You may recall that I posted about how the National Snow and Ice Data Center has an issue with the DMSP satellite sensor channel used to detect sea ice. Cryosphere Today is a few days behind in update compared to NSIDC, and here is what their imagery now looks like before and after:
Above: Arctic “Insta-melt” Click for a larger image
Here is the link to reproduce the image above.
Larger “holes” are likely to open up in the arctic sea in the next couple of days as the sensor further degrades.
Here is what CT has to say as a caveat for the side by side images:
February 17, 2009 – The SSMI sensor seems to be acting up and dropping data swaths from time to time in recent days. Missing swaths will appear on these images as a missing data in the southern latitudes. If this persists for more than a few weeks, we will start to fill in these missing data swaths with the ice concentration from the previous day. Note – these missing swaths do not affect the timeseries or any other plots on the Cryosphere Today as they are comprised of moving averages of at least three days.
No mention of the issue on CT’s main page though. They are still commenting on George Will. They seem a bit out of touch on the sensor issue.
h/t to Garrett
UPDATE: 11:30PM 2/20 CT has removed the comments about George Will from the main page, but still no mention there of the satellite outage nor are they displaying imagery on the main page from 2/20/09 The most recent is 02/19/09. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings.
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By their posted comments I would say that NSIDC has a few sensitive technicians at work. Seems as though they are protecting the “Holy Scroll”
if you look at the two images, it would appear to me that they are having other issues as well. there appears to be a substantial growth of ice between greenland and the northern coast of Canada above Labrador. I know that they got hit by a storm last night, that it seem a bit excessive. I wonder if this is part of the same problem.
AL Gore says sea ice will disappear in 5 years. Now we know how!
It is imperative that this data is corrected and maintained accurately. So much media attention is paid to melting sea ice. This is one of the major emotional drivers that sway many in the public over to the Anthropo Global Warming camp. It’s an easy one for the media to grab. Honest and expedient sea ice information is not only suggested…it is REQUIRED.
What stinks about this is that the other sensors don’t match the historic data as well for trend. So our future trend will be further affected by rematching the data.
this is getting hilarious…..still “not news?”
Wow, that’s a big butterfly! Is that part of the chaos theory?
This reminds me of the necklace that showed up in December.
Very odd, how can they not know there’s a serious problem by now? Ah
well, they don’t do a good job of reading their Email, I sent them
a couple notes about problems with their Arctic map (typos in the
HTML for the Canadian Archipelago) and never got an aknowledgement.
There may be only two people at Cryosphere, Walsh and Chapman.
At least Dr. Meier reads and returns Anthony’s mail.
When word of this “degradation” broke, thanks to WUWT, I have been shaking my head over the explanations regarding the reasons to continue flawed processes that publish bad data. Someone has their pants pulled down and its time for them to slide on the ice to awaken to the reality.
Surely this is nonsense. If they are really moving averages and frequent data dropouts are misread as missing ice then obviously the results ARE affected.
The only way they could be unaffected are if the dropouts are detected as abnormal missing data or if there are very infrequent dropouts over very many daily swaths.
CT still haven’t fixed their misleading and arguably deceptive labelling of NH charts prominently displayed at the top of the page, as if they were global data.
Eg, ‘recent ice area’ and ‘seasonal sea ice’ are in fact NH only.
SH charts, hidden away at the bottom of the page, are correctly labelled.
The maps do not look at all reliable. Over a couple of days, gaps appear and vanish over Hudson Bay and Labrador – as well as other regions.
And yes, the reference to George Will does rather suggest “Cryosphere Today” needs to reconsider its priorities – if it wishes to be taken seriously as a source of information.
OT – FYI, Anthony, a front-page (online version) from LA Times today, on Arctic permafrost melting releasing vast quantities of methane. Seems to have some hyperbole and untruths.
Link
The more you look at the two images, the more (major) differences you can find. Note the northern coast of Japan, on the 20th, it’s covered, on the 19th, not a lick of ice. Same with the Eastern tip of North America. And the Berring Sea, Hudson Bay, and a half dozen other places. With this many drop-outs, unless you can show that there’s no false positives, the data is, more-or-less, useless. Clearly we have false negatives, in which case you can say that you have a minimum amount… but we can’t possibly know what the maximum is in this case.
Note that some of these aren’t small differences, I’d imagine the Asia/Pacific coast difference has to represent at least a 6 digit square kilometer patch.
Why do they continue posting daily ice images when they are clearly compromised by data loss? I would have thought they would have pulled these pictures down until the problem is rectified (a whole new satellite?).
Neil Crafter is right. Providing clearly inaccurate information to the public makes no sense.
Apologies Anthony, I know you don’t like off topics, but it looks like the Chaiten volcano in Chile has erupted, prompting evacuations. Reports suggest ash has been blown 2 miles into the air.
What about SH?
Drudge has this up.
The sensors can simply not be trusted. The only way to tell
when they started to degrade, is to look for a jump in the
calibration bias tables. They should have these tables back
to pre launch tests. Normal variations should be consistent.
Degradation over time is normal, jumps are not.
Yes it does, keeping the hoax alive.
The ice is melting.
Why don’t we swamp them with mail?
What?? Hyperbole in a news article?? What is this world coming to????
😉
Compare Cryo above to
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_ncepice.html
Unless one or the other is mixing satellite data, ssm/i data is used for both. Discrepancy the result of different algorithms?
Funny name, algorithm. Many people probably do not really know what that means. Literally tens of thousands of lines of code, computer routines and subroutines all processing data input from satellite to get the finished result. Some of this stuff can be found online, it’s quite a mess.
OK, I’ve got a rant against Cryosphere Today.
From their main page:
“February 15, 2009
In an opinion piece by George Will published on February 15, 2009 in the Washington Post, George Will states “According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”
We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.
It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts. ”
Thing is, the article was written January 1st, not Feb 15th, and Mr Will was comparing the END OF 2008 with the END OF 1979. Not Feb 15th of each year (which was still a month and a half away from happening when he wrote it).
Why did Cryophere Today blatantly misrepresent what the author was writing about?
Those guys really piss me off…
The preceding paragraph says “according to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center…”
Are those guys so cross they can’t read?
That pic of the 19th
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=02&fd=19&fy=2009&sm=02&sd=19&sy=2009
doesn’t match this
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.some.000.png
I guess “igloo” doesn’t talk to “arctic” (in the urls).