betting
stoat | June 26, 2011This year's story so far: in May, I accepted some bets but was still trying to come to terms with Rob Dekker. In the comments there we came to agreement on the following:
If both NSIDC and IARC-JAXA September 2016 monthly average sea ice extent report are above 4.80 million km^2, RD pays WMC US$ 10,000. If both are below 3.10 million km^2, WMC pays RD US$ 10,000. In all other cases the bet is null and void
The numbers are a bit of a compromise, and of course the large "null gap" in the middle means a no-payment result is quite likely. Now is a sort-of good time to announce this, because this…
stoat | May 10, 2011Or perhaps part 3. I've lost track. Sea ice - and now for something just a tiny bit different refers, as does the earlier This year's sea ice. Yes, it looks like being part 3.
The above is the IJIS sea ice. Nothing very exciting at the moment (NSIDC have some nice pix. April 2011 was bang-on trend). As you recall, we're trying to agree a bet or bets. I want to bet on monthly extent and some of the others want daily. After too much equivocation, I've decided to stick to my guns: monthly it is, and if you don't like that, you'll need to find someone else to bet with. Or, you can apply a handy…
stoat | March 31, 2011[Update: see comments. We're having some dispute about whether to bet on the monthly averages (the scientifically respectable thing to do) or daily min (the wildly exciting popular choice). I need to bother work out the numbers. Until then, you'll have to be patient (2011/3/31; I've adjusted the posting date from 2011-03-22 to push this to the head of the queue)]
But not very different. Neven reminds me, again, that I promised to put up a slightly longer-term bet; see This year's sea ice and in particular this comment and reply.
Neven offers:
I'd be willing to bet 50 euros on a record low…
stoat | October 2, 2010Hurrah. That saves lots of effort paying :-). Not long ago it was looking bad for the good guys (i.e., me) with a "douple dip" recession of sea ice. But a strong perforcance from the boys up north in the mushy white stuff stakes saw a sharp rebound at the end of the month, leading to a monthly average for september of 4.90 (thanks for C for vigilance). As a reminder, recent years have been:
2000 9 Goddard N 6.32 4.31
2001 9 Goddard N 6.75 4.55
2002 9 Goddard N 5.96 3.98
2003 9 Goddard N 6.15 4.01
2004 9 Goddard N 6.05…
stoat | June 15, 2010Continuing from Three views of sea ice. Well, tis now mid-June, so the futurology aspect of the prediction is closing rapidly. Or so you would have thought. I've just taken £50 against CR for the ice being below 4.735 (he gets the low side) or above 4.935 (I get the high side). But my principal debt on sea ice is failing to write anything more about it. so, to remedy that!
I was going to suggest that the most interesting way of doing the pool was via Intrade. Unfortunately their Arctic sea ice pool doesn't look very interesting. The bet is "2010 greater than 2009" and is trading at around 43…
stoat | May 23, 2010The troops are getting restive. What wil happen to this year's sea ice? Rumours abound. Let's look at some pictures.
Probably the least interesting is this one from NSIDC. But it looks exciting, doesn't it. Woo-hoo, look, the sea ice now is lower than it was in 2007, that means it will be at minimum, too, doesn't it? Well no, of course not. Look at this one from AWI:
2006 was well below 2007 at this point, and turned out to be uninteresting. As far as I know, no-one believes in predicting the minimum (which, of course, is the only number anyone gives a toss about) based on previous months.…
stoat | March 22, 2010I doubt I'll be running the ever-exciting competition again this year, due to a lack of people who strongly disagree with me (i.e., the decline will be on the long term-trend, plus some error margin).
But While I'm here there appears to be some excitement from Romm over a Grauniad study about a GRL study about the role of wind forcing in sea ice loss, in particular in 2007.
The paper says
The unprecedented retreat of first-year ice during summer 2007 was enhanced by strong poleward drift over the western Arctic induced by anomalously high sea-level pressure (SLP) over the Beaufort Sea that…
stoat | January 28, 2010At some point I need to decide if I'll re-start the by-now-traditional sea ice bet for the summer. Before we start arguing over the details, remember that there is a lot of inter-annual variablity so we need to disagree *a lot* to have a meaningful bet. But at least one person has said in the comments that they feel "worried" by this years ice, so that suggests pessimism that I can exploit!
Any thoughts about what you might want to bet about, please leave a comment. My default position is going to be "will fit the 1979-2009 slope extrapolated to 2010". Bear in mind that this isn't a forecast…