2014 is not being handed its hat, it's just getting started.

Hadden: The powers that be have been very busy lately, falling over each other to position themselves for the game of the millennium. Maybe I can help deal you back in.

Ellie: I didn't realize that I was out.

Hadden: Oh... maybe not out, but certainly being handed your hat.

 Contact 1997.

Since posting my rather high prediction on CT Area I've been having doubts about it. A reason to to have confidence in it is the success last year, against the expectations of many including myself. However this year I think CT Area will be at the lower end of the prediction (3.0 to 3.3M km^2), if it is successful, and there is too much of a chance of 2014 being below 3.0 for me to have much confidence in it. The method trains the range to the 2007 to 2013 period, so it is likely overfitted and does not reflect the full range of feasible behaviours after the volume loss events of 2007 and 2010.

CT Area 2014 Prediction

The melt season has started off too late, there will be no CT Area anomaly cliff, and I don't believe that 2012's record will be neared or beaten. However I am making my prediction for CT Area in 2014. CT Area is Cryosphere Today Area, the data is available here.

NOTE - the final part of this blog post has been changed as an error was found in my transformation from CT Area to NSIDC Extent.

Sea Ice Prediction June 2014

Well, it's the 20th of June and CT Area (Cryopsphere Today Area) data for that date is what I've used to make a successful prediction last year. I've also put in a prediction for 2014 September average NSIDC Extent with the Sea Ice Prediction Network, and their June Outlook is now published. Given the weather so far in June, is my SIPN prediction already destined for failure, and what of my June 20th CT Area prediction for 2014?

Mid June 2014 Status

It's been a very slow start to the 2014 melt season, but that doesn't mean a recovery of the sea ice is underway.

Watch this space..

The 'space' in question being the large polnya in the Laptev Sea. My bet is that it will turn out to be one of the most fascinating features of this melt season.

PIOMAS May 2014. Part 2

As promised here is a more detailed breakdown of the PIOMAS May data release.

PIOMAS May 2014. Part 1.

I'm doing this month's PIOMAS data in two posts mainly because work (day job) pressures mean I'm far too tired to do a full post and will be for the rest of the week. I'll catch up over the weekend, that means Sunday, Saturday looks like a day of dozing and watching films. However the notable increase in traffic from Neven's blog suggested to me that I had to do something tonight, so here it is.

Do Not Press This Button!

Changes in Arctic sea ice are a warning to us, and in my opinion one of the best ways to see the warning is through anomalies.

Anomalies are the difference from a long term average, as usual I use the period 1980 to 1999 (20 years) for my long term average. I work out the average value of the index used for each of the 365 days in a standard year and then deduct this value from each daily value of the series 1979 to the present. This transforms the data from a large sinusoidal wave into the differences from that average sinusoidal seasonal cycle, these differences are called anomalies.


I've previously blogged on this for Cryosphere Today Area (CT Area), but thought it worth updating the graphs, this time including NSIDC Extent.