HR: 0800h
AN: U41C-0613    [Abstracts]
TI: Seasonal Arctic Ice Forecasting: Can we still use the past to predict the future?
AU: * Arbetter, T E
EM: tarbetter@natice.noaa.gov
AF: National/Naval Ice Center, 4231 Suitland Road, Suitland, MD 20746, United States
AU: * Arbetter, T E
EM: tarbetter@natice.noaa.gov
AF: UCAR Visiting Scientist Program, 3300 Mitchell Lane, Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Woods, L
EM: jwoods@natice.noaa.gov
AF: National/Naval Ice Center, 4231 Suitland Road, Suitland, MD 20746, United States
AU: Clemente-Colon, P
EM: pablo.clemente-colon@natice.noaa.gov
AF: National/Naval Ice Center, 4231 Suitland Road, Suitland, MD 20746, United States
AB: The National/Naval Ice Center, part of the North American Ice Service, produces a Seasonal Outlook each year as an early prediction of that summer's Arctic sea ice conditions. The forecasts for the Western Arctic, including the Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast, are determined using an statistical relationship of an array of monthly mean geopotential heights, sea level pressures, and surface temperatures calculated during the previous winter. These values are then compared with records of previous summers to determine an empirical forecast for the oncoming summer. This method has been essentially the same since it was originally developed in the mid-1970s. Here we examine the forecasts compared with actual conditions, using the opening and closing of the coastal shipping route between Barrow and Prudhoe Bay as the metric. Using NCEP reanalyses , we compute retroactive forecasts for 1948- present and evaluate whether the current method is likely to be well-suited if the dramatic decline in summertime Arctic ice extents continues.
DE: 0750 Sea ice (4540)
DE: 3349 Polar meteorology
DE: 4207 Arctic and Antarctic oceanography (9310, 9315)
DE: 4215 Climate and interannual variability (1616, 1635, 3305, 3309, 4513)
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting