More fun with 'Coloring Reality' and University of Maine's CLIMATE REANALYZER™

arcticsstnowcast[1]Earlier, we talked about how NOAA NCDC made February look warmer by choosing some nice pastel colors for “below normal” temperature in the USA.

Now, WUWT regular Chris Beal points me to the Arctic to look at sea surface temperatures, claiming they are running red hot.

A quick look at our WUWT Sea Ice Page tells me it looks pretty cool, like zero or below for a good portion of the Arctic. See the SST image at right and note the purplish-pink hue represents approximately 0°C

So, then whats up with this SST map from the University of Maine (up there in the vast wasteland known as Taminoland) that shows red roasted pepper color all over the Arctic? Is it Arctic Amplification Gone Wild?

climate_reanalyser_NH_temp_anomaly

Source: http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/index_ds.php

Hmmm, all that hot red shows where sea ice grows. I think if that if nearly the entire sea surface area of the Arctic was 7.4°F above normal, it might very well be melted ice. It is also quite interesting that right next to that roasted red pepper, we get a whole bunch of fuchisia showing -7.2°F in Hudson Bay.

But, other maps, like this one from NOAA, show no anomaly in the Arctic at all. All the ice is masked off so as not to give a false impression. Note the subtitle (white regions indicate sea-ice).

anomnight.3.27.2014[1]

Source: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2014/anomnight.3.27.2014.gif

[Added] Dr. Ryan Maue says:

ghastly use of GFS data. This is how you do it:

https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/449292829974482944/photo/1

So, since that ice is behind the mask, let’s check the UM Sea Ice and Snow plot to be sure the ice is still there.

climate_reanalyser_Arctic_sea_ice

Whew, for a moment there I though maybe all those calls for an Ice Free Arctic™ finally came to pass.

Hey, wait a minute, I’m pretty sure Canada is covered with snow, as it much of Russia. Let’s check the Cryosphere Today map:

cryo_latest_small[1]

Hmmm, the red hot ice and the missing snow must be a case of CLIMATE REANALYZER™ disclaimer-itis then:

DISCLAIMER

We make every effort to provide datasets and visualizations that are error-free. However, information on this site is provided “as-is”, and the Climate Change Institute and the University of Maine will not be held liable for errors or inconsistencies if they occur. Please report bugs to the contact e-mail above.

Source: http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/index_ds.php

I’m sure being the self appointed climate integrity standard bearer of Maine, our friend Tamino (Grant Foster) will be right on the problem any minute now with a sternly worded letter to UM.

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Pat
March 27, 2014 3:13 pm

Simply a hoax. A total hoax.

Peter Miller
March 27, 2014 3:19 pm

The Distinguished Professor would be proud of this type of data manipulation, but this is what today’s ‘climate science’ is all about – that and keeping the troughs full by keeping them well supplied by the use of scary tales and illusions.

March 27, 2014 3:22 pm

Perhaps they had intended to publish the page 4-1-2014 but the NSF grant for Climate Research required an early release…

Curious George
March 27, 2014 3:22 pm

Easy. Show a departure from a long-term average, whenever the ice extent is decreasing.

charles nelson
March 27, 2014 3:29 pm

Steve Godard had an NCDC map up yesterday which showed that parts of New England were ‘average’ at minus 5.5c below norm whilst parts of California were ‘much above average’ at 2.5C above normal. As you Americans say…go figure.

cnxtim
March 27, 2014 3:35 pm

What these daft institutional warmists don’t seem to understand, the more they use optical and grammatical tricks to pedal their theories, the more people mistrust and turn away from ANY university for knowledge.

March 27, 2014 3:37 pm

I remember a few years back, the images overlaying dark red over the western Antarctic ice sheet. Must have represented a balmy -30 degrees F.

Curious George
March 27, 2014 3:38 pm

Climate Change Institute? Enough said.

March 27, 2014 3:42 pm

Fiddling with the data they can, until the snow stands a meter at their own doors in late spring…

March 27, 2014 3:46 pm

Rather than showing the temperature of the water beneath the ice, which would be around the freezing point of salt water, [-1.7 to -1.9, Celsius, depending on how brackish the water has been made by melting ice], I think they must be showing the temperature of the upper surface of the ice, which is dependent on the temperature of the air-masses flowing over.
Despite the fact the arctic sun has now risen, the air up there looks like it is between -10 and -20 Celsius, which is still cold enough to freeze up any water exposed when ice cracks and leads form. However it is also “above normal,” because so much cold has been exported south to North America, replaced by milder air. “Normal” is around -25. Therefore, if you wish to play with crayons, you can have the whole Pole red, indicating that the surface of the ice is “above normal.”
The problem is that the map is suppose to indicate the Sea’s temperature, not the temperature of the air above the ice. If the sea was truly four degrees above normal ice would be melting like crazy, but it is not.
We actually could use more data on sea temperatures at various levels of the Arctic Ocean. Unfortunately, when the public wakes up to how they have been toyed with, they are not going to be in the mood to fund any arctic exploration. The real scientists who do real work will get punished, though they are not the ones who deserve it.

Bob B.
March 27, 2014 3:46 pm

You see, the Climate Analyzer failed to produce the desired scary results so they turned to the trusty Climate REanalyzer and there ya have it.

March 27, 2014 3:49 pm

Is the ice temperature +7.4F above average? What is average arctic ice temp? Is that even measured by the satellites? Since the sea water 2 meters or less below the ice surface is at 31F (-1C) or so, would that really just be measure of sea level air temp departure from average?

March 27, 2014 3:54 pm

Just saw Caleb’s more complete post after I refreshed from my post.
couldn’t agree more with Caleb, this is, about the public being in no mood to fund real polar data surveys and instrements once they find out they’ve been played for stupid by the AGW alarmists.

george e. conant
March 27, 2014 4:08 pm

Gosh darn it , there we go again , those big scarey red and orange blotches , now they are showing up in the frozen arctic where ice is hot…. when is the public going to have a collective brain hemmorage, honestly. I can’t take it ….

Michael D
March 27, 2014 4:41 pm

The “Arctic Temperature” (above 80 deg) graph in your Sea Ice reference page seems to show the arctic temperature about 8 degrees above normal. Could that be related to this red graph?

Jimbo
March 27, 2014 4:44 pm

Arctic amplification kicked in last year when Arctic sea ice extent and volume was up ~50 on 2012.
BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25383373
http://www.bbc.com/newsround/25401940

Jimbo
March 27, 2014 4:45 pm

I meant
Arctic amplification kicked in last year when Arctic sea ice extent and volume was up ~50% on 2012.

March 27, 2014 4:51 pm

March 27, 2014 weather report for
ALERT, NUNAVUT, CANADA
Weather report as of 33 minutes ago (23:00 UTC):
The wind was blowing at a speed of 4.6 meters per second (10.4 miles per hour) from West in Alert, Canada. The temperature was -23 degrees Celsius (-9 degrees Fahrenheit). Air pressure was 1,026 hPa (30.31 inHg). Relative humidity was 83.5%. There were a few clouds at a height of 5486 meters (18000 feet) and scattered clouds at a height of 7620 meters (25000 feet). The visibility was 16.1 kilometers (10.0 miles). Current weather is .
March 27, 2014 weather report for
BARROW, ALASKA, USA
Weather report as of 44 minutes ago (22:53 UTC):
The wind was blowing at a speed of 2.6 meters per second (5.8 miles per hour) from West in Barrow, Alaska. The temperature was -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit). Air pressure was 1,017 hPa (30.04 inHg). Relative humidity was 78.6%. There were a few clouds at a height of 6096 meters (20000 feet). The visibility was 16.1 kilometers (10.0 miles). Current weather is .
March 27, 2014 weather report for
MURMANSK, RUSSIA
Weather report as of 39 minutes ago (23:00 UTC):
The wind was calm in Murmansk, Russia. The temperature was -8 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). Air pressure was 1,030 hPa (30.42 inHg). Relative humidity was 92.5%. There were scattered clouds at a height of 792 meters (2600 feet) and broken clouds at a height of 2438 meters (8000 feet). The visibility was >11.3 kilometers (>7 miles). Current weather is .
March 27, 2014 weather report for
KHATANGA, RUSSIA
Weather report as of 12520 minutes ago (07:00 UTC):
The wind was blowing at a speed of 3 meters per second (6.7 miles per hour) from West in Khatanga, Russia. The temperature was 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit). Air pressure was 1,020 hPa (30.12 inHg). Relative humidity was 39.1%. There were a few clouds at a height of 1006 meters (3300 feet). The visibility was >11.3 kilometers (>7 miles).
athropolis

Well it’s a little warmer in Siberia, but it’s still plenty cold all around the artic ocean, but facts don’t seem to matter to the Alarmists.

Jimbo
March 27, 2014 4:54 pm

OT
On extreme weather I have notice that when I ask Warmists for say 5 peer reviewed papers showing extreme weather trends CAUSED by man – they freeze. They attack me instead of my request. There is a ‘mountain of evidence’ but they – freeze. This is the one to shoot for guys.

March 27, 2014 4:56 pm

This is what I would call “selling your deal” vs presenting science. They have a deal to sell to the public (CAGW) and they are looking for ways to do it (color schemes). I can’t fault them for that part of it but what I would fault them for is pretending that they aren’t “selling a deal” and this is all about science. That is simply dishonest.

DR
March 27, 2014 5:12 pm

Plausible deniability, nice.

March 27, 2014 5:22 pm

I can confirm that from Greenland and across most of Canada it was solid ice and snow on Mar 18th as I personally observer same from 40,000 ft. Probably Iceland, too, but I was watching a movie.

Bill Illis
March 27, 2014 5:27 pm

Let’s think about the average temperature of the ice at the top of the surface, essentially the temperature on top of the 2 feet of snow at this time of the year.
It is actually about -20.0C on top of the snow. At the bottom of the six feet of sea ice, it is around -1.6C in most of the Arctic, about -0.9C on the Siberian side where it is less salty.
Okay we have 8 feet of snow and ice to play around with now. The very top is -20C, the very bottom is -1.6C. It is possible to play around with these numbers to any extent that one wants to.
But how does one really know what this profile really is. There is only about 2 places in the entire Arctic when they are measuring this profile on a weekly basis, let alone daily.
Climate/meteorological science has just decided to just call any ice covered region -1.6C. Its frozen so it is really -1.6C somewhere in that 8 feet of profile. But the actual surface on top is -20.0C.
It is quandary that can’t really be resolved.
Now bring in the surface temperatures at 2 metres height which most other meteorological temperatures on land is based on. More fun. They don’t measure the temperature of black soil beneath the instrument which changes by up to 40C during the day as the sunlight hits it and fades away at night.
Just some point to think about here.

March 27, 2014 5:38 pm

I live here.
bunch of idiot hippies.
I suspect they are toeing the line to keep the funding for the offshore turbines the UM was working on.

AJB
March 27, 2014 6:00 pm

Some may be unaware of the DMI’s new ice temperature product (among others):
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/ice_temp/index.uk.php

A sparsely distributed observational network, consisting of drifting buoys, cannot resolve the surface temperature variations in the Arctic sufficiently but satellite observations can fill in the gaps of the traditional observational network.
The DMI ice temperature product (IST) uses three thermal infrared channels from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on board the Metop-A satellite to calculate the surface temperatures in the Arctic.

Go here for what else is new: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/index.uk.php

March 27, 2014 6:03 pm

March 27, 2014 at 4:51 pm | Paul Jackson says:

March 27, 2014 weather report for
KHATANGA, RUSSIA
[ … ] The temperature was 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit). [ … ]

I’m sure that you meant -26C ? http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/russia/khatanga

ES
March 27, 2014 6:27 pm

Here is a map of the actual temperatures. The ones with dashed circles around them are unreliability.
http://weather.gc.ca/data/analysis/351_100.gif
Water temperature normally is -1 to -2 when covered by ice.

Anto
March 27, 2014 6:38 pm

Click on the globe twice and you’ll see that Tamino has a portion of Antarctica sitting at around 20C above normal. LOL!!!
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/index_ds.php

Mac the Knife
March 27, 2014 7:47 pm

Jimbo says:
March 27, 2014 at 4:54 pm
OT
On extreme weather I have notice that when I ask Warmists for say 5 peer reviewed papers showing extreme weather trends CAUSED by man – they freeze. They attack me instead of my request. There is a ‘mountain of evidence’ but they – freeze. This is the one to shoot for guys.

Jimbo,
I think this is very much ‘on topic’! You have hit on the point of leverage that moves virtually all warmists into ad hom attack because they can not substantiate verified cases of man made global warming.
[You’re] right on target. Bombs away!!!
Mac

hunter
March 27, 2014 7:49 pm

The interesting thing is how media and political leaders, who should be counted on to be skeptical and seeking perspective have abandoned that in favor of sustaining hysteria over the weather. The weather. To sell one’s soul over fear of weather……..

Mac the Knife
March 27, 2014 7:51 pm

Jimbo,
Dang! Sloppy writing on my part. Should be
You’re right on target. Bombs away!!!
Mac

March 27, 2014 8:09 pm

I think the Climate Reanalyzer can be useful.
Beware of biases etc. like with any other alarmist or greeny website and you’ll be OK.
Well, I will admit this one is way over the top warmist and alarmist, so wear extra mental protection.

aaron
March 27, 2014 8:10 pm

As an IOE for my BSE, which includes ergonomics, I’ve though color and brightness should reflect relative intensity of anomalies.

Richard
March 27, 2014 8:12 pm

No wonder they coloured it, if it was all white you would think it was an ice age , that is a lot of territory covered in ice an snow .

aaron
March 27, 2014 8:16 pm

Sorry for the poor grammar and autocorrect.
I should have added, as studies show people perceive them.

Rob
March 27, 2014 9:09 pm

That 2nd map is very good. Notice the increasing cold East Pac temperatures coming from Peru.
The same thing happened last year. You’ll never get an El Nino with that occurring.

Rob
March 27, 2014 9:11 pm

Actually the 3rd map.

MattS
March 27, 2014 9:16 pm

Paul Jackson,
Of course the facts matter to the warmists. Do you have any idea how much work it is to hide all those facts?

March 27, 2014 9:17 pm

RE: “red roasted pepper color all over the Arctic”
Perhaps it is above “average” (maybe, maybe not), but how are these temps measured since there are no wx stations on the ice? (Well maybe one or two.) Satellites? Models? Extrapolation using one or two surface stations and then extrapolating?
The red is absurd and perhaps the methodology is also absurd.
CAS

pat
March 27, 2014 9:22 pm

27 March: UK Daily Mail: David Martosko: Climate jazz-hands: Federal government’s National Science Foundation paid $697,177 for New York City musical theater production about global warming
‘The Great Immensity’ opens in April, funded by U.S. taxpayers
The National Science Foundation awarded a grant of nearly $700,000 in 2010 to a New York City theater company so it could write and produce a play about climate change.
‘The play uses real places and stories drawn from interviews conducted by the artists to create an experience that is part investigative journalism and part inventive theater,’ according to the grant’s online description.
‘Attendance at the performances is projected to be about 75,000.’
‘The initiative … intends to create and evaluate a new model for how theater can increase public awareness, knowledge, and engagement with important science-related societal issues,’ according to the government bureaucrats who awarded the funds…
‘The Great Immensity,’ a play scheduled for an April 11 premiere in Brooklyn, is about a woman who hunts for a friend who disappeared from a tropical island. As she moves from place to place, she ‘uncovers a mysterious plot surrounding the upcoming international climate summit,’ reads an online plot summary…
The theater company producing ‘The Great Immensity’ is The Civilians, a Brooklyn fixture whose artistic director Steve Crosson wrote and directs the play…
The show’s first musical number, called ‘Margin of Error,’ recounts global-warming poll numbers that the producers say ‘were all reported by the New York Times.’
‘Forty-four per cent’ of Americans ‘think that it should be more of a priority, but not if it costs too much, and less than health care or the economy,’ reads one lyric. ‘Thirty-six per cent think it’s caused by humans – or maybe 47 per cent – or 51 per cent, maybe, think it’s a combination of human and natural causes.’
The song’s one laugh line: ‘Ten per cent believe the snow they shoveled last winter precludes any chance of climate change.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2590817/Outrage-Federal-governments-National-Science-Foundation-paid-697-177-New-York-City-musical-theater-production-global-warming.html#ixzz2xBQlsoua

Box of Rocks
March 27, 2014 9:31 pm

MY.
How far we have fallen.
And I just want to build gas turbines….
Thermo rules.

pat
March 27, 2014 9:57 pm

must read/watch. Nicholas Stern is challenged by ABC’s Tony Jones on China/coal/renewables propaganda, & comes out looking very foolish indeed. the Richard Tol stuff is predictible:
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: 27 March: ABC Lateline: Back tracking on carbon pricing will damage Australia
NICHOLAS STERN: What China is doing is growing rapidly and trying to reduce the fraction of coal in its energy portfolio and it’s succeeding in doing that.
TONY JONES: Sorry, can I interrupt you there. Do you know what it is at the moment? I found it hard to actually find details of this. What is the percentage of power produced by coal?
NICHOLAS STERN: I think it’s around – you’ll have to check this Tony but I think it’s just below 60 per cent coming down from considerably above 60 per cent.
Don’t hold me on those numbers. All I can tell you is that it’s coming down pretty rapidly in China as a result of direct policy and notwithstanding a likely doubling of the economy in 10 years, that they aim, during that period, to find a peak in coal and then bring it on down thereafter…
***TONY JONES: Finally, as scientists meet in Japan to thrash out the final wording on the IPCC’s next assessment report on the impact of climate change, British economist Professor Richard Toll who was one of the lead authors, has asked for his name to be taken off the document, claiming it’s alarmist and has been changed from talking, as he says, about manageable risk to the four horsemen of the apocalypse. How much damage will his departure do to the credibility of the final report?
NICHOLAS STERN: Not much. He’s always been somebody who as argued that the damages from climate change are there but very small. He’s an outlier really and I think his departure won’t make much difference.
***TONY JONES: Do you think it’s been orchestrated in some way? Is that what you’re suggesting?
NICHOLAS STERN: I don’t know whether it’s orchestrated or not. He’s making his own statements and he’s entitled to do that but I think he’s seen as a bit of an outlier in terms of someone who thinks the damages are much smaller than the rest of us fear and this is risk management, Tony.
You have to be very, very confident that the risks are going to be very small because the science tells us the risks could be very big and it is irreversibility here, as the concentrations in the atmosphere ratchet up, the high-carbon capital and infrastructure gets locked in. Delay is very dangerous so one person saying he thinks the risks might be very small is a very marginal part of the argument because most of the science is telling us that the risks are very big and with the irreversibility that we see in this, any kind of common sense or risk analysis says we should act strongly…
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s3973198.htm

lee
March 27, 2014 10:12 pm

pat says:
March 27, 2014 at 9:22 pm
‘The Great Immensity’ opens in April, funded by U.S. taxpayers’
The Great Immensity – The Tumescent Mann?

pat
March 27, 2014 10:23 pm

***Alister – as if you needed Tol to “acknowledge” the obvious:
27 March: Reuters: Alister Doyle: UN author says draft climate report alarmist, pulls out of team
One of the 70 authors of a draft U.N. report on climate change said he had pulled out of the writing team because it was “alarmist” about the threat.Richard Tol told Reuters he disagreed with some findings of the summary to be issued in Japan on March 31.
“The drafts became too alarmist,” the Dutch professor of economics at Sussex University in England said by telephone from Yokohama, Japan, where governments and scientists are meeting to edit and approve the report.
***But he acknowledged some other authors “strongly disagree with me”…
Another expert criticized Tol, saying his IPCC chapter exaggerated possible benefits.
“Of the 19 studies he surveyed only one shows net positive benefits from warming. And it’s the one he wrote,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Unit on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics…
Among rare examples of past dissent within the IPCC, Richard Landsea, a U.S. meteorologist, pulled out of the last report published in 2007, accusing the IPCC of overstating evidence that global warming was aggravating Atlantic hurricanes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/27/us-climatechange-idUSBREA2Q1FX20140327

philincalifornia
March 27, 2014 10:34 pm

Mac the Knife says:
March 27, 2014 at 7:47 pm
Jimbo says:
March 27, 2014 at 4:54 pm
OT
On extreme weather I have notice that when I ask Warmists for say 5 peer reviewed papers showing extreme weather trends CAUSED by man – they freeze. They attack me instead of my request. There is a ‘mountain of evidence’ but they – freeze. This is the one to shoot for guys.
Jimbo,
I think this is very much ‘on topic’! You have hit on the point of leverage that moves virtually all warmists into ad hom attack because they can not substantiate verified cases of man made global warming.
[You’re] right on target. Bombs away!!!
Mac
—————————————————————-
Yep, the one thing you can guarantee when talking to a warmist is that when they utter the phrases “mountain of evidence” or “overwhelming evidence”, their next sentence will not contain any. In fact, I think it’s an axiom in the climate science and blog commenter dupe field.

Espen
March 28, 2014 12:19 am

March 27, 2014 at 4:51 pm | Paul Jackson says:

I’m sure that you meant -26C ? http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/russia/khatanga

Interesting! I bet this is a case of the METAR-error Anthony covered some time ago? Errors like this one are sure to be filtered out of the temperature records – but when +2 is reported instead of -2 – who will notice?

March 28, 2014 12:37 am

RE: AJB says:
March 27, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Thanks for sharing that new DMI feature. When you animate it, it shows three totally cool things.
First, it shows the ice reflecting the cross-polar flow of frigid air from Siberia to Canada, at the end of the winter. (This is the supply of the air that has been freezing our socks off, down in the USA.)
Second, it shows the air in this flow becoming less brutal as the sun gets higher over Siberia. (Eastern Siberia has some of the greatest temperature extremes on earth. In the dead of winter it can average down around -70 (-57 Celsius), while in the summer it can average up over +80 (+27 Celsius). And that is “average;” and doesn’t include record-setting extremes.)
Third, it shows cracks forming and then freezing over in the Arctic Sea, as thin lines of warmer ice-surface temperature which then vanish as they freeze over. These leads (cracks) have to be fairly large to be seen from outer space. Ordinary leads are too thin to be visible. My feeling is that these cracks chill the water more than usual by exposing it. They are less likely to form when a zonal flow (around and around the Pole) brings calm to the central arctic. They are more likely to form when there is cross-polar-flow and the ice is exposed to stronger winds.
Now that the sun has risen on the Pole we can use our lying eyes to examine the ice up there with satellite pictures. You can see there were some fairly huge leads formed, up there in the windy winter darkness, for the new ice is darker than the old ice, albeit sometimes thick enough to be a milky color rather than pure white.
While the cracks do not seem as extensive as they were two winters ago, my guess is that the Arctic Sea has again been chilled. I’ll be keeping an eye on the DMI temperature graph to see if the summer temperatures up there again are below normal.
While I am sure DMI has some political appointees at higher levels, demanding maps be tinted differently, I think generally their products are good, due to hard workers at lower levels. After all, some Danes work at the edge of the ice, and if the DMI gets too political and produces false maps, people may die.
That is a reality-check the people at the University Of Maine seem untroubled by.

somersetsteve
March 28, 2014 1:47 am

‘The great immensity’….’The great absurdity’

izen
March 28, 2014 2:35 am

@-Jimbo
“On extreme weather I have notice that when I ask Warmists for say 5 peer reviewed papers showing extreme weather trends CAUSED by man – they freeze. ”
Perhaps you need to ask a better informed ‘warmist’?
Here are five to be going on with.
ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/wcas_2011.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3908.1
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.81/abstract
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09762.html

Rhys Jaggar
March 28, 2014 3:35 am

Look mate, if the normal temperature is -20C, then a 20F anomaly still wouldn’t melt the ice.
The chart you need to put in is the Danish temperature monitor for 80N which shows consistently that this winter, the arctic was much warmer than the long-term mean.
This has happened quite regularly in recent years, but, as yet, no-one has explained why, although warmists assert that it’s due to carbon dioxide.

Bill Illis
March 28, 2014 5:25 am

Here is the typical temperature profile from the sea ice off of Barrow Alaska in 2012.
Air temperature above -33C (height of the winter I guess). Down to the surface of the snow at -28.0C. Down to the top of the ice at sea level -20.0C. The ice slowly becomes warmer and warmer as one goes deeper until the bottom of the sea ice 4 feet down is -1.7C. What is the accurate surface temperature.
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2012/BRW_MBS12_currTprof.png

DrTorch
March 28, 2014 6:22 am

I look at the NSIDC Arctic page routinely, and this winter it sure looked like their Cartesian plot of ice coverage vs time, was well below what their map showed.
Could just be my perception, I didn’t digitize anything. But, anyone else sense that too?

Matt
March 28, 2014 6:38 am

Just a thought I had after reading this…
If areas of Sea Ice are masked when displaying these maps, does this also apply when calculating temperature anomalies?
If so, areas that are normally covered in sea ice but are open would obviously show a positive anomaly, while areas that are normally open but are covered in sea ice would be masked off (but would presumably have otherwise been a negative anomaly). This could potentially introduce a warm bias in the two poles…if sea temperature anomalies are calculated in a similar manner.
I don’t know if this means anything and I’m sure they account for this, but it was just a thought I had.

March 28, 2014 8:15 am

The same kind of color bar manipulation goes on in the oil and gas exploration industry. Multimillion dollar decisions are based on interpretations of seismic data. Once it’s colored up, it’s hard to unsee an interpretation. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been offered drilling opportunities that ultimately fell apart simply by applying the “default” color bar instead of the “sales-pitch” one.

March 28, 2014 8:33 am

Intrigued, I clicked the link in the original posr, switched to SST anomaly, and on my screen at least the ice covered areas for March 28th are currently a snowy white sort of a color!

MarkB
March 28, 2014 9:03 am

I just reasoned that the plots posted show (in order)
1) Sea surface temperature with a floor at -2 C (based on sea water covered by ice)
2) Ice surface temperature anomaly. Since the ice surface can and usually is colder than 0 C anomalies can have wide swings above and below the average. To be fair, I find it curious that there are regions where the colors transition from full scale positive to full scale negative over short distances which makes me wonder whether the measurement is reliable and if it is, what physical phenomena makes it so.
3) Doesn’t show data for the area of interest, so I’m not clear why it’s included.
4) Ice extent greater than some concentration (>15%)
5) Ice concentration
So my wild assed guess is that the pictures are different because they’re picturing different things, but I suppose one can’t exclude some nefarious plot.

ES
March 28, 2014 9:24 am

You got results:
Rather harsh criticism of Climate Reanalyzer’s daily sea-surface temperature anomaly map was posted yesterday on Watts Up With That?. At issue was the lack of a mask over sea-ice covered areas. Surface temperature anomalies are much greater over ice than over water, and the WUWT article implied that our graphics were intended to mislead or misrepresent information. This was not our intention. In order to avoid confusion and further angst, the surface temperature field now includes a mask over sea-ice covered gridcells. Today I will verify that reported region-averaged anomaly values are correct and do not include the masked areas.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/CR_blog/CR_blog.php

Pull My Finger
March 28, 2014 9:38 am

People in climate science really should have to take a class in cartography before they graduate. The internet is awash with awful, irresponsible, and deceptive maps.

March 28, 2014 9:59 am

Josh might have some fun with this.
Picture a “climate scientist” standing next to a globe with a paint brush and a can of red paint…
Caption:
“It looks like it’s warmer than we thought!”

March 28, 2014 10:04 am

Or more simply:
“It LOOKS like it’s warmer….”

DirkH
March 28, 2014 4:05 pm

izen says:
March 28, 2014 at 2:35 am
“@-Jimbo
“On extreme weather I have notice that when I ask Warmists for say 5 peer reviewed papers showing extreme weather trends CAUSED by man – they freeze. ”
Perhaps you need to ask a better informed ‘warmist’?
Here are five to be going on with.
ftp://texmex.mit.edu/pub/emanuel/PAPERS/wcas_2011.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3908.1
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.81/abstract
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09762.html

Picked the third one, read the abstract, no mention of man or anthropogenic. Where’s the beef.

March 28, 2014 6:36 pm

Thanks, ES. Good news.
3/28/2014 — SST Anomaly Map Now Includes Sea Ice Mask, Posted by Sean Birkel.
See http://cci-reanalyzer.org/CR_blog/CR_blog.php
This is a plus for Climate Reanalyzer,

anengineer
March 28, 2014 10:56 pm

We need a map showing the measurement showing the locations of the measurement points, and the region that the results are mapped over.
How accurate would those temperatures on the ice be if they were all plotted based on a single measurement at someplace like Point Barrow.