By Steven Goddard and Anthony Watts
From Steve: In May, WUWT reported on an apparent error in the Nansen ice extent data. It appears that we were correct, as Nansen has adjusted their 2009 extent data upwards.
The (light red) line below shows their ice extent data from May 2, 2009. It had been too low since their downwards adjustment in December.
But, as of June 5th, the 2009 extent has been corrected (dark red)
Also note that the 2007/2008 lines have not changed, and that ice extent was in the normal range for most of April and May.
From Anthony:
Interest in sea ice extent continues to run high, but there remains differences between different groups such as NSIDC and Cryosphere Today, which have both been plagued with SSMI sensor problems from the DMSP F13 satellite. NANSEN may have had the same issues with SSMI/F13, and if they did, they seem to have gotten them under control, possibly by switching to SSSMI/F17 as NSIDC did.
For example here is a page that NANSEN maintains that shows the differences between the newer AMSRE (that JAXA uses) and the SSMI. One of the images is an AMSR minus SSMI, and it looks like the two different satellites/sensors are in pretty good agreement, with areas along the ice edge (where ice/water boundaries are rapidly changing) showing noise differences where you would expect them to.
There’s another difference though between NANSEN and JAXA, and NSIDC/Cryosphere Today. The NANSEN and JAXA pages don’t have the kind of news updates that we are used to seeing from their USA counterparts. In that respect, we should probably thank NSIDC and CT for their willingness to provide timely updates and especially thanks to NSIDC’s Walt Meier for making guest posts and answering questions here.
Along the same lines, if you look at the press releases and news articles and compare them, NSIDC seems to lead in speaking to the press, followed by CT, with NANSEN/JAXA having very little press interaction.
Interestingly though, NANSEN offers forecasts of arctic sea ice extent here from their TOPAZ model with comparisons to both SSMI and AMSRE data plotted also.
What is interesting is that, at least for this year, the TOPAZ model has been underperforming both in forecasting area and extent. Perhaps this is why we don’t see much in the way of forecasts from NANSEN projected to the media. The model isn’t quite tuned yet. I applaud such caution when it comes to forecasting minimum summer sea ice extent in the spring to the media.
OT
This unbelievable story from ClimateAudit :
“Banned at Sudbury Airport”
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6217
Does this mean that the IARC/JAXA graph is to be modified in due course?
Sorry if this point has already been addressed above.
Hmmm. So, either the 11,000-year warming trend continues, or it is reversed as we go into the next ice age.
From the polar bears’ point of view, it seems to me that it doesn’t matter much whether humans bring on melting soon or natural forces bring it on a little later. Either way, they’re short of ice.
Steve Goddard
The Catlin Arctic Survey has posted a spreadsheet with their ice results at
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/science
I looked at the results and there does not seem to be anything remarkable. The average thickness was 185 cm for the entire trip. This seems in line with mostly first year ice which, as you pointed out, was what they would have expected given their chosen track.
Gordon Ford
Thanks for following up on the fuel cache story. I had noted that the fuel was left there in an email to Anthony and he put it on WUWT. The CAS folks then started talking about retrieving it, but they never did.
The only info on their website right now is at
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/ops_room.aspx?categoryID=31
where it states on a post dated May 22: “drums still need to be retrieved from the fuel cache, just as soon as there is a break in the weather” which is the same story as the one given by Curtis Didham to you in his email.
Since May 22, the CAS website has been silent on the issue. I would appreciate your continuing to follow up on this. As you point out, it will soon be too late to pick up all the stuff left there.
Two sailboats completed the North West Passage last summer. One was an GW awareness raising trip out of Norway
http://www.69nord.com/english/expe/index.html
The other was a private adventure From Australia to the UK
http://awberrimilla.blogspot.com/
The blogs for both are online.
This summer the Australian boat will traverse the arctic again, this time by the North East Passage (same URL).
Also a Canadian sailboat is going to sail the North West Passage to raise GW awareness.
http://www.openpassageexpedition.com/
A good day to be watching wheat futures
http://france.meteofrance.com/france/meteo?PREVISIONS_PORTLET.path=previsions/20090609060000T
S’il pleut à la saint-Médard, la récolte diminue d’un quart
If it rains on Saint Médard’s (8 June) day, the harvest will be down by a quarter
Juin froid et pluvieux, tout l’an serra grincheux.
June chilly and damp, the whole year will be mean
http://trucsmame.chez-alice.fr/pages_prov/prov_juin.htm
” Global warming is baloney’ signs put the heat on Burger King”
burger King has issued a Fatwa.
Mark Hugo writes: “Why is it so hard to get people JUST TO LOOK????”
I think this is a very important question.
Well, in the meantime the extent is now below 2008 and getting closer to 2007 which, may I remind you, is the year of all records. For June 7, we have (in sqkm)
2009 – 11017500
2008 – 11077656
2007 – 10948750
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
glenncz (19:44:29) :
“This is all about the polar bear. The thin scraggly, tired beast. That is what has the public mesmerized and concerned about the Artic ice. Something They know very little about. Right now their are millions of people living in sewage and starving, but yet we care about the polar bear. OUR minds are like a big magnetic, which vibrates with the thoughts we hear and entertain the most. No one would care about how open Artic shipping lanes could increase prosperity in this world, they have been told to care about polar bears. No one cares that we have millions starving, living in squalor, in need of simple electricity and water which could be easily provided if we stopped spending Billions on climate and soon, many Billions on Cap/Trade Punishment Tax.”
Viva glenncz
In a formal presentation by a student group last week (who are looking at biogas development in Haiti), an unusually asute graduate student remarked that the carbon offsets proposed were just another form of “forced philanthropy.” This is a prospect that I had never considered before but is rather obvious. Frankly I’d like to control my philanthropy myself rather than having someone force it on me to save the polar bears or the arctic from melting. It certainly would be an easier sale to just levy a direct tax for helping out the millions in poverty rather than to diguise it in carbon offsets. Somehow I think that those people glenncz mentions above would be served a bit better by direct philanthropy. Note that close to 1 billion people worldwide (not polar bears) live in slum conditions. see Millennium Development Goals Report 2007. I’d say that a bit of increased fuel use might help the people out their hole. Is it human nature that people focus on nonproblems like ice extent, polar bears, and co2/AGW, rather than the more serious issues facing humanity?
APE
APE (23:00:24) :
Is it human nature that people focus on nonproblems like ice extent, polar bears, and co2/AGW, rather than the more serious issues facing humanity?
It is human nature to go after power, and in our societies the big stick has given way to the big money. There are two types of human nature, individual and crowds. When in crowd mentality people can be manipulated easily to get the desired outcome. The desired outcome will not be the solution of serious issues facing humanity, but it will be the increase in the power of the manipulators. Serious issues do not give power to manipulators and are avoided, polar bears and corals and other such trivia do fine as banners for crowd control.
Mark Hugo (18:59:41) :
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/np2009/cam1-2009web.mov
Web Cam MOVIE, “Nautilus 90 North” (i.e., a North Pole Web CAM).
Can really see the sea ice breaking up in this. (NOT!)
Why is it so hard to get people JUST TO LOOK????
Oh, yeah reminds me of a desert, only cold and frozen water type of desert.
ew-3 (17:54:34) :
anyone hear any new reports on the results or press from the Catlin Arctic “Survey” lately ?
Seems they have gone quiet.
Probably still busy reading the comments to the WUWT articles on their ‘mission’.
🙂
[Steven Goddard (17:53:23) :
There isn’t any indication that the ice is “breaking up” in an unusual fashion.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png
Temperatures in the Arctic have been running below normal.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Hudson Bay is still almost completely frozen over.]
1. Presumably most of the ice loss in May/early June is OUTSIDE the 80N latitude?
2. Presumably there has been regular, ongoing and careful visual checking of ice extent over the years to correlate satellite sensor data to visual reality?
3. The totality of reports here and elsewhere seem to indicate:
i. Very warm May in Alaska.
ii. Colder May in Northern US states.
iii. Very warm in parts of Europe (e.g. Switzerland)
A common thread to link those anywhere?
@Steven Goddard (17:53:23) :
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.php
It’s happend every year in the melting season…the temp. drops below the 50 years average, because a huge melting…all the heat-energy is sucked out of the atmosphere….Look at june temp. in the archive files.
Anyone who had noticed that nature operates in cycles and that the Arctic temperature was reaching the same peak as the 30’s should have considered a recovery as a very strong possibility. Unfortunately there are too many academics who see a rising trend and are desperate to believe they know the reason why. Climate science is far from the only academic branch to demonstrate this behaviour; it’s merely their turn to be dazzled by the media spotlight.
” Flanagan (22:39:46) :
Well, in the meantime the extent is now below 2008 and getting closer to 2007 which, may I remind you, is the year of all records. For June 7, we have (in sqkm)
2009 – 11017500
2008 – 11077656
2007 – 10948750
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm”
When I then look at http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic I get a sea ice extent closer to 12 million so who is right? Nansen seems to indicate a greater current ice extent and also considerable more ice than in 2007 or 2008. As a layman I must admit I am confused. So if you support AGW you refer to ijiss as Flanagan and if you are a [skeptic] preference will be shown for Nansen. What about some reliable graphs?
When I then look at
Good! Maybe the warmist propagandists will now quit telling us that the Arctic ice is melting faster than ever…
Re:
Flanagan (22:39:46) :
Well, in the meantime the extent is now below 2008 and getting closer to 2007 which, may I remind you, is the year of all records.
Do I detect some gloating there Flanagan?
So when do they amend the sudden dive the graph has taken? How can they publish such a change in trajectory (and ice-loss) without any explanation as to how it occurred?
What were the contributory factors? A change in wind direction? A change in sea-currents? A sudden warming trend?
Just what happened to the ice? – or did it all fall into the Arctic entrance to the hollow Earth 😉 😉 (lots of smiley faces…)
Flanagan and everyone else:
Yes, the Arctic ice extend is falling rapid, and who knows might resemble 2007 in septemper.
I personally again will say:
Global temperature are better reflected by global temperatures than Arctic-summer ice extend. Global temperatures are falling even though La Nina is long gone: http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/glotempmay092.gif
So the lCO2 driven heat seems not capable of preventing all the ice to form in due time. It seems that there will be ice for all Martinies soon enough.
And then a question to all:
When Arctic sea ice is shrinking these days, howcome Arctic snow area is so extremely much bigger that last year??
Is it an error ?:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/snowjune09.gif
Is there any other links to present snow cover?
Hello there,
Trevor: no gloating of any form, just observations.
John Peter: the NSIDC graph gives just the same as the JAXA I gave. And moreover that’s the graph you can find here, on WUWT in the right column.
The ice cap of may and june are in the last years very close to eachother. July and August are importend months. Lets just wait until then.
Rhys Jaggar … it’s was a very warm spring in Newfoundland too … our trees began leafing out 2-3 weeks early where I live … and we had a milder winter while most of Canada froze!
I notice the TOPAZ forecast has the current downtrend flattening out by the end of June. Hopefully this implies some warmer weather on it’s way for us further south.