I’ll be watching.
Interesting that you mention summer of 1996. Global sea ice is on track to have the highest May average anomaly since 1996: http://climatenerd.com/global-sea-ice-stats-averages.php?data_calc=avg_an&mva=10&yrb=1950&yre=2014&mnb=5&mne=5
Though that’s mostly thanks to the Antarctic. Arctic is still hugging 6th lowest ever and quite a bit less than last year at this point. But anything can change.
Another Obama “adjustment” hit the U.S.A. on Wednesday.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dream-of-us-energy-independence-was-just-revised-away-2014-05-22
Wow ! 96% downgrade and all gone !
Maybe Obama should call the U.N.U.S.N. SeaView and her Nobel winning crew to travel to the Arctic Ocean and launch an attack on the Van Allen Radiation Belt amongst other targets of interest (Kerry’s beloved Ukraine for one … Shelf life up to the Dem Pres Conve in 2016).
Ha ha
JTF, if I may translate those graphs:
Cold,,, with a Tisdale Burrrrr, and light winds…….
Those winds can play havoc on ice.
http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/5/1311/2011/tcd-5-1311-2011.html
Sea ice at both poles had an upswing in recent days. I wonder if that is what is driving this announcement? Maybe they are trying to show that they are on target with their predictions. The Antarctica anomaly started backsliding off of it,s high point in late April. It then slowly descended until several days ago, where a fresh uptick has taken hold. The high anom had been around 1.6 mil and it had dropped close to 1.0 mil. It is now back up to 1.365 and climbing. I see a good possibility for a new record this breaking the 2 mil point for the first time. Every time that the sea ice anomaly receded, the jet stream had broken up, and moved away from the continent. Then when the ice starts a fresh round of increase, the jet stream has once again closed in closer to the continent. That is exactly what the jet stream has done down there over the last 3 days.
The Arctic anomaly is still a good bit away from the median. I think they will be wrong on their prediction.
“Does anyone know the value of 0,on an anomaly graph?”
The value of zero on an anomaly graph is “nomalous” or “having a name” because it is somehow expected and normal. Anomalies have no name because they are deviant and this sort of unacceptable behavior cannot be countenanced with a name.
It can be expressed by the mathematic equation 0=N, where N is what you expect, what you wish for, or what you have cherry picked.
Must be all that extra northern hemisphere rain and humidity due to global warming that is causing an extra large flush of fresh water in the Arctic which freezes at a higher temperature than salt water.
The CFS v2 paper says the prediction is biased high:
“For sea ice thickness, there are no data available for assimilation, and we suspect there is a significant bias of sea ice thickness in the CFSv2 model that causes the sea ice to be too thick in the IC. For the sea ice prediction, sea ice appears too thick and certainly too extensive in the spring and summer. Figure 10 shows themean September sea ice concentration from 1982 to 2010, and the bias in the predicted mean condition at lead times of 1 month (15 August IC), 3 months (15 June IC), and 6 months (15 March IC). The model shows a consistent high bias in its forecasts of September ice extent.”
REPLY: Right, but the last two years were lower than this one, so the increase is representative of a real increase in the model, though the magnitude may be high. It still points to improved ice conditions in the summer, assuming the model is worth anything at all. – Anthony
Never forget/ignore that 1979 was the coldest year in many decades, so all slopes from then are necessarily positive.
ossqss says:
May 23, 2014 at 4:08 pm
Off topic, but an unknown meteor shower is forecast for the Northern Hemisphere tonight. Well, we have not experienced it prior. More here.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
ossqss,
Thanks for the reminder! Had heard this was set for 2-4am EDT. In a meteorological rarity, we have CLEAR skies here (just S of Seattle) at 9:30pm PDT! I think I’ll have to get a small fire going down by the water and do a little ‘hot toddy and star watch’ tonight!
Regards,
Mac
ossqss says: May 23, 2014 at 8:24 pm
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) – HYCOM Consortium for Data-Assimilative Ocean Modeling – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
Those winds can play havoc on ice.
Yes, but note on the following Beaufort Sea Ice Thickness animation that 4 meter thick Sea Ice is much more resistant to fracturing by wind than is 2 or 3 meter thick ice:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"]
It will be interesting to see how far the thick sea ice in the Beaufort Sea travels this year.
Tim Palmer can explain everything…to Bloomberg:
headline on Sustainabiliity homepage is: “Extreme U.S. and U.K. Winters Linked to CO2”
23 May: Bloomberg: Justin Doom: Extreme U.S. and U.K. Winters Linked to Greenhouse Gases
The severe snowstorms that battered much of the U.S. and the U.K.’s wettest winter in almost 250 years were at least partially caused by rising greenhouse-gas emissions, a University of Oxford researcher said.
Rising sea temperatures in the tropical Western Pacific also exacerbated last year’s typhoon season including Haiyan, which killed more than 6,000 people in the Philippines, and heat waves in Australia, said Tim Palmer, a professor of climate physics whose findings appear today in the journal Science…
“The sea temperatures in that crucial region of the west Pacific, which are some of the warmest ocean temperatures anywhere in the world, have reached these all-time record warmings through an additional effect, which is man-made climate change,” Palmer said in a telephone interview. “The water’s already warm there, and it’s just taken it over the brink to create conditions last winter and into this spring that were unprecedented.” …
“There are various links in a long chain, and part of my message is that climate is a complex system,” Palmer said. “Interaction between natural climate variability and man-made climate change are coming together in a perfect storm.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-22/extreme-u-s-and-u-k-winters-linked-to-greenhouse-gases.html
You see? Man made CO2 is causing Climate Change. Now we have more than normal Arctic ice!
We’re doomed.
I’m still blown away by how much ice remains on Lake Superior….shipping out of Duluth harbor is slowly catching up to where it should be, and other businesses are being impacted.
http://www.northlandsnewscenter.com/news/Lake-Superior-Ice-is-Costing-Duluth-Charter-Comapnies-Thousands-in-Revenue-260486711.html
Funny that.
Now, 1.0 Mkm^2 of sea ice represents the entire area between the North pole and latitude 85 north. (84.9 to be precise).
2.0 Mkm^2 of sea ice is everything between 83 north latitude and the pole. (82.8 latitude)
3.0 Mkm^2 of sea ice covers everything between 81 north latitude and the pole. (81.2 latitude)
So who declared this arbitrary “fact” that an “ice free Arctic” can be declared when sea ice still covers everything between 85 north and the pole? Do you still hold that old claim that increased sea ice loss from today’s minimum sea ice extents in mid-September causes increased ocean water heating due to solar absorption into the darker ocean waters?
Jimbo says:
May 23, 2014 at 4:39 pm
If they lose this one and global sea ice then the jig should be up. They can then leave Climastrology and get back to doing some real, useful work for humanity instead of wetting their pants while feeding at the trough.
OMG NO Jimbo. You can’t be serious. We can’t let these f*ckw!ts loose in society. Can’t we have something akin to the Monty Python Ward for Overacting, and let them wonder through it spouting their cliches for the next 50 years (no access to the internet of course). I’m pretty sure it would be less expensive than trying to rehabilitate them.
Looking at the 2012 May projection , they modelled at flat summer at around -0.9.
When we look at what happened it was the low point of the whole record. A massive negative spike to about -2.7.
On that basis I would say their model has near to no skill at predicting ice cover.
You may as well go over the excitables on the Arctic ice forum and join in their guessing games.
To heck with the models!
At the end of April, LAKE SUPERIOR was still 60% ice covered!
There were reports of ice 8 feet thick……
http://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/minnesota/2014/04/26/lake-superior-ice-delaying-great-lakes-shipping/8202049/
But I suppose that would be considered ‘ice free’ by some who can’t face the reality of 60% ice covered and 8 feet thick ice remaining on the Great Lakes heading into May.
Per my post above. Dare I say it – a “Model” for a future hospital for climate scientists:
I wrote the following on May 12, just a few days after the Antarctic Sea Ice anomaly this month was “only” 97% the size of Greenland. The Antarctic sea ice anomaly is a little smaller today (May 24) at 1.38 Mkm^2. But the lesson remains. Arctic sea ice extent at minimum is not only misleading and a false indicator of the planet’s heating (or cooling) trends, but is the WRONG indicator to watch. But, a negative Arctic sea ice anomaly is the ONLY thing the CAGW religion has left.
Submitted on 2014/05/12 at 2:39 pm
All data from last week’s WUWT (May 8) Sea Ice Page. (Today’s values (May 12) are slightly lower. Then again, we are 5 days closer to the maximum solar exposure in the Arctic. Thereafter, the arctic gets less sun every day.) But the Antarctic gets more sunshine everyday after June 22 as well.)
1. “Excess” total sea ice area anomaly is now (May 8) greater than 1.050 million sq km’s.
Hmmmn. An “excess” total sea ice area anomaly (which combines both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice areas together) approaching the size of Hudson Bay.
2. “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area is now 1.67 Million sq km’s (May 8)… Or 97% the area of the entire Greenland ice cap. (A fact which 97% of government-paid climate scientists in the Obama administration will chose to ignore.)
3. By itself, “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area is now back over 1.67 Mkm^2 … a level only reached 5 times before.
A level NEVER reached between 1979 and 2007 in the entire modern (global warming) era, but a level that has been passed five times in the 7 years between 2007 and 2014. Obviously, the more CO2 is in the air, the more Antarctic sea ice area keep increasing, right?
Combine this with the “Inconvenient Fact” that actual measured satellite global temperatures have NOT increased since 1996 … Makes Obama and NASA and NOAA and the NSIDC seem a bit – “premature” maybe in claiming that global warming is a national crisis?
4. “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area in 2014 is now (May 8) about 1.0 Mkm^2 GREATER than 2013′s sea ice area on this date last year. And 2013 set a record-breaking maximum Antarctic sea ice area in late December. Makes you wonder what will come later in this year.
5. And the Great Lakes sea ice – which is NOT included in the NSIDC’s “sea ice area” calculations! – has not yet melted away – but we are now in the second week in May. Steel, iron ore, coal production are already being affected, companies have already announced second quarter incomes and jobs are being affected in the Great Lakes region.
Now, Arctic sea ice is of course melting, and Arctic sea ice area has been dropping since early April as it does every year. Total sunlight onto the Arctic is increasing, and will increase until June 22 – about 5 weeks from now. Arctic sea ice will continue melting through the long summer days up north. But Arctic sea ice will continue decreasing its albedo until late July – decreasing from its present 0.93 to towards its low of 0.45 or so in July. But by mid-September when Arctic sea ice is at its minimum and Antarctic sea ice will be near its maximum, the Antarctic sea ice edge will be irradiated by five TIMES as much solar energy per square meter than the Arctic sea ice edge.
So, if 5 times the solar radiation falls on 1.67 million “extra” square kilometers of newly-frozen “excess” Antarctic sea ice than falls on a missing 0.4 Mkm^2 of Arctic sea ice, what happens to the planet’s total heat balance?
Do we not cool off even more?
I bet there would be an overabundance of pledges supporting the creation of the Nick Stokes Ward ….
or its a straw man -“look the ice is EVEN worse than what the models predicted we must act now” line? truth is a moving target in this game.