Leaving The Ice Pack Behind
Guest post by Steven Goddard
2009 Arctic ice extent has jumped into a big lead over the previous four years. Danish Meteorological Institute Ice Cover April 21, 2009
NSIDC shows Arctic extent continuing to close on the 1979-2000 mean
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
AMSR-E data shows Arctic extent extending it’s lead at a seven year high :
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Global sea ice continues to move up towards a twenty year high.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary (and Nobel Prize winner) Dr. Steven Chu warns of impending California flooding due to polar ice melt:
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — Caribbean nations face “very, very scary” rises in sea level and intensifying hurricanes, and Florida, Louisiana and even northern California could be overrun with rising water levels due to global warming triggered by carbon-based greenhouse gases, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday.
In order to highlight the “very, very scary” danger California faces, I created some frightening visualizations of what California may look like once flooded with water from Arctic ice, which – as we are told by top government officials – is melting at a record pace. If you are squeamish, look no further – this is indeed scary stuff.
Here is what the Santa Ana UHI Station may look like after being flooded :
And most frightening is what might happen to Mt. Whitney after the next Biblical flood:
If these pictures don’t scare you into buying a hybrid (or even better an aquatic car) I don’t know what will.
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RE kink in AMSR ice data.
I asked about this last year and was told (by who I don’t recall) that it was an algorithm adjustment to compensate for lower than actual ice readings due to the presence of “melt ponds” on the ice that appear around this time
“Flanagan (00:30:26) :
In any case it is quite easy to note (looking at the cryosphere today ice concentrations maps) that much of the ice is very close to melting. In my opinion, we will see a rapid decrease within the next two weeks.”
I also looked at those maps, and I even used my magnifying glass. I carefully examined each and every pixel and for the life of me could not see even one pixel of ice that had even a hint of meltwater on it. Of course, I could be wrong, please tell me again how to tell if a pixel of ice is “about” to melt.
Thanks for your help on this,
Mike Bryant
Ain’t science great?!
NH Sea Ice Area is larger this year than last year on the same day, by an area at least as large as California…
From the state department
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=10138500
Please get it right here at WUWT
Thanks to everyone kind enough to respond to my question.
Mike.
Perry Debell 03:12:44
Yesirree, it may well be a spectacle. Last year’s race for survival of the Baby Ice was closely watched at climateaudit.org with some late season dramatics as the 2008 curve started diving toward the 2007 one. It pulled out just in the nick of time, and the sophists started talking up sea ice area instead of sea ice extent. Now they’ve switched to ice volume, which is a phony ploy, too, because volume after an extensive melt will lag by a year. If sea ice extent melt is not extensive as last year or the year before then volume will inevitably start rising.
To me, this emphasis on volume is just symptomatic of the desperation of the alarmists. They’ve got nothing else to hang their fearful hats upon.
==============================================
L Van Burel: re kink The point being it ain’t a natural phenomenom…. Thanks for your comments.
Flanagan, remember when I posted that at times I wasn’t sure if you were just pulling our chain or that at times you were truly attempting to understand, and help us understand, the CO2 greenhouse effect. When you post that by looking at Cryosphere Today, you can tell that the ice is about to rapidly melt in the next two weeks, I am inclined to believe that you are just pulling our chain.
Have you not, like I suggested you should do, been studying the jet stream maps and Arctic weather predictions? The only way rapid melt can happen in the next two weeks, in such cold temperatures, is for a very strong, steady wind (I am talking gale force or greater) and swift ocean current to send the ice on a sailing venture South.
Your comment about what the colors are telling you at Cryosphere is just plain silly and clearly stands out as an uneducated remark on this blog. Was it just a slip of the pinky on the keyboard? Were you on your third beer? If it was any of these, I’ve been there. We’ve all had our moments. If it was otherwise, please don’t do it again.
Len van Burgel (20:20:35) :
In reply to Taylor, Noastronomer and others who raised this in the past, the uptick which occurs every 1 and 2 June is likely a calibration adjustment.
Calibration is an important issue with all satellite measurements. Looking at the AMSRE pages, it seems there are calibration issues with the “hot load temperatures” and also “along scan adjustments” need to be made.
Further re-adjustment due to instrument drift is quite likely the reason for the uptick. It seems JAXA only makes the adjustment once a year on the approximate anniversary of the beginning of the AMSRE data.
What is surprising is that JAXA don’t correct past data available on their web site by making the assumption the drift was linear. But then many on this forum complain about massaged data, so we can be glad that the values are left in the “raw” state even if it does show the strange uptick every 1 or 2 June.
Expect the same to happen this year on 1 and/or 2 June
Actually the adjustment is made to the algorithm to better process the signal from ice with melt ponds. The switch is made on June 1st and back on October 15th.
Reply to Phil and Andy W and Adoucette:
You are right and I was on the wrong track.
I thought in the meantime the best was to ask JAXA. I got an immediate reply;
Here it is:
Dear van Burgel,
Thank you for inquiring about our AMSR-E sea-ice monitor web.
You are right.
Current version of data processing makes an erroneous bias of
sea ice extent on June 1st and October 15th which are seen
in the graph of sea ice extent as a small peak on these dates.
The apparent bias arises due to a switching of some parameters
in the processing on both dates. The parameter switching is
needed because the surface of the Arctic sea-ice becomes
wet in summer due to the melting of ice which changes
satellite-observed signatures of sea-ice drastically.
We are planning to improve the processing to make the gap
much smoother in the coming year.
Sincerely,
Masahiro HORI
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Last year (2008) the ice was at the greatest extent since 2000 for a full 2 weeks. I hope the same doesn’t happen with our 2009 ice.
Speaking of ice, why does the AMSR-E Ice Extent chart show virtually every year ice extent taking a jump up (increase) at the beginning of June?
George E. Smith (16:42:33) :
Patents are useless if you do not have a large budget to defend them. Even then, if the product or process is valuable enough, it will still be used without compensation.
I am associated with a company possessing a valuable patent. A larger company began using our process without royalty payments. They were confronted in court and this confrontation cost us over $100,000. The company continues to use our process without paying royalties.
Now I am with another company. We too have a valuable technology. We will not patent it. We will simply maintain physical control of the technology, providing a service, not an instrument. I don’t know if it will protect us in the long run. But I already know what won’t.
Dr. Chu is simply a product of his generation. Take what you can if you can get away with it. The AGW debate is based on the same ethical failures.
Technology will not save us from ourselves.
change in the algorithm
I believe Google have changed theirs quite recently. Probably a side effect…
California? Don’t worry, here in Italy when asked if Venice will be affected by global warming, Prime Minister Berlusconi replied, ask a fortune teller.
“””Jack Simmons (02:45:54) :
George E. Smith (16:42:33) :
I know of one patent that was issued to someone who asked me to sign on as a co-inventor; which I declined to do; since all the details of that invention are in my lab notebook from perhaps ten years before I described it to this “inventor”. If it’s that important to him; let him bask in his glory; I have plenty; including a patent on “thin air”. He does have a lot more than I do, but then that is how he measured his career. For me they are just business tools that companies use to stop encroachment by competitors. (it doesn’t stop people from some cultures anyway.)
Patents are useless if you do not have a large budget to defend them. Even then, if the product or process is valuable enough, it will still be used without compensation. “””
How true Jack. Most often these days, the big companies gather up these patent portfolios, and use them to keep the little guys out of their playpen. The big guys simply trade patent rights among themsleves, and then all gang up on th elittle guy.
It is probably impossible these days to build an integrated circuit, without infringing a thousand patents held by fifty different companies. Those companies simply swap their portfoliios; but the little guy just startign his company with a new product idea has to pay royalties to all fifty of them and their thousand patents.
My “thin air” patent is actually a patent on a lens made of air. Everywhere that is not the lens, is optical plastic or glass. And actually it works and has actually been built. Moreover a Korean outfit, tried to get us to pay for an optical system they say they designed, which is infringing on my air lens patent; so no we didn’t pay them any money.