NSIDC makes a big sea ice extent jump – but why?

Here’s their satellite map –
It has been all over the place the past two weeks with lots of triangular blank areas.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
If you look closely there are three main areas that have changed OVERNIGHT.
1. The Gulf of St. Lawrence has had a major ice breakup?
2. The entire SW quadrant of Hudson Bay has had an ice breakup?
3. The Chukchi Sea in eastern Siberia has had a major ice breakup?
I have contacted Environment Canada in Manitoba and left a message.
I wish confirmation whether or no such a breakup has taken place on Hudson Bay since it would be a major news event. If not, then it is another “October Surprise” for agencies that are entrusted to provide accurate data.
Just FYI –
For the past three days the temps at Churchill, MB have been steady in the 0 degrees F range dropping to the minus teens yesterdays. Winds have been generally moderate.

I saw this as well. The NSIDC “recent” graph has been weird for a while, but not that bad. Neither AMSR-E nor NANSEN are showing anything like that:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic

Slightly OT but U of Colorado sea level data is a bit more up to date: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Also these curves are inconsistent with NSIDC too.

I have been head scratching over this one all weekend.
if you look at the latest daily image I think you will see a couple rather unique features, like straight line swathes of missing ice ( or data ) around Chukotsky. Both on the Bering side and the Chukotsky Sea side.
Plus Hudson’s Bay seems to have a large crack running through it. Are we perhaps seeing athe result of satellite repositioning in response to the latest “incident”?
Anyone have a better thought?
I would expect some sort of comment if this data is validated as the NSIDC is keenly aware of the interest in this data.

I’ve found the NSIDC to be exceptionally open with their data and methods. I’ll download the gridded near real time data tonight and take a look at what’s happening.

absolutely crazy! how can that much ice disappear in a day (response to the cryosphere data) it takes weeks to melt a large snowman !!

Funny data? Or funny data readers? The Arctic will be ice free by March.
Two points:
It is possible the frigid massive Arctic cold front winds are pushing and stacking the ice up.
Is the raw, unprocessed satellite data available anywhere? Or a competing data reduction group?

Unless there’s a major eruptive event happening,I would bet there is a data problem.This time of year it’s nearly impossibel to have that kind of breakup…

OT but still icy hot: First Carbon-Free Polar Station Opens In Antarctica
Read the BS (Bad Science) Arguments and never trust any data coming from this station.
“Thomas Leysen, chairman of Belgium’s Umicore, a leading manufacturer of catalysts for cars who attended the ceremony, said it made good business sense for companies to help protect the environment.
“The global credit crisis is a result of unsustainable behaviour. We can’t deal in an unsustainable way with our planet otherwise we will also face a crisis which will be even bigger than the credit crisis,” he said”.
Scientists monitoring global warming predict higher temperatures could hasten melting at Antarctica, the world’s largest repository of fresh water, raising sea levels and altering shorelines. If Antarctica ever melted, world sea levels would rise by about 57 metres.
This will have affect some 146 million people living in low-lying coastal regions less than one metre above current sea levels, researchers said.
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said failure to reduce emissions by 50 to 85 percent by the middle of this century could be catastrophic.
“Globally we will be in a temperature increase zone that the earth has not known for the past two to three million years,” he said.
http://planetark.org/wen/51629

I know what happened. Debris from one of the smashed satellites got in the way of the NSICD satellite camera / sensor, causing a false reading of diminished Arctic ice extent! 🙂

If you have been following the Cryosphere maps it’s obvious that there are serious data problems. The ice in the St Lawrence area, off Labrador and in the southern Hudson Bay has been popping in and out of existence repeatedly the last few weeks, though the Bering Sea is a new problem area.
There are other smaller scale anomalies. For example the Bothnian Gulf is shown as ice-free, while it is actually completely frozen.
For a reality check it is a good idea to use national ice sites which are for the use of sailors and fishermen, not politicians:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/Ice_Can/CMMBCTCA.gif
http://retro.met.no/kyst_og_hav/iskart.html
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/index/gronland/iskort.htm#ugekort

Perhaps this has been noted already. However this site also doesn’t show any dramatic ice loss.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/
As other has observered the images seem odd with straight lines missing. It is a similar problem seen sometimes on Cryosphere todays regional images. There are vertical “blips” here and there.
In my simple opinion it is either “lost” data or some corruption. This should be corrected in the next few days.