After a false start that fooled even the experts, it appears that sea ice has turned the corner, for real this time. NSIDC issued an update this week:
Update: 21 September 2010
Although ice extent appeared to reach a minimum on September 10, rising afterwards for three straight days, it has subsequently declined even further. NSIDC scientists are closely monitoring the ice extent and will provide another update on the data, as conditions develop.
Our season-end announcement in October will provide the final numbers for the minimum extent, as well as the monthly data for September, which scientists use for establishing long-term trends.
This is confirmed by the other sources:
What is of renewed interest though is what is going on in Antarctica:
While the Antarctic Ice never dipped below normal, the dip itself illustrates what I alluded to in Sea Ice News #22:
While the vagaries of wind and weather can still produce an about-face…
And just like the dip in the Arctic, the dip in the Antarctic is weather related, and is now rebounding with a change in weather.The sea ice on the edge of the Antarctic continent can be affected by winds and weather patterns in the same way as Arctic ice.
Speaking of weather, according to DMI the temperature in the Arctic continues to plummet:
Though, we may see some temperature rebound after the first or second week of October, as the Arctic Oscillation ensemble forecast calls for the AO to go positive then:
More on the impact of the AO in this graphic here (PDF)
And as we see in this CT comparison, the ice is refreezing rather quickly in the month of September:
Click to enlarge. Notice how the areas of lower concentration have disappeared.
Later this week, I’ll do a recap on who forecasted what and how the final tally looked.
Why would anyone believe what NSIDC says? I used to work there, and on one project the scientist whom I was working for wasn’t getting realistic results from his modle so he told me to arbitrarily change all the snow depths so that his results would match the observations better. As far as I know, he never mentioned in any of his publications that we had “enhanced” the data.
P.S. I forbade him from listing my name as a co-author on any journal article because of this.
NSIDC is pretty much of a joke. One of my last assignments there was to modify a program that was written by their “lead programmer”. This program was the absolutely most pathetic hack job that I’ve ever seen. It unbelievably had no less than 108 IF statements in the main function alone. The exact same if test was performed at 7 different places in the same function. It had an IF…ELSE IF…ELSE IF… block that was so long that it took more than 4 pages to print out. And everybody else there thought that it was a great program! Those people are clueless!
P.S. I forgot to mention that the absurd computer program that I discussed in my previous post is the program that NSIDC uses to compute sea ice concentration!
P.S. P.S. The original author admitted to me that for one part of one of the most widely used sea ice concentration algorithms she just assumed that she had done the programming correctly because the output looked like what she expected it to look like.
So I know R. Gates seems to have disappeared for now, but I came across this paper while doing a literature search the other day:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;161/3842/690?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&volume=161&firstpage=690&resourcetype=HWCIT
Title is “MAGNESIUM SULFATE INTERACTIONS IN SEAWATER FROM SOLUBILITY MEASUREMENTS”
We know R. Gates isn’t an expert in sea ice, but I’m wondering if this could be the same guy since there is a correlation there and we know R. Gates has an honest interest in the sea ice status.
-Scott
I would not give R Gates that much credit, Scott. I remember him admitting many posts back more than once, that he was NOT a scientist.
[And of course, I am not one either, and I know another non-scientist when I see one.. 😉 ]
Also, there were too many giveaways in his posts that he sort of knew what he was talking about…but at the end of the day…he did not know what he was talking about.
He never listened to others either who had superior technical understanding of the subject, either. Like an automaton, he delivered the same agenda-driven responses every time.
Also his naive use of technical jargon was a clue: “We know that AGW [sic] models say this….and that.”
I don’t think this could be the same one.
The one on this blog just does not have the pedigree to actually be a researcher.
[Or, in light of the poster Jeff’s damning allegations about the NSIDC, maybe he does LOL].
Interestingly, there is no R Gates on faculty or research staff as listed on the website:
http://www-po.coas.oregonstate.edu/people/
-Chris
Jeff says:
September 28, 2010 at 4:37 pm
========================
Jeff, have you contacted Anthony?
If what you are saying is true, he might be interested in what you would have to report, for sure.
We all would, for that matter.
-Chris
savethesharks wrote:
“Jeff, have you contacted Anthony?
If what you are saying is true, he might be interested in what you would have to report, for sure.
We all would, for that matter.”
I guess that I was assuming that Mr. Watts reads these threads. He seems to participate in a fair number of them. As far as whether it’s true, I have a nephew who is a lawyer so I’m well aware of the risks of making libelous statements. I posted under my real name and anyone from NSIDC who reads my posts will know who made them, which does not worry me a bit.
You’ll need to post more proof than that Jeff if you’re going to have any credibility with your statements about NSIDC.
Andy
The program that I referred to is called pmalgos, and it is a program that they distribute to the public. It can be obtained at
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/tools/pmsdt/
The problems with that program are rather obvious.
The research project in which we performed the data “enhancement” was one in which snowdepth was a significant factor. I’m not going to discuss it further because some might figure out the identity of the scientist (who is a very nice person), other than to say that it was not Mark Serreze or Walt Myer.
Another massive gain yesterday. CT area showed an increase of 108842 km^2. Since the minimum, we’ve gained 624214 km^2, now the highest gain from the minimum in the last 10 years! Remember that there were plenty of years 1979-2000 with bigger increases though.
JAXA extent was also impressive, with a gain of 105157 km^2 yesterday. This makes 2010 the first year in the JAXA record with more than one 100000+ km^2 single-day gains in Sept. And the gain is steady – in the last 4 days, we’ve set the 3rd, 4th, and 5th largest single-day gains in the JAXA Sept record. We still have two more days left in Sept too. 🙂
Earlier I’d said I expected us to be within 100000 km^2 of 2009’s extent by the month’s end and that we would pass it on Oct 3 (and on Steve Goddard’s site I said we’d pass 2009’s area by Oct 5). The gain has been much faster than I expected, I we may pass both in Sept, though I think Oct 1-2 is a more likely possibility. We’re 101628 km^2 behind in area, and only 50937 km^2 back in extent.
The real question is whether these rapid gains have much meaning…
-Scott
Jeff said
September 28, 2010 at 11:55 pm
The program that I referred to is called pmalgos, and it is a program that they distribute to the public. It can be obtained at
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/tools/pmsdt/
The problems with that program are rather obvious.
The research project in which we performed the data “enhancement” was one in which snowdepth was a significant factor. I’m not going to discuss it further because some might figure out the identity of the scientist (who is a very nice person), other than to say that it was not Mark Serreze or Walt Myer.
____________________________________________
Put up or shut up.
Andy
AndyW says:
September 29, 2010 at 10:54 am
I absolutely agree with Andy here. Jeff, if you’re going to talk about this on open forum, then you’ll need to show evidence. If your lawyer relative has really advised you in this regard, then he would have told you to keep some sort of hard evidence as proof.
Honestly, I’ve seen enough incompetence and agenda-driven behavior in my graduate work to not be surprised by anything. But until you show real evidence of what you’re saying, there’s no reason for us to believe you (and even if we do believe you, it doesn’t go anywhere unless you have evidence). Misspelling Dr. Meier’s name definitely hurts your credibility too.
-Scott
JAXA extent slowed yesterday, with the lowest extent gain in over a week (57481 km^2). That low value brings us down to right at the average in the JAXA record (just a touch lower, actually). That leaves it with the 2nd greatest growth in the JAXA record since the minimum, 54532 km^2 lower than 2002 (which had its minimum 9 days earlier). However, 2002 performed relatively poorly on Sept 30, so with a gain of about 80000 km^2, this year would end up with the best extent increase from the minimum to Sept 30 in the JAXA record. The average gain over the last 8 days is about 77k, so I think we’ve got a 50% shot or higher at reaching this. Passing 2009 by Sept 30 is a different story though. It’d require roughly 109k of increase, so its probability is probably 5% or less.
CT’s area measure, on the other hand, had a day that would make any polar bear beam. Gain was 135524 km^2, beating the average by about 50k. Area gains since the minimum are now blowing away anything in the last 10 years. Oh, and we passed 2009. 🙂 Unfortunately, I don’t have my area spreadsheet as detailed (yet) as my extent spreadsheet, otherwise I’d give you some additional figures.
Hmm, given the massive area gains yesterday, maybe I should raise my probabilities for extent performance on Sept 30…
-Scott
Thanks for the computations & updates scott.
Actually Pips suddenly showed Frasm Strait Exhaust. Latest JAXA gain
8,906 (preliminary)
… won’t stay for long. though. Maybe a day of Loss, quickly ending because:.
The storms in the “Hurricane Graveyard” may be starting to merge. It is getting quite Crowded. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/mslp_01.fnl.html
Mr Vuckovitch: (Sorry: I am probably mangling the name) is there some E-M reason why Hurricanes travel to the Arctic & just sit there ? Sounds like it should be electrical.