Something odd is going on at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Look at this image:
The image is directly from NSIDC’s Artic Sea Ice News page today. Of course there’s the large drop of about 1 million sqkm of sea ice in the last couple of days that is puzzling.
If this were real, we’d also expect to see something also on Cryosphere today plots, and while that group does not do an extent graph, they do make an areal graph. It “should” show something that reflects the drop but instead goes up. WUWT?
While ice extent and area are not exactly the same, they are closely related. So one would expect to see at least some correlation. But we have zero. I suppose there could be a wind issue that is compacting sea ice, but surely there would be something in the area graph.
Something seems not right, and NSIDC owes the public an explanation as they did for a previous drop in extent change from January 15 to 26 which is currently in their Feb 3rd news release.
h/t to Joe D’Aleo and many WUWT commenters.
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gelus, gelatus, frigidus, congelatus…Aeternum sit
Domine, ignosce eis, quod enim faciunt, nesciunt
Nihil evenit fortuito
Fraternitas Praedatorum Cervisiae ….( many brahmas)
Sorry for my bad latin
Craig Moore:
Those aren’t neuter nouns of the second declension??
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Sorry, that was OT and I will cease & desist.
Well, it seems weird that the Arctic ice would retreat when US temps for the past year are below normal. If this is true, then is cold Arctic air replaced with warmer air as it dives southward into the CONUS?
If true, I guess this will be “adjusted” away soon as well…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/jan/02_01_2009_DvTempRank_pg.gif
Smokey-
Makes about as much sense as “now you see it, now you don’t” ice packs. Perhaps the data monks will reveal all as to how they, their graph lines, and their verbage go on a bender.
just me (13:08:57
“it is constantly smoothed and error corrected… . But: there is an important thing: it is about climate monitoring, not about Titanic controlling.”
I do understand that there is constant smoothing and error correction but I do NOT understand why the correction is virtually always down! Neither do I understand why the News Releases always focus on the most negative slant possible. For example, Autumn ice recovery was actually at a record breaking rate. Surely balanced reporting would have made a head line out of this? But far from this being the case, the stunning ice growth was side lined and barely mentioned in the passing. OK, so more exposed water meant more water to freeze, but this process continued to accelerate even after it had exceeded the mean values of recent years. There was a focus instead on the relatively high temperatures despite rapid ice recovery. Clearly this was due to the fact relatively warm water was being frozen due initially to very cold temperatures with the resultant latent heat of fusion then being released back into the atmosphere. It stands to reason that it would not have been possible for the unusually warm waters in the Arctic (which NSIDC identified) to freeze without abnormally sustained cold temperatures. But we all know that the heat has to go somewhere hence the warmer atmospheric temps. But the headline of course was… “Expected Paradox: Autumn warmth & ice growth”. No real mention of the fantastic rate of ice recovery or where the Autumn warmth had come from.
So, my question here is, if indeed there is absolutely no agenda, then why is both the smoothing of the data and the reporting so one sided? If you watch carefully all the adjustments that are made over time you will see what I mean. Also look at all the News Releases and you will get the same picture. OK, maybe it is for the most part a gloomy picture, but you would think that in the interest of balanced reporting, the occasional bit of positive spin on something like the example I have given would be in order. I personally have no agenda, I’m just really obsessed with snow & ice – that’s why I watch charts such as those produced by NSIDC so closely!!
Ben
Ben
Ben
Mike Bryant (15:37:45) :
“How much more gracious would it have been to say, “Thanks, Anthony, for bringing this to our attention. It will be fixed shortly.”?
Now Dr. Meiers curt answer is likely to be the subject of a blog out there somewhere.”
I am somewhat surprised by his apparent curt response. Why did he have the data removed, and why is he “looking into it”?
One email from Anthony causes this responsible scientist to pull data that had been publicized, yet expressed an awareness that their “near real-time data” is susceptible to data dropouts, bad data due to satellite issues, errors that have a “good independent” check from an independent resource and are passed by some measure of manual quality control.
Being only a layman, I’d expect that under those circumstances that they would know enough not to release data until they were sure about it to the point that it wouldn’t be pulled and looked at as a result of one persons query. And if this reporting of near realtime data is subject to such potential for error, it would not be released until being “looked into” first.
“Look at the Sea of Okhotsk. It looks like the ice disappeared there overnight in the graphics.”
That happened once before on Jan 21/22 2009. Look for the lower leftmost ice. around Labrador
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=01&fd=21&fy=2008&sm=01&sd=22&sy=2009
I never heard any explanation. Just how can that much ice dissappear in 24 hours?
I don’t think I’m being paranoid when I say there are a lot of people with reputations and livelyhoods on the line. They may feel desperate enough to “correct the trend”.
Remember the biologist whose white rats had rectangles of black fur, proving a new anti-rejection drug? Somebody pointed out a few white hairs and he whipped out a magic marker to touch ’em up.
Keep your eyes pealed!
Maybe we should give Dr. Meier the benefit of the doubt and ascribe his short temper to something else… like a fight with his wife or a bad headache… Still, the QC really needs to be improved.
Mike Bryant-
I share your concern. There seems to be a rash of misfires followed by a hyping news release. Steig is only one of many such examples. Dr. Pielke, Sr. also has a current column on the reporting bias. http://climatesci.org/2009/02/15/an-egregious-example-of-biased-news-reporting/
Or being beat up in blogs, facing rampant speculation about motives.
However, if such problems with the data can occur that easily, perhaps slowing down the process a bit might help avoid such rampant speculation. An extra QC step, perhaps. I think delaying the data for a day wouldn’t be a problem.
For another view see
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_ncepice.html
Yesterday this map showed a big chunk of ice completely missing from SE Greenland coast.
Anyone care to figure out just what this means?
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/support/land.html
“Since we can’t have sea ice on land, it is a requirement for sea ice products that land be represented reasonably. This turns out to be a nontrivial process. Over the years that NCEP sea ice products have been constructed, different versions of land have been used in response to interests and concerns of users. This has resulted in improved products for daily usage, but has introduced artefacts into the record for those users who are interested in long-term effects.
The potential effects of different land definition policies are not trivial. Approximately 1.6 million km^2 can be moved into or out of the ‘land’ category, depending on how ‘land’ is defined. Much of this occurs in areas with complex coastlines, such as the Baltic Sea or the Canadian Archipelago. Since both can include an ice cover, this represents a significant fraction of the total Arctic ice pack (which reaches a maximum extent of approximately 14 million km^2).
In order to stabilize time series which may be derived from the NCEP ice products, we have recomputed the land masks all at the same time, and then recomputed the products. The hemispheric products have not included (in their data files) land, but the global fields do include land as part of the processing. Since it is also the global products which are most used for time-series purposes, this does require revisitation by those users.”
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nh_snowcover/ Here is another link for artic ice i find useful.
Mike Bryant said:
“How much more gracious would it have been to say, “Thanks, Anthony, for bringing this to our attention. It will be fixed shortly.”?”
Grace is in short supply in the AGW war – and is likely to remain so. Desgraciadamente.
I’m waiting now for the headlines to appear worldwide covering the record-setting catastrophic melt of Antarctic sea ice, based on the high quality data released by NSIDC showing barely 2 million km² and the melt season’s not yet ended:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
Speaking of funky data, I seem to recall an instance a while back (within the past month or so?) when Arctic sea ice extent imagery showed large areas of grey instead of white. Perhaps an indication that the NSIDC buggy is breaking down?
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html. I find this also useful if it shows minus 2c if its not ice it should be soon with freezing temperatures.
I think Walt Meiers prompt response is enough.
This a nationalised industry remember and they are notoriously inefficient. Personally I am impressed and merely hope that their QC is tightened up with better automatic alarms.
DaveE.
A look here shows almost the entire sea of okhotsk is minus 2c but very little ice. http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
Just a follow-up to a couple comments.
First, we appreciate being informed of any errors, but generally we will catch obvious errors, of which the above is a clear example. Because this is near real-time data obtained from an operational satellite, it shouldn’t be considered in any way “final” for at least several days. For further discussion of errors, see here:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq.html#quality_control
We do some automated QC, but when an unusual error occurs, it can slip by, as it did today. We will correct it as soon as we get a chance. We may consider doing a full manual QC before publishing any data, but that could slow things down. Scientists are well-aware of issues using near real-time data and no final conclusions are drawn from such data.
In general, it would be more productive for Anthony to email us directly rather than posting it on his blog without giving us a chance to respond. I apologize for my snide comment regarding this, but posting this to a widely-read blog only increases the number of people we have to respond to and takes away from what we primarily do here at NSIDC, which is science and data management.
Finally, thanks for the “data are” correction. As one who uses the word “data” a lot, I’m quite sensitive to that and it annoys me too when I see it incorrect, but in my haste I can make the occasional grammar error. 🙂
walt
Paul Friesen (18:24:11) :
A look here shows almost the entire sea of okhotsk is minus 2c but very little ice. http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
I’m assuming that is satellite data and as I recall, they quoted an uncertainty of 2 – 3ºC
Not saying it’s wrong of course and no, I’m not a believer.
DaveE.
Walt Meier,
I appreciate your comments. Thanks.
Walt Meier (18:35:27) :
Sir I believe you are being a little disingenuous to Anthony. The following from the original blog article…
“If this were real, we’d also expect to see something also on Cryosphere today plots, and while that group does not do an extent graph, they do make an areal graph. It “should” show something that reflects the drop but instead goes up. WUWT?”
I think makes it clear that whilst the error has been noted, it is noted as an error.
The whole point of the article is that the discontinuity had been noted by several people and Anthony has defused it as an error that has somehow slipped by QC.
DaveE.
Walt Meier (12:06:13) :
“I’m not sure why you think things like this are worth blogging about.”
Mr Meier,
Besides trillion dollar taxes being proposed to deal with “manmade global warming” there is also a prediction made by Al Gore recently that North Pole ice could be gone “in five years”.
Last year Mark Serreze, of the NSIDC (you may know him), said North Pole ice could be gone in the summer of 2008. He said then “The set-up for this summer is disturbing”. This, of course, was broadcast in all news outlets around the world. Everyone on both sides of the global warming debate was watching Arctic ice totals last summer to see what would really happen. You may have noticed hits on the NSIDC web site were high last summer.
Now Mark Surreze is saying North Pole ice is in a “death spiral”.
You can be certain that Arctic ice data will be scrutinized because of Al Gore and Mark Surreze. A line has been drawn by both. Both have placed it clearly on the radar screen. This is why NSIDC data is worth blogging about–especially since Mark Surreze is employed at the NSIDC.
If someone is neutral in the manmade global warming issue they would not have sensed this line drawn. But, there are 1000’s of people all over the world, on both sides of this issue, that will be scrutinizing every movement of Arctic ice. And this will be happening for years.
There is no way for the NSIDC to get out of this scrutiny.
I’d like to offer some advice :
Firstly, don’t make any data public until you are certain there are no problems such as happened today.
Secondly, post some sort of disclaimer on the “Daily image update” page of the NSIDC web site, that is easily visible to the casual eye, that small errors could occur in NSIDC data from time to time and that the NSIDC is always working to amend such errors as quickly as can be reasonably expected. Also you could state that the NSIDC knows there will be scrutiny of it’s data, and that you understand the reasons for, and welcome, that scrutiny.
It may not seem like it but being under this microscope of scrutiny will be good for the NSIDC. It will be held to a higher level of accountability. This will produce a higher level of excellence in it’s work, though it may not feel good to be held to this higher standard.
I hope my comment has struck a friendly tone. I intended it to.
References :
Al Gore 5 year prediction :
(link has poor video quality)
Mark Surreze 2008 North Pole ice free :
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=4728737&page=1
and
Mark Surreze North Pole ice in “death spiral” :
and
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08282008/news/worldnews/arctic_ice_in_death_spiral_126443.htm
Walt Meier (18:35:27) :
My previous comment took a while to type and then check over before posting it. I didn’t see your latest comment until after I clicked “enter”. I would have changed it’s wording if I had known how your latest comment read.
My apologies,
Gene
“In general, it would be more productive for Anthony to email us directly rather than posting it on his blog without giving us a chance to respond. I apologize for my snide comment regarding this, but posting this to a widely-read blog only increases the number of people we have to respond to and takes away from what we primarily do here at NSIDC, which is science and data management.”
Personally, I could care less whether data “is” or data “are” –
What I do care about is that those agencies with a responsibility to provide that data act in a scientifically rigorous and unbiased manner in presenting it. Today, I spotted the NSIDC irregularities BEFORE I clicked onto Watts Up; however, websites such as this have allowed pajamas bloggers to add more eyes and minds to looking for errors. Todays snafu – of a half-million square km of ice – should have been obvious to even a cursory glance by NSIDC people before it was posted. Obviously, it was not.
I have little sympathy for you, Dr. Meier, especially in your regret in having to deal with the hoi polloi – many of whom are as educated and intelligent as you.