We present a robust assessment of the impact of sea ice initialization from reconstructions of the real state on the sea ice and atmosphere prediction skill. We ran two ensemble seasonal prediction experiments from 1979 to 2012 : one using realistic sea ice initial conditions and another where sea ice is initialized from a climatology, with two forecast systems. During the melting season in the Arctic Ocean, sea ice forecasts become skilful with sea ice initialization until 3–5 months ahead, thanks to the memory held by sea ice thickness. During the freezing season in both the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, sea ice forecasts are skilful for 7 and 2 months, respectively, with negligible differences between the two experiments, the memory being held by the ocean heat content. A weak impact on the atmosphere prediction skill is obtained.

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