INTERIM PROGRESS REPORT Project Title: Forecasting the Condition of Sea Ice on Weekly to Seasonal Time Scales

• Main Authors: Pi Dr, Ignatius G. Rigor, Pablo Clemente-colon, Lt. John Wood
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; albedo; Climate change; Global warming; Polar Science Center; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127.1610; http://www.climate.noaa.gov/cpo_pa/nctp/progress_reports/rigor.pdf

The Arctic has long been considered a harbinger of global climate change since numerical simulations of global climate change predict that if the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere doubles, the greenhouse warming signal will be much greater at high latitudes. This “polar amplification ” of the global warming is attributed to changes in sea ice and snow (ice-snow albedo feedback). Indeed, many studies of the observational records show polar amplification of the warming trends, and four of the last seven summers have set record minima for Arctic sea ice extent. Could we have predicted these past minima? Through this project, we plan to answer this question, and hope to improve our operational capability to predict the conditions of Arctic sea ice so we can forecast future minima with demonstrable skill. The proposed work stems naturally from the long standing collaboration between the National/Naval Ice Center (NIC) and the Polar Science Center (PSC) which have been working together to maintain the network of drifting buoys on the Arctic Ocean as part of the International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP;