Cryosat ice mission returns first science data

News from Nunavit today on the CBC. Frobisher Bay is ice free. The Innuit can’t go out hunting over the ice. There is no ice.
Polar bears, being much lighter than Innuit, are having no trouble . They can walk across the memory of arctic ice.
Maybe the new ice age has to do with the cubes in the drinks at the Petrolium Club in Calgary.

I wonder if they will actually send someone to check if their “relatively simple” calculation is working correctly.
It doesn’t seem like anything relatively simple to me. Neither the ice nor the water is flat, unlike their sweet diagram. Not every low point will be water either.
Still, I suppose the algorithm will be exactly imprecise, which means we can learn something from the anomalies. [ sigh ]

Radar pulse has been around for a while (serious use began in WWII). Most radar specialists have this one fairly well understood. I for one, am excited about this and will be following it like a hawk on a rabbit, dry on day-old bread, baby to nipple, fox to the hen house, stud to studette, a woman to a diamond, a snake to the grass, and a redheaded Irish lass to laced coffee on a witch tit cold morning.

@John McManus: Have you checked a weather map lately?

Dagnabit! Off the AGW wagon not of!!! *sigh*

““Nobody really knows how the Arctic is going to behave as the ice retreats, but we do anticipate that significant changes will occur,” said Dr Seymour Laxon”
Well Dr. Laxon you seem to be assuming that the sea ice is going to retreat when the past few years it has expanded. Maybe as a scientist you should wait till you have your data and let it tell you what is happening rather than decide what your data will show before you even collect it.

OK, so I’ll bite.
What means “Gravitational Level” ? And is that “Gravitation” adjusted for the earth’s rotation; seeing as how the earth does rotate, and that would affect local “gravity”.
Why do these graphs always raise more issues than answers ?

But its ability also to map the shape of the sea surface will tell scientists if Arctic currents are changing as a result of winds being allowed to blow more easily on ice-free waters.
Allowed? Man is controlling the winds now? /head desk

Mmmm, tasty data; needs a little less spin though.

George Smith —
“Gravitational Level” is technically called “geoid”. It is the theoretical surface where the strength of gravity is constant. Since the Earth is not uniform, the geoid bulges up where it is denser and down where it is less dense. The actual shape can be quite complex. There are places in the US where the equipotential surface or geoid varies several meters over a few tens of kilometers. Satellites use a smoothed geoid with features no smaller than a few kilometers.
The geoid is harder to determine than “sea level”, but is more dependable because it doesn’t change with tides, winds, currents, etc., and is available in the middle of continents.
The Equivalence Principle tells us that all accelerations are equal in the sense that the source doesn’t matter, whether gravity from mass or motion caused by force. Since the geoid follows a constant acceleration value, the rotation of the Earth is factored in automatically.

So when can we expect to see some pretty graphs using this new data? Anything similar to The Cryosphere Today page out there yet? It will be interesting to see how it compares to PIPS and PIOMAS. It may put to rest the debate over which one is more accurate when actual measurements are available for comparison.
I agree R. Gates. The fact that we will now know, as opposed to just guessing (or believing), is exciting unto itself. While it may be a time for some to gloat at the opposition, let’s hope that measurements reveal a non-issue with sea ice. Not just because I am sceptical of AGW but because then we can focus on more pressing concerns like actual pollution, poverty and corruption.
MrC