I had planned to do a post yesterday evening about how sea ice area and extent had returned to very near normal levels. But I was tired, so I saved off the graphs from the NANSEN arctic sea ice site.
This morning I was shocked to discover that overnight, huge amounts of sea ice simply disappeared. Fortunately I had saved the images and a copy of the webpage last night. Here is the before and after in a blink comparator:
There is no mention on the NANSEN website as to this change. So either it is an automation error or an undocumented adjustment. Either way, since this is for public consumption, NANSEN owes the public an explanation.
And there is more, see additional blink comparator graphs I’ve added below:
After examining the above, it appears the issue only manifests itself when comparisons to the 1979-2000 monthly average are made. The adjustment starting point appears to start around September 10th – at the summer minimum for both area and extent.
This could be a data processing error, though if so, it is so blatantly obvious to anyone who follows the NANSEN presentation that it immediately stands out. Many people commenting on this blog and others also saw the change without the benefit of my handy-dandy blinkj comparator above.
That fact that it occurs on a weekend could be viewed as suspicious due to fewer eyes on the website , or an indication that they have sloppy quality control there at NANSEN and this was published via automation with no human inspection prior to the update.
Steven Goddard writes via email:
The explanation (if one is offered) will be interesting to say the least.
UPDATE:
I received this email from Stein Sandven at Nansen in response to my query:
Dear Anthony,
The ice area calculation has been too high since about 22 October, causing too steep slope of the 2008 curve. We corrected for this yesterday and recalculated the ice area for 2008. The slope of the 2008 curve should now be correct and can be compared with 2007 and the previous mean monthly ice area.Best regardsStein
For my opinion though it seems to be an incomplete answer, generating even more questions.
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Lars Tunkrans tells us that Stockholm, Sweden is still warm, but this site:
UK Temperature Tracker seems to suggest that CET is a couple of degrees below average …
Interesting.
And equally strange the nsidc sea ice extent has NOT been adjusted. It appears to be headed towards the 1978-2000 average by the end of September
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Have some fun with this AP article today http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081214/ap_on_sc/global_warming_obama
Quotes:
“When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can’t avoid.
Since Clinton’s inauguration, summer Arctic sea ice has lost the equivalent of Alaska, California and Texas. The 10 hottest years on record have occurred since Clinton’s second inauguration. Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it.”
And: “”We need to start in January making significant changes,” Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. “This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis.”
Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding “tipping points.”
“We’re out of time,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. “Things are going extinct.”
Read the whole thing. The world is past the tipping point. Obama has to save us and this year!
wow.
Thank you Walter Dnes. I will study it.
Grant
I live in Central Mass, and I know that with all of the news coverage on MSM regarding the ice storm we had last Thursday night, it will be almost 60Deg here tomorrow.
I haven’t checked any historical sources, but I have to say that inspite of a few cold snaps?…I think this has been a very mild Dec so far, and wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was warmer than normal.
Jim
JimB (19:07:49) :
Someone who tracks snow depths for me (see http://wermenh.com/sdd/index.html ), is in Pepperell, and posts a month-to-date summary every evening. However, he’s missed the last few days. || (Read in between the lines.)
IIRC, December was just slightly above his 25 year average. November was almost exactly average.
Just wondering: the NANSEN curve has only been ‘adjusted’ as of approx. September 10, 2008. Shouldn’t all the other curves in the graph be ‘adjusted’ as well? Doing that, the discrepancy between today’s ice extent and the 1979-2007 average would probably reduce to zero again. This is something NANSEN should explain.
What’s the technical terminology? Jiggering the numbers? Of course it raises suspicious to see a graph change like this. I think it’s fair to wonder what exactly happened on that date in September that made this happen. I would further suggest that if you wanted to change a graph to meet your expectations while also making it not show any strange jumps you would choose the place where the graph made a big change in direction. Just as happened or was done here.
It happened Sept. 11? data terrorists?
Mia culpa. I pointed out to Stein Sandven that there was a descrepency between the comparable graphs, e.g. between the two ice extent graphs for 2008. The 2008 lines should have matched between the 2 graphs but they didn’t. The graphs with the +/- 1 std were adjusted down rather than the other graphs being adjusted up, thus the apparent loss of sea ice.
What has happened to the JAXA graph? It seems that ice extent has reversed, and is FALLING as winter approaches!!!
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Re: late freeze-over of Hudson’s Bay.
Canada, it would seem, is now chock-full of Arctic air, and will be for at least the next ten days.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/ensemble/tenday_e.html
Standard deviations in the prairies 0f +4! Considering that the standard deviation out there must be fairly generous, that is powerful cold. Don’t go out and frolic in those shale-oil deposits , O Alberta!
The Northeast US has not yet been consistently below normal in December, although we have had in and out shots of Arctic air. Dec 8th was the earliest sub-freezing day at Newark Airport since the same date in 2000 (Central Park had a sub-freezing day in November). The next day, however, the maximum temp was 58 and on the 10th, the high was a shirt-sleevy 65.
Currently, at 10:30 AM, EST, it is 60F at Newark Airport. Tomorrow, however, should see a high in the mid-40’s, which is just about the norm.
All of this is indicative of a positive AO and a lack of blocking, with an early-winter storm track from the Gulf to the western Lakes, which puts areas east of the Appalachians in the warm sector ( the New England ice storm can been seen as a warmsector event). With all of these ups and downs, December is still averaging almost a degree below normal (a good deal of that anomaly will be wiped out today).
This situation should be about to end, if the consensus of models is any indication, with the cold overwhelming the pattern in spite of a basically postive AO. The last half of December may be a doozy. If it is, I look forward to reading the NJ State Climatologist writing up a third consecutive month of below normal temps, and three of the past four.
I appreciate that Denver is subject to extremes of climate, but breaking a daily record by 13 degrees ?!
ON DECEMBER 15TH…THE TEMPERATURE BOTTOMED OUT AT -19 DEGREES
AT 231 AM. THIS IS A NEW RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE FOR DECEMBER 15TH
BREAKING THE OLD RECORD OF -6 SET IN 1951.
Um, that’s great and all; but, why are we assuming that EITHER graph is accurate? I have no way to assess the accuracy of the data presented whether they change it overnight, or keep it the same.
Besides which, it seems that the data are all collected, recorded, and presented by individuals who have a vested interest in having the evidence support Global Warming — how is it that either graph is reliable?
Why does this matter at all? The warmists are right that a few years of cold does not DIS-prove global warming. Normal or increasing ice caps for a few years does not DIS-prove global warming.
Why is everyone falling into this trap? It is not anyone’s responsibility to DIS-prove global warming. Global Warming, anthropogenic or otherwise, has never been proven. The Burden of Proof is on the warmists, and always has been.
The answer is in the HADCRUT data and always has been. THERE HAS BEEN NO GLOBAL WARMING. This is not something that you or I have to DISprove. THEY have NEVER proven it. All temperature data that the warmists rely on that is prior to 1940 is MADE UP. Anyone ever hear of BOOTSTRAPPING? It can only be reliably used on NORMALLY DISTRIBUTED data – which temperatures are not.
How do folks here justify a Global Average Temperature for, say, 1860, that is based on data from less than 16% of the globe?
Where is the temperature data prior to 1940 FROM? Are they reliable sources? Were they all collected according to ONE standard methodology?
In order to try to DISprove global warming, one must first accept that the data presented to prove it is reliable/acceptable proof. Why is everyone here proceeding as if they are trying to DISprove something that has been proven?
So let me get this straight, the answer to the discrepancy is the sea ice levels were too high. OK, is that too high fo the hoaxers — Or is it the truth, or is it just made up as well, the apparent error was made at the apex of the graph, hmmmm. Just call me skeptical.
Aren’t the warmist hoaxers required to prove their hoax, instead of others disproving it? There is no proof that stands up that global warming caused by man exists.
“” crosspatch (19:07:45) :
Arctic sea ice is frozen sea water but the longer it lives the more the salt works out of it. The older it gets, the fresher it gets. “”
Well not exactly; the solubility of the salts in the solid phase (Ice) is very much less than in the liquid phase (water). The ice “grows” at the interface between the liquid phase and the solid phase, and the salts are excluded from the solid at that time, which makes the liquid at the interface even more salty than normal, but the ice as grown, is quite fresh. I don’t know exactly what the segregation coefficient is for the common salts in sea water; but presumably any of those Oceanographer types from Scripps and such places could tell us.
For sea water with 2.47% salinity, the maximum density occurs at the freezing point which is about -2.5 deg C. Normal sea water is about 3.5% salinity, and freezes at an evan lower temperature, and also keeps getting denser till it freezes.
The floating ice, being freshwater, melts at zero C so once the sea freezes, it tends to grow quite quickly.
But there really isn’t any “outsalting” process that goes on once the water is frozen. The very concept of solid means that the molecules are NOT free to move about in the solid, so any small amount of salt in the solid is not going to move about and get ejected from the solid.
Freezing, including seeded growth of a crystal, is a very common process for highly purifying materials.
We used to grow single crystals of Gallium Arsenide for semiconductor products (LEDs), using a “:Gradient Freeze” process, whereby the crystal growth started at a seed crystal, and proceeded along the melt driving any impurities in front of the growth face, so all the impurities were caught in the extreme end of the crystal, or uually left in a small liquid “slag” puddle at the 3end of the growth. We also reprocessed recycled gallium and purified it to seven nines purity (99.99999%) by repeated crystallization, and remelting.
George
Regarding the note from Stein at Nansen: ?? It is obvious that changes were made from about 11 September, but he says 22 October. WTF? And the “adjustment” obviously amounted to a constant for all months following 11 Sept. How could they “lose” a constant amount of ice for 3 months? Much more explanation is needed!
When you combine this with the “hottest October” hoax we just saw and the “Ten Hottest Years” hoax a few years back and the other (always upward) “adjustments” that keep happening to temperature measurements, it stops being amusing.
I looked in over at the Nansen site, today. Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see any mea culpas over there. Perhaps they think that posting on “Watts” is enough?
I kinda gotta throw in with Thorn (Charlton Heston) when he mocked Sol Roth’s (Edward G, Robinson) lament “Greenhouse Effect! Everything’s burning up!”.
(See Soylent Green, 1973 – a true classic SF movie)
There is now a correction note on the NANSEN website:
On 13th December the ice area and extent were recalculated and new curves plotted for 01.09.2008-12.12.2008 due to error in new version of software.
Comparing the Nansen graphs with AMSR. What is going on at AMSR. They are showing that ice extent has fallen for the past week or so. I remain sceptical of the reasons for changing the graphs. Too convenient.
Link to AMSR
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Somehow data, when inconvenient to the person presenting it, always seems to change. If their reason, software change, whatever it is, is valid, then why is only one part of the graph affected? 2 + 2=4 in my book, according to theirs it’s 22. hmmmm
George E. Smith (11:50:04) :
“” crosspatch (19:07:45) :
Arctic sea ice is frozen sea water but the longer it lives the more the salt works out of it. The older it gets, the fresher it gets. “”
………….
But there really isn’t any “outsalting” process that goes on once the water is frozen. The very concept of solid means that the molecules are NOT free to move about in the solid, so any small amount of salt in the solid is not going to move about and get ejected from the solid.
Actually George crosspatch is right, see here for example: http://www.nsidc.org/seaice/characteristics/brine_salinity.html
Trevor (02:57:29) :
Comparing the Nansen graphs with AMSR. What is going on at AMSR. They are showing that ice extent has fallen for the past week or so.
And if you look at the other curves you’ll notice that it’s not an uncommon event even in January.
Trevor (02:57:29) :
Comparing the Nansen graphs with AMSR. What is going on at AMSR. They are showing that ice extent has fallen for the past week or so. I remain sceptical of the reasons for changing the graphs. Too convenient.
Have a look at the animation in cryosphere http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ .
There is a retreat the last few days.
If you look at the water temperature anomalies, another animation at the bottom of the index page http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/, you will see a “hot spot” south of Iceland after mid november. Volcano/geothermal activity?