Shooting At a Rapidly Moving Target
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Arctic ice area has recovered to normal (one standard deviation) levels, so ice area no longer matters. The issue is now thickness, which is measured by a team of explorers (Catlin) with a tape measure, who intentionally seek out flat (first year) ice for their route.
The team systematically seeks out flatter ice because it is easier to travel over and camp on. Typically, the surface of first‐year ice floes is flatter than that of multi‐year ice floes.
Arctic ice area back in the normal range
Antarctic ice extent has been setting record highs, so the AGW team now claims that Antarctica doesn’t matter.
the scientific community has known for some time that that on a warming planet, sea ice in the global North (Arctic) is expected to melt while sea ice in the global South is expected to remain constant or even sightly grow.
Buoy data which shows thickening doesn’t count, because buoys don’t cover a wide enough region. Even though their region is much larger than the Catlin coverage.
Thus, while the buoys provide an excellent measurement of thickness at a point through the seasons, they do not provide good information on the large-scale spatial distribution of ice thickness.
Two year old multi-year ice no longer counts, the ice now has to be three years old to matter.
The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before. Researchers say that as spring begins, more than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
Dr. Hansen’s original prediction that Antarctic ice would diminish symmetrically with Arctic ice no longer matters, because the models have improved since he made that prediction.
A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. This adds new evidence of potential asymmetry between the two poles, and may be an indication that climate change processes may have different impact on different areas of the globe. … numerical models have improved considerably over the last two decades”
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
Douglas DC, the lake can freeze all it wants too. I just don’t want my huckleberry slash fish haven (South Fork) to glacier up like it did last time. By the way, a fascinating ride through that Goodle satellite map thing will uncover all kinds of terminal moraines. The notion that the Wallowa Lake Moraine is one of the last undeveloped moraines in the world is nonsense. The Blues (and by extension, the Wallowas) are filled with them. As are the high plains and canyons that also pepper the area.
However, it appears that I should be more concerned with the area right around my Pendleton house! brrrrrrr. My hands, feet and butt are COLD!!!!!! Hey, I could do that pop bottle experiment on my front porch tonight!
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/
I wouldn’t pin too much hope on the ICE_AREA chart. I remember last Dec. 9th when it indicated that the area was not only normal, back in the 1 standard deviation range, it had actually touched the “Average” (black) line. Two days later on Dec. 11 the last three months had been adjusted (“corrected”) such that it was not even the 1 standard deviation range. (I believe this was covered on WUWT) I wouldn’t be too surprised by another “correction”.
It seems a consistent pattern, when the data doesn’t look “correct” (i.e. too cold, too much ice, etc.) AGWers search until some corrective factor is found and applied. But if the data agrees with expectation there is no need to seek corrective measures, the data is obviously correct.
“Steven Goddard (08:01:48) :
May Day! May Day!”
Is there going to be a crash in to the 1979–2000 average?
I haven’t scanned the entire response but I’m wondering if the recent eruption of Mt. Redoubt has anything to do with the recent increase of Arctic ice.
Richard deSousa (22:26:44) :
Unlikely as not much is happening at present.
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/
http://www.seablogger.com/?cat=22
It seems it is as vg (20:38:09) : noted. The AMSR-E graph looks like it’s still being “adjusted” unlike NORSEX and nsidc.org/data, so far!!
The “warmists” have now come to the conclusion that it is far better to get behind the climate change (CC) flag then the AGW one, as the CC flag is far berter able to provide “sustainable” taxation levels, regardless of what happens to the climate, then the AGW flag.
So now we have governments taxing the hell out of us to prevent climate change. The thing that concerns me is is how do they know that the present climate is the best one ever, and that any change is disastrous.
Remember this classic on WUWT:
Something is rotten in Norway – 500,000 sq-km of sea ice disappears overnight
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/13/something-is-rotten-in-norway-500000-sq-km-of-sea-ice-disappears-overnight/
So, Tuesday morning’s update (4/28) is my guess in the betting pool for when the NSIDC graph touches the long-term trend.
Think I’ve worked why CT does not want you to be able to compare current NH ice
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png with previous (see 1980) what a joke!
vg (14:05:00) :
> Think I’ve worked why CT does not want you to be able to compare current NH ice
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png with previous (see 1980) what a joke!
You can compare images if you edit the URL right. The reason why they disabled the form from generating URLs for 2009 images is as they state – the failing SSMI sensor is generating very poor quality data. I think Cryosphere is only two people big (at least, two scientists), and don’t have time to switch to AMSR-E.
If you want to compare 1980 Apr 24 with 2009 Apr 24, see http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=24&fy=1980&sm=04&sd=24&sy=2009
See my last comment at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/20/sea-ice-sensor-degradation-hits-cryosphere-today/ for a few more details.
Ric Werme (18:43:55) If you look back on 4/21-4/24, 2009, Hudson Bay is very inconsistant day to day, there is a dropout on the pole itself and scattered dropout from there SE across the Artic Sea. It appears their data is trashed. I was watching the side-by-side every day since mid-December. It was available for several weeks this year, and then 2009 disappeared from the selection list, it seemed well after their sensor failed and was discussed in WUWT. You or someone here mentioned forcing the link by typing it in at the top of the page a week ago or so. I simply don’t trust how they present their data, as I have posted on the encroachment they did with their representation of snow on land. It represents a loss of 1.6 X 10^6 Km^2 of possible sea area, that started in 2004. I see a step function change (loss) in their chart from that time on. The number I give would only be represented as a fraction of that amount unless the whole sea froze solid. See here: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
and here:F
http://i44.tinypic.com/330u63t.jpg
Ric Werme (18:43:55) :
vg (14:05:00) :
You can compare images if you edit the URL right. The reason why they disabled the form from generating URLs for 2009 images is as they state – the failing SSMI sensor is generating very poor quality data. I think Cryosphere is only two people big (at least, two scientists), and don’t have time to switch to AMSR-E.
Although their daily images are AMSR-E and are therefore of very good quality. As they explain their comparison archive is from SSMI and the recent data from that satellite is unreliable.
Steve Keohane (21:24:02) :
As you’ve been told before the apparent encroachment of the snow on the sea ice in the pictures doesn’t effect the value they produce for area. That depends on the mask file (areagrid.dat if I recall correctly), only if that file is changed would there be any change in the potential sea area, painting an image pixel white doesn’t do that.
Sorry Phil., I have never seen a response prior to yours here. If what you say is true, why is the winter sea smaller than the summer sea by about 10%, and why would the mask be larger than the area depicted? It is not just a matter of painting pixels white as you say, since the white encroaches into the sea depiction. Also why does this coincide with a step function decrease in measured ice area in time?
April 14, 2008
For the past 13 years I have kept track of the dates of freezing and thawing
for the small New Hampshire lake on which I live. Thawing is defined as the date the main part of the lake is essentially completely free of ice, which just occurred Sunday, 4/13/2008. Freezing is defined as the date on which the lake freezes over and stays that way for the duration of the winter. This ignores those times when it freezes over and then opens up again.
This now gives us a duration in number of days that the lake is open for
boating (again, ignoring the temporary freeze-overs.) The number of days
varies rather randomly from year to year, and inspection does not show a
pattern. However, there is a statistical method for determining a trend
known as least squares regression analysis. Having practiced my math by doing income taxes, I decided to do this calculation for the years from 1995 through 2007. It shows that the number of open days is decreasing by 1/3 day per year.
If this trend continues, it means that by the year 2776 the lake will be
frozen over all year long. Isn’t trend analysis marvelous?