Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Arctic Sea Ice Extent
2012 Update Posted on 10 October 2012 by dana1981 Last year we
examined a few predictions of the September annual Arctic sea
ice extent in 2010 and 2011. We now have another year of
predictions in the books, and a new record sea ice minimum. The
Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) has also collected
sea ice extent predictions since 2008. In this post we will
examine how these predictions have fared year-by-year, and
Figure 1 below shows the average accuracy of individuals or
groups who have made at least two annual Arctic sea ice extent
predictions since 2008. In all of the graphics in this post,
orange bars represent model-based predictions, blue bars
represent statistics-based predictions, purple bars represent
heuristic predictions (experience-based, which essentially means
any predictions not based on statistics or models), and green
bars represent a combination of methodologies. Observational
data from the National Snow and Ice Data C