I’ve been aware of this for a couple of days on our Sea Ice page, but hadn’t done anything about it since I wanted to see if it might change. When blogger Kate of Small Dead Animals noticed it and published on it, I figured it was time to start asking NSIDC some questions.
Compare this NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice extent chart…
…with this from Cryosphere Today:
The NSIDC plot has since intersected the 2007 line, but CT has no new images up since 10-27-10:
It certainly appears that there is more ice in 2010 than 2007 on the Cryosphere Today page. CT hardly ever responds to email, so I didn’t even bother asking them why the discrepancy. NSIDC’s Walt Meier though, takes our concerns seriously and responded rather quickly to my questions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: Walt Meier
To: Anthony
Subject: Re: you might have a problem
Sent: Oct 29, 2010 8:42 AM
Hi Anthony,
Thanks for the heads up. I looked at it and it doesn’t look like there
is any problem.
As we went through before with Steve [Goddard], looking at the images can be
misleading because they’re not on an equal area projection. There is
more ice in the central Arctic this year, but less in the Beaufort Sea,
Canadian Archipelago, and Baffin Bay. These areas roughly balance each
other out.
I also recall Cryosphere Today having an issue of changing their images,
so I don’t know if you can consistently compare them anyway – it looks
like their 2007 image is missing some ice. Attached is our concentration
images from 2007 and yesterday and there doesn’t look like much
discrepancy (apologies for the different image sizes).
walt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I fixed the size differences, and here they are:
Of course we don’t have the daily extent data from NSIDC, since they so far have refused to publish it (they do give monthly though) so, we have to be content with image comparison rather than data comparison with NSIDC.
=======================================
Walt, as I said before, you really should publish the daily data. Consider how this looks: NSIDC director Serreze screams “death spiral” to the media while at the same time holds back publicly funded data. It is the same sort of bull-headedness that got CRU in deep trouble. – Anthony
=======================================
UPDATE: Reader Lee Kington provides this blink comparator version:
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JDN says:
October 30, 2010 at 6:18 pm
EFS_Junior says:
October 30, 2010 at 3:32 pm
What is the HFS format? There are too many acronyms with HFS for me to find it. Is there a simple reader or file convertor?
As for raw data, I don’t want to convert every pass. What I’d like to do is assign the raw data to approximate GPS position over open ocean to correlate it with ocean imaging from planes or ships which might be in the area. Basically, I’d like a spot check on the performance of the satellite and its ability to identify % of ice cover.
_____________________________________________________________
My bad, it’s called HDF;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_Data_Format
Also, after looking at my mish-mash of NSIDC links, I can see that not all gridded datasets are in HDF format.
Here are a few links to the NASA Team and Bootstrap datasets;
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice/
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice/faq.html
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq.html
http://nsidc.org/data/smmr_ssmi_ancillary/area_extent.html
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice/pm.html#pm_seaice_conc
http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0002.html
http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0051.html
http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0079.html
http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0081.html
http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0192.html
To be honest with you, I need to read the NSIDC FAQ.
But AFAIK, all raw data and algorithms/programs/codes are available on NSIDC’s or GSFC’s ftp servers.
I tried very hard to find processed dailies that are current/up-to-date, but the best that I could find were dailies circa 1972-2007 (nothing for 2008-10).
The AO has turned positive recently since then we have seen ice build up to the west of Greenland very quickly looking at the satellite images.
Doug in Seattle says:
October 30, 2010 at 6:57 pm
This all just navel gazing until we see a full 60 years to account for the PDO (or even longer if we want to factor in the AMO).
The Pacific NW is looking more like the early 1950′s than the 1990′s of late. Even the koolade drinkers are getting a bit antsy about global warming theory now.
_____________________________________________________________
I mean seriously, the 60-year cycle canard is getting very old and very tired.
If we just use the ~32 years of NSIDC I see no crest and I see no trough, in other words I don’t see even a half cycle in that data set.
If there is a cycle in that 32-year dataset it’s much longer than 60 years, that’s for sure.
So maybe it’s a 64 year cycle, or maybe it’s a 66.6 year cycle, or maybe it’s a 69 year cycle, I mean who knows, who really knows?
Just repeat the sixties meme.
But wait, we also have satellite data going back to 1972 (and NSIDC is currently working on some satellite data circa 1960’s) and before that sea ice charts that John E. Welch derived sea ice extents circa 1951-78.
http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/people/indiv/iarc_all_staff.php?photo=jwalsh
In none of those data sets, combined (grand total of 70 years), is there ANY hint of a proported 60-year cycle with respect to Arctic sea ice extents (and most especially with respect to Arctic sea ice extent minima).
Been there, done that! About sixty ways to Sunday, as a matter of fact.
All sea ice extent data sets show at least a quadratic relationship (negative leading coefficient, meaning concave down).
In fact it looks just like the first drop in a roller coaster ride, except it just keeps on getting steeper and steeper.
In other words, the data to date, for Arctic sea ice extent, shows absolutely no cyclic nature, save for the all too obvious annual cycle, which isn’t going up, long term, if you get my drift.
Now if we have a true Arctic sea ice volume recovery, I’m sure you all will come up with some 140-150 year cycle from Imaginationland or some such.
Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.
🙁
And ALL above post have completely forgotten about Antarctic ice extent ABOVE ANOMALY LAST 5 years! its not “global” warming guys, sorry.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Let the alarmists hold their comments until we at least match the 2007 melt again. If that happens with a quiet sun and a negative PDO and AMO then even I would be rethinking.
#########
that leds to an interesting question. what would have to happen to arctic ice for people to change their minds.
Kudos to mr wilde for putting some measure of skin in the game
Looks like the probkem is the problem they have always had, using 15% sea ice extent instead of at least 30% sea ice extent – but don’t expect them to change it now, it will ruin their story!
Could the poorly covered magnetic field and the never mentioned Earth’s thermal heat play a part? I think so and it plays a far more complicated and important part.
“The coinciding periods of correlation between the Earth’s global temperature and the strength of the Earth’s global magnetic field”
http://www.science27.com/Earth/index.htm
Roll on cryosat and a DECADE of data from it, then we can start to discuss sea ice with a degree of seriousness.
You’re linking to sea ice area not 15% extent, but that data does seen to tie in with the CT images.
NSDIC may well be correct looking at the blink comparator it seems that there was a lot more thin ice cover in 2007 and that would come into the 15% calculation. What is clear, even just from eyeballing the images is that there is significantly more area with denser sea ice coverage than there was in 2007.
So, yes it looks like there’s more ice and there almost certainly is more ice (both in thickness and area) but that does not have to be at odds with the NSDIC 15% extent graph.
However, Walt Meier’s equal projection argument seems particularly weak in view of the small range in latitudes and that the distribution if ice is more russian less canadian so not even really biased by any projection shrinkage.
EFS_Junior,
Here’s something cyclical for you—as the Arctic is doing that the Antarctic is doing this:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
North Pole ice head one way South Pole ice heading the other. You forgot about the South Pole, huh—doh!
Are your long comments intended to inform others or to reassure yourself?
Extents are down, areas are up, consistently. So, there is recovery in the Arctic as the current ice is thicker.
NSIDC should be publishing its data. Really should be paying attention to the details that are going to make a big difference in the next Congress when it comes time to decide who’s worth the precious budget funds and who’s not.
Take note, Dr. Meier, NSIDC is not putting its best foot forward.
Ice Ice Baby..Coming to an Arctic near you!…The graphs won’t be able to hide the Spike that is starting & will continue for awhile….
PS..I report the Ups & the Downs…Nuttun but the tooth!
Coordination, after¨”Climate Gate” it is troublesome, can´t communicate “tricks” through email now!…we´ll fix it right away by applying the same convenient adjustments…
“Owen says:
October 30, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Stephen Wilde says:
October 30, 2010 at 1:26 pm
“We’ve seen two years recovery of sea ice at minimum (then a small step back due to an El Nino and residual warmth in the Atlantic from 30 years of positive PDO) but then most likely further sea ice recovery to come.”
——————————————————————
Look at the NSIDC plot of September minima from 1970 to 2010 (http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20101004_Figure3.) and please tell me where you see any recovery whatsoever.
You seem to inhabit a fantasy world”
The recovery is from the minimum of 2007. I judge that 2007 marked the bottom or near bottom of the downswing of a natural sine wave.
Steve Mosher says:
“that leds to an interesting question. what would have to happen to arctic ice for people to change their minds.”
———————————————————————-
That should be an uncomfortable, soul-searching question for many on this blog.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen no evidence that the skeptic/denialist position would change in the slightest if the entire arctic ocean were ice-free in the summer by, say, 2020. They would simply say it is natural causes, it happened before, etc. For most of the commenters on this and other such blogs, theirs is a true denialist position, and the data be damned, along with the scientists who collect it.
Does it really matter, it appears it has all happened before.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/05/03/is-chu-for-real/
“Look at the NSIDC plot of September minima from 1970 to 2010 (http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20101004_Figure3.) and please tell me where you see any recovery whatsoever.”
Lets look at that a bit more closely:
i) The period from 1978 to nearly 1998 shows virtually no trend at all over a period of some 20 years.
ii) Around the time of that 1998 El Nino which was a culmination of 30 years of successive strong El Ninos the Arctic sea ice started to fall.
iii) Then we see a fall for about 10 years as the 1998 El Nino and the effect of all those El Ninos leading up to it steadily filter into the Arctic Circle melting sea ice in the process.
iv) We now have the beginning of a negative PDO phase and the residual heat in the northern oceans is disappearing fast with little or no immediate prospect of a repeat of that 2007 ice melt.
So all we have supporting all the panic is a ten year trend with a likely cause readily available and that causative factor no longer being in place the most likely trend for the next ten years at least (possibly 30 years) is for a slow erratic sea ice recovery.
The evidence available for a human impact is heavily over egged.
EFS_Junior says:
October 30, 2010 at 9:48 pm
re; cycles in sea ice extent
Pay attention now junior as obviously you weren’t paying attention in history class.
Roald Amundson navigated the Northwest Passage in 1906 in a 70 foot fishing boat. That feat wasn’t possible again until 2007.
Ya think it was anthropogenic CO2 that opened up the passage in 1906?
The 60-year AMDO is but one cycle but it’s an easy one to see in land temperature records. There is also PDO and ENSO cycles that beat at different frequencies. Sometimes they are out of phase and sometimes the phases line up. Since none of them are exactly the same length on each cycle it makes forecasting much into the future difficult but in the near term they can all be seen and it appears they are all lining up on the cold side of their cycles (in phase) as we speak. Global warming alarmism will probably morph into global cooling alarmism by 2030 (20 years from now) just like it was the rage in the 1970’s. Climate alarmism is a 60 year cycle too.
Just to confirm the eyeballing, here are the histograms of the 2007 & 2010.
http://i56.tinypic.com/e6xapc.jpg
I did a manual capture on the values from 115 through 125, and values 246 through 255 for each image, to catch the mid-range and high-end extents for each, that is, the middle and far right spikes in each histogram. For 2007 the high-range has 2341 pixels, mid-range has 60,066 pixels. For 2010 the high range has 3553 pixels and mid-range 57,268 pixels.
Barry Day says:
October 31, 2010 at 3:32 am
“Could the poorly covered magnetic field and the never mentioned Earth’s thermal heat play a part?”
Yes and no. The earth’s crust is a very very good insulator. The average amount of heat escaping from the hot interior is just a few milliwatts per square meter. So on average it is insignificant and seldom mentioned.
However secondary effects can be brutal when the interior heat builds up close to the surface in hot spots and comes out in violent volcanic eruptions. Supervolcanoes (Yellowstone is one of the largest) can devastate a continent wide area almost overnight covering it in a thick layer of ash and send global average temperatures way down for at least several years by injecting particulates into the stratosphere possibly triggering an ice age.
@ur momisugly EFS_Junior says:
October 30, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Thanks. One more question. Usually with these huge packages there is a workflow that they never tell you about. Something like: Put all raw data in some named directory, Run some pre-processing program to stitch everything together, Run a big script which actually calls the main programs, Look at some new directory with several output formats plus error logs. If you could comment on that, it would make things easier.
Owen says:
October 31, 2010 at 7:04 am (Edit)
Steve Mosher says:
“that leds to an interesting question. what would have to happen to arctic ice for people to change their minds.”
———————————————————————-
That should be an uncomfortable, soul-searching question for many on this blog.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen no evidence that the skeptic/denialist position would change in the slightest if the entire arctic ocean were ice-free in the summer by, say, 2020. They would simply say it is natural causes, it happened before, etc. For most of the commenters on this and other such blogs, theirs is a true denialist position, and the data be damned, along with the scientists who collect it.
#######################
I see denialism on both sides. More importantly, there is no “skeptical/denialist position” there are a variety of positions, stances, arguments. Just as there is no real consensus. Nevertheless, unless a person can clearly state what evidence it would take to change their position then it’s quite impossible to insure a rational debate. The grounds of argument will shift, and then mistrust is created, and then it goes personal. The pattern is pretty clear.
Stephen Wilde says:
October 31, 2010 at 7:17 am
“So all we have supporting all the panic is a ten year trend with a likely cause readily available and that causative factor no longer being in place the most likely trend for the next ten years at least (possibly 30 years) is for a slow erratic sea ice recovery.”
Unlike your analysis of the 1979-2010 September sea ice data, the linear regression line through the data is an ideologically unbiased estimation of trend. And that trend is clear – sea ice has steadily decreased from 1979 to the present. Your recovery (I assume you were talking about 2009) gave a value that was only ca. 70% of 1979-80.
The average ice age is dropping, as is the PIOMAS estimate of ice volume (I know you don’t trust it because its a model). All indicators point to an ongoing process of dramatic sea ice loss in the arctic, your analysis notwithstanding.
Owen – { Nevertheless, unless a person can clearly state what evidence it would take to change their position then it’s quite impossible to insure a rational debate.}
OK here’s mine, anyone with half a brain can understand that the artic should warm up the most of anywhere on the planet. It’s simple, heat rises! Ergo, with the arctic being at the top of the planet, aqll the heat should go there. So if the artic heats up and becomes tropical, then i will believe in AGW!
🙂
The current ice edge and areas of coverage are nothing out of the ordinary given the conditions on the ground. Both wind, pressure systems, and SST’s, which all collide at the Arctic, appear to be consistent with current ice conditions. This is nothing that cannot be explained by natural weather pattern variation and oceanic circulation of equatorial-birthed ocean temperatures.
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png