Back on April 2nd, it looked like Arctic Sea ice extent at NSIDC would cross the “normal” line. See: Arctic Sea Ice Extent Update: still growing
The image then looked like this:
Now before anyone starts trotting out claims of “adjustments”, I’ll point out that the independent JAXA data set, done with a different satellite and the AMSR-E sensor shows the same thing:
Note the area I’ve highlighted inside the box. Here is that area magnified below:
The NSIDC presentation is zoomed to show the current period of interest, whereas the JAXA presentation shows the entire annual cycle. So we notice small changes in NSIDC more often. Also, the NSIDC presentation is a running 5 day average according to Dr. Walt Meier.
Of course whether you are scientist, scholar, layman, casual observer, or zealot, nature never gives a care as to what we might expect it to do.
So worry not, no skullduggery is afoot. Nature is just laughing at all of us.
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Looks to me like someone is trying to “hide the incline”! I saw that myself and did a double-take.
How do many thousands of square miles of new ice suddenly change their mind and decide not to exist?
I’ve often wondered about the impartiality of the NSIDC site, thanks for posting this, Anthony! I’m still waiting for their narrative to be posted for all of March, 2010….I bet it will be full of spin.
Happy Easter to those who observe the holiday!
REPLY: JAXA says the same thing, and they don’t make monthly editorials on Arctic Sea ice like NSIDC does and use a completely different satellite, sensor, and methodology. While I often don’t agree with what NSIDC says, particularly when the director makes wild claims that are unsupportable, I see no evidence that anyone is trying to hide anything here. – Anthony
Typical, they just can’t leave anything “unadjusted”.
Still well within +/- 2 SD of normal; i.e.:
Still well within real-world normal; i.e.:
Contrary to Gore & Co., actual data continues to show that artic sea-ice ain’t going away any time soon.
One more imaginary limit to be crossed over,
One more climate myth to be debunked.
This is ICE-GATE!
I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
But don’t give up you who are AGW sceptics, it may still cross that barrier. 🙂
As I said yesterday, we saw our maximum arctic sea ice extent for 2010 (based on IJIS data) on March 31 at 14,407,344 sq. km. This despite the fact that on his April 2nd radio show, Rush Limbaugh reported that “arctic sea ice is still growing” later in the year than it normally does.
Really though, we’ve seen a long term downward trend in year-to-year arctic sea ice, and to expect that suddenly, in one magical month, that such a trend would suddenly reverse itself (without any record cold in the arctic even) is not realistic. Even if it did pop into the positive anomaly range for a brief visit, though the event would be much celebrated by AGW sceptics, I would guess it would quickly reverse and continue in the negative anomaly range it has been in.
With the negative AO of this winter, we’ve had warmth and high pressure parked over N. Canada and Greenland for much of the season (though fading now), and we’ve also had some warm Atlantic water near Greenland. Yes, we had less flushing of older ice, but I still maintain that the net effect of all the warmth this winter in parts of the arctic will be too see ice melt faster in these areas and I hold firmly to my 4.5 million sq. km. guess (based on IJIS data) for the summer low sea ice extent in Sept.
Given the degree of axial tilt, it would be indeed unusual and even miraculous that the downturn would still be ahead of us. I also see no attempt to hide anything at all here.
Anthony, thanks for bringing this up. It’s thesort of thing that makes this site so special. You would never get something equivalent flagged up at Realclimate or any of the pro AGW sites for that matter
But its flippy floppy water instead of ice.
Maybe it’s just reached the point at which it’s starting to become rotten ice.
Or flippy-floppy ice, or ooshy-gooshy ice, or whatever the post-modern scienteriffic term is…
Well, this 15% ice coverage must be a good measure if you are in a boat trying to navigate safely. If there are strong winds the changes seen are probably nothing more than pile up, reducing the area. A wind gauge, so to speak.
One more variable misused from its original purpose.
Hey, lets not get too excited… after all, if the Arctic sea ice gets too big our poles may flip over!!! 😉 Actually, my comment is a sarcastic jab at Rep. Hank Johnson. Can anyone believe how dumb this guy is???
It was overdue to start heading down so no real surprises there. A shame though. Ice extent above average would have finally driven a stake through the heart of the drowning polar bear story and I am so – so sick of hearing about the poor cute drowning polar bears.
If NSIDC is a running 5 day average, that means that on April 01 the ice extent has probably been above the 1979-2000 average. Because the day value of that date has been averaged with the lower values of the four previous dates.
I also noticed this this morning and overlayed the April 3rd plot on top of the April 1st plot in photoshop. This is just another reason not to trust the data on global warming.
There must be some kind of MA filter on that data. The animated like comes very close to the average, almost no gap, then at the end, there is a clearly visible gap. Was past data updated?
R. Gates (09:38:16) :
I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
But don’t give up you who are AGW sceptics, it may still cross that barrier. 🙂
(…)
Even if it did pop into the positive anomaly range for a brief visit, though the event would be much celebrated by AGW sceptics,…
——————-
Reply:
Perhaps, but not by Climate Realists. We’re not the celebratory type.
The warmist looks at the glass of water and, gleefully, says it’s half full (and probably caused by CO2); the skeptic looks at the same glass of water and dejectedly says it is half empty (and no way was it caused by CO2). The realist looks at the glass of water, considers it for a while, and says “That glass is twice as big as it needs to be. Now, what materials and expertise do I need to make a glass that fits the circumstances? (And did you notice all that CO2 is making my garden grow better?)”
It will almost certainly cross the NSIDC median line over the next few days, because the Newfoundland median line is pulling back quickly this time of year, and because of very cold air over the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/ANIM/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.30.gif
One positive note for you AGW sceptics…the antarctic sea ice continues to creep closer to being normal (though still showing a negative anomaly):
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
But alas, global sea ice extent continues below normal (due to the current refusal of arctic sea ice to cross that invisible barrier no doubt).
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
I will be watching the Global Sea Ice anomaly chart very closely the next few years. Since 2004, global sea ice has spent far more time in the negative range than the positive, and this chart, more than any other, give one a quick sense for the overall status of the earth’s cryopshere. If AGWT is correct, this chart will become nearly constantly negative in the coming years…
I thought the interesting thing was that it only took 2 months to go from an end of the world scenario to a normal/average situation.
Quite a late peak this year on JAXA. I tend to look at the equinox as the theoretical peak date, and that would have been 20 March.
On JAXA, I recall watching for the summer trough last year. JAXA seems to estimate very recent days, and last summer there was a regular downward correction to my recollection. Not saying that’s skullduggery, but could be more to do with caution.
The recovery has made it into the UK Sunday Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7086746.ece
(Sarc On)
I’m most curious about “How” they* plan on getting down to sub-normal levels in the next 5 months. Will it be a precipitous or gradual drop. Someone has really put the world in a pickle.
* – whoever ‘they’ are
The most likely explainations are that the code was glitched by a gremlin and/or one of the key sensors took a gigawatt hit from an unfortunate lazerlike GRB from the deepest depths of the cosmos. Probably a high dark energy non-photonic anti-light what’ya’ma’call’it.
I’m sure the “peer reviewed” correction will show no such rise ever occured and that the ice curve is actually, and consistantly has been, lower by 3.76589 million square kilometers during the entire 2009-2010 timeframe.
Don’t be surprised, either, if Congress and Parlement don’t have a Joint Committee Investigation into how this ‘hacker-thing’ happened, OR –here’s the real kick in the teeth– if everyone who has ever posted a comment on WUWT ends up in a Canadian Arctic Concentration Camp for the rest of their lives.
(If they can’t ‘convince’ us that AGW is real, they’ll make us pray it was.)
(Sarc Off)
The JAXA digital data shows that starting on April 2, 2010 Arctic sea ice extent reached 14,379,531 square kilometers versus the prior high for that date of 14,335,781 square kilometers on April 2, 2003. This trend continues for April 3, 2010 with 14,328,438 square kilometers versus 14,250,469 square kilometers on April 3, 2003. Thus the state of Arctic sea ice extent is now higher than it has been for the last seven years. This is remarkable given that all IPCC Arctic sea ice extent models predict only declines in sea ice extent from 2007. Once again the IPCC climate prediction models have been proven wrong.
R. Gates (09:57:13) :
Arctic, Antarctic and global will likely be all positive in a few days. Interesting death spiral.
>>”Jerry (09:54:02) said :
There must be some kind of MA filter on that data. The animated like comes very close to the average, almost no gap, then at the end, there is a clearly visible gap. Was past data updated?”<<
That is what it ;looks like to me, even if the 5 day average plot point for April 3rd is correct, the April 1st point should still be the same but it is not, it is lower now.