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
By the way, I reserve such investigations to the ones truly involved in such unethical practices, not honest attempts to research climate and weather pattern variations. Eventually the climate will prove stable and weather pattern variations shown to be intrinsically driven and wholly natural and CO2 beneficial. Which will leave all research to the contrary open to scrutiny, especially those that included scary far-fetched results.
ferdberple says:
May 24, 2014 at 6:58 am
An Ice free Arctic would be a HUGE benefit to those nations that border the Arctic Ocean. Imagine for a moment that the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Oceans were frozen over and what this would mean for the bordering countries.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yeah, Alberta could ship it’s oil up the Mackenzie River by barge or in the already approved pipeline route.
However, that won’t happen. This week the CEO of TransCanada Pipelines announced their participation in the rail load out facility being constructed in Edmonton to take oil to the US by rail until/IF KXL is every approved. Happy Warren. Obama – who knows? Next – finish pipeline to the east coast refineries that import oil from the Middle East and would love to be refining cheaper Canadian oil.
People in BC are asking that the National Energy Board Consider Climate Change in their evaluation of the increase in capacity of the Kinder Morgan pipeline. However, I suspect, as the State Department discovered on KXL, stopping the pipeline will INCREASE carbon dioxide emissions and not change fossil fuel use one iota. However, fossil fuel use in vehicles will likely decrease. The price of fuel has gone from 8 cents a litre when I was a kid on the farm to C$1.20 to C$1.50 per litre in Western Canada.
An Arctic with safe shipping and offshore drilling will be a benefit. But having been involved in infrastructure in Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and other northern communities many years ago when normal steel beams would crack in the cold; I won’t be holding my breath.
Don’t think we need to worry much about Polar Bears either – unless the spring ice gets too THICK. That is their big problem – it’s tough on everything when it gets too cold.
Sorry for the ramble, but so much is interconnected.
Nick Stokes says: May 23, 2014 at 8:41 pm
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – Climate Prediction Center – Click the pic to view at source[/caption]
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.”
Last year they were low, i.e. “CFSv2 underestimated sea ice extent in the prediction from Jan – Aug 2013 initial conditions.”
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_assessment/CFS_assessment.html
Here’s their September 2013 forecast versus actual:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="632"]
Sea Ice Melt Enthusiasts;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/07/tough-times-for-sea-ice-melt-enthusiasts/
could be in for another tough year…
Greg Goodman says:
May 23, 2014 at 11:11 pm
“This suggests either the exposed water and the larger annual swings provided a negative feedback that slows the melting, or some long term external driver has changed direction”.
Two things you appear to have missed: a) The 2007 “surprise melting” was actually a huge August cyclonic storm that broke up a large tract of the ice and whirled it out the Fram Strait (actually the same in 2012- google animations). This of course will confound a forecast but not necessarily invalidate it. b) Your measurement of decline slopes aren’t sufficient to appraise the minimum. First measure the 2m+ ice area. This is has a good chance (barring august cyclonic storms of course) of surviving the minimum and this is what is being relied on for the forecast. You are otherwise ignoring a prime parameter and basing your speculation on a secondary one.
What was the actual for 2013 in the graph? I don’t see it.
Oh. There it is.
Wayne Delbeke says:
May 24, 2014 at 11:06 am
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Amen! Refineries in Charleston or Savannah or Jacksonville are of great strategic importance to the U.S. Yet Washington is clueless.
John McClure says:
May 24, 2014 at 11:00 am
tom s says:
May 24, 2014 at 10:33 am
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Your email to Dr. Wadhams is an example of the type of email Dr. Bengtsson received.
IMO, the tone of your email serves no purpose and is counter-productive/harmful.
I fight fire with fire sir. His statements are ridiculous. He’ll never be persuaded so I shove it in their face. It’s what I do and I do it well.
Pamela Gray says:
May 24, 2014 at 11:01 am
By the way, I reserve such investigations to the ones truly involved in such unethical practices, not honest attempts to research climate and weather pattern variations.
=========
I completely agree regarding delivery to the K-12 classroom. Our educational system generally requires teaching materials to be properly edited and fact checked before entering State school systems. NASA as well as other teaching materials are entering the classroom via a back door which circumvents the normal process. Teachers have the opportunity to add materials to make coursework appropriate to their classroom but poorly crafted NASA materials and NGO propaganda are a huge problem as are poorly crafted NASA press releases.
Research Scientists have delivered on their respective grants. The problem, as Dr. Curry pointed out to a Congressional Sub-Committee years ago, was the narrow UN focus to find human impact on the environment. IMO, that is where the research went haywire. But, it didn’t stop the UN from using it to justify the creation on the UNFCCC.
If you want to hold “them” accountable, start with the UN and work your way down to governments. Other than a handful of climate scientists, the blame belongs to UN policies and member states.
Not an easy situation to fix.
I just don’t think there’s any way this is going to happen. Due to last year’s large increase in the Sept minimum and favorable winds over the winter, we have a lot more of the >1-yr ice in the western Arctic this year, which will help. But temperatures over the winter weren’t that great. Basically, we’d be looking for as much of an improvement from last year as last year had over the average of 2011-2012.
Just doesn’t seem plausible to me. And even if it happens, the Arctic as an indicator is pretty overrated IMO.
-Scott
Gary Pearse says:
May 24, 2014 at 11:17 am
Greg Goodman says:
May 23, 2014 at 11:11 pm
“This suggests either the exposed water and the larger annual swings provided a negative feedback that slows the melting, or some long term external driver has changed direction”.
Two things you appear to have missed: a) The 2007 “surprise melting” was actually a huge August cyclonic storm that broke up a large tract of the ice and whirled it out the Fram Strait (actually the same in 2012- google animations). This of course will confound a forecast but not necessarily invalidate it. b) Your measurement of decline slopes aren’t sufficient to appraise the minimum. First measure the 2m+ ice area. This is has a good chance (barring august cyclonic storms of course) of surviving the minimum and this is what is being relied on for the forecast. You are otherwise ignoring a prime parameter and basing your speculation on a secondary one.
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Gary , two things you appear to have missed.
a) I’m not really interested in playing betting games on one day per year ice levels. The ice classic is much more fun for that. When people look at the ice minimum, they usually are trying to imply something (incorrectly) about the general state of the ice sheet and long term trends. We have daily data , so I use ALL of it, not just one day per year and ignore the rest.
b) I’m interested in understanding the physical processes and what this tells us. Of course decadal trends don’t tell you what will happen in any one year, let alone on one day of one year.
That’s a fools game. A propaganda exercise for alarmists. It’s highly variable so you can make a fuss in years when it’s low and then go all quiet when it isn’t. Go and look at the fools on the Arctic Sea Ice blog. They all went very quite once they demonstrated to the world they had no idea about Arctic Sea Ice.
c) The fundamental question is whether the Arctic ice is in “run away melting”, a “death spiral” decline driven by AGW, or is it long term natural variability.
Now if you’d like to come up with something based in 2m+ ice, I’d be interested to see what it tells and discuss any differences to the detailed work I did.
Until you do that I don’t see much value in your popping up and telling me what you think I’ve missed and how I should have done it.
CRS, DrPH says:
May 23, 2014 at 9:50 pm
I’m still blown away by how much ice remains on Lake Superior…
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I completely agree and the effort by Coast Guard ice breakers to speed the break-up was amazing.
Other aspects which are frequently overlook in the Arctic are the fresh water budget and Pacific Ocean salinity entering the Arctic Ocean.
I still contend it was salinity which dropped the Arctic Ocean out from under the ice sheet which caused the broken up of old ice. Wind just flushed it out in 2007. Call it a theory ; )
yikes!
Other aspects which are frequently overlook
s/b
Other aspects which are frequently overlooked
I still contend it was salinity which dropped the Arctic Ocean out from under the ice sheet which caused the broken up of old ice. Wind just flushed it out in 2007. Call it a theory ; )
s/b
I still contend it was salinity which dropped the Arctic Ocean out from under the ice sheet which in turn caused the old ice to fracture in 2007. Wind simply flushed the pieces. Call it a theory ; )
as I was saying…
we are (globally) cooling from the top (and bottom) down (and up)
why?
could it have something to do with the ozone, peroxides and nitrogenous oxides manufactured at the TOA?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
footnote: has 3D imaging improved since 2007 or are we all still stuck with a 2D charting perspective?
Just The Facts says: May 24, 2014 at 11:11 am
“Here’s their September 2013 forecast versus actual:”
First, that’s a forecast made in July. The lead post gives their May forecast, which looks like about 5.4 M sq km; actually a closer forecast, but definitely high. Their forecast in 2012 was similar, and over by more than 2 M sq km.
Second, if it’s Wang’s submitted forecast, it is almost certainly bias-adjusted. Their paper explains:
“Therefore in the CFSv2, when the sea ice predictions are used for practical applications, bias correction is necessary. The bias can be obtained from the hindcast data for the period 1982– 2010, which are available from NCDC.”
HenryP says:
May 24, 2014 at 12:56 pm
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Not until you can point to repeated atmospheric anomalies, in the chaotic climate system, which drive the creation of Kelvin waves (as well as other anomalies), which in turn create ENSO (as well as other significant influences on the system), which in turn…?
Good luck with that given Al Gore or the UN as the spokesperson ; )
The recent post on Climate Etc. is fascinating as it points to localized weather events are triggers of extended change in the climate system.
Bottom up cooling made me chuckle, the Earth’s core bottom up?
climatebeagle says: May 24, 2014 at 8:11 am
“Thanks to Nick Stokes quoting of the CFv2 paper[1] we see that:
– models do make predictions and forecasts
– models can be compared to observations
So, is the some official climate “science” notification that indicates which models can be compared to observations and which cannot?”
Yes, of course they can predict. We see that every day with numerical weather prediction. You can compare with observation.
And yes, there is is “official” notification of what constitutes a prediction. They tell you if they are predicting. You’ll find very few of these posts claiming discrepancy between GCMs and observations that actually quote a prediction. Mostly they are plots of model runs, which are quite different.
GCMs are NWP programs explicitly run beyond their predictive range. They have all the physics of weather, but not the timing. Their point is that they respond to forcings as real weather would. So if you average over a long enough period that weather averages out, you find out how the climate will change. That’s what they are for.
Greg Goodman says:
May 24, 2014 at 12:12 pm
Gary Pearse says:
May 24, 2014 at 11:17 am
Greg Goodman says:
May 23, 2014 at 11:11 pm
Fair point. On re-reading it was “popping up” to be sure. Mine was much more limited in focusing on why one might expect a positive ice anomaly for 2014 minimum. Re the 2m+ ice, no deep analysis in this selection. The quick melt has been the 1-2m annual ice that starts to freeze up in October and in earlier years, the multi-year stuff survived. After 2007, it became clear that multi-year ice is occasionally vulnerable to cyclonic storms that break it up and flush it out into the Atlantic. Since there was up to 25m thick ice that was even lost (apparently a new island was also discovered), this was probably aided by a warm decade of the 1990s that saw the melting of buttressing less thick ice adjacent to the thicker stuff.
The 2007 and 2012 August cyclones gave us the record minimums and were what led to alarmist and perhaps reasonable thoughts that positive feedbacks (lowered albedo, expanse of sunwarmed water) could accelerate a “death spiral” for the arctic ice cover in summer. In this status of learning while doing, we have begun to see that such feedbacks are either not very strong, or are easily overwhelmed. I won’t attempt a statistical analysis to support my earlier forecast for the one day. Probably time will be quicker than I am in putting it all together. The minimum this year could be another useful lesson in the unfolding of theory. If a significant increase in extent of the minimum proves to be the case, I would more boldly expect that next years will be new steps in the recovery of the arctic ice (granted probably see saw as you note). Its coincidence with the AMO turning cooler could be a nice piece of the puzzle.
Ultimately, an ice extent model will probably incorporate global warming and cooling (in response to AMO, PDO, ENSO, GHG perhaps for some of it, or whatever) the possibility that the cyclonic storms are a feature of the end of a warming period (I’m not sure whether we have kept much track of past cyclonic storms in the arctic – this would be an interesting statistic- look for them in 30s-40s weather data? fewer in the tropics, more in the arctics?), extent of multiyear ice would certainly not be excluded in an ice extent model. The beauty is we can probably end up over the next few years with a fairly skillful model for this compared to the poor skill of the full climate models. Being the cool end of the engine, it is likely also to be a good piece to add to a real climate model, improving it.
Finally, I have come to appreciate the prodigious work, knowledge and thought you contribute to the scientific discussion here and elsewhere. No put-downs intended.
Jimbo,
That was a hilarious prediction by Paul Beckwith [@4:35 pm above].
I have yet to see Beckwith or anyone else ever admit that they were wrong. For Nick Stokes’ benefit, Beckwith states that he was making a “prediction”.
But they all make predictions, whether they call them that or not. Catastrophic AGW [CAGW] is a flat out prediction, for the simple reason that no catastrophe is currently happening. For that matter, AGW is also a prediction, because there is no measurable scientific evidence confirming that AGW exists.
The total failure of all climate alarmist predictions is a good reason to suspect that their entire premise is wrong. When someone makes multiple predictions that all turn out to be flat wrong, the only rational course of action is to assume their belief system is wrong.
What say you, Nick Stokes? What will it take to get you to admit that the AGW scare is a false alarm? Or will you never admit it, no matter what?
dbstealey says: May 24, 2014 at 1:52 pm
“For Nick Stokes’ benefit, Beckwith states that he was making a “prediction”.”
Beckwith was a PhD student.
I wonder if we’ve entered a mode of periodic clearing of black carbon with every melt:
Black carbon accumulates on the surface.
The darker surface warms and melts, dropping the black carbon into the ocean.
Fresh ice reforms.
Repeat.
GCMs are NWP programs explicitly run beyond their predictive range. They have all the physics of weather, but not the timing. Their point is that they respond to forcings as real weather would.
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uh Nick???…I thought getting a GCM to model “all” of the forcings was the whole problem.
We don’t even understand all of the forcings.
Latitude says: May 24, 2014 at 2:18 pm
“I thought getting a GCM to model “all” of the forcings was the whole problem.”
GCMs don’t model the forcings, they respond to them.
And yes, GCM results aren’t perfect, and uncertain forcing is part of it. Of course, we have explicit uncertainty expressed in the GHG emission scenarios (and also volcanoes etc).
Beckwith was also a “……part-time professor in climatology/meteorology at the University of Ottawa.” Maybe he should be the student of his own classes. In the link above he goes on to say:
Peter Wadhams is not a PHD student and he says it will be gone latest September 2016 “….except perhaps for small multiyear remnant north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island…..”