Adapted to the weather?

I'm going to do some complaining about the recent power failures from Chicago through the Washington DC area, and there will be some relevance to talk about climate change adaptation.  But first, a few words about my background to be making complaints.  I'm not someone who has never been without electricity for an extended period before, nor, for that matter, without running water.  I've hand-pumped my water for some weeks.  And I carried it a couple hundred meters in buckets to water my grandmother's recent plantings in the hot and dry, by the standards then, summers of 1987-1988 in the midwest. While I like modern technologies, not least because it is why I reached age 10, I know how to live ok on a late 19th century level, and have done so.

In discussions about climate change, I hear that "Don't worry, we'll adapt to it." and
"Mitigating climate change means returning to 19th century technology."

I'll leave aside whether the recent derecho represents climate change.  And even more so the question of whether the change has a human fingerprint on it.  I live in the national Capitol area for what is supposed to be the richest and most technologically advanced country on the earth.  And many, large population, counties around me are among the wealthiest in the country.  If any area should be well-adapted to current weather, forget to climate change, it is this area.  Let's just consider events already in hand.

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Quick Notes

 Sea Ice:

• Alastair, in case I didn't confirm it earlier, you're on for the 50 quatloos for September NSIDC sea ice extent over/under 4.15 million km^2.  I'll stand with that even with the recent drop in ice extent.
• All are welcome to enter in the poll at the bottom.  I see few are taking the higher side of estimates.  I hope that's not because you're intimidated by my guesses!  When I'm confident about what I'm doing, I'll call them predictions.
• The June Arctic Sea Ice Outlook is out (more in a post to come).  The guesses I'm involved with are 4.4, 4.8, 4.9, with the 4.8 likely to come down when we make a run with more recent initial conditions.  (Again, this first one was from December)
• GCOM-W1 did indeed enter orbit safely and instruments are powering up and being checked out.  The bad news is that AMSR2 is looking at 12-18 months from launch before its data distribution (to me at work) becomes operational.
•  The recent rapid drop-off (and then plateauing) is more or less to be expected.  I think.  If I'm wrong, Alastair stands to win his 50 quatloos. 

Japan:

• My meeting went well.  My thanks to the JMA and JAXA (Japanese Meteorological Agency and Japanese Space Agency). And especially Misako Kachi who took lead in coordinating it.
• Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Kamakura, and Mt. Fuji all are excellent places to visit as a tourist.  Selected photos to come.
• Someone with approximately zero Japanese language skill, but ok English, can indeed tourist around Japan ok.  (Exhibits 1 and 2 being my wife and me.)
• If you're not Japanese, be sure to stay at a Ryokan if you have a chance.  We stayed at Fujitomori.
• 13 time zones followed by several 12 hour working days are difficult.

 continued ...

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AMSR 2 on the way!

My contact inside JAXA sent this note:

GCOM-W1 was launched at 1:39 18 May (Japan Standard Time) as scheduled, and the satellite was separated from the rocket successfully.

This is the satellite carrying the AMSR-2.  Keep your fingers crossed for successful deployment.  But this is a major step to operations!

Sea Ice Predictions 2012 Open Poll

The poll for your guesses on September 2012 sea ice extent (NSIDC) is open.  All the way to the bottom of the page.  If you'd like to explain how you arrived at your guess, please do post a comment explaining it.  If it's a substantial explanation (i.e., one I could steal research for my professional use), I'll also bring it up here to the main post.

Poll is open to the end of June, EDT.

2011 Sea Ice Outlook Verification

Sometimes time passes faster than you'd think.  I'm sure that's where Einstein got the principle of relativity from.  In any case, I realized that we're about to be submitting our guesses for the 2012 sea ice outlook and I never did get around to examining, on the blog, how our guesses for 2011 did.  In brief, pretty well.

• 7.03 million km^2 -- Climatology 1979-2000
• 6.67 million km^2 -- Climatology 1979-2008
• at least 5.5 million km^2 -- Joe Bastardi at WUWT
• 5.31 million km^2 -- Linear Trend Climatology 1979-2008
• 5.0 million km^2 -- Wang, Wu, Grumbine model, June
• 4.8 million km^2 -- Wu, Grumbine, Wang model, June
• 4.61 million km^2 -- NSIDC observed September Average sea ice extent
• 4.6 million km^2 -- Wu, Grumbine, Wang model, August
• 4.4 million km^2 -- Grumbine, Wu, Wang statistical ensemble, June
• 4.4 million km^2 -- Crandles, L. Hamilton (at Neven's, but also cited in comments here)
• 3.9 million km^2 -- Alastair (in comment here)

As I'd expected,  the statistical ensemble was low, and the Wang et al. model was high.  The June Wu et al model was a touch high, and the August version was right on (given its reporting precision).  Also, and reassuring, is that all our guesses were within 0.5 million km^2 of the observation.  That's what we've estimated as the standard variation in sea ice extent.

It's a good sign that we were within that range.  Also, 0.5 million km^2 is the variability estimated by almost all groups that provide an estimate for it.  Even though that number is suspiciously round, we actually arrived at it by data analysis.  It's a statement of how much the ice pack varies, rather than the quality of the methods.  The quality of the methods is how their error compares to the 0.5.

For the coming year, we've got some modifications in mind (experiments) for the Wu et al. approach, and I've already made some for the statistical ensemble. 

Plus, I'm going to be taking a look, perhaps getting Wu to play too, at whether this past winter's heavy sea ice cover in the Bering Sea was something we could have (or did) estimate in advance.  The model runs are already done.  It's 'just' a matter of analyzing them.