September Arctic sea ice minimum prediction  – a skillful new statistical approach

Ionita, Monica; Grosfeld, Klaus; Scholz, Patrick; Treffeisen, Renate; Lohmann, Gerrit

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-189-2019

Articles | Volume 10, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-189-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-189-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 1

Research article

|

21 Mar 2019

Research article |

| 21 Mar 2019

September Arctic sea ice minimum prediction – a skillful new statistical approach

Monica Ionita, Klaus Grosfeld, Patrick Scholz, Renate Treffeisen, and Gerrit Lohmann

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Final revised paper (published on 21 Mar 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 20 Sep 2018)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Oct 2018
- AC1: 'Response rev1', Monica Ionita-Scholz, 18 Dec 2018
RC2: 'Interactive comment on "September Arctic Sea Ice minimum prediction - a new skillful statistical approach"', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Nov 2018
- AC2: 'Response rev2', Monica Ionita-Scholz, 18 Dec 2018
RC3: 'Review of "September Arctic sea ice minimum prediction - a new skillful statistical approach", manuscript-ID: ESD-2018-061 by Ionita et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 15 Nov 2018
- AC3: 'Response rev3', Monica Ionita-Scholz, 18 Dec 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (18 Dec 2018) by Christian Franzke

AR by Monica Ionita-Scholz on behalf of the Authors (27 Feb 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Mar 2019) by Christian Franzke

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (07 Mar 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I thank the authors for their tremenduous effort to reply to my comments and to improve their manuscript. It is a reward if also the comments of a non-expert in statistical sea-ice extent forecast are taken serious.

I suggest that the paper is ready for publication pending the comments / technical corrections listed and correction of the typos.

Comments / Technical Corrections

On page 8, lines 11-13, you might want to add that increased cloudiness and humidity are responsible for enhanced melt via enhance longwave radiation. When talking about shortwave radiation budget, the conditions are not as straightforward as it seems (see Perovich, The Cryosphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2159-2018) because the efficiency of the impact of clouds on sea-ice melt strongly depends on timing and surface properties.

Same page, lines 34-35: It is correct that the quoted storm possibly brought large amounts of heat and moisture but it might make sense to consider two other aspects which are presented here: Zhang J., R. Lindsay, A. Schweiger, and M. Steele (2013), The impact of an intense summer cyclone on 2012 Arctic sea ice retreat, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 720–726, doi:10.1002/grl.50190 --> the sea-ice cover was properly preconditioned already (see also Wang et al., doi:10.1002/
2015JD023712) and the storm allowed a large amount of oceanic heat to be mixed up to the surface - which after all might have been more efficient to melt the sea ice than the heat in the atmosphere.

Page 9, lines 6-9: It is very nice to see how your method captures this change in the overall atmospheric situation and provides an almost perfect prediction. May I nevertheless ask you to provide 1-2 references about the situation and/or the differences in the conditions in 2013 compared to 2012? Possible sources could be again the above-mentioned paper by Wang et al. as well as Liu and Key, Environmental Research Letters, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/4/044002.

Typos:
On page 1:
IPPC --> IPCC

On page 3:
ERSSTv4b --> ERSSTv5
RRSSTv5 --> ERSSTv5 (at least in your reply to the reviewers' comments you did mention that you used version 5 and that version 4 was a typo.)

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (08 Mar 2019) by Christian Franzke

Dear Dr. Ionita,

I am happy to accept your manuscript for publication on condition that the below technical corrections will be carried out. Please submit a corrected manuscript.

Best regards,
Christian

Technical corrections:
On page 8, lines 11-13, you might want to add that increased cloudiness and humidity are responsible for enhanced melt via enhance longwave radiation. When talking about shortwave radiation budget, the conditions are not as straightforward as it seems (see Perovich, The Cryosphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2159-2018) because the efficiency of the impact of clouds on sea-ice melt strongly depends on timing and surface properties.

Same page, lines 34-35: It is correct that the quoted storm possibly brought large amounts of heat and moisture but it might make sense to consider two other aspects which are presented here: Zhang J., R. Lindsay, A. Schweiger, and M. Steele (2013), The impact of an intense summer cyclone on 2012 Arctic sea ice retreat, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 720–726, doi:10.1002/grl.50190 --> the sea-ice cover was properly preconditioned already (see also Wang et al., doi:10.1002/
2015JD023712) and the storm allowed a large amount of oceanic heat to be mixed up to the surface - which after all might have been more efficient to melt the sea ice than the heat in the atmosphere.

Page 9, lines 6-9: It is very nice to see how your method captures this change in the overall atmospheric situation and provides an almost perfect prediction. May I nevertheless ask you to provide 1-2 references about the situation and/or the differences in the conditions in 2013 compared to 2012? Possible sources could be again the above-mentioned paper by Wang et al. as well as Liu and Key, Environmental Research Letters, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/4/044002.

Typos:
On page 1:
IPPC --> IPCC

On page 3:
ERSSTv4b --> ERSSTv5
RRSSTv5 --> ERSSTv5 (at least in your reply to the reviewers' comments you did mention that you used version 5 and that version 4 was a typo.)

Hide

AR by Monica Ionita-Scholz on behalf of the Authors (11 Mar 2019) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

Based on a simple statistical model we show that the September sea ice extent has a high predictive skill, up to 4 months ahead, based on previous months' oceanic and atmospheric conditions. Our statistical model skillfully captures the interannual variability of the September sea ice extent and could provide a valuable tool for identifying relevant regions and oceanic and atmospheric parameters that are important for the sea ice development in the Arctic.