A research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration admits this winter's ice cap prediction on the Great Lakes was completely wrong.
Jia Wang, Ph.D. an ice climatologist, tells Blackburn News there was a technical problem with the ice coverage models and improvements are coming.
"This year, our projected ice cover is way higher than the reality, and the model needs to be improved," Wang said. "The statistical model is able to project ice cover close to climatology, but not very well for the extreme cases, in particular the low ice cover."
He added he has a plan to improve the model using a predictor of accumulative freezing degree days when NOAA progressively projects ice cover from December into February. Wang said the models are usually stable and blames warmer temperatures for the "terrible projections." He said getting it "100 per cent wrong" hasn't happened before and it's a lesson learned.
The American scientific agency within the Department of Commerce showed the ice cover on Lake Erie is only expected to reach less than 20 per cent in early March. The total Great Lakes ice cover is 7.9 per cent as of March 10, 2020 compared to 65.1 per cent the same day a year ago.
In early January 2020, NOAA predicted the Great Lakes ice cap to reach 80 per cent this winter then changed it to 67-74 per cent in early February.
NOAA reports this winter was the 6th warmest on record in the U.S.