UPDATE: Dr. Walt Meier of NSIDC writes in with some information, seethe end of the article.
I’m getting weary of answering this question in comments, so here it is front page. Note the little bump right about June 1st.
Rick W asks:
Can anyone explain the upward bump in the sea ice extent that seems to occur each June? Apologies if previously covered.
Answer:
This is a seasonal adjustment to compensate for meltwater on top of the ice, which would ordinarily be viewed as “open water”. Right about now, the Arctic sea ice gets melt pools forming on the surface. If these are not compensated for, sea ice extent will read artificially low.
That being said, I wonder why we don’t see the same adjustment at NSIDC:
I don’t know the answer, but it could be in the difference between SSMI and AMSR-E satellite sensors (NSIDC uses SSMI, JAXA uses AMSR-E).
We also don’t see an adjustment at Cryosphere Today, and they also use SSMI:
Nor does NANSEN:
Click for larger images
If anyone knows why JAXA does the adjustment but the others do not, I’m all ears. My theory is that it is sensor related, but we should find out for sure. I’m swamped today, so I’ll leave this puzzle for WUWT readers to solve.
UPDATE
Dr. Walt Meir writes in with this:
Since you mentioned it on your blog, I can fill in at least some info:
You are correct. When the melt season kicks in the surface water changes
the contrast between ice and water. To more accurately measure the
area/extent, you should adjust coefficients to account for this.
This is done for SSM/I. However, because the SSM/I algorithm is
different from the AMSR-E algorithm (and other differences between the
sensors) the adjustment is different. In SSM/I, the adjustment is
smoother and thus there isn’t that “bump”.
You have to remember that AMSR-E is a research sensor and the algorithms
are still being refined. That is one reason we don’t use AMSR-E for the
long-term timeseries (though the more important reason is the
inconsistency between the two sensors and algorithms).
– Walt
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Phil. (20:25:23) : in reply to
“DaveE (16:50:31) :
RoyFOMR (16:29:24) :
Not to mention that Amundsun SAILED the NW passage in either 1903 or 05.”
Replied as follows
“Actually both (they didn’t actually sail in 1904 just stayed in Gjoahavn).”
I think you may find he didn’t make it through in 1903-that is when he set out on his expedition of 1903-06. He was involved in various tasks including finding the magnetic north and arrived at the Mckenzie river in the late summer of 1905. He eventually became became iced in but went overland to file a report that was carried in this contemporary account in the New York Times of December 1905.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A03E1DD113AE733A25754C0A9649D946497D6CF
However, he didn’t actually make it through completely in his ship until the following year in order to make it ‘official’, as this account from his own records show;
http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/amundsen.htm
“At Point Barrow, Amundsen received a letter of invitation from the people of the town of Nome. Using the opportunity to obtain a new gaff, they arrived at Nome on 31 August 1906: the celebration there marked the official end of the first successful Northwest Passage voyage.”
Tonyb
OT – Another from the “It must be climate change, stupid” files:
Listening to BBC Radio 4’s today programme this morning, they had a brief interview with a chap (I forget the name) discussing the observed drop-off in seabird populations around the UK coastline in the last 10 years.
The interviewee started by giving the numbers for the drop-off and continued by stating that food shortages (primarily due to sand-eel fisheries etc.) “could account for some of this”, but then went on to say (guess what’s coming…):
“There is growing evidence that the main cause is a rise in surface sea temperatures, caused by global climate-change, of between .2 and .9 deg C per decade since the 50’s” – basically killing off the wee fishies.
(I swear you could hear the interviewer sigh when the interviewee started down the climate-change road.)
After this obligatory mention of CO2-induced grimreaperness, the interviewee then, as a last, throw away, line mentioned that the birds’ eggs and nesting sites were also often under threat from mink, rats and other ovoid nabbing critters.
So, in summary: birds’ food sources being nicked, birds’ offspring becoming tasty rodent nibbles ergo bird population suffers… Nope, it’s all down to climate-change; course it is, how silly of me.
I subsequently found this link which, I think, is the original source of the interview:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/springwatch/2009/06/the_great_seabird_mystery.html
Interesting to note that the few comments there so far have a reasonable proportion of people effectively saying they don’t buy the climate change reason…
Cheers
Mark
jeez (18:58:18) : Off topic, but I have an itch.
This is a known consequence of Globall Warmning and is fairly easily cured by the application of Cooling Amber Lubricant which is widely available. It is understoood as a necessary and essential consequences of application of this cure that one will suffer from a tendency to loquationsness ant occasonally misssspelet wrords. I sugest New Zealand Steinlager…
Or you could just scratch…
Flanagan (22:35:54) : Certainly OT, but there’s no recent post on global temperatures, so: the GISS anomaly for May 2009 is out. 0.55, which is nothing but the highest anomaly this year and the third highest anomaly for May in their database.
Ah, yes, the wonderful GIStemp data fabrication process with the past inevitably re-written lower and with “data” fictions sprinkled like little red colored candies over the snowy globe to “fill in” where (and when) there are no data. All nicely created so as give the illusion of actual data where there are none.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/so_many_thermometers_so_little_time/
And they find an astounding “anomaly” of a fraction of a degree when all that means is that they have no idea what the real anomaly might be since the raw data are in whole degrees of F and so everything to the right of the decimal point is A FICTION of False Precision:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/mr-mcguire-would-not-approve/
This is consistent with the fact that most of the warming in May was observed at the poles – which are not covered by satellites (UAH, RMSS) that accordingly show relatively small positive anomalies.
Oh yes, the “warming at the poles” that comes from another data food product that uses estimates and interpolations to make up the input for GIStemp that then smears it over 1500 miles or so of distance…
from:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/hansen-global-surface-air-temps-1995/
This says that they have had uncertainty in global temperatures due to poor spatial sampling. That is, they don’t cover oceans well.. Add in ships and bouys data and it gets better “but in situ data introduce other errors”. Then they go on to say satellites provide better total surface coverage, but limited time coverage and “The satellite data provide high resolution while the in situ data provide bias correction.” OK, which is it: “introduce other errors” or “provide bias correction”? Please explain how such an error prone data set can be used to correct a new high tech satellite series? This just smells like a cover up of a “Data Food Product Homoginizing Process” coming.
Yup, next paragraph. They talk about “Empirical Orthogonal Functions” used to fill in some South Pacific data… but it uses “Optimal Interpolations” which sure sounds like they are just cooking each datapoint independently… From here on out when they use EOF data they are talking about this synthetic data. It also looks like they use 1982-1993 base years to create the offsets that are used to cook the data for 1950-81. Wonder if any major ocean patterns were different in those two time periods, and just what surface (ship / bouy) readings were used to make the Sea Surface Temp reconstructions? They do say “The SST field reconstructed from these spatial and temporal modes is confined to 59 deg. N – 45 deg S because of limited in situ data at higher latitudes.” OK, got it. You are making up data based on what you hope are decent guesses.
Yeah, I’d be quaking in my booties about how horridly hot it was if it weren’t for all the snow everywhere:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/south-hemisphere-record-early-snow/
Which, link, BTW, also covers a bunch of snow that just won’t go away in the Northern Hemisphere too. I’ve stopped adding “anecdotal” news stories to the article since it’s getting too long to be reasonable… but just note that there is snow in England in Summer … and, horror of horrors, a cold storm has damaged the Hops harvest in Germany! And, btw, there is this tiny little problem of both the Canadian and Argentine wheat crops getting buggered due to weather with excess snow in Canada…
At this rate, when GISS reports a 1+C anomaly we’re gong to have Ice Fairs on the Themes again and be walking from N.Y. to Jersey over the ice…
Posted from Under The Blue Blob in formerly sunny California where all the “anomalous heat” has left my tomatoes waiting for enough time above 50F to set fruit at a time when it ought to be 90 F some days…
(My Siberian is producing, it sets fruit in the 40 F range, but growth is slower than I’d like due to limited “degree-days” to warm it.)
Presently 48F on my patio 8 FEET from my kitchen over flagstone where the sun shines as it sets… so it looks like no tomatoes any time soon… Oh, and 20 feet from the BBQ that has not been used lately due to the cold…
As I’ve said before, and will repeat Every Time GISS anomalies are presented as evidence: GIStemp is useless for telling you anything about what is really happening in the world.
Look at the dates of first and last frost, the open and close dates of ski resorts, and the “snow on the ground” if you really want to know if it’s warmer or colder this year. They all say colder. For some strange reason I feel compelled to use reality over computer fabrications, maybe it’s just me…
Hi E M Smith
I have got that article I wrote about Wilkliam Connelley you were interested in, and also an article I wrote about Global temperatures that would probably slot in to Chiefio. If you can let me have an email address I will send them over.
Tonyb
TonyB (02:51:02) : I have got that article I wrote about Wilkliam Connelley you were interested in, and also an article I wrote about Global temperatures that would probably slot in to Chiefio. If you can let me have an email address I will send them over.
Email is embedded in the “about” tab at the top as pub4all ATSIGN aol DOT com.
BTW, I decided to see if The Big Blue Blob was just local to the coastal areas of California or not, so I decided to look up Red Bluff at wunderground… Red Bluff, for those not familiar with California, is a particularly hot part of the Northern end of the Central Valley of California. For my whole life I’ve been seeing it pop up on the news about this time with the early 99 F and 100+ F reports. It makes the news since it’s usually a degree or three hotter than the stuff in a few hundred mile radius, so the news guys report it to get a “hot spot” to talk about. From:
http://www.wunderground.com/US/CA/Red_Bluff.html
I picked up:
Friday 76° F | 58° F
Chance of Rain 20% chance of precipitation
Saturday 77° F | 58° F
Chance of Rain 30% chance of precipitation
Sunday 76° F | 58° F
Partly Cloudy
Monday 81° F | 59° F
Partly Cloudy
Tuesday 86° F | 63° F
Partly Cloudy
Now for those not familiar with what these numbers “ought” to look like:
Max Temperature: Min Temperature: Normal (KRDD) 90 °F 59 °F Record (KRDD) 102 °F (1987) 50 °F (1992)So where we ought to be having 90 F or so, we’re having 70x F hopefully rising into the mid 80s by the end of the week. While I’m sure folks up there are “loving it”, it is normally much hotter. And rain? Not good. (Bad for peaches – they get brown rot if they are ripe enough… the sulphur dusters will be out … if they can still use sulphur …)
Also, for all of California:
Looks like the whole state is cold… Even in the Mojave desert ( I think Needles is officially in it, it’s normally hot and dry enough) we hit 78 F as the peak? In summer?
Yup, AGW sure is having an impact /sarcoff>
As you can see on that image the NW Passage was open and 7 yachts sailed through last year, Berrimilla for example left Nome on 24th July and reached Nuuk, Greenland on 27th August, less than half the time the St Roche took.
We been through this before Phil, you are distorting the truth.
All those boats went throught the southern route of the NW Passage just as Amundsen easily did in the early 1900’s. The St. Roch and Larsen went through the Northern Route of the NW Passage which never opened fully last year and I expect to be more frozen this year.
And no Amundsen was not stuck in the ice for 3 years. He stayed to finish the scientific work that was required and learn the survival skills of the Inuit and then left at a time of his own choosing.
And after Amundsen went through the NW Passage he later went through the NE passage and completed the circle around the North Pole. And then after that the AGW caused the Arctic to warm for 100 plus years and the ice level appears to have increased or stayed at the same level.
Many more have traversed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage. What is called the consensus of science just chooses to ignore the huge amount of historical evidence. And this is done purposefully as there is no other explanation for it.
Forget about GISS it is a joke, here is Sweden we might have the coldest beginning of the summer (1-10:th of June) since the 1950s according to SMHI (That is the Swedish equivalent to NOAA in the US). The strawberrys (very popular during the midsummer weekend later this June) will be small and few due to the bad weather.
The rest of NW Europe is also cold and when both part of Europe and the whole of Canada is cold at the same time what is the chance that GISS is correct? Not much I would say.
BTW I belive that RSS and UAH say the opposite to what Flanagan says, they cover the poles much better than GISS and Hadley.
GISS and satellites give similar multi-year trends so I would be tempted to say they have similar quality. Moreover, GISS is in accordance with the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis http://www.climat-evolution.com/article-32112504.html. I think we might expect these values to join again within a few months…
Dennis Ward 23:17:23
“It is quite interesting that you consider that anybody who points out facts is a troll, whereas all the far more puerile comments and those who need to use cherry picked data like ‘eleven years cooling’ on here are not.”
You mean cherry picked facts like an arbitrary starting and ending point for graphs and temperatures (often adjusted after the fact) often used by Hansen, Gore, and Schneider? As for the “facts”, I guess they depend on ones natural biased induced interpretation of data and statistics no? Most on here give both sides of the debate and Anthony and Charles allow tremendous latitude for the AGW crowd to post here. You will rarely, if ever, see that allowed on the pro AGW sites or are you not honest enough to admit that?
EM Smith-having fought fires in California in the late 80’s though most of the 90’s,
the forecast for Red Bluff is ah,’Sweater Weather’ for the locals.Rain and thunder in NE Oregon too…
Reply: I didn’t clean it up. I approved the whole mess. I suspect Anthony ~ charles the moderator
Thanks for fixing my typo!! It was bone headed.
TonyB (00:43:41) :
Phil. (20:25:23) : in reply to
“DaveE (16:50:31) :
RoyFOMR (16:29:24) :
Not to mention that Amundsun SAILED the NW passage in either 1903 or 05.”
Replied as follows
“Actually both (they didn’t actually sail in 1904 just stayed in Gjoahavn).”
I think you may find he didn’t make it through in 1903-that is when he set out on his expedition of 1903-06.
I was obviously too cryptic, I meant that the sailing through the passage took place in 03 and 05. In 04 they were frozen in Gjoahavn and carried out exploration of possible routes on foot. As you mentioned, in the autumn of 05 although they’d cleared the passage they were frozen in again and Amundsen hiked overland to send the message to the outside world.
Mark Fawcett (00:52:08) :
I thought the post from marineBlueplanet was well thought out and very sobering. Then he went blew it with this silly but understandable emotional rant.
No longer can we view the commercial fishing industry with the romantic notion of hard working fishermen risking everything to put fish on our plates. It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction, that is prepared to wipe out whole species for profit with almost no long-term consideration for the health of the marine environment.
What annoys me is Copenhagen will be a venue for grand standing politicians and morally bankrupted pseudo scientists. There will be the usual bunch of free loaders prophesying the end of earth through ocean acidification and heap of phony studies to push their junk science. They are money grabbing grubs. Ok, I’ve had my rant and feel better for it.
To my mind marineBlueplanet is a real conservationist and I find sad that his like won’t get a word in edgewise on a very important issue.
Morgan T (06:10:23) :
Forget about GISS it is a joke, here is Sweden we might have the coldest beginning of the summer (1-10:th of June) since the 1950s according to SMHI (That is the Swedish equivalent to NOAA in the US). The strawberrys (very popular during the midsummer weekend later this June) will be small and few due to the bad weather.
The rest of NW Europe is also cold and when both part of Europe and the whole of Canada is cold at the same time what is the chance that GISS is correct? Not much I would say.
UAH also shows the NH extratropics as positive, their global result for May was low because they had such a low value for the tropics which meant the extratropics had to be high to compensate.
BTW I belive that RSS and UAH say the opposite to what Flanagan says, they cover the poles much better than GISS and Hadley.
RSS don’t cover the poles at all, they only cover 70S to 82.5N and exclude areas of high ice such as the Andes and Himalayas because of interference from ice signals. UAH go as far as 82.5S I think, but this has been criticized because of the ice interference (I can’t remember who wrote the paper).
MartinGAtkins, could you please tell me what’s so silly about this rant:
No longer can we view the commercial fishing industry with the romantic notion of hard working fishermen risking everything to put fish on our plates. It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction, that is prepared to wipe out whole species for profit with almost no long-term consideration for the health of the marine environment.
I’m currently reading The Unnatural History of the Sea by professor Callum Roberts and I can tell you it’s not pretty.
Neven 09 50 38
I think there are two truths here. Your defence of the comment is most certainly correct about one truth. However I come from a UK fishing port and the ‘hard working fishermen risking everything’ is certainly correct also, and the hi-tech industry bit certainly stretching it rather.
Many people have died who work out of the South West fishing ports. However Lyme bay-where I live-has also just banned beam trawlers to protect corals and sponges amongst other marine ecology. This has caused the big boys to cry ‘foul’ whilst seriously inconveniencing and threatening the livelihood of the small scale fishermen.
Like most green things in life nothing is black and white.
Tonyb
Shawn Whelan (05:40:50) :
“As you can see on that image the NW Passage was open and 7 yachts sailed through last year, Berrimilla for example left Nome on 24th July and reached Nuuk, Greenland on 27th August, less than half the time the St Roche took.”
We been through this before Phil, you are distorting the truth.
Not at all, it’s a completely accurate statement.
All those boats went throught the southern route of the NW Passage just as Amundsen easily did in the early 1900’s.
Now this is a distortion, the trip was anything but easy! I have Amundsen’s account of the expedition, the description of the storm that caused him to put into what later became Gjoahavn in Sept. 03 is extremely dramatic. They had to throw cargo overboard to avoid being destroyed on a reef. They entered the bay on Sept. 12th 03 and the ship wasn’t able to leave until summer 05. The eskimos had told them that the summer of 03 was very mild and was unlikely to be repeated in 04 and so it proved with only temporary shore leads opening up to allow short trips in dories and kayaks.
The St. Roch and Larsen went through the Northern Route of the NW Passage which never opened fully last year and I expect to be more frozen this year.
What you expect is hardly relevant. Which route opens up is largely subject to the vagaries of the winds.
And no Amundsen was not stuck in the ice for 3 years. He stayed to finish the scientific work that was required and learn the survival skills of the Inuit and then left at a time of his own choosing.
His own account says otherwise, the Gjoa couldn’t have left the harbor in 04. In any case his subsequent journey depended on the reconnaissance by Hansen which determined the appropriate route.
And after Amundsen went through the NW Passage he later went through the NE passage and completed the circle around the North Pole. And then after that the AGW caused the Arctic to warm for 100 plus years and the ice level appears to have increased or stayed at the same level.
Your time-line seems a little off, it’s only 2009. Also Amundsen had to have his ship rescued from the ice by the alaskan coastguard after his NE passage trip in and area which was open water last year. Also the attempt to claim Wrangel Island by a US/Canadian expedition in 1922 failed because it was cut off for resupply for over a year (all except for one woman died). So your account of greater ice seems not to agree with those events.
Many more have traversed the length of the Northern Route of the NW Passage.
Really who and when?
What is called the consensus of science just chooses to ignore the huge amount of historical evidence. And this is done purposefully as there is no other explanation for it.
A claim made apparently based on your version of history and exaggerations.
E.M.Smith, it’s not hot in your state because it seems the heat normally reserved for Pheonix and the desert areas has been vacationing in Texas and northern Mexico. That heat will soon spread to where we are in the southern half of Kansas with a chance the 100 degree days could come early this year according to Intellicast.
How about this, maybe something will push the nation’s hotspot back to the southwestern desert where it belongs and we’ll enjoy a cooler summer (because we don’t have lots of crops that need the extra heat) 🙂
Phil
I have been through Amundsens accounts and understood he stayed in the port during 1904 quite deliberately to carry out scientific work. Can you clarify your comment that his ship was frozen into the ice in 1904 and couldn’t leave even if he wanted to? Thanks
Tonyb
TonyB (12:03:28) :
Phil
I have been through Amundsens accounts and understood he stayed in the port during 1904 quite deliberately to carry out scientific work.
Although he stayed to do the scientific work he does refer to the state of the ice which would have prevented his leaving. He frequently doesn’t give actual dates so it can be difficult to pin down. Late in July he refers to Simpson Strait being closed but hopes it might melt. However, early in August Hansen left to establish a depot at Cape Crozier for the following spring’s reconnaissance trip, Simpson Strait was blocked with ice both on the way out and on their return (7th Sept). Gjoahavn froze completely by 21st Sept.
Summarizing their experience that summer Amundsen writes:
“The summer had been cold and inclement and there had been very little open water for navigation. (using dories and kayaks not the Gjoa: Phil.) We could only hope for better luck next year.”
I know it’s only weather, not climate.
My home-community in SoCal puts up every year since 1979 a fund-raiser event for the local fire department. It used to be every year on the second weekend in june. We kept records of the weather for each event.
June in the SoCal is usually associated with “june-gloom”, low level clouds in the morning, with sunshine the rest of the day. Those low level clouds used to not affect us, as the community is above 2200 ft MSL, above those marine-layer clouds.
Warm weather for that event is important. The fire department sells a lot of beer then, which creates income 🙂 .
Historical weather data for the event:
1979 – 2001 reliably sunny, temperatures ranged from low 80s to upper 90s
2002 morning cloudy, afternoon sunny, temps in the high 70s
2003 cloudy, drizzle in the morning, sunny late afternoon, temps in the low 70s
2004 cloudy, rain in the morning, partly cloudy afternoon, temps in the mid to high 60s
2005 rainy all day. temps in the low 60s
2006 rain in the morning, partly cloudy afternoon, temps in the high 60s to low 70s
Since 2007 the event was moved to september, as the june date no longer guaranteed good weather. Evidence of climate change?
This year we have since mid may temperatures in the upper 50s to low 60s , dense overcast, drizzle and rain.
I have the heater in the house running in june!!!
KLA: That’s a fairly interesting cooling trend, and curiously started going down since the peak of the last solar max? Could it be that solar quiet manifests itself first in specific regions like high mountain areas?
Then again it’s not that high up, something must be causing the trend, SST’s didn’t peak till 2003 for starters.
@ur momisugly Adam from Kansas (14:50:49)
No, it’s not that high up. However, the community is on top of the first mountain range from the ocean. Just about 15 miles due east from the beach. Currently, and in the last years, the lower areas close to the ocean are often sunny, while we are buried in orographic clouds.
Neven (09:50:38) :
In particular this line.
It must now be seen for what it is, a ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry of destruction,
It parameterises “efficient, hi-tech industry” with “ruthless destruction”. Todays fishing ships indeed efficient and hi-tech as well as very expensive.
Having said that, they are more economic and safer than fleets of small boats fishing over a wide area. Like any business they seek to maximize return on capital outlay. This is not immoral or necessarily bad in a competitive market as it drives innovation and the outcome is a better and more affordable product for the consumer.
This works well where the producers have a stake in the source of the product, by ownership or licence because it is in their interest to protect and enhance the source of their production. I’m not saying the outcome is always perfect because in any human endeavor mistakes will be made, but with diverse ownership of owned or licenced properties, bad outcomes on an individual scale can be reversed.
The problem is that nation states only have resource security over a three hundred mile perimeter of the surrounding ocean. Sometimes these boundaries overlap but more often than not, agreements are reached and a shared interest leads to a comprehensive conservation strategy that includes sustainable harvesting.
The problem is a healthy ocean can’t be achieved by good management of narrow coastal bands. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you why. 😉
So the problem isn’t so much a “ruthless, efficient, hi-tech industry” but the lack international agreements on steps that can be taken to ensure wide ranging coordinated efforts to enhance fish stocks and there by improve production and profitability for the fishing industries.
This is not what will be discussed by the posers at Copenhagen and perhaps nor should it be. Conservation has been hijacked by ideologically driven environmentalism and their pseudo science.
There should be a separate venue for the international fishing industries to meet and discuss ways of securing fish stocks and improving quality of product. It should have government representation from all states who have an interest in securing good fishery outcomes.
The UN should be starved of funds and broken up. It’s become nothing more than a self perpetuating Marxist bureaucracy.