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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Now NSIDC have changed their graph so it does not look strange at all….!
As I can see from the downloaded numbers on the IJIS web site, it is five years since the sea ice extent in the Arctic has been so high in this time of the year (16th February).
Compared with the mean numbers from 2003 – 2008 the ice extent is nearly 125 000 square kilometer higher. It is also nearly 150 000 square kilometer higher than last year.
But more interesting – if you look closely on the numbers from the the last week you can see that it has been a standstill in the ice extent since the 9th of february (14,076 mill. square km). Yesterday it was 14, 043 mill. square km.
Last year it was a similar situation where the ice extent had a nine day standstill or even went back as much as 250 000 square km from the 12th to the 20th of february
On this date three years ago the ice extent was just 13, 507 square km.
It will be very interesting to monitoring the numbers the next rwo weeks.
In the end of february we can have a complete new situation.
This is actualy ridiculous. When you look at these graphs look, at the average from 1970’s-2000’s compared to how much ice there has been for the line in the past two years. OMG REALLY it went down? Oh man scarry. Wait soo doesnt that also mean HIGHER average tempuratures? You know less ice is usualy due to higher tempuratures, or is that just me trying to conform to the modern theory? This isnt about how much ice there is on a daily basis, its just showing you how on avergae there is LESS ice recently then there has been up untill now…. probably due to global warming. Also global warming doesnt say that every day of every year is going to be nessasarily warmer then that of the previous year, all it states is that there has been a increase in AVERAGE tempurature over the past 20 years or soo, and that is has been caused by greenhouse gasses AND its has cause a drop in the average ice covering in the artic? get it? omg makes sense now eh?
For longer I’ve been looking at ratios of Extent v Area as an indirect indicator of sea ice quality. The greater the difference the poorer the state of the sea ice thckness/volume. 2 million less SIE and last summer the ratio dropping to 61%, worse than any year. For the June-October period it’s been worst in last few years than.
As for that chart screenshotted. It was only limited hours like that. I understand the US had a long weekend when this showed. Same occurred for the Antarctic plot a number of months ago. Any ltd IQ tested would comprehend this, but this supposed “most popular” science blog is really just a science gossip tabloid to with object to ridicule… hence the enormous antipathy towards the likes of McIntear and A.Watts.
The guy from JAXA send me an email it required manual intervention and algorithm changing to keep the plot on course, hence why you see these odd repetitive blips and dips, which did not get corrected until first time last fall.
matt (08:25:22) :
Probably due to NATURAL OMG causes. Not CO2 OMG doing some convoluted waltz.
What happened prior to the satellite era? The Northwest Passage is called that for a very good reason. Ask the Russians. When you see quoted “The Northwest Passage was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906” you must add the pinch of salt – first time we know of.
“omg makes sense now eh?”
Sekerob (09:19:07) :
“…..it required manual intervention and algorithm changing to keep the plot on course…”
This is why we must question.
Phil and Walt,
while you are explaining how the data is handled, I am hoping you can take the time to explain another issue I ran across looking at historical data.
On the Cryosphere side-by-side displays, many areas of low density ice adjoining land turns to land from June 29 to July 1, 2004. Was this a change in how the data was interpreted? How was this handled in the monthly and annual outputs?? Did it affect anything or just a visual??
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=29&fy=2004&sm=07&sd=01&sy=2004
Thank you for any info you can provide.
Walter 21:54
Most of the NOAA graphs I checked show day of year as 46 just now.
FYI
Ed
Sekerob,
would you explain why, as was mentioned on this blog, more moderate chunks of ice disappear and reappear from the Cryosphere data?? Their “pictures” still show these. Go back day by day for a couple of months and see what you find.
Either the instruments have problems or those AlGorythms need a LOT more work. If they need more work, what does that say about the historical data set?
Are these data sets to be like surface temperature where they are monthly recomputing what seems to be random site data??
How many studies are redone after each of these changes in algorithms?? How transparent is the process in determining the needed changes??
What Anthony and others are pointing out is that the science AND the Politics are affected by the data and there are plenty of problems with the data AND the statistical tools misused by some of the big names in the Climate Community!!
Steven Goddard (13:56:53) :
Drift is much more important, because it does affect the summer minimum.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_track-map.html
I suggest you go here for drift data:
http://cersat.ifremer.fr/data/discovery/by_product_type/gridded_products/psi_amsr_drift
E.g. http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/20081218-20081220.jpg
Well, it seems since yesterday that the Western Central area of Hudson’s Bay has refrozen, but an area to the North of James Bay (South East Hudson) has melted overnight. An area the size of the UK. Meanwhile, all of the gaps North of Canada have refrozen, and vast areas North of Russia have melted instead… In short, serious technical glitches, one must suppose.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
OptiSkeptic (22:46:56) :
“I watch NSIDC almost every day also… I noticed that over the past two weeks, excluding the last 2 days, that the data has consistently come out a bit below the 2006-2007 line just about EVERY day, but then as it recedes into the few days past, it is also consistently adjusted UPWARDS, so that the end result is that the average is almost exactly the same as 2006-2007.”
Sorry, but I don’t think you’re correct in this assessment! You obviously missed the very definate up spike last week around about 11th & 12th which subsequently disappeared. There have been numerous other examples of this, while the corrections up the way to which you refer are very few and far between as well as marginal.
I don’t actually believe there is a conspiracy either, but I do believe that even the most ethical of scientists is capable of allowing his/her data analysis to be swayed by stongly held hypothesies, projections & resulting expectations.
Ben
Cryosphere Today for Feb 17 has the western half of Hudson Bay empty of ice, where NSIDC for Feb 17 has the eastern half of the Hudson empty of ice. Bremen shows no loss of ice in the Hudson. And curiously this (and other glaring inconsistencies) seemed to happen sometime since yesterday.
Damaged satellites? Weather messing with radar? Babies playing with razorblades (or algorethms)? Expressing some frustration here, taxpayers support this stuff and salaries with billions of dollars.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=02&fd=16&fy=2009&sm=02&sd=17&sy=2009
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/amsre.html
matt (08:25:22)
Actually, as most AGW pronouncements, you are empty of facts. NASA announced around 2000 that changes in currents and wind were causing increased ice loss. Early last year they announced another change in current and wind to a pattern similar to the 70’s when ice levels were higher.
So tell me, why is ice increasing again even though the temps are HIGHER THAN NORMAL??
Answer, 10c higher than normal makes little difference when normal is -30 to -40c. Ice being pushed into warmer water and air temps OUT OF THE ARCTIC WILL MELT IT!!! Ice staying home tends to stick around longer!!
At the rate with which the Arctic sea ice is melting, according to the sea ice extent imagery, the Arctic will be ice free in a week to ten days. Today’s image has more open water than yesterday’s.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
Glenn (15:35:16) :
Cryosphere Today for Feb 17 has the western half of Hudson Bay empty of ice, where NSIDC for Feb 17 has the eastern half of the Hudson empty of ice. Bremen shows no loss of ice in the Hudson. And curiously this (and other glaring inconsistencies) seemed to happen sometime since yesterday.
Damaged satellites? Weather messing with radar? Babies playing with razorblades (or algorethms)? Expressing some frustration here, taxpayers support this stuff and salaries with billions of dollars.
As I’ve explained before different imagers are used by different organizations. Cryosphere Today uses both: the ASMR-E for their high res images and SSM/I for their comparative images and archives. Arctic ROOS, JAXA and U Bremen also use ASMR-E but NSIDC uses SSM/I. The current SSM/I imager is apparently on the fritz hence the problems with CT archives (but not their main image) and NSIDC. Problems occur from time to time with satellites, e.g. drifting of NOAA-16 (MSU).
NSIDC have posted a notice confirming what I said above.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
NSIDC has just committed a whole webpage to this latest error:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Something curious here. Notice the greyed out areas over ice areas in the
Bremen AMSR-E, off Labrador, the eastern Hudson Bay and Chukchi Sea by Alaska:
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_visual.png
Those areas pretty match the same problem areas on:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090217_Figure1.png
Apparently someone at NSIDC did “look at” the data results before Anthony reported this discrepancy, although their “arcticseaicenews” (notice the word “news”) page no longer contains today what was reported on that page for several days since before yesterday:
“Also of note is that from January 15 to 26, ice extent saw essentially no increase; an unusual wind pattern appears to have been the cause.”
“News”? Does “look at” mean just that, with a little “guess” mixed in?
Today there is a different story:
“we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February.”
Stranger still, looking at the comparison graph of SSM/I vs AMSR-E, January SSM/I shows a gain of over a millioin km2! Personally I wouldn’t call that “essentially no increase”.
AMSR-E shows an increase of around 1 1/2 million km2 over the time period. Wow, if that “unusual wind pattern” hadn’t been in play, the Arctic might have increased by a couple million km2 in a little over a month?
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Anyone have an idea how to verify the NSIDC “partly volunteer” website claim
that there has been a channel malfunction on the SSM/I? A tech bulletin from an official source, like the DOD, maybe, but might be security sensitive info.
NDISC is a major source of scientific information to the US. And this whole issue is beginning to look similar to the land temperature “adjustments” fiasco. Instead of there being a satellite sensor malfunction that wasn’t automatically caught, I think someone up in Boulder been dinkin with the code circa early January to more “accurately” reflect ice extent, and got bit by the beta bug.