You may recall that I posted about how the National Snow and Ice Data Center has an issue with the DMSP satellite sensor channel used to detect sea ice. Cryosphere Today is a few days behind in update compared to NSIDC, and here is what their imagery now looks like before and after:
Above: Arctic “Insta-melt” Click for a larger image
Here is the link to reproduce the image above.
Larger “holes” are likely to open up in the arctic sea in the next couple of days as the sensor further degrades.
Here is what CT has to say as a caveat for the side by side images:
February 17, 2009 – The SSMI sensor seems to be acting up and dropping data swaths from time to time in recent days. Missing swaths will appear on these images as a missing data in the southern latitudes. If this persists for more than a few weeks, we will start to fill in these missing data swaths with the ice concentration from the previous day. Note – these missing swaths do not affect the timeseries or any other plots on the Cryosphere Today as they are comprised of moving averages of at least three days.
No mention of the issue on CT’s main page though. They are still commenting on George Will. They seem a bit out of touch on the sensor issue.
h/t to Garrett
UPDATE: 11:30PM 2/20 CT has removed the comments about George Will from the main page, but still no mention there of the satellite outage nor are they displaying imagery on the main page from 2/20/09 The most recent is 02/19/09. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings.
Quick! Somebody email all the upper level AGWing advocates and tell them that there are a bunch of polar bears floating on little bits of melting ice! Tell them to check out Cryosphere as proof that the Arctic is melting and is much worse than the models predicted (they will believe that one). We will even get them a boarding ticket for the next cruise ship!
Save the endangered polar butterfly! There’s no time to waste!
Austin (17:59:42) said:
“They do not have a model to detect quality control issues. Its pretty simple stuff for those who deal with large amounts of data flowing in. Like most cases, the private sector is way ahead of the public and scientific one when it comes to finding and fixing data issues.”
As Ronnie Reagan used to say, “The best people don’t work for the government. If they did, the private sector would steal them.”
If you have any doubt that this problem is ENDEMIC to government, make sure you read F. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Should be required reading for all HS Seniors, but I’m not holding my breath. Liberty isn’t very high on the average HS syllabus.
Our best hope is to keep bureaucrats from screwing-up too badly. In this case, I’m afraid they’ve managed to pull ahead (probably due to (a) the quasi-religious nature of the issue and (b) large companies e.g BP capitulating so they can skim-off some of the inevitable pork fat) and the private sector has some serious catching-up to do.
actuator (19:45:19) :
———————
Smokey (17:01:42) : ……. Neil Crafter is right. Providing clearly inaccurate information to the public makes no sense.
actuator (19:45:19) :……… Unless you’re politically motivated and reality needs to be distorted.
J.Hansford……… Too true Actuator, Communism and it’s sister, Socialism, have deliberately distorted reality to suit political objectives since that sad political ideology came into existence….. Trofim Lysenko would be a classic example of this…… Makes one wonder when viewing this mad AGW hypothesis which seems to have become a Government mantra nowadays….
Hmm is it just me or doesnt this kind of remind of the big summer melt the last 2 summers? Starting at the same area but this time the sea ice is not supposed to melt since it is in the middle of the winter.
Could this error have happened before but went by unnoticed since the sea ice is expected to melt? I.e. AGW biased error finding.
Like someone said: “It’s a mess!”
These satellite problems…. nothing to do with high energy
incoming “cosmic rays” and reduced solar wind?
So, as the ice disappears from the sensor it disappears from the earth? Ohhhh… I see… So the faulty sensor is causing the ice to melt?
Pamela Gray (21:24:21) :
The necklace is still there if you put the December 6 choice. I had written and asked then but got no answer.
It is in a different part of the map.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=12&fd=06&fy=2008&sm=02&sd=20&sy=2009
The butterfly trumps it.
Back in December 6 2008 when the necklace appeared, there were other views available in cryosphere, and one could see that it was a space construct because it projected differently in the different views. I can no longer find those plots and unfortunately it seems I only copied the standard one..
I wonder if there are other views of the butterfly
Check out the halo that started on the Feb 10 till the 19 and then disappears on the 20th
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=02&fd=10&fy=2009&sm=02&sd=19&sy=2009
This data has been adjusted to sensitivity and has gone over the edge when the ice build up corrupted their computer model proxies that they use to smooth or adjust.
I don’t believe for a minute that the satellite all of a sudden, gets a glitch, yeah, REAL data being read from a military satellite,
“Where does NSIDC get its data?
NSIDC gets sea ice information by applying algor(e)ithms to data from a series of Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) sensors on Defence Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites. These satellites are operated by the U.S. Department of Defense. Their primary mission is support of U.S. military operations; the data weren’t originally intended for general science use.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Really, after 30 years of using it, you say it was NOT intended for general science….. But you use it to prove AGW….?
I used to trust NSIDC, but just one more method of measuring data corrupted …
I’m getting so disillusioned, it’s becoming so hard to fight against disinformation when even the simplest scientific laws and understanding are not known. I would of never thought I would have to defend elementary science over the internet.
I’ve lived through Hansen’s believing in our HUMAN made gases where cooling the world into a new ice age (pine cones and computers)(… meh! He wrote the freaking program) and other misunderstood reasons like ozone depletion blamed on our CFC/HFC/…KFC?… lol
ALL WRONG, ALL NATURAL, AND ALL STILL GOING ON THE SAME AS 1979 to 2009
Ironically back in the 70’s it costing XX millions of dollars for AGC(ice age) that never happened, but we saved our planet using energy efficiency EVERYTHING, and nuclear was born.
…and here we are over 30 years later spending billions for the same alarmists views of a new ice age as they rang the bells for the CO2 AGW religion.
And still no modern nuclear energy program in the US, even with some/most EU states supplying as high as 80% of their power from nuke and supplying power to other EU controlled countries around them.
Reply: The “religion” meme as a derogatory slur is strongly discouraged in order to keep the dialog at a higher level. I know it happens at all the time and is not called out enough, but I’m catching it here. ~ charles the moderator
The NCEP/NCAR snow-cover data (http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/) also uses SSM/I data and is way off at the moment.
I emailed them about the sensor issue a couple of days ago. No acknowledgement.
If CT waits 7-8 more weeks to fix the error (missing NH peak ice season), they’ll be right again.
After all, the current sensor error helped them in their cherry-pick against George Will (8 weeks ago!
Off Topic
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/4734859/Scientists-capture-dramatic-footage-of–Arctic-glaciers-melting-in-hours.html
Mike D. (21:14:51) :
Are there any Greenpeacers headed to the “butterfly” with their kayaks yet?
Yes – a British team just just arrived at Resolute –
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/default.stm
p.s. OT but while searching for above link I just noticed this by the BBC Environment Editor – http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/02/need_for_a_cooler_climate.html
Sorry, the correct link for BBC’s page on the Catlin Arctic Survey team is:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7897392.stm
and the project’s website is: http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
Wattsup comments have become my favourite reading over the past few weeks.
its interesting how they say “The SSMI sensor seems to be acting up and dropping data swaths from time to time in recent days”
would they like to quantify it, how recent are the days, 30 days, 90 days, 2 days, and time to time. once a day, 10 times a day. once a week?
If you look on the images, you will see new ice where no ice was. Was the ice always there, and not detected?, or is it ghost ice. Errors in other sensores from other satellites? If the failure of one sensor (which has last longer than its predicted lifespan), what are the other sensors date of manufactor. Are these sensors also creating errors.
There is now serious doubt over some of the datasets, And i have to ask myself, When did it really start. The you come to the calculations, it will follow the gigo rule. (garbage in, garbage out).
(on a lighter note, it could be a butterfly has landed on the sensors. proof of alien life. space butterflies LOL)
If you look att the Cryosphere views for December 5, 6 and 7 2008, it is obvious that the sensor was already acting up at that time. It is not only “the necklace”, but there is also instant “freeze/melt/refreeze” in the Kara Sea and the Bering Sea. We should regard all SSM/I data for at least the last three months as suspect.
Does CT exist only for propaganda value? We can add ice, we can remove ice. We could apply the current sea ice masks to the snow-less images in our comparison product, but why should we? “The necklace”, “the halo” and “the butterfly” might be a part of an experiment in psychology. How outrageous can we make these images without causing widespread doubt? CT has been advised and questioned about these artifacts repeatedly with no response whatsoever. I think they could be put an image of the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man there at the pole and we would only hear deafening silence from the AGW proponents…
Sit back down and shut up… this is our baby. The attitude at CT is appalling. I hope that the NSIDC does not condone this capricious use of their data.
Or perhaps it can all be put down to carelessness.
Hmmm I wonder if they really do have psychiatrists and psychologists on the staff there?
Bloomberg–the news agency, not New York City’s Commissar of Nutrition–
has picked up on this story. Via Drudge:
http://www.drudgereport.com/
I really wanted to give Walt Meier the benefit of the doubt. But he’s making it very difficult: click
Also, I enjoyed Richard C. Savages’s website (20:04:55).
Finally, thanx to jarhead for finding the Cryosphere email address (@19:56:08).
Someone really should email this entire thread to George Will. I’m sure he would appreciate it.
anna v & pamela gray: here is the necklace 12/6 with 12/5/08. Not only the necklace appears, but there is massive ice loss overnight just south of the necklace and north of the river Ob’s outlet.
http://i37.tinypic.com/33ejz4p.jpg
This brings back the spurious ice loss I looked at 12/08 regarding shoreline change from the old maps having no snow to the modern addition of snow, which impinged on the sea area. This means that the maximum ice extent can never be reached again, comparing modern ice to old, since the baseline is based in the past.
http://i44.tinypic.com/330u63t.jpg