All through September, I thought Carrick was in the lead to win the quatloos for the Late NH Extent bet; I would take second. We’d both bet 3.6. But when NSIDC announced the September Ice Extent Average: 3.61 million sq km. it turned out SteveF edged us both out. He bet 3.615! So, win place and show for the “late bets” go to SteveF, Carrick and me! The other bets are shown below:
| Rank | Name | Prediction (millions km^2) | Bet | Won | |
| Gross | Net | ||||
| — | Observed | +3.61 (millions km^2) | |||
| 1 | SteveF | 3.615 | 4 | 67.847 | 63.847 |
| 2 | Carrick | 3.6 | 5 | 67.847 | 62.847 |
| 3 | lucia | 3.6 | 5 | 54.278 | 49.278 |
| 4 | DRUK | 3.75 | 5 | 35.319 | 30.319 |
| 5 | NickStokes | 3.786 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 6 | Ray | 3.794 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 7 | redc | 3.8 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 8 | denny | 3.81 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
| 9 | HaroldW | 3.812 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 10 | Owen | 3.88 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 11 | obo | 3.9 | 1.74 | 0 | -1.74 |
| 12 | KennethFritsch | 3.935 | 2 | 0 | -2 |
| 13 | Richard | 3.97 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 14 | BobDroege | 3.99 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 15 | NielsANielsen | 4 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 16 | BigBear | 4.025 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 17 | Zeke | 4.05 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 18 | JohnNorris | 4.06 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 19 | RobertLeyland | 4.07 | 4 | 0 | -4 |
| 20 | GeorgeTobin | 4.09 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
| 21 | PaulSk | 4.09 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 22 | Ant42 | 4.1 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 23 | PaulButler | 4.11 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 24 | Hal | 4.111 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 25 | KevinRyan | 4.13 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 26 | MarcH | 3.07 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 27 | BenjaminFranz | 4.15 | 4 | 0 | -4 |
| 28 | Skeptikal | 4.17 | 4 | 0 | -4 |
| 29 | Genghis | 4.213 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 30 | SteveT | 4.22 | 2 | 0 | -2 |
| 31 | Skiphil | 4.23 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 32 | pdjakow | 4.24 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 33 | Freezedried | 4.26 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 34 | BenjaminG | 4.28 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 35 | angech | 2.92 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 36 | AMac | 4.31 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
| 37 | ArfurBryant | 4.328 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 38 | dallas | 2.89 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 39 | Tamara | 4.37 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 40 | Ben | 4.39 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 41 | JohnF.Pittman | 4.41 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
| 42 | ivp0 | 4.44 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 43 | Pieter | 4.45 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 44 | DocMartyn | 4.45 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 45 | denny | 4.55 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
| 46 | Lance | 4.64 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 47 | Patrick | 2.55 | 2.55 | 0 | -2.55 |
| 48 | LeoG | 4.67 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
| 49 | MikeP | 4.73 | 4 | 0 | -4 |
| 50 | BobW | 4.82 | 3 | 0 | -3 |
| 51 | porcozio | 0.1 | 5 | 0 | -5 |
| 52 | ggg | -1.5 | 1 | 0 | -1 |
The net winnings for each member of the ensemble will be added to their accounts.
I get 3.578857 from the data.
Bruce–Clearly, SteveF, Carrick, Druk and I are going to have to have a rumble fighting over the quatloo distribution. If it’s below 3.6, Carrick will have won. He wagered 5 quatloos– so Druk will probably win less because there will be less in the pot. Steve F will certainly loose out on the number of quatloos he wins.
But I think using the “official” is best.
I’m still cross with myself for errr… crossing out my early 3.6 bet, oh well it was an interesting betting season.
The fact that NSIDC has trouble with math doesn’t bother me much … but it does surprise me.
fyi
Interior Department seeks climate change advisers
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/259959-interior-department-seeks-climate-change-advisers-
The Interior Department is creating a panel of outside experts to help steer its scientific work on the effects of climate change on natural resources.
The department, in a notice to be published Thursday, will seek nominations for the new, roughly 25-member “Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science.â€
Wow – I was fourth! Plan to run off and spend my quatloos before I’m downgraded…
I donate half my quatloo winnings to Lucia for maintaining the site.
Better luck next time, ggg! One of these days your ship will sail in, I’m sure of it!
Tarnation, just missed out again!
I wonder if I would have got closer if I had used daily NSIDC intstead of JAXA?
Bruce, please see my posts in the previous blog.
For some reason, the “official” mean and the mean calculated from daily figures, whether “final”, or “near real-time”, never seem to be exactly the same (checked to 2007), so the official figure seems unlikely to change.
Aren’t the NSIDC published ‘daily’ values actually 5-day means? If so, using that data would include four non-September days in the calculation.
Paul S,
If that is correct, does that mean the daily figure for Sept. 1st was actually for Aug. 30th to Sept.3rd, and that for Sept. 2nd. was actually for Aug. 31st to Sept. 4th, and so on until that for Sept. 30th was Sept. 28th to Oct. 2nd?
Even if that were the case, surely the official mean should still be the same as the average of the daily figures for Sept. 1 to 30th?
Unless they use the “actual” daily figures from Sept. 1st to 30th, which they don’t publish, which would seem odd.
Ray–
That might be what they do. They may think daily is “too noisy” to publish.
If you ask, true daily might be available at special request. At some point, everyone needs to decide what to make available real time. Providing things,making sure scripts are maintained and run and so on does require assigning a person to that task. When you want something, it always seems that ‘one little thing’ would cost nothing to provide. But the fact is, there are an infinite number of potentially useful individual little things. An agency is going to downselect and make available a finite number of things.
I am posting this here because the September UAH betting topic is closed. An interesting announcement from Roy Spencer:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/10/uah-global-temperature-update-for-september-2012-deg-c/#comments
I have had a reply from NSIDC regarding the difference between the official monthly average and the average calculated from the daily figures.
Basically this seems to be due to the fact that that for daily figures, a cell is included in the average if it is individually over 15% ice concentration.
In the case of the monthly figures, the average concentration for the cell over the month is calculated and the cell is included if that is over 15%.
Ray –
Thanks for tracking that down. I didn’t expect that.
Presumably this method is also used for NSIDC’s seasonal minimum, which at 3.41 M km^2, did not match the minimal daily value of 3.37. I wonder how long a period they use for the seasonal extremum. Perhaps 5 days? A week? We could bet on it!
The JAXA daily ice extent is currently increasing rapidly and is currently almost at the 2007 extent for the same date.
Expect the extent to go above 2007 within the next few days.
As expected, JAXA was above 2007 today!