By Steve Goddard
In recent articles, I have have been discussing GISS’ claim that their divergence from Had-Crut over the last decade is due to better Arctic coverage.
They use the two images below to justify their claims.
The GISS 2005 image is deceptive, because GISS uses 1200km smoothing. Their actual 2005 Arctic coverage (using 250km smoothing) is below, and shows that they have very little data north of 75 degrees.
GISS 2005 Annual Map – 250km smoothing
In order to make it easy to visualize the differences in coverage between GISS and Had-Crut, I mapped them onto 3D spheres, which eliminates the infinite distortion near the poles in this favorite GISS projection. I also threw in a recent NASA/NOAA/UAH equivalent map. None of these images have been cropped.
![[Image]](https://i0.wp.com/discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/browse/AMSU_A_15.latest.a_01.png?resize=481%2C273&quality=75)
NOAA satellite map used by UAH
The images were created by taking the maps, replacing the gray areas which “signify missing data” with black, scaling the images to 512×512, and mapping them on to an OpenGL sphere. Assuming that the original maps all reach 90N at their top, the images are an accurate representation of their coverage. That probably is not exactly correct, but is close. It appears from the NOAA/UAH map geography that they have coverage further north than 82.5°.
Conclusion: GISS claims of better 2005 Arctic coverage in their recent paper are not justified.
UPDATE: Steve has rendered this video for further discussion.
Got to have been “raw” data. How else to account for the rotten Easter Egg look?
Damn drive-by posters.
Kelly Manning said on May 23, 2010 at 8:40 am: (emphasis added)
Thanks a lot, human solid waste evacuation orifice, for making me have to give (non)scienceblogs a hit to get that Register URL.
If you see that URL anywhere on this page, then point out where. Have you seen it used anywhere on this site lately? And what of that article? Something was postulated, countering information was presented, the originator considered the information and agreed they were wrong. That’s how science is supposed to work, that’s how scientists are supposed to act. Nothing was denied there.
The denial that is happening is you denying how stupid you look with your stupid words and stupid assertions. I started writing this angry, and now I’m just laughing. Dear God, you’re so laughable it’s pathetic.
Have a nice day, and be careful on the way out. Don’t let the door handle hit ya where the Good Lord split ya!
Kelly Manning
Everyone counts pixels. NSIDC teaches pixel counting to their students for measuring ice. Instead of mindlessly repeating ad homs you read somewhere else, try using your brain.
Arctic ice is close to normal and above 2007.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Kelly Manning
You might also notice that the 2009 minimum was 20% greater than the 2007 minimum, and that NSIDC does not measure volume.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
The only thing that was correct in your post was an apparent typo. “It is not below the area for this time in 2007”
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
The referenced Register article was correct. There was a discrepancy between NSIDC and UIUC. As a result of that article, UIUC made two changes.
1. They added this text “Sea ice concentrations less than 30% are not displayed in these images” because their legend was/is incorrect.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh
2. They corrected the eye elevation of their ice maps.
Oh come on!!! They ridded us out! It was only a matter of time before they did so
:o)
From stevengoddard on May 23, 2010 at 10:41 am:
Yup, I see that now. Previous comment was during a break from cursing my way through yard work so it was a bit rushed. I saw a “gentleman’s disagreement” with your follow-up statement starting with “Dr. Walt Meier at NSIDC has convinced me…” I did find his words about “the rest of the article” to be a bit extreme. Does he normally get that touchy when anyone questions global warming? 😉
Here in central Pennsylvania I finally got the old lawn tractor running. Two small O-rings in the carburetor assembly apparently didn’t like the “up to” 10% ethanol in the gasoline and broke down, clogging some small passageways. The engine now runs in surges with some backfiring. It was designed for “factory set and owner forget” emissions with only the bare minimum of gasoline going into the engine for the speed lever setting. It seems the lower energy content in just that small amount of ethanol is throwing it off, the engine tries to speed up then acts like the gas supply is insufficient, the governor mechanism then closes the throttle plate on the slowdown but too much leaving the motor almost stalling. Another type of malfunctioning feedback system linked to (C)AGW has now been identified.
Did you finally get in a soccer practice, or did you run out of season first? I’m asking this on the off-chance you’ll read this as all attention is now on the new Arctic Ice report. 🙂
Kelly Manning:
Isn’t “denier” an ad hominem argument?
No Nobel prizes for name calling.
Anybody:
New at this. Once you turn the italics on, how do you switch them off?
[Reply: </i> ~dbs, mod.]
I like looking at monthly data as much as the next guy, but let’s keep this in perspective –
there is SO much natural variability affecting temperature and ice coverage area, etc. that no data from “this month’s” or “this year’s” can tell us very much about what the values will be in December or 2011, etc.
(Although the Nino 3.4 vs. Global Oceans curve match-up in ‘Spencer: global average sea surface temperatures poised for a plunge’ looked pretty interesting. Would be nice to see a longer term regression or statistical model including Nino 3.4)
I guess I really know how to kill a thread??
Thanks for the HTML tip.
Jbar said on May 24, 2010 at 4:38 pm:
The Arctic Sea Ice birds have migrated to the new territories, don’t take it personally.
If you had CA Assistant you would have had a Preview function that would have shown you the italics problem, and it also lets you easily apply italics. Worth looking into.
this web site suks it dosent answer any of my questions and it should be taken of the web!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!