| Summary: | The Arctic is currently undergoing dramatic changes that have profound impacts on populations, ecosystems and the climate of the High North. Sea ice forecasting has established itself as an emerging discipline of climate sciences since 10 years, thanks to its potential benefits for societies, industries and stakeholders. But just how good are these forecasts, and how useful are them? During this presentation I will review the past and ongoing efforts to advance Arctic sea ice prediction, discuss its inherent limitations and suggest ways forward. In particular, I will (1) review the physical mechanisms that are thought to provide sea-ice predictability from days to decades, (2) discuss the reliability of sea-ice reanalyses, (3) describe the current limitations in observational networks and possible improvements and (4) review the knowledge on long-term sea ice projections and what controls their uncertainty (a timely issue as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) is about to start).
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