The taxpayer-funded, billion-dollar black holes known as 'climate models' have been unable to predict squat when it comes to future climate conditions - as with global temperatures, the same holds true for the newer IPCC models predicting Antarctic sea ice extent.....it's the 'same old, same old'
(click on image to enlarge, image source)
Untold resources have been spent by government bureaucrats in an attempt to improve the dismal performance of the CMIP3 computer climate models. After billions being spent on these IPCC CMIP-class of models one would expect that they would have a confirmed capability to accurately predict Antarctic sea ice reality.
At least that's what 5 climate scientists expected. Wrong.
"The authors write that "Phase 5 of CMIP (CMIP5) will provide the model output that will form the basis of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]," and they therefore thought it important to determine how well these models represent reality...examined "the annual cycle and trends in Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) for 18 models used in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project that were run with historical forcing for the 1850s to 2005."...report that (1) "the majority of models have too small of an SIE at the minimum in February," that (2) "several of the models have less than two-thirds of the observed SIE at the September maximum," that (3) "in contrast to the satellite data, which exhibit a slight increase in SIE, the mean SIE of the models over 1979-2005 shows a decrease in each month," that (4) "the models have very large differences in SIE over 1860-2005," and that (5) "the negative SIE trends in most of the model runs over 1979-2005 are a continuation of an earlier decline, suggesting that the processes responsible for the observed increase over the last 30 years are not being simulated correctly." [John Turner, Thomas Bracegirdle, Tony Phillips, Gareth Marshall, Scott Hosking 2013: Journal of Climate]
Additional climate charts.