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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Anna V,
Where are you from?
Maybe that is why the southern hemisphere, not populated as much, has a stable temperature.
I am from Florida, I personally know for a fact that there are a lot people inhabiting it. Northern Florida has Pensacola, Tallahasse, Jacksonville
Central Has Gainsville, Orange County, Daytona, Orlando, Tampa, Clearwater and the southern areas of Florida have Palm Beach, Melbourne, West Palm Beach, Sarrasota, Miami Key West.
Florida in all of it’s history has never had a stable and predictable environment, let alone Temperatures. I remember it snowing in Florida when I was young I thought it was the coolest thing seeing snow for the first time, in the late 1980’s. Every year other year we have freezes, I remember the big freeze we had sometime in the 1990,s that destroyed and ruined 10,000’s of acres of orange groves, and strawberries and various other crops. Then that same summer would be 90’s Degrees F. Florida is in the South and it sees it’s fair share of natural variations of Weather patterns and climate variability.
Just a little birds eye view of 30 years being a Floridian.
Living here you have to pay attention to the weather, or you could lose your house, family, etc…
Although for not less than 27 years our house has been here untouched.
Hi Anthony
hm, I knew you wouldn’t like this video. 😉
Nevertheless this animation is really impressive, I would like to hear your opinion on this, esp. where the flaws in the argumentation are.
Maybe you can get this animated data from anywhere else (ie the part starting at 1’15) and can bring it here to discussion later?
On the other hand this video (and others from the same series) also could be useful to demonstrate how ignorant some alarmists are, I’m sure Lubos Motl would like it ;-).
Best regards, and go on! You are doing a very good job here!
Alexander
REPLY: I think the source video is from NASA, find that and I’ll be happy to comment on it. – Anthony
Slightly off topic, anyone noticed the new NSIDC daily charts showing that arctic sea ice dropped very rapidly in May 2009 from almost on the long-term average to nearly come down to the 2007 minimum?
Any independent sources (human visuals etc) indicate that this has in fact happened and that there is no anomaly associated with the new sensor?
Hi Anthony,
sorry, I got no idea where to search for.
I ‘ll better ask the guy who made the video 🙂
Alexander
REPLY: goto to YouTube and search on keywords – Anthony
Steve Hempell (11:15:37) :
OT but have you seen this?
http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/sunday/051709_1.wmv
The last gasp of AGW – acidification. One need not dig too deep to get an idea of just who authors such as Alana Mitchell are. A former feature writer for the Globe and Mail, Ms. Mitchell’s previous book “Dancing with the Dead Sea…” is described as a travel piece on global warming. Ms. Mitchell tells us breathlessly that “ocean plankton is the key to all life on earth.” And that the default sinner CO2 is causing the “acidification” of our oceans. Which kills plankton and when they die will kill all terrestrial life (or thereabouts) she adds gleefully.
That the climate change industry has become the cornerstone for pop media should be no surprise. That the CBC story cites no science or scientists is also standard procedure. What might surprise WUWT readers is Ms. Mitchell’s featured address to the Club of Rome in 2004 where she concluded: “Society needs to accept that evolution is on-going and we are not supreme.”
Unfortunately, more CO2 and acidification scares mask real oceanographic problems like reef degradation, pollution, dead zones, and over fishing.
Already got it, had the same idea!
Best regards
Alexander
HI Anthony,
Did you notice this article on the BBC today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8079767.stm
By looking at ancient climate patterns, scientists have previously estimated that the East Antarctic ice sheet formed around 14 million years ago, burying and preserving the Gamburtsev mountain landscape under ice that is now up to 3km thick.
“You need a mean annual temperature of about 3C for the glaciers to form the way they did,” Dr Siegert told BBC News.
“The mean annual temperature in this region now is -60 C. So we believe that these mountains are relics of [glacial erosion] in Antarctica before the ice sheet was in place.”
He added that the findings provided an insight into the stability of the ice.
Antarctica’s landscape was mountainous before the ice formed
“It is a critical part of our Earth’s system,” said Dr Ferraccioli. “If the whole ice sheet collapsed, sea levels would rise by 60m.”
“There’s been a lot of climate change over the last 14 million years,” Dr Siegert said. “And what we can say about this place in the middle of the Antarctic is that nothing has changed.”
But, he warned, if levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continued to rise, in around 1,000 years they will approach the same levels that existed “before there was persistent ice sheet in Antarctica”.
“This puts the ice sheet into the context of global climate and what conditions are needed to grow an ice sheet,” explained Dr Siegert. “The worrying thing is that we seem to be going back to carbon dioxide concentrations consistent with there being a lot less ice around.”
NOTE THE WARNING AND THE CATASTROPHIC IMPLICATIONS… “The worrying thing is that we seem to be going back to carbon dioxide concentrations consistent with there being a lot less ice around.”
That carbon dioxide is clearly implied to be the main driver of the ice sheet in Antarctica is an extremely odd comment from any scientist or PHD worth their salt: as everyone knows that the position of Antarctica has changed dramatically in the last 14 million years (and of course much more if you go back even further in time).
For example
http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/antarctica/ideas/gondwana2.html
….it seems kind of obvious, even to a child, that the shift from Glaciation to a huge Ice Sheet might have something more to do with the position of Antarctica than anything else?
Perhaps this woudl make a good main article on WUWT – it certainly illustrates an agenda driven selectivity on either the part of the BBC author or Dr. Siegert.
NSIDC is back up and they released their May Arctic Ice update today:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
@ur momisugly Jeremy (10:43:37) :
“….an odd comment from any scientist or PHD worth their salt: as everyone knows that the position of Antarctica has changed dramatically in the last 14 million years (and of course much more if you go back even further in time).”
What a qualifier that word dramatically is! You’d think Antarctica moved from the north pole to the south pole in those 14 millions years.
The reality is though, Antarctica has essentially been in the same place for the last 100 million years.
http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/plates/100o.htm
Salt isn’t worth much these days.
Alexander (09:56:23) :
OK, I’ll bite, because I had started commenting on the disappeared one when it disappeared.
1) There are no clear dates on your offered video , as there are on the one in this post, making it difficult to know when one is talking about what.
2)If you stop the video at 2 seconds there is very little red, as little as at the end of the video, in area. The different location does not mean much when we look at the top post videos and see how wind drives ice over the year. So looking at the red I would say we are at a cyclical in years pattern .
3) who measured the red? Catlin like expeditions?
Hi Anna
the data are from NSIDC, as can be read at the lower end. Certainly it are NOT “Catlin” data but satellite measurements.
I am just a reader of this and other blogs, but I’m sure some folks here know how and where to get more information on this.
Best regards
Alexander
Supporting Jeff Id’s excellent work there is a video clip from Environment Canada showing an anomalous ice tongue development in the Cabot straits in March this year.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=11930&Lang=eng
In addition the Ice berg count ( below 48 degrees north) from the International Ice patrol for the years 1978 to 2002 ( they don’t seem to have any data beyond this) roughly follows the ice development shown by Jeff’s video
Year No of bergs
1978 75
1979 152
1980 20
1981 63
1982 188
1983 1352
1984 2202
1985 1063
1986 204
1987 318
1988 187
1989 301
1990 793
1991 1974
1992 876
1993 1753
1994 1765
1995 1432
1996 611
1997 1011
1998 1380
1999 22
2000 843
2001 89
2002 877
Benjamin P.,
Continental drift is widely regarded and accepted as responsible for the formation of mountains (uplift), rift valleys (depressions), volcanic activity, the relative position of continents and seas etc. The formation or movement of mountains, rift valleys and oceans can influence prevailing winds, precipitation as well as ocean temperatures due to ocean current circulation.
Nobody could possibly be so naive as to think that it is reasonable or even responsible for an educated person to suppose that Antarctic climate change is down to ONLY one main variable alone – Carbon Dioxide – and worse – make statements to the BBC that imply this to be the case. That was my point.
I suggest you look again at the recent movement of Antarctica and with a more open mind to the possibilities of uplift, depression and changing air and ocean current patterns (any of which might have played a significant role – so why mention ONLY Carbon Dioxide).
Benjamin P.,
I would add that most scientists believe that it is the relative equilibrium between warm summer sun and cold winters that also has a heavy influence on glaciation/ice sheet retreat or expansion (obviously also heavily affected by ocean and wind prevailing patterns). If more snow melts in summer than is added in winter then, over the long run, you get accumulation of glaciers and vice versa.
If you think about it – small movements of a continental plate near the south pole will heavily influence the number of days with no sun at all. This is because days of no sun begin to occur inside the Antarctic circle and at the pole you have 6 months without sun. (temperatures drop dramatically at night) I estimate that each degree of latitude of movement towards the pole will increase the number of totally dark cold winter days by roughly one week. Clearly, taking an average over centuries or thousands of years then there is possibly some “tipping” point at which the ice sheet is either accumulating or melting. Another factor is that heavy ice accumulation (3 KM) will raise “ground level” significantly enough to further reduce temperatures (as you go higher in the atmosphere it gets colder)
Anyway, none of this is to say that anything I have said is definitely the cause of what the scientists in the BBC article discovered. My point is that it is just plain silly to omit all these factors and yet mention Carbon Dioxide alone.
Jeremy (08:53:13) and (09:28:26) :
Hi Jeremy, I am not a frequent poster, but I do post from time to time. I am actually a geologist and I know Continental drift (more accurately called Plate Tectonics) fairly well. That’s why when I saw your post, “Moved Dramatically in 14 million years” and knew it was not very dramatic at all. But I will certainly agree with your later posts, that Plate Tectonics has a HUGE effect on climate! No scientist worth their salt denies this.
Where I live, 40 million years ago I would have been sitting on a beach much closer to the equator. We have beautiful palm fronds preserved in our local sandstone which is a testament to our past warmer climate, and the paleo-magnetic data to show us exactly where we were.
The thing is when we think about plate tectonics and climate change, we are talking about processes which operate on timescales of millions of years. I think we tend to reckon ideas of climate based on the thousands of years (natural variability) and hundreds of years (for anthropogenic variability).
“Any day now” the Atlantic ocean will begin to subduct underneath north America. We will have a new orogeny (mountain building event…which reminds me of one of my favorite bumper stickers “Subduction leads to orogeny”) that will have a huge effect on the Northeast’s climate. A new uplift of mountains, a change in the configuration of the Atlantic ocean, a change in the prevailing winds, and a whole host of other variables. This will have a profound effect on climate. Although, any day now when talking about Plate Tectonics is within the next 30-50 Million years.
Another interesting thing about Plate Tectonics is its influence on biology and evolution. When you have a mountain range where there was not one before, sometimes critters on one side of the range take a different evolutionary path than their cousins on the other side. Plate Tectonics is a very powerful theory that plays a huge role not only on climate, but on the biosphere as well.
But again, it all comes down to rates and time scales in the processes we are considering.
Cheers,
Ben
AEGeneral
Great work, but audio is noticeably absent.
In space, no one can hear ice scream.