Alastair wrote:

It is nice to see a few old names still here after my sojourn in other
realms of web space :-)

Presently, I am inflicting RealClimate http://www.realclimate.org/
with my heretical views on global warming, and have been presented
with a question I cannot answer. I was wondering if anyone here could
help? The question is at

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...#comment-51273
and reads:

310 wayne davidson Says:
30 August 2007 at 11:14 PM

#288 Alastair, I take it you are from the UK? Well I am a little
puzzled by the met office no longer displaying sea ice extent yearly
projections until 2100. I am getting convinced that the ice and Polar
atmospheric models were off by 10 to 20 years, would have really
appreciated seeing their projections still, as I am curious about how
we take it from here. Is the met office ice model merely wrong
timewise? It will be very good to understand where the error is,
especially compare the 2007 melt with 2007 projection, it would help
narrrow down a bug, and perfect future models. I don't think its bad
yo be wrong, it is terrible when you can't know why.

I actually know where the models are going wrong but I am sure that
the MetOffice do not. However, I would be very interested in hearing
their take on this. Feel free to answer directly to RealClimate or
here.

Cheers, Alastair.

The predictions are still available on the Met Office site at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research...modeldata.html.
On the same page is a briefing document on climate change which is worth a
read.

I agree that the forecast looks to be going wrong. The reduction in ice
coverage has been accelerating so much in the past few years that I
wouldn't be surprised to see it vanish by 2020 instead of the Hadley
model's 2080.

As I don't know the parameters of the model, I couldn't say what, if
anything, is wrong. However, one feature of recent years has been the
increased forcing of multi-year ice through the Fram Strait. The resultant
loss of old ice in the Arctic increases the amount of ice that is lost in
the summer melt. As most of the ice is lost on the Russian side of the
Arctic, I wonder whether this has been responsible for intensified cyclonic
activity in that region and hence increased the ice-flow out of the Arctic.
If this is the case, the loss of old ice from the Arctic each year could
now be creating the right conditions for future losses.

--
Graham P Davis
Bracknell, Berks., UK
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