NOTE: This webtool is a prototype. Please provide feedback to sidfex@polarprediction.net

About SIDFEx

The Sea Ice Drift Forecast Experiment (SIDFEx) is a community effort to collect and analyse Arctic sea-ice drift forecasts at lead times from days to a year. The forecasts are made with various methods for drifting sea-ice buoys and, ultimately, the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC), a year-long trans-Arctic drift campaign commencing in autumn 2019. SIDFEx is part of the World Meteorological Organization’s Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) and inspired by increasing research and operational needs to forecast future positions of assets drifting in Arctic sea ice. A systematic assessment of real drift forecasting capabilities is also foreseen to improve our physical understanding of sea ice and to help identifying and resolving model shortcomings.Since the launch of SIDFEx in 2017, eleven groups have started contributing drift forecasts for selected buoys of the International Arctic Buoy Program (IABP) on a regular basis. Most groups derive their 10-days toseasonal-range forecasts by means of diagnostic Lagrangian tracking based on prediction drift fields of coupled or uncoupled general circulation models. Some groups submit ensembles of drift trajectories instead of single (deterministic) trajectories, and several groups submit their forecasts in (near-)real-time.

To learn more about SIDFEx, please visit our website.

About this site

This site is a webtool that allows you to:

(1) Get an overview on the current set of SIDFEx targets, including their past movements and their status, and also an overview about recent observations of the MOSAiC drift (tab 'Observations').

(2) Explore the past forecasts and how they performed in comparison with obversations (tab 'Browse forecast archive').

(3) Retrieve (near-)real-time forecasts for the currently active SIDFEx targets, including targets related to the MOSAiC Drift.

This site is based on R-Shiny and the SIDFEx R-package.

Statistics

116970 forecasts
14 groups
24 methods
42 targets

Acknowledgement

The coordination and implementation of SIDFEx and this webtool has been led by the research group Seamless Sea Ice Prediction(SSIP), which is funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research BMBF).




Imprint

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Oh Buoy!
This is an overview of the current positions of the SIDFEx targets. Coloured lines show the trajectories of active buoys for the past twelve months, whereas grey lines depict targets that are not active anymore. The red circles mark the current (or latest known) positions. Click on image to enlarge.

The table below and lists all SIDFEx targets, their status, latest positions, and the time periods over which they have been considered as SIDFEx targets, based on the SIDFEx target table.

Overview

Zoom to MOSAiC

Here you can explore the past SIDFEx forecasts and how they performed in comparison with observations. Be aware that the evaluation and plotting can take relatively long if you select a large set of forecasts simultaneously. Also note that speed-angle and error plot are not available for fixed targets (TargetIDs starting with 'FIXED...'). Furthermore, in order to make forecasts of different systems distinguishable, coloring of the trajectories will automatically switch from a (continuous) lead time to a (categorical) forecast system colorbar. The asterisk in the main plot marks the latest known position of a target, the grey lines represent at least 90 days of observational data (or the earliest chosen forecast).

to
Here you can retrieve (near-)real-time forecasts for the currently active SIDFEx targets, including targets related to the MOSAiC Drift. Select a target, a target time (i.e. a time for which you want to get a drift forecast) and choose whether you want to shift and rotate the forecast trajectory to the latest known observed position (highly recommended for „operational“ use). Details for a particular forecast system/method can be obtained by clicking on one of the table rows; plots of the corresponding trajectories as well as time series of longitude and latitude appear below the table. The default target time is (now + 24h). Note that the plots might need a few seconds to appear for larger ensembles or target times far into the future.