Jeff Id at the Air Vent has been doing some interesting work lately. Before the NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice anomaly plot went kaput due to failure of the satellite sensor channel they have been using, they had created a vast archive of single day gridded data packages for Arctic sea ice extent. Jeff plotted images from the data as viewed from directly over the North Pole. It took him over 15 hours of computational time. An example image is below.
Jeff gathered up all the resultant plotted images and turned them into a movie, but placed them on the website “tinypic” where the movie won’t get much airplay.
I offered Jeff the opportunity to have it hosted on YouTube and posted here, where it would get far greater exposure and I completed the conversion this afternoon.
What I find most interesting is watch the “respiration” of Arctic Sea Ice, plus the buffeting of the sea ice escaping the Arctic and heading down the east coast of Greenland where it melts in warmer waters.
Jeff writes:
I find the Arctic sea ice to be amazingly dynamic. Honestly, I used to think of it as something static and stationary, the same region meltinig and re-freezing for dozens or even hundreds of years – not that I put much thought into it either way. Shows you what I know.
This post is another set of Arctic ice plots and an amazing high speed video. The NSIDC NasaTeam data is presented in gridded binary matrices in downloadable form HERE.
The data is about 1.3Gb in size so it takes hours to download, I put it directly on my harddrive and worked from there. The code for extraction took a while to work out but was pretty simple in the end. This code ignores leap years. Formatting removed courtesy of WordPress.
filenames=list.files(path=”C:/agw/sea ice/north sea ice/nasateam daily/”, pattern = NULL, all.files = TRUE, full.names = FALSE, recursive = TRUE)
trend=array(0,dim=length(filenames)-1)
date=array(0,dim=length(filenames)-1)
masktrend=array(0,dim=length(filenames)-1)
for(i in 1:(length(filenames)-1))
{
fn=paste(”C:/agw/sea ice/north sea ice/nasateam daily/”,filenames[i],sep=””) #folder containing sea ice files
a=file(fn,”rb”)
header= readBin(a,n=102,what=integer(),size=1,endian=”little”,signed=FALSE)
year=readChar(a,n=6)
print(year)
day=readChar(a,n=6)
print(day)
header=readChar(a,n=300-114)
data=readBin(a,n=304*448,what=integer(),size=1,endian=”little”,signed=FALSE)
close(a)
if(as.integer(year)+1900<=2500)
{
date[i]=1900+as.integer(year)+as.integer(day)/365
}else
{
date[i]=as.integer(year)+as.integer(day)/365
}
if(i==1)
{
holemask= !(data==251)
}
datamask=data<251 & data>37 ## 15% of lower values masked out to match NSIDC
trend[i]=sum(data[(datamask*holemask)==1])/250*625
}
###mask out satellite F15
satname=substring(filenames,18,20)
satmask= satname==”f15″
newtrend=trend[!satmask]
newdate=date[!satmask]
After that there is some minor filtering done on 7 day windows to dampen some of the noise in the near real time data.
filtrend=array(0,dim=length(newtrend))
for(i in 1:(length(newtrend)))
{
sumdat=0
for(j in -3:3)
{
k=i+j
if(k<1)k=1
if(k>length(newtrend)-1)k=length(newtrend)-1
sumdat=sumdat+newtrend[k]
}
filtrend[i]=sumdat/7
}
So here is a plot of the filtered data:
Here is the current anomaly.
This compares well with the NSIDC and cryosphere plots. This anomaly is slightly different from some of my previous plots because it rejects data less than 15% sea-ice concentration. Cryosphere rejects data less than 10%. In either case the difference is very slight but since we’ve just learned that the satellites have died and are about 500,000km too low, my previous graph may be more correct. I hope the NSIDC get’s something working soon.
All of that is pretty exciting but the reason for this post is to show the COMPLETE history of the NSIDC arctic sea ice in a video. I used tinypic as a service for this 27mb file so don’t worry, you should be able to see it quite well on a high speed connection. It took my dual processor laptop computer more than 15 hours to calculate this movie, I hope it’s worth it. Brown is land, black is shoreline, blue is water except for the large blue dot in the center of the plot. The movie plays double speed at the beginning because the early satellite collected data every other day. You’ll see the large blue circle change in size flashing back and forth between the older and newer sat data just as the video slows down.
After staring at the graphs above you think you understand what is happening as ice gradually shrinks away. Well the high speed video shows a much more turbulent world with changing weather patterns in 2007 and 2008 summer blasting away at the south west corner of the ice. I’ve watched it 20 times at least, noticing cloud patterns (causing lower ice levels), winds, water currents and all kinds of different things. I’m not so sure anymore that we’re seeing a consistent decline to polarbear doom, with this kind of variance it might just be everyday noise.
Maybe I’m nuts, let me know what you see.
No Jeff you aren’t nuts. Here is the YouTube Video, suitable for sharing:
Here is another video I posted on You Tube last month which shows the flow of sea ice down the east coast of Greenland. Clearly there is more at work here than simple melting, there is a whole flow dynamic going on.
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OT.
I am watching everyday the creeping of ice area on the AMSRE_sea_ice_extent shown on the right. 2009 is sliding on 2008 and we are nearly on the blip. I am waiting to see if 2009 will blip, or will keep on sliding. They were talking of new corrections and maybe, if there is no blip this year, they have been already applied it only to 2009, and that is why 2009 landed on 2008 a month ago.
It is like watching Pooh sticks.
Kuhnkat
“Of course, the loss has, at least temporarily reversed. Willing to bet your future on a short, incomplete, data set and study??”
Temporarily reveresed? What? Why would think the decline has reveresed? Because 2008 was more than 2007?
Why do I have to bet my future? Sounds like someone is being alarmist.
RoyFOMR (15:55:23)
You’re right, it would probably be the seals going first, and then the polar bears.
But the second part of this story has already been on television, on NOVA. A momma polar bear and cub, without ice, trying to fatten up on shore.
They didn’t know about the salmon run, but they did find the berries. They were both gaunt and dirty when they curled up for the winter.
I myself do not want to watch the pitiful spectacle of the Polar bears competing with the Brown bears, on land. The one population of polar bears that has been increasing; was previously hunted. When the summer ice goes, the hunting seasons should resume.
George E Smith (15:01:31)
Methane is the worry, with Arctic warming. Methane from melting permafrost, that is already happening. And melting of the frozen “hydrates” under the Arctic sea floor.
Methane has about 20 times the greenhouse effect of CO2.
jorgekafkazar (19:38:09)
You got me there. I don’t know the physics of the albedo of ice.
But I’ve seen ice on large frozen lakes…that has partial transparency…part way in. And I’m imagining the solar radiation entering…part way in. So, its not reflecting off the surface.
And, the thick ice I’ve seen…has been a bright white. There’s no transparency, so the light reflects off the surface.
Also, I presume the ice thickness is increasing mostly from snow, from above. There isn’t Antarctica’s more exteme cold, that can add ice underneath an ice shelf.
So, one would expect more of this snow…on the multi-year ice…to be whiter, and more opaque.
just want truth
just look at this for a difference!
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
The question is which is correct? LOL
Whatever happened to the up-to-date data showing global temperatures plummeting?
@Aron (23:57:33) : says,
“Actually from 20,000 years ago until the European Industrial Revolution there was a steady rise in CO2 from 180ppm to 270ppm. This is often ignored by Alarmists/global Marxists who want the West to take the blame for everything (especially George Bush – blame him for galactic collisions billions of light years away too)”
So Aron, you are postulating that 90 ppm CO2 increase over a bit less than 20,000 years is the same as 120 ppm CO2 over 120 years? I know you have accused the global Marxists of ignoring the above rise, but make sure you are not ignoring the rates. And what exactly is a global Marxists anyway? I mean, how would that be different from a regular Marxists?
@Anthony Watts (02:57:09) :
“Nobody here “denies” the climate has changed, we only question the attribution of cause as being 100% human. – Anthony”
I don’t think anyone on the other side of the discussion attributes it to be 100% human either.
@smallz79 (15:45:17) :
That .pdf you linked (like may things on the internet) is crap.
Here is just one example (of many).
In the .pdf linked, Hans Schreuder states,
“At no stage though does water vapour add warmth to the atmosphere…”
Like all matter, when a phase change occurs there is heat associated with this phase change. When water vapor condenses from a gas to a liquid, heat is released during the phase transition (latent heat of vaporization).
Hans Schreuder (the author of the .pdf) may be a member of Mensa, but he doesn’t know #$%^ about physics.
Ben
@Alan the Brit
From the ice core data
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore.html
Of course plant life was suffering circa 20,000 years ago when CO2 levels were at 180ppm. It was still the ice age.
The data shows that CO2 levels had been rising at a steady rate from 180ppm to 270ppm until the last two centuries when we became more productive. The Alarmist camp would have us believe that CO2 levels were always stable and that the evil western white man and his free thinking culture is destroying utopia. The East is latching on to this and using the UN to force developed nations to pay lots of money to them for our sin of having developed stable productive societies. I look at it quite differently.
It was the East who started industrialisation over 5000 years ago. It was our Asian ancestors who started building cities, creating trade routes, chopping down whole forests, growing crops, going to war, etc. We just followed in their footsteps because they were too busy oppressing and killing each other, especially as their ancient secular cultures gave way to monotheistic dictators who crushed the dream of republics and democracies very early on.
I have always believed that we could have seen the freedoms, technology and prosperity we have around us today a long time ago (over a 1000 years ago) had those ancient cultures kept up their progress and had not succumbed to totalitarian religious rulers, increased superstition, crusades, genocide, oppression, and imperialism. We could have been much further along today, even achieving post-humanism and leaving the planet.
So if the East wants to blame the anyone for the West’s power today then they only have to look at themselves. Countries like the US and UK don’t owe anyone anything for having developed. We contribute massively to the world just by going to work, buying products and inventing technology that lifts people out of poverty.
Now these Marxist Greens want us to live under their centralised regimes in which everyone is constantly monitored for their resource use, taxed heavily, live on carbon rations, buying Indulgences and have to believe in Gaia and global warming. They’re making the exact same mistake humanity made before by turning their backs on science and progress in favour of superstition, guilt and prophetic announcements of doomsday. And the media backs them up just like street preachers who used to spread the dictates of kings and godmen.
this article on cloud cover might be worth a post
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/airborne-bacteria-discredit-climate-modeling-dogma
Karl (20:49:56) : replied to me about the jet stream:
” Tony B.
I had the opportunity to interview the late Reid Bryson http://ccr.aos.wisc.edu/bryson/bryson.html”
The jet stream is fascinating and the idea that it was only ‘re-discovered’ in 1945 illustrates how many things we probably still don’t know.
That was a great link. What a huge range of informed people we have posting here at WUWT.
I hope Pamela saw my initial comment and your reply as I know (and share) her interest in the subject.
Tonyb
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4810266.htm
Just Want Truth
Thanks for Vid I have watched some time ago it is very informative, but think I did not ask the question properly, hence I did not get the desired info. My bad.
After reading the above link ( only to about the half way point) I have come to think that this is talking about carbonizing a material to LOL absorb CO2 from an emmitter or dishcharge of a smoke stack as well as a filter for enclosed environments such as a submarine or space shuttle in an effort to clean the air or rid i of un healthy levels of CO2. They say to initially carbonize the selected materia it would require a high levels of in an oxygen and atmoshperic free chamber. Puzzling I thought by the AGWers talk that carbon is effected any warm temp maybe I miss understood. Second point In order to reuse this filter all that is required is to reheat it at a lesser high Temp for a period of time(15 min). Doing this would release all the absorbed CO2. What is the point of this filter for then??? On top of that it took a long period of 15mins at a higher than atmospher temps to create this whole process. What happen to ability of carbon to absorb and retain heat for long periods of time.
I am not a scientist, but am looking for other ways to prove or disprove the carbon’s ability to absorbe and the duration of time, if any, it retains such heat. Also, I have been doing some reading on the conductivity of carbon mixed with and seperated from the atmosphere. My reading leads me to a slight degree(pun intended), believe that any energy or rays that are reflected from the Earth’s surface (if any, I am still looking for anything related to the idea that the Earths surface heating the atmosphere buy a gradual release of heat and vapour into it) are cunducted, or trasfered from one carbon to another carbon until it reaches the outer most layer of the atmosphere. Let me know where to find any such studies please.
“So Aron, you are postulating that 90 ppm CO2 increase over a bit less than 20,000 years is the same as 120 ppm CO2 over 120 years?”
Benjamin, we don’t know how much CO2 is manmade anyway, but let’s say for the sake of discussion all the rise in CO2 in recent times and also the dates I mentioned is manmade.
You spoke about rate of increase above and asked if I think “90 ppm CO2 increase over a bit less than 20,000 years is the same as 120 ppm CO2 over 120 years”. My answer is the rate is irrelevant so they are the same for one specific reason : CO2 emissions are proportionate to productive industrial output. The greater the freedom humankind has the more his/her creative potentional is unleashed which results in the use of resources.
Now, classical Marxism does not frown upon this at all. Marx didn’t give a damn about the environment (he couldn’t even get being a good husband right) and wanted extremely heavy industrialisation with every human employed as parts of a gigantic human industrial machine.
Modern Marxists are different in that they have adopted the oppressive systems of rations, population control and monitoring as practised in the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, East Germany, Cuba, and Communist Romania as a means to redistribute wealth, create government positions for themselves, control the use of resources so that cultures they detest cannot develop, and control behaviour and beliefs in the name of protecting the planet. It’s thoroughly elitist, imperialist and religious fundamentalist behaviour.
Yes, I demand that someone go to China and stop the pollution now!!!! Remember the olympics? On your next trip, stop by the new USSR, woops, I mean Russia and tell them the same thing. The USSA has new dictator, OBAMA, soon everything will be banned and a new lights out curfew will be enforced to limit breathing activity.
marcia marcia wrote: “I have a suggestion, no criticizm whatsoever, no complaiant whatsoever, just a suggestion — you could make a second version (if you have the time) that runs a little slower, with music, and has 2 dates per year superimposed”
and add singing polar bears and tap dancing penguins – but don’t go to any extra trouble.
Aron (04:05:55) :
Modern Marxists are different in that they have adopted the oppressive systems of rations, population control and monitoring as practised in the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, East Germany, Cuba, and Communist Romania as a means to redistribute wealth, create government positions for themselves, control the use of resources so that cultures they detest cannot develop, and control behaviour and beliefs in the name of protecting the planet. It’s thoroughly elitist, imperialist and religious fundamentalist behaviour.
I can’t seem to recall a single country where “classical Marxist communism”
occurred and/or succeeded. Can you?
Here is another guy who has completely lost it.
‘Cars are weapons of mass destruction, responsible for the melting of the ice caps’ he says.
Please clear him up.
His e-ail address is at the bottom of the article.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=248
Aron:-)
Thanks for the feed. I have never heard that before from any source as the claim had always seemed to be that CO2 was pretty much constant for 650,000 years, or 750,000 years depending upon who says it & what impression they are trying to make. Of course the longer the time scale the more “frightening” it can be made out to be. As I have said before, in either case, it’s another way of saying there is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there has been for 650,001 years! According to this kind of evidence, we should never have entered any ice-ages. However, I will say that as I understand it, there are losses in extracting ice-core data that can potentially lead to false (low) levels of atmospheric CO2 being measured, (Zbigniew Jaworoski).
Ben, FYI, 😉
many years ago there was a formal organisation called the “International
Marxists Group” back in the 60’s thro’ to the 80’s. It may even have had its origins in the 50’s. I know because I nearly joined them in my “yoof” when I wanted to rebel against everything & anything as I saw an economic system that was flawed! They all wanted to “empower the people” through Marxism & “set them free” from the “shackles of oppression”, ( I have loads of these statements) apparently. However, I have yet to witness such “empowerment & freedom” by this means. History does teach us some things, as a geologist recently said, ‘if you want to know about the future, look in the past’! I saw the light & didn’t join them but set on a more moderate path in life. They are probably still around & there is always “global” distribution in some form or other, no matter how small. I suppose my point is, that when the Berlin Wall came down, where did all the marxists go, many into the envirnomental movement where they could continue the glorious fight against Capitalism & evil mankind, hence co-founder Patrick Moore’s well known public disenchantment with Greenpeace, it became less & less interested in the environment & more & more interested in controlling mankind. (I also have a problem with the Greenpeace/FoE/WWF claims in the 1980’s that an area of Amazonian rainforest the size of England and Wales (around 58,000sq miles) were being destroyed each year!) Sure the “system” is flawed, what isn’t, but it works & can be patched & fixed! We are just an intelligent ape (frequently forgotten by some) & can sort it out & hopefully stand proud above the multi-millionaire Gore-illas of this world!.
Apologies to moderator for straying;-))
wws
“and add singing polar bears and tap dancing penguins – but don’t go to any extra trouble.” And if those polar bears were to be playing Pooh sticks how happy Anna could be whilst Ben could theorise on the vagaries of currents and the chaotic effect of the random placement of benthnic stones and the inequality of it all…..
Green Left Policies devastate our planet and our future:
The doctrine is totally wrong.
CO2 is not responsible for warming our planet, polar caps are within normal parameters, temperature is going down.
Despit these facts the Green Left insists causing a Global Mess UP of Human Society and Nature:
This is another disturbing view devastating our future: Capitalism is destroying the earth
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/797/41049
I think the Green Left is destroying the earth:
Burning wood does not require a CO2 permit!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ardNIC7rNzQE&refer=uk
This is the only viable answer:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/06/yes-to-energy-freedom-no-to-cap-and.html
Joel Shore: Thank you for reading my post and for your reply. I think you misunderstood my point.
Climate alarmists depend on ill-informed and gullible people to follow their “arguments”. A few shots of polar bear cubs and happy music is followed by a grim dirge, shots of melting ice, and an earnest narrator describing how the polar bear struggles to get from floe to diminishing floe. This is nothing but propanganda–alarmist nightsoil, and everyone that reads this blog knows it, including you.
There are people out there who, if asked, would tell you that they know that CO2 is now the 2nd most common gas in the atmosphere, right after O2. Those are the people who have swallowed, without question, what has been fed to them by the alarmists. What these people think is that the ice cap is shrinking and when it is gone the coastlines will flood. They’ve been taught that the ice cap had been fixed and immanent and is now (for the first time) melting because of the depravities of industrial man.
This video shows a dynamic and largely stable system. Watched with an open mind, it could cause even the dullest to question the alarmist party line.
Tim Clark (05:31:06) : “I can’t seem to recall a single country where ‘classical Marxist communism’ occurred and/or succeeded….”
Yes, comrade! Ours will have the honor of being the very first! Oh, joy! Let us all now join hands and do the Dance of Universal Poverty…Oops, I mean the dance of Universal Peace. Smiles, everyone!
Just Want Truth… (18:00:07) :
You have posted it four times and every time it has been off topic. Many of us are aware of Svensmark’s theory and it has nothing to do with the iArctic sea ice machinations and it distracts from the hard work of our contributors do.
I am not totally innocent of this folly but I have developed the art of the lurker, Hold your input until the time is right.
WUWT has many new critical minds to accommodate and they of course can be forgiven for transgressions. You and I however have a special responsibility not to cause the moderators unnecessary angst.
D. King (20:13:48) : “jorgekafkazar: Do you think the crystalline structure of the snow ice, sitting on top of the sea ice, will be the most reflective?”
It depends on the level of contamination. Generally, fresh snow is clean and has good reflectance. Contamination and onset of melt drop the albedo considerably.
jeff Id, you’re OK in my book.
Holmes: And then there was the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.
Watson: But the dog did nothing in the nighttime!
Holmes: That was the curious incident.
“I can’t seem to recall a single country where “classical Marxist communism”
occurred and/or succeeded. Can you?”
Thankfully no because that would REALLY be bad for our environment. When I referred to classical Marxism I only meant what we read in Marx’s writing.
Hey, the NSIDC arctic sea ice extent maps are working again.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html