In this post, I use a quadratic regression model to forecast the September, 2011 Arctic Sea Ice Extent. The model was developed with 1980 – 2010 data. Links to the R script, source data and how-to article on polynomial regression are provided.
Arctic Sea Ice Extent Forecast for September, 2011
First, here is my forecast: (Click image to enlarge)
Based on the 1980 – 2010 downward Arctic Sea Ice trend, my forecast is that September, 2011 SIE will decline 0.36 below 2010 levels, to 4.54 million km^2, with a confidence band of +- 0.59.
How Did I Develop My Forecast?
I have written a number of posts on Arctic Sea Ice Extent (here, here, here). In this post, I used the NSDIC‘s monthly data file (link) to construct a quadratic regression model of September sea ice extent for the 1980 – 2010 period. I then used this model to predict the September, 2011 Arctic Sea Ice Extent.
I have 2 main learning curve sources for this model:
- Tamino‘s post on Arctic Sea Ice decline provided the basic idea of using a quadratic model to fit Arctic SIE decline.
- John Quick’s tutorial on polynomial regression provided the how-to instructions I needed to implement Tamino’s approach in R.
RClimate Script and Links
Here is the link to my RClimate script.
