Bad news from NSIDC

Hopefully some of the Catlin crew will be there to talk about their experiences with the -40 degree Arctic springtime heat.

NSDIC — Now into cooking ice. What’s next, cooking cities …
Need new source of real and accurate data, or we need to do our own ice from raw satellite data software.

The last phrase of CATHERINE BRAHIC’s column is “watch this space…”
Well, I am still watching..
While trying to find if she did post an update (I could not find any) I came across this: (anti-skeptic “facts”)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462-climate-change-a-guide-for-the-perplexed.html

It is clear that he was talking of the North Pole itself, not the Arctic Ice Cap in its entirety:

“There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole at the moment,” says Serreze. “This raises the spectre – the possibility that you could become ice free at the North Pole this year.”
Despite its news value in the media, the North Pole being ice free is not in itself significant. To scientists, Serreze points out, “this is just another point on the globe”.

So this:

As we know, that didn’t even come close to being true. Summer 2008 had more arctic ice than summer 2007, and summer 2007 was not “ice free” by any measure.

Has no relation to his actual comment.
Nor did he “forecast” an ice-free North Pole. A “possibility” is not a certainty.
REPLY: Bird man, you know nothing about handling the media, what matters is the public perception and headlines, like the one at ABC for which he is directly responsible. The fact that he did NOTHING, NOT ONE THING, to mitigate the error he started in the press, speaks volumes. Spin it however you want, but he did nothing to correct it. A scientist of character would act to correct the misconception he started. Yet here it is, a year later, and the ABC story is still up, unchanged.
And I should add this comment from Serreze “this is just another point on the globe”. What absolute tripe. It is the only point he is interested and the focus of the story itself.
I saw Serreze recently ona History channel special and he repeated the same sorts of propaganda in his interview. He knows EXACTLY what he is doing.
– Anthony

Without intending to insult any person wearing a beard, but Dr. Serreze looks a bit like Santa. You believe in Santa or not.
NSIDC without a shimmer of a doubt is a warmist platform, shame on them.

Why do I have this bad feeling that the new movie “Frozen”, will be effective propaganda? “Cold Matters”… that’s why the 2007 ice melt will be prominently featured as Serreze drones on about our burning, dying planet, as an impressive heartwrenching score makes even the most hard-hearted shed a tear. The polar bears will starve and drown on cue as biologists describe the desperate animals that have even had to resort to cannibalism. We will fly closely over miles upon miles of dry, cracked steaming lakebeds. The sea level rises will be so much better handled than the simple graphics used by AIT. Every scenario that has been credibly discounted and disproven over and over will once again be brought back from the dead. Kilimanjaro is just too good, too cinematic NOT to use. The Hockeystick Graph will be new and improved and even scarier. As the spaghetti lines of the graph move slowly from left to right around the huge sphere, the violins, the timpani, the trumpets will crescendo along with the upturn to our present day. The ocean will boil and churn and acidify before our very eyes. There will even be footage of the tsunami along with the colorful global sea level images. Hurricane Katrina will play a major role as one of the villains of this fraudulent main feature. Of course, the real criminal in this farce is you and me and a way of life that has brought even more life and wealth into this world, because we are the spreaders of the filthy CO2 that has brought our beautiful planet to within a hairsbreadth of destruction. And to prove our culpability the Mauna Loa data along with those beautiful colorful moving images from the AIRS team will put the nail in our coffin…
Don’t worry if you can’t afford a ticket, it’s free if you just register to vote.
Almost forgot… you also get your choice of an action figure made of soap. Gore, Hansen, or Mann… which dope on a rope will YOU choose??

It seems that in 1958 the submarine USS Skate became the first vessel to surface at the Pole. How thin would the ice have to be to allow a submarine to break through?

The fact that he did NOTHING, NOT ONE THING, to mitigate the error he started in the press, speaks volumes.

Where is the error in his statement that there was a possibility of the north pole being ice free last summer?
Where was the error in the headline that said exactly the same thing?
What is there to correct?
REPLY: Oh puhleeeze. Where is the result of the headline “North pole could be ice free in 2008”? Show me that result, you can’t because it didn’t happen. You are defending scaremongering, and it shows that you have no scruples. What next, defending Waxman? Serreze did nothing; zero, zilch, nada, he let the error he started live on in headlines worldwide. If I had made a statement in error that the media picked up you’d be all over me to fix it, retract it, deny it, whatever, Serreze gets a free pass…because you (and your friends) have no scruples. – Anthony

I just got up from taking a nap to see this—am I still sleeping and having a surreal nightmare??

from 1962.
Seadragon (SSN-584), foreground, and her sister Skate (SSN-578) during a rendezvous at the North Pole in August 1962. Note the men on the ice beyond the submarines.
Seems to me that it isn’t all that unusual to have no ice at the pole.

This isn’t a nightmare, its a comedy. These people are fast becoming late night jokes. Eventually, comedians will pick up on the discrepancy between warnings and reality. They will start telling jokes about PMS and global warming, global warming and “natural enhancement”, etc. The more science is taken out of the realm of journals and into the media, the more its underbelly (and there is and has been one since science was first practiced) will be known to Joe Schmo and laughed at.

Sorry a bit OT, but I eagerly want to see a graph showing the temporal evolution of man-made CO2 emission, from late 19th century up to as more recent year as possible (e.g., ~2007). This is because I am now beginning to doubt the “reality” of the astonishingly smooth, monotonous increase in Mauna Loa CO2 concentration, as someone pointed out in the Sir Monckton thread.
Could somebody help me in this? Thanks in advance.

Maybe a bit of good news coming from our British brethren. In a thread earlier today on WUWT I highlighted an editorial on solar activity in Sunday’s The Independent that partook in some “denier bashing”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/felipe-fernandezarmesto-its-been-a-long-cold-lonely-winter-but-here-comes-the-sun-and-yes-its-all-right-1674263.html
However, printing this editorial might have been a bit of CYA (Cover Your Ass) by The Independent in preparation for this article in Monday’s Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-missing-sunspots-is-this-the-big-chill-1674630.html
This is one of the most factual assessments of recent solar activity that I have seen in the main stream media to date. Cheers to Dr. David Whitehouse for writing a balanced piece on solar activity and to The Independent for printing it. Now if we could just get the Economist and BBC to start reporting the facts, we might be able to have genuine informed debate with our friends on the other side of the puddle.

“dhogaza (16:47:07) : Where is the error in his statement that there was a possibility of the north pole being ice free last summer?”
There’s a possibility the moon could start heading toward earth and crush the United States. There’s a possibility I could marry Halle Berry. There’s a possibility people will start wearing shoes on their hands. So what’s wrong with me saying these dhogaza? Where’s the error?

My Father, life long Democrat can only shake his head at what is going on now with Gore, Pelosi, Obama, Biden, Kerry and others.
Wow, 100 ppm CO2 is going to destory the planet? Give me a break, only fools would buy into that non-sense. It’s all about taxes and more taxes.
The Government better be finding out how to grow crops in cold climate. If the sun does not wake up soon, it’s going to be very cold soon.

crosspatch (17:14:11) :
HEADLINE :
“Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea”
Recent news? No
New York Times, February 20, 1969. From article :
“In fact Dr. Budyko (Dr,. Mikhail I. Budyko) argues that an ice-free Arctic Ocean is the “normal” situation.”

I am in MD. I can probably attend. Let me know if you have found anyone else. If not, I will attend…

Does snyone know why the JAXA NH Sea Ice extent is abot the same distance from the 1979-2007 average as NSIDC NH Sea Ice extent is from the 1979-2000 average?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html

“US government tax receipts down 27% in March.
Who is going to pay to perpetuate this myth?“…
Well if the SUPREME GORON has his way all us Bernie Madoff types will have to even give up more of our earnings to finance that boondoggle…

jack mosevich (16:06:11) :
The last phrase of CATHERINE BRAHIC’s column is “watch this space…”
Well, I am still watching..
While trying to find if she did post an update (I could not find any) I came across this: (anti-skeptic “facts”)

Jack, I particularly like her piece entitled “Climate change: A guide for the perplexed “ where she states “Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds could slow the warming or speed it up.”
Could slow or speed up warming? Sounds to me like she should first do a little reading of her own before attempting to write such a guide, perhaps become a little less perplexed herself?

“I am still waiting for David Barber, of the Univeristy of Manitoba, to respond to my $1000 challenge. He predicted that the arctic will be ice free by the summer of 2015. I proposed a wager. I am still waiting.”
I challenged one of them to a wager about a year ago. He ducked. These folks remind me of the alleged psychics whom James Randi is always trying to debunk:
(1) They are great at predicting stuff after it’s happened.
(2) The predictions they do make are chock full of “could” “might” and other weasel words.
(3) They resist the opportunity to put their claims to an actual controlled, objective test.
(4) They get very defensive and angry when confronted by legitimate skepticism.

All Points Alert: the naif, dhogaza, is missing from institutional care at ‘The Closed Mind’. His caregiver, the firm, silent and patient Tamino worries that he can’t survive outside the soothing echo chambered feedback of that censored environment. Anyone with any knowledge of his whereabouts, please contact authorities.
======================================

New York Times, February 20, 1969. From article :
“In fact Dr. Budyko (Dr,. Mikhail I. Budyko) argues that an ice-free Arctic Ocean is the “normal” situation.”

And that is a true statement. Another fact the warmist scaremongers ignore. The fact that the planet has been ice-free for most of its existence doesn’t register with them because — cue the drum roll — “it’s an inconvenient truth!”
George Carlin put it best. “The planet is fine! The people are [messed up].” (pre-sanitized for a family-friendly blog)

Mike Bryant (18:20:42) :
I may have misunderstood your question.

Anthony,
Apparently, Serreze is traveling around giving this seminar at various locations:
http://www.ic3.uwaterloo.ca/seminars/2009/serreze_flyer.pdf
Here’s the abstract:
Cranking Up the Arctic Heat
“The concept of Arctic amplification is that rises in surface air temperature in response to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will be larger in the Arctic compared to the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. Model‐projected Arctic amplification is focused over the Arctic Ocean. As the climate warms, the summer melt season lengthens and intensifies, leading to less sea
ice at summer’s end. Summertime absorption of solar energy in expanding open water areas increases the sensible heat content of the ocean. Ice formation in autumn and winter, important for insulating the warm ocean from the cooling atmosphere is delayed. This promotes enhanced upward
heat fluxes, seen as strong warming at the surface and in the lower troposphere. Based on the satellite‐derived sea ice record and other data sources, Arctic amplification associated with declining ice extent has emerged in the past decade, and is growing in strength. The extreme Arctic warmth of
autumn 2007 and 2008 serves as an exclamation point on this trend. Anticipated impacts of continued Arctic amplification include alterations in patterns of atmospheric circulation and precipitation both within and beyond the Arctic, and enhanced warming of Arctic and subarctic land areas that may hasten carbon cycle feedbacks associated with thawing permafrost.”
It is interesting that his abstract states:
“Ice formation in autumn and winter, important for insulating the warm ocean from the cooling atmosphere is delayed. ”
That’s not what happened last year!! In fact, I suspect he will avoid talking about 2008 – 2009 altogether…

Oh – and, apparently, Serreze is “a leading expert on climate change” and (drumroll please) one of *** Al Gore’s *** key environmental advisors!
http://en.sourcews.com/top-climate-change-expert-gore-adviser
“One of North America’s leading experts on climate change, Mark Serreze, will give a public talk on the sharp loss of Arctic sea ice during a visit next week at the University of Waterloo. One of Al Gore’s key environmental advisers, Serreze is the senior research scientist and Arctic specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, based at the University of Colorado in Boulder. His talk, entitled Cranking up the Arctic Heat, takes place Wednesday …”

Just Want Truth…
Since Arctic Roos JAXA, includes 2001-2007 in their average plot, it seems that their 2009 plot would be closer to average than NSIDC appears to be to the average which does NOT include 2001-2007, which had lower summer averages…
Thanks,
Mike

If the cryosphere is so “directly observable” then why is Caitlin trying to collect data, and why can’t the researchers agree on what is happening around the poles?

A good 1958 newsreel video of the USS Skate. Wherever they surfaced and pushed ice off the sub in the video looks to be not more than a couple feet thick. The report claims they surfaced 10 times.
http://www.icue.com/portal/site/iCue/chapter/?cuecard=41751
And from JohnDaly:
“the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick. […] On both trips we were able to find open water. We were not able to surface through ice thicker than 3 feet.”
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm

BTW, tonight’s Bloomberg reports:
Forest Fires Mostly Overlooked by Climate Modelers (Update1)
By Jeremy van Loon
April 24 (Bloomberg) — Forest fires worsen global warming and make it harder for societies to adapt to drought and higher temperatures, scientists said.
Trees and brush set ablaze, by accident or through slash- and-burn farming in the tropics, fuel hotter weather, said Jennifer Balch, a researcher at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. That’s because smoke adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
“We don’t think about fire correctly,” Balch said. “It’s very intrinsic to the planet.” …
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=avUxLQ0scEwA&refer=home

Let me add, that if forest fires “worsen global warming”, then why have we entered a cooling period?

theBuckWheat (20:32:27) :
Let me add, that if forest fires “worsen global warming”, then why have we entered a cooling period?
Because subsurface materials are absorbing-storing less heat now than in 1998 due to the weakening of solar irradiance.

Man, that explains why I always felt Walt Meier was walking on eggs when speaking out to the media and posting here… I always felt some discomfort in his interventions. I posted this thought a while back when the NSIDC sensor failed. I did not know then that Mark Serreze would succeed him but I recall writing that “Serreze must be breathing on his neck”… Yes alarmism pays and perhaps when retired Meier might come clean.

John 20:39:50
The main reason I so confidently say we are cooling is because of the PDO. We warmed from around 1910 to around 1940, cooled from around 1940 to around 1970, then warmed ’til just after the turn of the century. If you watch that curve, it peaked about 2003-2005, and has now turned down. Sure there will be ups and downs, but the trend for at least 20 more years will be cooling. Of course, I’m not 100% sure.
==========================================

John (20:39:50) :
Maybe the cold hasn’t reached your latitude yet.
For some of us, it’s already here, and it’s been here 3 years and still continues to cool.
Maybe you are far enough towards the equator that it will never reach you.

crosspatch (17:14:11) :
It isn’t unusual to have ice-free patches up there. It’s floating.
The only thing is that there aren’t enough of us around who remember those things. I was just a kid at the time, but for me it was right up there with Sputnik, Mercury & Gemini. How could I possibly forget?
The rendezvous at the North Pole in 1962 would make a fantastic billboard.
Anti-buffoonery at it’s simplest.

dhogaza (16:10:44) :
It is clear that he was talking of the North Pole itself, not the Arctic Ice Cap in its entirety:
“There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole at the moment,” says Serreze. “This raises the spectre – the possibility that you could become ice free at the North Pole this year.”
Despite its news value in the media, the North Pole being ice free is not in itself significant. To scientists, Serreze points out, “this is just another point on the globe”.
That’s funny, since the North Pole is just a point, 0 square feet. If Serreze meant what you claim, it was the ramblings of an alarmist buffoon.

Watts, “The fact that he did NOTHING, NOT ONE THING, to mitigate the error he started in the press, speaks volumes”.
This is a salient point.
Another premier example of this problem was when Dr. Jane Lubchenco (new head of NOAA) wrote a report last year that suggested a connection between AGW and ocean dead zones.
In her report, her research group cautioned they could not establish the extent of the link, if any, to climate change.
Her reported suggestion of a link circled the globe and Lubchenco did NOTHING, NOT ONE THING, to mitigate the error she started in the press.
And as the ultimate demonstration of how these “errors” become known facts,
I posted the Lubchenco story to CA last week. One of the regular contributors responded that the link between ocean dead zones and AGW had been established. So there was CA regulars convinced the link had been.
They didn’t read any peer reviewed, published research making the link because there is no such thing.
And the punch line is Gavin let that error ride on his “science” blog CA.
On that same thread there is at least a half a dozen equally in error claims and not one of them did Gavin correct.
In fact I have never seen Gavin correct any baseless claim.
Isn’t it interesting that Gavin only scrutinizes and critiques comments and claims that are from the skeptic’s side while allowing every bizarre claim from warmers?
Pretty darn scientific.
Then to exacerbate the matter, after responses make all those crazy baseless claims he blocks rebuttal.
Over and over again academia send reports into the media

I for one am getting tired of the word games. Melting at the pole, define pole. Define melting. Define ice free… Oh that not what he meant. GEEEEEEEZEEE!!!!! Is it me or whenever an argument fails due to lack of evidence the supporters of said argument fall into the define the word game.
Well guess what. The time for that has come and gone. No more shades of grey crap. Like Ive told all my state reps and the stinkin governor too. You are either on the right side, or you are against us. If you’re against us. Don’t expect reelection. Even non action is a choice. Its about time to hold peoples political feet to the fire. If you want this Co2 crap to stop, make your representives stop it. They may be too gullible to understand the science but they certainly understand job security.

Edit – just realised that
Hathaway only said the first sentence not the remainder

carlbrannen (18:41:58) : The worst example of this was when substantial percentages of the German population blamed the banks busted in the Great Depression, the starvation blockade after the end of WW1, the threat of societal collapse due to Communism, the hyperinflation of the 1920s, and the unemployment of the 1930s, all on the Jews.
This is the real danger behind. Hope this time the same good people is not chosen in the end to be blamed, because all this nonsense is reaching fantastic levels.

Crosspatch – re, pre-Colombian fire events in North America:
I believe that fire would have been common, but I think that extremely large fires (ie, covering hundreds of miles) would have been extremely rare.
Reason: without modern fire control efforts, every fire that started would have used up whatever fuel was available to burn, thus constantly depleting that available fuel. The land would *never* be in a condition where decades of dry fuel had built up on the ground, which has been the case in most of the great western fires in recent decades. If the available fuel is minimal (not living trees, but dead) then the burn from each individual fire will be quite limited – dying out as soon as it ran into a nearby burn scar.
There would have been far, far more small fires – in fact, during dry months they would be an almost constant occurence – but no great, hundred mile long fires.

Oldjim, yes, the article is written by Dr David Whitehouse, a skeptic. what is remarkable is that the Independent (normally on the extreme hysteria end of the climate spectrum) chose to publish it.
By the way it wasnt just Serreze who said the arctic would be ice-free in 2008. Somewhere on Andy Revkin’s blog he talked about a team of “experts” who predicted this would happen.

Flanagan (05:19:03) :
“A retraction about what, exactly? About stating that north pole COULD be ice free? I really don’t see the problem here.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004065899_webarctic11.html
Published December 11, 2007
‘The Arctic is screaming’ — summer sea ice could be gone in five years
“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.
—
This, my friends, is the scientific tone adopted by the incoming *** director *** of the NSIDC (and currently one of Al Gore’s top climate advisors)! What more can I or anyone say? This statement (and the rhetoric surrounding it, as established in the linked article) speaks for itself.
We can thus be assured that the materials and data products provided by NSIDC will not be influenced by anyone’s political or personal views on AGW…

Adolfo 05:56:11
Don’t worry, this time we are going Blame Canada.
================================

It turns out that the Arctic really WAS screaming back in 2007. An audio tape was recently released in which it screamed, “WOW, IT’S GREAT TO GET OUT FROM UNDER ALL THIS ICE!!!”
Recently the Arctic was quoted as saying, “Well man, when I screamed back in 2007 it had been awhile, now, I’ve kinda chilled and I really don’t mind another 30 or 40 years of ice…”

Oldjim: In the article you cited there is the following the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree
How unusual is this?

rephelan (00:03:34) :
hereticfringe (20:14:33) :
Yes, now that you mention it, I’ve been trying all day to access the site and couldn’t. I thought maybe I was just incompetent. Oddly enough you can access the CIRES pages just fine, but when you click on the NSIDC links, you can’t get there from there. Or anywhere. Earlier I was finding I could not get into NASA or JPL links cited on another, archived, WUWT thread. WUWT? Maybe some of our readers might want to check out NASA, NOAA or JPL threads from some old threads and see if they are still active.

Yes the NSIDC pages were unavailable through most of yesterday. Having worked in large data centers I doubt it is anything to worry about. All large data centers go through patch cycles where they do up grades, and repairs, and install necessary security and fix patches for the operating systems and key applications. In American that is almost always done very late in the evening on Saturday night and allowed to run into Sunday if they have problems.
Every once in a while patch changes go bad and totally muck up the system and they need to rebuild data bases and sort out what went wrong and sometimes back out the change to get things working again. The majority of changes I have dealt with take about a 4 hour window, with a few requiring 6-12 and a small number required a “scheduled” down time of over 12 hours.
Since the ice links are running this morning I would be inclined to think they had a long running patch/change cycle last night , and perhaps some large upgrade that required the data bases to be pulled down for a while. That typically requires them to write a full backup (can take hours) then pull the data bases down and do the changes, then bring everything back up and test. If the tests fail, they would need to back out the changes and restore the backed up data bases and plan a new maintenance cycle at some later date.
Looks like everything is up right now as I can get to links.
Larry

Keith Minto (22:32:09) :
theBuckWheat (20:27.03), I read something similar cobbled together by the Australian ABC http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/24/2550891.htm?site=science&topic=enviro
This article seemed so full of inconsistencies that it really needed its own segment on WUWT.
For example 1. “marked reduction in forest fires since 1870 have increased fire loads”- yes ,but wouldn’t new fires just release carbon already stored by this reduction in forest fires?
2.”deforestation fires result in 20% of human caused CO2 emissions”.-are they ALL caused by humans?
3.”smoke plumes inhibit convection”-have you ever seen or flown through Pyrocumulous clouds?…..I have, descending into Canberra from Melbourne at the start of the 2003 bush fires when 500 homes and many lives were lost.
It was a rough descent with ascending smoky cloud peaks to 25k ft.,certainly no lack of convection there.
It just went on and on, it is a shame that articles like this are presented without judgement”.
Keith Minto,
This is what they call AGW/Climate Change Alarmism.
It’s a combination of semi science, manipulation and fraud combined with biased journalism.
Both scientists and journalists involved have sold their scientific hence journalistic integrity in support of a very dirty political scheme.
The sinister part of this scheme is that many of the alarmists involved really believe they are doing “the right thing saving the World” but in realty they help an Authoritarian Elite into power and it’s populations in “Green Shackles”.
The question I often ask myself when dealing with those kind of people is the following.
You have studied, you have acquired a degree, but…do you have any common sense?
The World is not suffering from Runaway Global Warming, the world is suffering from
Runaway Global Stupidity!

Today (4/27/09), the NSIDC arctic sea ice extent appears to be tracking very close to the 1979-2000 average. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png I didn’t check it over the weekend, so I didn’t see the adjustment, but right now it seems to be closer to the benchmark than it’s been for a while. And the sun continues to sleep, it looks so comfortable (I don’t blame Sol for snoozing, I certainly felt like sleeping in today.) Also, Could the massive volcanic eruptions in alaska and the accompanying natural aerosols be slowing the melt?

John H.- 55 (09:59:24) :
“Does anyone save NSIDC daily Arctic sea ice extent graphs?
Because the last two days I saw something peculiar.”
I saw it too. I looked at NSIDC’s Arctic Sea Ice Extent Graph on Thursday eve and it looked like we were on an imminent collision course with the 1979 – 2000 average and I looked again on Saturday early AM and it appeared that we were tracking at a decent distance below and parallel to the 1979 – 2000 average. The current graph at http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png seems to have arrived around the midpoint of my two observations. I understand that there are data corrections occurring on a regular basis and IARC-JAXA graphs showed a reasonable drop in the last few days http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png, but the change I saw on NSIDC seemed to be a longer term shift in the essence of their graph.
Perhaps Dr. Walt Meier can let us know if there has been a significant revision to their data set, adjustment to their reporting methodology, or otherwise?

Mike Bryant (20:03:39) :
It could be that JAXA being more modern is more accurate. That could account for some of the differnce you are talking about. It could also be that when 2001 – 2007 is averaged in there isn’t a big difference from when it is not added in– I haven’t taken the time to do the math on it, sorry.
But it still could be that I misunderstood your question.

“Flanagan (05:19:03) : I really don’t see the problem here.”
It’s anything goes here on the internet, hey Flanagan!

Re: Bill Illis (16:42:23) :
“I think you can actually download the movie here. Would take more than a couple of hours to download though given the different options are 1.3 – 1.9 Gig files.”
I downloaded the Hi Quality (1.867GB) file. It took about 27 minutes at about 850kb/s on my PC. The video clip is 11.57 minuutes long. The quality of the graphics was good even on my 19 inch display. The message was “shock and awe.”
Needless to say, I didn’t save the video to My Library.

AKD (12:36:39) :
Ron de Haan (10:50:14) :
John H.- 55 (09:59:24) :
Does anyone save NSIDC daily Arctic sea ice extent graphs?
Because the last two days I saw something peculiar.
Their graph of Arctic sea ice extent had showed the ice approaching the 79-00 average, nearly meeting it, then a clear turn down showed up.
Today it appears the turn down was softened by revising previous days resulting in the turn away from the average being gradual over along period of time.
My cynicism has me imagining the fear of ice returning to the average motivated a turn down adjustment that hadn’t happened. The next day it was softened to better conceal the more obvious turn, or adjustment”.
AKD,
This is what they call fraud and manipulation.
It must be clear by now that the current NSIDC is serving a political agenda.
Therefore, get your data somewhere else until scientific integrity has been restored, hence, the hoax is over.
Ron, John H. notices something he thinks might odd and requests the information that would be needed to even seriously suspect a real problem. You don’t produce that information but instead immediately respond that what he sees is fraud and manipulation. On what are you basing this? Your gut feelings? I’m growing a bit weary of constantly hearing your gut feelings and instinctive reactions. Don’t become the very problem we all see”.
AKD,
You are right, I should not have made the remark about the change in data John has observed. But that is it.
There is no reason to suspect that the NSIDC is fumbling with it’s data.
The NSIDC is a brilliant example of unbiased scientific representation of the facts, worth every cent of tax money they receive.
Even the inventor of the F15 sensor system that provided the basic ice data until February of this year stated that they have made a mistake to provide the NSIDC access to the technology.
As I said before, GET YOUR DATA SOMEWHERE ELSE.
In regard to this remark:
“I’m growing a bit weary of constantly hearing your gut feelings and instinctive reactions”. please explain yourself!

“Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.”
~~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Harvard 1978 commencement address

Just the facts said,
“but the files for 4/24 through 4/26 are missing.”
Hmm? Well that would be exactly when I saw the curious adjustments happen.
In looking over the graph for this winter I suspect the line should be smoother and much of the fluctuations are probably errors.
For my own consideration I tend to assume the graph should show a smoother and overall higher level of sea ice extent.
In the arena AGW where all sorts of supposition is used as science this layperson will go ahead and suppose that the line should be a smoother curve passing near the high points just prior to the few drop off curves.
My version of a corrected graph would place the whole season’s line very near the 07-00 average line and possibly having crossed that line within recent weeks.
But I’m just supposing.
Not unlike many of the observations attributed to AGW with nothing more than supposition.
Unfortunately, and unlike this layperson, there are many professional scientists and professors also using science by supposing to find links to AGW where none exists.
Ultimately I can imagine some hefty pressure applied to some of the institutions such a NSIDC to not infringe upon the desired objectives of the AGW movement. Couched in the justification that the creative adjustments
aren’t very egregious and it’s better to avoid handing the opposition data that will be misused and become fodder for skeptics.
So in a creative end justifies the means thinking the adjustments of the sea ice graph would actually be an action to prevent skeptics, paid by oil, who don’t understand the science from misusing the data.
In their hands a season long line of near or at average sea ice extent would not be very helpful to the AGW cause.

2021 – Scientists looking at current Arctic conditions decry the lack of 14 year sea ice in the Arctic. They note that ice 12 years and younger is more fragile and subject to melting than ice older than 14 years.
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On another note: normally the flu season is over by now. I wonder what is delaying the onset of spring?

Oops, That’s hold the Alt key whilst typing the number on the numeric pad
DaveE.

Anthony,
I would like to point you to this article I found today in the net pages of the biggest Norwegian dead trees daily; VG:
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/klimatrusselen/artikkel.php?artid=542650
From the article (my translation):
“Climate Scientist: Ice Free Arctic by 2100
BERGEN (VG): The experienced climate scientist Ola M. Johannessen (70) was baffled when he calculated when the Arctic Ocean will be ice free year round.
“- It shows, if we put the numbers into that formula, that we are going to have an ice free Arctic – summer as well as winter – already in this century”, says Johannessen.
Now, it is not just any kind of formula the Research Director at the Nansen Center for Climate Research has developed.
He has compared the annual ice extent in the Arctic Ocean with the annual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
AND THE RESULT IS FRIGHTENING:
“In the beginning of the century we have some natural variations we cannot account for. But the last five decades there is a very strong statistical correlation between the measured CO2 concentration and the actual measured ice extent.”
BAFFLED
“Yes, if we put the graphs of the ice extent and the CO2 content on top of each other – then the connection is apparently striking.”
“- I was certainly quite baffled when I saw it,” says Johannessen to VG.
His analysis shows that the increase in CO2 alone may account for as much as 90 per cent of the ice decline in the Arctic.
On this basis, he has simply been able to construe a formula which suggests how much a given increase in CO2 content in the air affect the ice extent. Thereby he can simply enter both values into the formula on his PC, and look at when this formula says there is no more ice left:
“- If we use my statistic formula, all ice will be gone, even in winter, when CO2 concentration in the atmosphere reaches 765 parts per million (ppm). Today the concentration is about 385, but 765 will most probably be reached by year 2100, if we don’t execute drastic cuts.”
Photo captures (top): “Arctic – without ice. If the shocking calculations of research veteran Ola M. Johannessen is correct, Arctic will be without ice by year 2100. Summer as winter.” (bottom): “WARMER: During the last ten years sea level has risen by about 3 centimeters.”
Anthony, I don’t know if this is the right thread, but I think this deserves some attention. It looks like we have another contender for the prize of the boldest ice prediction for the Arctic.
We have previously Dr. Serreze with his prediction of an ice free North Pole in the summer of 2008. Then we have big Al with his prediction of an ice free Arctic by 2013.
However, I think Johannessen is in a class of his own. Please notice, he not only predicts an ice free Arctic in summer, he predicts an ice free Arctic in WINTER.
It is conceivable that an ice free Arctic in summertime may occur if the atmosphere and the oceans warms by a few degrees C. This has probably also happened earlier in Holocene, according to archeological evidence. However, in the wintertime, there is bitter cold and darkness 24/7 all over the Arctic for the good part of 6 months. Thanks to the invaluable research efforts by the Catlin Arctic Survey team, we now know that temperatures in the Arctic, even in March/April, are between -25 and -40 degrees C. How is a doubling of CO2 concentration going to increase temperatures enough to avoid freezing of sea water in Arctic winter?
According to reasonably accepted science, a doubling of CO2 will increase temperatures by about 1.2 C, give or take a few tenths. Even if we accept the baseless and highly unlikely assumption of a climate sensitivity of 3, the temperature increase will not be more than 3.6 C. So how exactly is this temperature rise going to stop water from freezing in the Arctic during the 6 months of winter temperatures below -20 or -30 degrees?
What this exercise in statistical extrapolation shows, is how absurdly out of reality it is possible to end if you just extend short time trends to infinity.
Anyone who thinks he can up the predictions even more?
Do we have a winner?
Regards
JAN

Smokey,
Yes I could do that, but then the warmers would probably counter with the evidence that when CO2 was two hundred ppm lower than it is now, the ice extent was 1000% higher.
Then we would be back to algorean correlations. As we know, this is the kind of correlation where the future is allowed to come back with a vengeance and cause the past.
Nice correlation you got yourself there, Smokey. Have you considered that if you updated your graph up to 2009, then you might find that the recent surge of piracy outside Africa has already caused the global temperatures to drop significantly the last couple of years?