NSIDC’s Mark Serreze must be thrilled, as he’ll now be able to justify some of his press releases. Gore must be ecstatic that his 2013 “Entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years” prediction has come in way ahead of schedule.
Click for the current Arctic Ice image.
Notice the contrast between Arctic and Antarctic. I can hear the Angelic choruses of “we told you so” taking flight now. Oh, wait.
* Hmmm, at second glance it looks like some sort of malfunction. We’ve seen this before in the SSMI sensor, perhaps something similar is going on now.
Even so, you’d think they’d notice it on their main webpage, and you’d think they’d put something up on the webpage to tell visitors about it?
Why do us bloggers have to be the ones to catch these things?
h/t to WUWT reader Tom who writes: “Hi Anthony, Looks like Al Gore was wrong about an ice free summer in a few years. Latest image from Cryosphere Today shows we’re ice free today.”
UPDATE: News travels fast. Within about 30 minutes of posting this essay poking a little fun at CT, the correct images are back online now which you can see here:
As WUWT commenter “Steamboat Jack” says: “That current Arctic Ice image was so pretty (and full of hidden meaning!) that I made it my desktop background!”
For those that missed the ice free interlude and would like to do the same, here is the hi-res “ice free Arctic” image.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/cryosphere_arctic_seaice_map.png
UPDATE: This message has been added to the Cryosphere Today main web page:
Sept. 14, 2009: No, the Arctic ice did not disappear this AM. There was a processing glitch in our maps for about an hour that caused the NH maps to be displayed without their sea ice. We apologize for any confusion.
Here’s a recent North Pole cam.Looks like those pesky sensors again:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa1.jpg
Not sure this is worth blogging about, Anthony… 🙂
This is beyond parody.
Heck, it’s beyond madness.
Cyrosphere Today needs to put down the baggie of ‘eco-fairy dust’ and take a nice walk.
It’s worse than we expected
Neat trick…Vegas needs a new magic act.
“Glace” the Exciting new Musical Extravaganza! See the entire Arctic Ice Cap vanish before your eyes! featuring Toyuk the amazing disappearing Polar Bear — at the Mirage….
BTW the ice is back so the show is over. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
We are here all week, come back soon.
Check this out:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
It uses the same image for Antarctica and the correct image for the Arctic.
Both ice sheets are doing better than last year, the Arctic is bottoming out it’s minimum and the Antarctic has not started decreasing yet.
It’s possible that one pic is screwed up. If you look at the comparison page, it shows a normal pic for 9/13.
Still they should have caught this error on the main page.
Slightly OT, I get a kick out of this sea ice animation blurb on the cryosphere page:
“View the updated high resolution animation of this year’s sea ice retreat (01/01/2007 – 09/23/2007). WARNING – This quicktime animation is very large at 200Mb, but it illustrates nicely the temporal evolution of this year’s sea ice. Animation: 2007 sea ice minimum animation”
“this year’s” sea ice????
Q: Update much? A: When the evidence is favorable, yes.
It wasn’t a sensor problem but rather an adjustment to make the data fit the models.
http://newsbusters.org/static/2007/07/2007-07-07AlGore.jpg
Be praised Lord of doom, of disaster, most magnificent prophet of occidental civilization’s Armageddon, you words ought to have been fulfilled.
However, please do not blame us for being suspicious: Did order your servants, your slaves, to alter those measuring devices?, because from one day to the next it was impossible for all that ice to evaporate, who do you think we are?
MattN, I must question your statement that this is not worth blogging about. Who else will let the public know that this is an equipment failure? How many gullible people (especially those who want to believe) will not hear or see the retraction and explanation of faulty sensors? We must not let this stuff get by us. Unfortunately, a lot of damage has already been done. This blog (among others ) provides an invaluable service. Ferme le bouche!!!
REPLY: Matt was doing a tongue in cheek post, referring to NSIDC Walt Meier’s admonition when I questioned the NSIDC data glitches this past winter. – Anthony
Looks like their SSMI (Special Sensor Microwave/Imager) sensor of the arctic DMSP (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) has failed utterly. Are they ever going to switch over to using JAXA’s AMSR-E (Advance Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS)? Or will the National Snow and Ice Data Centers (NSIDC) simply trumpet that the feared event has arrived and we now have no Arctic ice cap?
Well, this is one way to “prove” global warming.
REPLY: I’m not sure the SSMI sensor has failed, I rather think this could be a processing glitch where an error in data overlay caused the map to be output with no data. – Anthony
That current arctic Ice image was so pretty (and full of hidden meaning!) that I made it my desktop background!
I’ve got a question.
I’ve been checking the daily mean temperature graph you link to on the right column of the site and it’s now heading to 265d Kelvin, so it’s way below sea ice freezing, but the 80th parallel is a very tight circumference around the north pole and that area is pretty much contained within the ice cap. Is there anything, anywhere that tracks the movement of 273.15 d kelvin in terms of latitude?
I posted this on another thread. The Independant and BBC telling us that commercial ships are sailing through the North East passage for the first time?
“Both ships left South Korea in late July, negotiating the passage off north-eastern Siberia behind two Russian icebreakers.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8251914.stm
Sorry about the double post in one day.
You are being tradduced and defended on the Telegraph blog Christopher Brooker.
Maybe the Queen of Heart’s gardeners painted the ice blue?
I thought it was kinda suspicious when a feller came into my store last night and offered to sell me 5 million square kilometers of bagged ice wholesale.
I said ‘no thanks’ and I reckon he took back wherever he got it from.
Of course its ice-free … if the Independent says so, it must be.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/09/triumph-for-propaganda.html
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/09/turd-eaters.html
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/09/pictures-tell-story.html
“I rather think this could be a processing glitch where an error in data overlay caused the map to be output with no data.”
That is a really bad way for data overlay to be done. The depiction of “no data” should not look the same as “clear water with no ice”. Compare with the way layered image editors place an obvious black/white checkerboard “behind” the actual image, so as to distinguish between a pixel that is transparent in all layers and one that coincidentally matches whatever background color happens to displayed behind the image.
21st century technology. 11th century results.
Forget sensors…how about some first-hand observation
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/icy-northwest-passage-gave-sailor-the-chills-59214522.html
WUWT Webmaster,
The thumbnail “DMI Polar Temperature” is the image for 1978 instead of 2009. The link itself is correct.
The thumbnail call should be to a resized http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2009.png
Kip
REPLY: I chose a random image as the thumbnail, others might suggest I use the middle image like video thumbnails do. Some like you might suggest the end image. Since the thumbnail itself is not important, I’m not going to worry about it but I am going to move the thumbnail of my choice over to WUWT to minimize traffic for DMI. – Anthony
According to the DMI graph the temps. above 80 degrees lat. are currently running colder than last year at this time. Definately not something you want if you are vouching for an ice free arctic.
That DMI is amazing, just keeps dropping, and dropping, and dropping.
When will the AMSR-E do a hockey stick exit stage up?
Even Mercury which is next to the sun is thought to have ice at its poles (at least in some craters)… why should it be all gone here on Earth?
I’m telling you their messing with the sensor’s AGC or
uplinked signal level bias values. The problem they had
last time, is they tweaked the values too much and AGC
had not enough signal to work, causing it to appear
there was a sensor failure. If you look back at the previous
post here, you can see the precipitous drop in signal.
These games have to stop. We need to look at all the
data uplinked to the sensor.