A number of people have inquired about the deep red drop today in this graph:
Of course the concern is along the lines of wondering if the world famous Mark Serreze “death spiral” has suddenly kicked in. While people like Joe Romm would be tickled with “I told you so taunts” if in fact the graph represented reality today, it does not. It only represents a satellite data outage. For example see the missing grey sector areas in this NSIDC image derived from the same SSM/I data:
And of course, it doesn’t show up on the newer AQUA based AMSRE sensor, showing now ice extent up for the third day in a row.
Thanks to NSIDC’s Dr. Walt Meier for confirmation.
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Where did the Arctic ice go?
Maybe it has been transferred to Canada’s Prairies:
[ http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=more_rain_batters_manitoba_110910?ref=ccbox_homepage_topstories ]
“Prairie frost is killing crops
September 14, 2010 — Harvest crops are still weeks behind schedule in the Prairies and the frosty conditions aren’t helping.
There’s signs of an early winter across the Prairies and that is spelling trouble for farmers.
First it was a wet and soggy spring and summer season and now single digit temperatures and frost are adding to the list of weather concerns.
The crop is already weeks behind schedule thanks to the persistent rain that’s left fields completely swamped and saturated with water. Some farmers left their fields unseeded as the ground was just too wet to get into. Others faced severe damage.”
(-by Andrea Stockton, staff writer )
James Sexton says:
September 14, 2010 at 4:49 pm
James, I’m pretty sure the data processing and graphical updates are all automated. I’m sure the problem will be fixed within a day or two.
-Scott
So is the SSMI satellite on the verge of failure, or is it simply a glitch?
I’ve posted several times to his site (Joe Romm) and he deletes everything I say …. it doesn’t even come up `waiting for moderation’ any more. If he is any indication of how the Team tried to keep papers from being published then I’m ashamed to be in the field of science!
I congratulate the moderators of this site for letting the wa#k jo*s post …. I don’t of course know how many get deleted but at least some come through.
Or as the folks say on Joe’s site, I’m AFRAID, very afraid (maybe of my wife but not AGW 🙂
When we demand instantaneous display of data obtained by technical wizardry we should expect a few glitches and not treat the providers harshly. This is rocket science, you know.
The Arctic (like our climate) is being treated like a very sick patient in an emergency room.
But if we look at the very regular and healthy “pulse”, well within a very safe range of utmost extremes, global glaciation and a completely ice free Arctic, this patient should be fired from the hospital immediately.
Scott says:
September 14, 2010 at 4:58 pm
James, I’m pretty sure the data processing and graphical updates are all automated. I’m sure the problem will be fixed within a day or two.
========================================================
I’m sure of that also. If I were the programmer that allowed this to be shown, I wouldn’t be much of a programmer. Were I the IT pro or net admin that allowed this to be shown, I wouldn’t much of either. Were I to be one of the scientists or technicians that deal with the data, which many look at on a daily basis, then I would have acquiesced my responsibility to some form of automation.
Scott, you know this is a flaw, I know this is a flaw, pretty much everybody that visits this blog knows it is a flaw. But dammit! We have politicians that think islands can capsize! Can’t the twits that bring us this continuous feed(of superfluous, immaterial data upon which laws are made and lives are affected) be conscientious enough to at least look at the stuff, maybe once a day? Is it too much to ask?
Sorry, my rant for the day, unless I grab another beer……..which, sounds pretty good right now.
The annual watch on the comings and goings of the Arctic sea ice is an entertaining pastime, not quite fantasy football, but fun never the less. But everyone would be well advised not to confuse these numerous graphics with reality. Even with the obvious error in the Nansen data, their sea ice area number is still nearly 3/4 MILLION km2 higher than CT’s and the range of values for SIA has been over a million km2 for weeks. The IJIS graph seems to have become the de facto gold standard but, though they always quote their data to the nearest km2, the bullet points beneath the graph include this
“In principle, SIC data could have errors of 10% at most, particularly for the area of thin sea ice seen around the edge of sea-ice cover and melted sea ice seen in summer. Also, SIC along coastal lines could also have errors due to sub-pixel contamination of land cover in an instantaneous field of view of AMSR-E data.”
and this
“Definition of sea-ice cover (extent and area)
The area of sea-ice cover is often defined in two ways, i.e., sea-ice “extent” and sea-ice “area.” These multiple definitions of sea-ice cover may sometimes confuse data users. The former is defined as the areal sum of sea ice covering the ocean (sea ice + open ocean), whereas the latter “area” definition counts only sea ice covering a fraction of the ocean (sea ice only). Thus, the sea-ice extent is always larger than the sea-ice area. Because of the possible errors in SIC mentioned above, satellite-derived sea-ice concentration can be underestimated, particularly in summer. In such a case, the sea-ice area is more susceptible to errors than the sea-ice extent. Thus, we adopt the definition of sea-ice extent to monitor the variation of the Arctic sea ice on this site. ”
For those who are wondering SIC is sea ice concentration. As with all graphics in “climate science” it pays to keep Korzypski’s injunction in mind when dealing with them. “The map is not the territory.”
Oops! Korzybski, of course
The “Glitch” is also affecting the Southern Hem. NSIDC data:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_bm_extent_hires.png
Mayday, Mayday. This is Global.
Psych! Caught you napping! Next time it will be for real. Just don’t tempt me.
Kang
Ruler of Earth
rbateman said on September 14, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I want to know if it’ll be determined the SSM/I stuff has been going funky for awhile now, and previous readings aren’t totally reliable. NSIDC doesn’t archive daily numbers so it’s hard to do a check against the IARC-JAXA’s AMSR-E results.
Of course we could just trust NSIDC to know better and have correct numbers. It’s not like their director is pushing some alarmist propaganda like the idea of an Arctic Ice Death Spiral, right?
☺
I think it’s interesting that even with the big chunk of ice missing, the ice extent still remained above the 2007 level.
Philip Finck says:
September 14, 2010 at 5:06 pm
“…. I don’t of course know how many get deleted but at least some come through.”
I think they let most come through. I’ve often seen them taken to task about something they’ve said or not said. Here is a very good recent example of what they let in as far as dissenting opinions. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/13/my-towns-climate-action-plan/#more-24809 There are many other examples. Of course, I’ve yet to see where one didn’t get their azz handed back to them. The best debates are when they let us argue amongst ourselves!
I don’t buy it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the warmists, it’s that models and graphs are always right, but sometimes reality is wrong.
“The rent is in arrears
The dog hasn’t been fed in years
It’s even worse than it appears”.
– Grateful Dead, Touch of Grey
The ice was hit by an ocean liner and sank…
May I ask a silly question please?
Why is there very little variability in the data at the end of December?
Is this due to the geography? Or just our limited dataset? But then why does the variability increase once again after February?
Thanks.
“Where did the Arctic ice go?
Maybe it has been transferred to Canada’s Prairies:”
Yeah, in what is supposedly one of the warmest summers in Canada’s history, we’ve had the furnace on far more than the air conditioning.
Can someone please send some Global Warming out our way? Thanks.
Does this mean that before satelites there was no arctic ice?
Follow the adventures of the two ships attempting to circumnavigate the Arctic. The translation buttons are ify but it is still fun to follow their trips via the maps.
http://www.ousland.no/blog/
http://rusarc.ru/
captainfish says:
September 14, 2010 at 6:34 pm
One silly question (there’s really no such thing) deserves another:
Why does the temperature at 80N do the opposite of the Sea Ice Extent & Area?
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/meanT_2010vs58-09.jpg
Its just a ‘rotten’ satellite…
waitaminute.
Polar bears *eat* satellites, don’t they?
Note the picture near the bottom of the page – after Nanook swatted his dinner out of the sky all that’s left is satellite bones…
OT sorry, but my gut split on this one.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/09/14/climategate-inquiries/#comment-241405