I’ve been remiss at posting regular entries of this feature, and there hasn’t been much happening on the way to peak Arctic Ice this year. The action seems mostly down south, and there’s a lot of news from NSIDC that you haven’t heard about.
Per the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Anomaly for November was a record high for their data set:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Nov/S_11_plot.png
November’s record high Antarctic Sea Ice Area of 16.90 Million Sq Km, exceeded the prior record of 16.76 Million Sq Km (Set in November 2005), by 140,000 Square Kilometers. See here:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Nov/S_11_area.txt
Oddly, they have a plot for extent, and a data file for area, but no plot for area or data for extent. I meant to say: Oddly, they have a plot for extent, and a data file for area, but no plot for area or data file for extent. They do have both data included in the file named “area.txt”. Seems backwards, doesn’t it?
The NSIDC plot certainly shows a lot of growth in November around the periphery of the sea ice pack in November:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Nov/S_11_trnd.png
I find it interesting that the (NSIDC) National Snow & Ice Data Center doesn’t find it newsworthy to mention this record high Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Anomaly in their December 6th press release:
They certainly could have included this information, since their FTP folder had NH data posted three days prior to the December 6th press release:
And the SH data also, with the same time stamp:
But this comes as no surprise considering that they glossed over the other record highs that occurred this year in,
June:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jun/S_06_plot.png
Data: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jun/S_06_area.txt
July:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jul/S_07_plot.png
Data: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jul/S_07_area.txt
August:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Aug/S_08_plot.png
Data: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Aug/S_08_area.txt
It is apparent that Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is currently maintaining above average;
But, with such good news, I wonder why NSIDC and others aren’t providing more information to the public on this interesting phenomenon. I know these new record highs aren’t as interesting or as likely to generate news stories as “death spiral watch”, but perhaps in their next press NSIDC release they will at least recognize the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice for the simple fact that it has hit record highs?
We are constantly told that NSIDC is all about the science, and we are just “breathtakingly ignorant” (to quote NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze), so I’m sure this press release reporting on only one half of the planet’s icecap’s is just an oversight on their part. I’m sure NSIDC will want to show that their mission truly is “global” and talk about the gains in Antarctica when they write up their year end review which will be seen by hundreds of journalists.
They seem to have interest in the minuscule (compared to the whole continent) Antarctic Peninsula ice loss, but not so much the main continent gains.
Antarctica is by far the largest mass of ice on Earth, containing approximately 90% of the world’s supply. By contrast, the Arctic and glaciers make up the remainder, yet they get all the facetime.
The fact that Sea Ice Extent around Antarctica is trending up and has been regularly hitting record highs in 2010 should give any rational person a moment’s pause. It might even provide the basis for some healthy skepticism of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Narrative.
Oh, and for the few worrywarts who frequent here, who will howl mercilessly that I didn’t show the Arctic Sea Ice trend, here’s your North and South trends together:
Cryosphere Today – extent 15% or greater – click to enlarge
Cryosphere Today – Antarctic Sea Ice anomaly – click to enlarge
Of course all the graphs and imagery that I didn’t cover here is available 24/7/365 on the WUWT sea ice page, which I recommend you visit.
h/t to WUWT reader “Just the facts” for pointing out the ftp data which has remained buried and out of view of NSIDC’s main public relations page.
November's record high Sea Ice Extent of 16.90 Million Sq Km, exceeded the prior record of 16.76 Million Sq Km (Set in November 2005), by 140,000 Square Kilometers:
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Lies of omission are still lies. We can’t trust our Government agencies to tell the complete story. Thanks for being a legitimate source of truth.
Easy to miss. No doubt an honest mistake, Ha!
Surprised to hear of the extra ice down south. I thought it had all blown up here in the wind coming through Melbourne right now.
The selection of data and the screaming about global warming on the front page of Cryosphere Today is also inappropriate. Please post again on how ocean levels are not rising, the BBC did a whole series on the effects of a 3mm rise, e,g, they lied.
No way to blame this on CO2 or CAGW – yet.
Don’t worry though Anthony, I’m sure their top people are working on it.
Truly amazing, here in the UK our much loved BBC seems to have developed myopia on all things regarding climate unless the story is “on message”. This is a great loss to us Brits, as we were once known for being non partisan in our reporting and trusted around the globe, how things are changing.
Does anyone know how to smooth out this red line – so that I can see deviation from average?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
The expansion of sea ice on the southern hemisphere is consistent with AGW. Since there is a sea all around Antarctica, if these areas warm just a little, there will be more evaporation, thus more clouds, thus more rain. This rain will fall on Antarctica, and it won’t be in liquid shape. It will be snow, of course. This snow will pile up and extend itself towards the sea.
So, in simplistic terms, more warming should contribute to more sea ice extent in Antarctica. The same does not happen in the Artic because it is surrounded by continents, mostly.
The fact that this is not “distributed” to the media is meaningless to what basic reason tells us about the physical facts. But it does inform us that media is not “unbiased”, and is concerned that the general public will not understand this issue and be confused, thus creating problems for the AGW narrative. You are right in this respect.
You can also say, physically speaking, that this increase of ice is “good news” in the sense that it creates a sligth negative feedback. But I believe such feedback to be irrelevant, numerically speaking, I’ve not confirmed this. It can even be irrelevant for the northern hemisphere – we can have two different hemispheres developing rather differently in the next century.
My dad has the same problem at the bar as warmists with news like this, selected hearing.
Citizen Kane’s new war is AGW.
16.90 Million Sq Km
Living in Melbourne, I had always thought having a very large (now I know the size) ice block just across the water from me would influence the weather.
I recall reading something to the effect that the Antarctic sea ice increase was only a regional phenomenon and therefore not part of the “global” trend and that is why it is being ignored.
Questions:
1. Does anyone know how much new ice accumulates on continental Antarctic each year?
2. How much does the depth of the ice increase each year?
3. How much water (in litres) is removed from the atmosphere and locked up as ice each year?
4. If you add the Artic and Antarctic sea ice anomaly graphs together to give a global sea graph what trend is then apparent?
5. What does the global graph look like if you include the new ice from question 3?
I know question 5 has issues due to comparing area with volume but I’m sure you could just include the areas (sq km) of Antarctica that have increased ice depth.
This is one part of the “summer of lies” we are about to enter in a few months. They figure enough time has passed since the CRU scandal, and can now continue pushing the green realignment. One must understand that they have already spent the new tax money they expected to raise through the AGW farce. The disinformation will be heavy and thick.
I assume you’ve notified Walt Meier about this post, and hopefully he’ll reply. He’s an alarmist, but at least he’s a thoughtful, non-rabid, non-insulting alarmist. I’d love to see his side of the reporting bias issue.
Hide the incline!
They can not justify their funding if they show a growth in polar ice at either pole so we can expect silence from them except for low periods. Expect to here how much ice disappeared around the West Antarctica peninsula because that is a sure sign of a major global warming trend!
A thinking person would hypothesize that some kind of /oceanic/wind/atmospheric system brings about these trends, for example, that there may be a correlation between higher ice area/extent with positive AAO, than with negative. Right now both are positive. So here is a quick set of references that explains the connection here.
Information here about the AAO:
http://www.jisao.washington.edu/data/aao/
Information here about AAO data:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/aao.shtml
And information here about the connection to sea ice:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/page4.php
Isn’t this just an aww crap, where we going to hide all this stuff?
It’s hard enough to scam people about global warming when it’s so damn cold and snow is everywhere. And now you want them to put out correct data, and then write stories about how cold it is, and how much ice there is? What, you have a dream?
The people know, this is the winter that the world figures out it was all a lie.
And as we approach the ice age, this suddenly becomes ‘not funny’ at all.
1000 years of history undone – Britain has once again become a foolish and petty place, of very little consequence to the rest of the world.
November’s record high Antarctic Sea Ice Area of 16.90 Million Sq Km, exceeded the prior record of 16.76 Million Sq Km (Set in November 2005), by 140,000 Square Kilometers.
Surely the exceeded figure should be 2350 Manhattans? [Manhattan land area = 59.5 sq. km]
Or 538 August 2010 Petermann Glacier calf ice islands? 😉
Greg Holmes @ur momisugly 4:21 am: Montford and Newbery made a submission to a BBC inquiry dated 25 October, 2010, in which they detailed the development of BBC’s bias concerning global warming.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/16/montford-and-newberys-submission-to-the-bbcs-science-coverage-review/
another damn cold summer night in aus!
I have Buzzed this one up , it deserves to be seen and noted:-)
our ABC is still determined to ignore all evidence to the contrary re warming.
sheesh, no cure for stupid I guess?
90% of the ice mass in the southern pole!? That’s a great thing to know.
4 monthly record highs in Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Anomaly in the last 6 months certainly seems noteworthy, I’d be interested to hear from Walt or Julianne of the NSIDC as to why this has gone unreported. Was this an oversight or has this information been intentionally excluded from the NSIDC’s press releases?
The National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is publicly funded by NASA, NOAA and NSF;
http://nsidc.org/about/sponsors.html
they have a responsibility to provide the public with the information that we pay them to collect. Excluding information on record highs in the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Anomaly from their press releases, while reporting with bated breath that, “November 2010 had the second-lowest ice extent for the month since the beginning of satellite records.” seems at minimum sloppy, and may be indicative of an intentional effort to mislead the public…