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Weekly Arctic Sea Ice Contest


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The inlets near the head of the Aleutian archipelago do have some icing although there isn't any along the actual islands yet. That might happen if we realize this arctic outbreak that the models seem to be latching onto, although as skier says there are some warm eddies in the region whose deleterious effects will have to be monitored as well. It doesn't much matter, though, compared to how badly we're doing on the North American side....prelim was -57k today, incredibly embarrassing for mid-December.

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There is not ice anywhere near the Aleutians (besides some shore ice in the bays along the Alaskan coast).. and they are surrounded by water of +6C to their north.. not even close to "the Aleutians freezing solid." Iceland also has a pool of warm water surrounding it of +2C which is not close to freezing either. As I've said before, areas which are close to freezing show up as 0-1C or N/A. No significant ice in Okhotsk either. Prelim -57k.

Saying "the Aleutians could freeze solid" or that the ice pack will extend to Iceland in the next week seems sort of outlandish to me at this point.

arctic.seaice.color.000.png

I see a bunch of ice in Okhotsk's southwest corner...that's the dimmer part of the map towards the bottom, but you can clearly see floating ice in the coastal regions of the Sea.

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Yeah that's weird that area is so dim you can hardly see it. Still not very much though.

Yeah it's not going to have a significant impact on the global count unless it expands northward and covers all the coastal regions of that inlet. We are getting some cold airmasses into the Sea of Okhotsk for the next week so hopefully it can expand.

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Week 13 Scores:

skierinvermont 	42000
Nzucker		-28000
Normal		-62000
ElTacoman	-66000
winterwxluvr	-69000
Consensus	-70000
grcjrsc		-73000
MallowTheCloud	-106000
MN transplant	-118000
Roger Smith  	-138000

Cumulative Scores:

skierinvermont 	1381000
Normal		1235000
ElTacoman	973000
Consensus	968000
Nzucker		930000
MN transplant	926000
frivolousz21	733000
grcjrsc		676000
Roger Smith  	339000
winterwxluvr	289000
blazess556	71000
BethesdaBoy	64000
Organizing Low	49000
MallowTheCloud	5000
Ytterbium       -171000

Average Error (at least 3 weeks):

skierinvermont 	143769
Normal		155000
ElTacoman	168917
MN transplant	172833
Consensus	175538
Nzucker		178462
frivolousz21	188917
grcjrsc		193667
winterwxluvr	221100
Roger Smith  	223923
MallowTheCloud	249615

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I went climo because it is beating me.

thumbsupsmileyanim.gif I don't think we can be too emphatic in our own forecasts considering none of us are really doing any better than climo.

I do think it is possible to have some skill though. I think my guesses have had some skill but often it's been a case of going too extreme and losing points because of that.

I went back to see how many times I got the sign of the weekly anomaly right because any skill would be more evident there. I got the sign of the anomaly right in Weeks 1,3,6,7,9,11,12,13 or 8/13 times. Not that good, but if you only look at weeks where I guessed more than 50k above or below climo, I got the sign of the anomaly right 7/7 times. So when there is a clear obvious sign one way or another, I think I can pick it up correctly.

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thumbsupsmileyanim.gif I don't think we can be too emphatic in our own forecasts considering none of us are really doing any better than climo.

I do think it is possible to have some skill though. I think my guesses have had some skill but often it's been a case of going too extreme and losing points because of that.

I went back to see how many times I got the sign of the weekly anomaly right because any skill would be more evident there. I got the sign of the anomaly right in Weeks 1,3,6,7,9,11,12,13 or 8/13 times. Not that good, but if you only look at weeks where I guessed more than 50k above or below climo, I got the sign of the anomaly right 7/7 times. So when there is a clear obvious sign one way or another, I think I can pick it up correctly.

I've really started to improve in the last four weeks by being less emotional and checking SSTs more carefully. I definitely don't see why, however, so many people would go in the low 200s this week with brutally cold air in the Bering Strait area as well as the Barents Sea, as well as the huge chunk of Hudson Bay that is sitting as open water in late December. I think there is definitely a tendency in this contest to bias one week's forecast on what happened the previous week and what mistakes were made, which is a fallacy.

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nzucker			375k
Skierinvermont 		340k
winterwxluvr        	336k
MN Transplant  		303k
tacoman      		240k
grcjrsc            	212k
Roger        		200k

MN, Mallow, zuck -- go ahead and throw your guesses in if you want (just try not to look!)

Whoops, I've been busy the past few days. Well I haven't looked at anything but the normals (and other guesses :P ) yet, so my guess is 388k. After last week's craptascular showing, we've got to catch up at some point.

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+59k prelim...lower guesses are out of it at this point.

This was actually a mistake, as we've not gained as much as I expected...Here is the latest data for 12/26

Current Extent: 11,631,406km2

Daily Gain: 49,531km2

Contest Gain: 226,718km2

I know that Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay have been warm, but I'm surprised we've not gained more with the brutally arctic outbreak near Alaska/Bering Strait. Prelim was -17k for today; heck, it seems easier to freeze a lake here in NYC than a bay up at 80N this year, blocking FTL. Of course, there's always the possibility the numbers are being "censored" by Jim Hansen.

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