For the past 13 years I have kept track of the dates of freezing and thawing
for the small New Hampshire lake on which I live. Thawing is defined as the date the main part of the lake is essentially completely free of ice, which just occurred Sunday, 4/13/2008. Freezing is defined as the date on which the lake freezes over and stays that way for the duration of the winter. This ignores those times when it freezes over and then opens up again.

This now gives us a duration in number of days that the lake is open for
boating (again, ignoring the temporary freeze-overs.) The number of days
varies rather randomly from year to year, and inspection does not show a
pattern. However, there is a statistical method for determining a trend
known as least squares regression analysis. Having practiced my math by doing income taxes, I decided to do this calculation for the years from 1995 through 2007. It shows that the number of open days is decreasing by 1/3 day per year.

If this trend continues, it means that by the year 2776 the lake will be
frozen over all year long. Isn’t trend analysis marvelous?

Although their daily images are AMSR-E and are therefore of very good quality. As they explain their comparison archive is from SSMI and the recent data from that satellite is unreliable.

Steve Keohane (21:24:02) :

As you’ve been told before the apparent encroachment of the snow on the sea ice in the pictures doesn’t effect the value they produce for area. That depends on the mask file (areagrid.dat if I recall correctly), only if that file is changed would there be any change in the potential sea area, painting an image pixel white doesn’t do that.

> Think I’ve worked why CT does not want you to be able to compare current NH ice
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png with previous (see 1980) what a joke!

You can compare images if you edit the URL right. The reason why they disabled the form from generating URLs for 2009 images is as they state – the failing SSMI sensor is generating very poor quality data. I think Cryosphere is only two people big (at least, two scientists), and don’t have time to switch to AMSR-E.

If you want to compare 1980 Apr 24 with 2009 Apr 24, see http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=24&fy=1980&sm=04&sd=24&sy=2009

See my last comment at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/20/sea-ice-sensor-degradation-hits-cryosphere-today/ for a few more details.

Something is rotten in Norway – 500,000 sq-km of sea ice disappears overnight

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/13/something-is-rotten-in-norway-500000-sq-km-of-sea-ice-disappears-overnight/

So now we have governments taxing the hell out of us to prevent climate change. The thing that concerns me is is how do they know that the present climate is the best one ever, and that any change is disastrous.

Unlikely as not much is happening at present.

http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/
http://www.seablogger.com/?cat=22

It seems it is as vg (20:38:09) : noted. The AMSR-E graph looks like it’s still being “adjusted” unlike NORSEX and nsidc.org/data, so far!!

May Day! May Day!”

Is there going to be a crash in to the 1979–2000 average?

It seems a consistent pattern, when the data doesn’t look “correct” (i.e. too cold, too much ice, etc.) AGWers search until some corrective factor is found and applied. But if the data agrees with expectation there is no need to seek corrective measures, the data is obviously correct.

However, it appears that I should be more concerned with the area right around my Pendleton house! brrrrrrr. My hands, feet and butt are COLD!!!!!! Hey, I could do that pop bottle experiment on my front porch tonight!

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/

Oh! an OT semantics discussion about heat!

My original response was directed at Geo who said “Heat rises” which we all know (or should know) is not true. Heat flows from hot to cold (good ol’ thermodynamics). At any rate, heat is BOTH a noun and a verb, so you are wrong in your response. Sorry.

You can heat (verb: to make warm or hot) something up by adding heat (noun: added energy that causes substances to rise in temperature, fuse, evaporate, expand, or undergo any of various other related changes, that flows to a body by contact with or radiation from bodies at higher temperatures, and that can be produced in a body (as by compression)).

And yes, water is most dense at 4 C, that’s why lakes don’t freeze in the winter (good for the fish).