UPDATE: The publisher of the Atlas has issued a clarification and apology:
The Times Atlas is renowned for its authority and we do our utmost to maintain that reputation. In compiling the content of the atlas, we consult experts in order to depict the world as accurately as possible. For the launch of the latest edition of the atlas (The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 13th edition), we issued a press release which unfortunately has been misleading with regard to the Greenland statistics. We came to these statistics by comparing the extent of the ice cap between the 10th and 13th editions (1999 vs 2011) of the atlas. The conclusion that was drawn from this, that 15% of Greenland’s once permanent ice cover has had to be erased, was highlighted in the press release not in the Atlas itself. This was done without consulting the scientific community and was incorrect. We apologize for this and will seek the advice of scientists on any future public statements. We stand by the accuracy of the maps in this and all other editions of The Times Atlas
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I’ve pointed out that NSIDC is denying any specific involvement in the errors related to the new Times Atlas of the World.
Makes you wonder though, was this a faulty interpretation of existing NSIDC data by the Times, or was it something else?
Maurizio Morabito has an idea: the source might have been Wikipedia. He writes:
In fact, and intriguingly, and twice embarrassingly, there exists one map that strongly resembles the Times Atlas’ “15%” Greenland (see also the Greenland Physical Map from TourTeam.dk). And the embarrassing bits are: it’s one map used on Wikipedia. Worse, it’s supposed to be only showing ice sheet thickness, not “cover” as claimed (it doesn’t highlight the areas where the ice is less than 10m/30ft thick).
Look for example at the outline of Eastern sides of Kong Christian IX Land and Kong Christian X Land, the nearest to Iceland (brown on the Times Atlas to the left, green on Wikipedia to the right).
Read the rest at Maurizio Morabito’s Omniclimate
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Many thanks for the mention. All, do remember the mantra: this interpretation is consistent with… 😉
“Kong” Christian? Methinks that should be “King”. And if Wiki was the source, not surprising, given their propensity for denying denial. For the Atlaseers to be that lazy is typical of the geographically-ignorant.
Gruenelande is what the Vikings called that island during the medieval warming period because it was warmer then and alot more of the snow and icepack had melted. The vikings set up habitation sites there and took a left hand turn to the New World. It was called Findeland or Neue Findelande, that is, New Foundland. Ever heard of it?
Maurizio Morabito says:
September 20, 2011 at 9:07 am
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I agree with om on this one……I think he’s nailed it
Besides, how do you draw an island on a map, unless you know it’s an island………..
And once again, Wikipedia gets exposed as the biased lying fraud that it is.
At some point the atlas makers will need to actually come clean if they are to have any credibility left…………… or not come clean if that saves what little credibility they have left.
This “data” had to come from somewhere. They didn’t just make this map up out of nothing…..did they? If this atlas has any credibility (and I would hope they do) they will provide the data or maps they based it on. If they don’t then in means they were grossly incompetent and are hiding the fact, or they we grossly activist and are trying to save face.
If it was simple error, they would simply point out how and why and correct. This isn’t the first map error ever……..but it does seem to follow the trend of “all errors seem to favour the alarmists mantra”. A couple errors can be coincicdence, but this steady stream of warmer and more alarmist “errors”, really tests even the most open mind to explain it away.
Whoops … pink slips anyone?
“Kong” is Danish for ‘King’, so ‘Kong Christian’ island is perfectly correct. In fact, when ‘King Kong’ was released in Denmark, the title was changed to ‘Kong King.’
THIS JUST IN…
The cartographers at the Time Atlas of the World have reworked their maps to correct the errors recently discovered by the public. The revised world map can be found here…
I suspect the cartographers for The Times Atlas have degrees in Political Science.
I don’t think so. There’s a lot of similarity but many details are different.
I read this article in the Star this morning and that of the WUWT article on the atlas — and vis versa…
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/20/fulford-criticism-and-conflicts-of-interest/
Because Bernard Berenson was more respected and learned than any other expert on Renaissance art, people assumed that he was also trustworthy. His stature seemed to guarantee honesty. But after his death in 1959, successive biographies showed that the shell of prestige surrounding him concealed more than a trace of chicanery.
I hope you see the parallels in this… I know it made me smile.
I see wikipedia are currently asking for feedback on articles.
For once Wikipedia has no fault. It shows ice sheet thickness up to 10m (a considerable thickness of standing ice anywhere outside Greenland and Antarctica).
I wonder if the local Eskimos/Inuits have 500 words for “sorry cartographers it’s still cold and icy up here”?
Methinks you are wrong. In fact, meknows you are wrong. “Kong” means “King” in Danish and Norwegian.
“The atlas, published by HarperCollins, showed that Greenland lost 15 percent of its ice cover over the past 12 years, based on information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado in the United States.” (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/19/us-atlas-ice-idUSTRE78I4UG20110919
Wikipedia is very robust !!!!
Connolly’s fingerprints on this?
“Methinks you are wrong. In fact, meknows you are wrong. “Kong” means “King” in Danish and Norwegian.”
So wait… King Kong is really King King? …Why does that oddly make sense for an oversized gorilla?
Has Reuters now concluded that that alarmists are not telling the whole truth. I can’t recall the last time I saw a MSM article that noted two major errors by alarmist scientists!
So if this wasnt discovered, it would be;
Wikipedia=>Atlas=> AR5 ? Am I right?
No, just kidding. Can’t be that bad.
mohatdebos –
As far as I can tell, there were no errors by scientists involved. Check the story again, and the apology issued by the publisher:
Cimate AUdit has a different take on this…
http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/20/the-times-atlas-and-y2k/
This is evident from comments at Cryolist by Martin O’Leary, a graduate student at Cambridge, as follows:
As fun as it is to bash The Times, the images I’ve seen of the erroneous map do bear a striking resemblance to the following map which I was able to pull up on the NSIDC website by poking about looking for ice thickness information: http://bit.ly/o3iV6i
Anyone from NSIDC care to comment on what the data source being used here is? I’m sure it’s just an issue of definitions over what’s an “ice sheet” and what’s an “outlet glacier”, but it’s pretty easy to see how an atlas-maker could use that as an authoritative source on what’s going on in Greenland.
The NSIDC Atlas of the Cryosphere is here. If you zoom into Greenland a few times and, for the Java button “Glacier Basemaps”, select “none”; for the Java button “Greenland Basemaps” select “ice sheet thickness”; and for the snow extent button and sea ice extent buttons, select none, you’ll get the map shown by O’Leary, which matches the Times Atlas version sufficiently closely that one can say with considerable confidence that this is the provenance. I’ve shown the NSIDC map and the Times 2011 map below (the latter rotated to match NSIDC):
Interesting read…
That wikipedia lead is not worth following.
The author of the wikipedia map seems to be a competent cartographer and references some of his sources. NSIDC provides ice thickness and surface elevation data, so I went to their web pages where the data is readily available and plot this map: http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/6374/greenland.jpg
If I can do in 15 minutes, I am sure the Times cartographers can do in less time without any help from Wikipedia.
The problem may be related to the 1999 data, what was used then by Times? Comparing it to the NSIDC data may not be appropriate.
By the way, this data from NSIDC is from 2001, and there are 15 papers, full of caveats, explaining the data: http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/get_metadata.pl?id=nsidc-0092
I should also add that the main author, Bamber, is quite a sober scientist, his recent evaluation of Greenland mass balance is the opposite of alarmism.
I seem to recall a science fiction story based on the premise that commercial cartographers intentionally include some false information which, when appearing on some other company’s map, proves theft.