UPDATE: 3/5 8:30PM PST There’s a hilarious backstory on the sockpuppetry that went on yesterday from the founder of The Arctic Institute – read my comment on it here
It is that time again where attention turns to Arctic Sea Ice because it is approaching maximum extent. There’s really only two periods each year that garner intense interest, and that is the times of maximum and minimum extent. We are fast approaching maximum.
First, let’s start off with a tiff that has developed between Cleveland’s NewsNet5 meteorologist Mark Johnson and an outfit I’ve never heard of called the “Arctic Institute” which called him out a couple of days ago over his report “Ice, ice, baby: Arctic sea ice on the rebound“. They opined on his report:
Only two problems, when I queried him, Johnson stated he was referencing NORSEX SSM/I from the WUWT Sea Ice page, not NSIDC. And, since the Arctic Institute apparently doesn’t know how NSIDC graphs work, they’ve pwned themselves in the process of making their put-down counter claims. Have a look:
The NSIDC 3/3/12 chart looks well within ±2STD and pretty close to the ±1STD boundary to me. Source: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
NORSEX SSM/I extent for 3/4/12 is in fact within ±1STD:
Source: http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Mark Johnson was right. You’d think an outfit that bills themselves as…
The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, interdisciplinary, and independent source for information and in-depth analysis about the developments in the High North. The Institute was founded in 2011 and currently aims to bring together scholars and researchers to build a growing stock of knowledge and expertise on the Arctic region. In contrast to existing platforms for Arctic affairs, The Arctic Institute is not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the Arctic states.
…would know that NSDIC graphs are on a five day average (and thus don’t reflect recent updates right away), and that daily graphs such as the NORSEX SSMI showed that there had been a dramatic surge in the last couple of days. I guess we know now that “authoritative” is just really their own self serving world view, and not based in actual evidence.
By itself, this peak doesn’t mean all that much. We saw a similar jump near the max in 2009 and 2010, and in 2010 the extent hugged the normal center line for several weeks. In the end though, most people are interested in the minimum in September, and since that event is so dependent on the short term vagaries of wind and weather, having a normal extent at maximum doesn’t guarantee a higher or even normal minimum in September.
One other thing I noted about the Arctic Institute is that they really didn’t show the current extent mapped out, so here it is:
I note that folks like the Arctic Institute just don’t like showing picture of reality, especially at maximum, since their entire existence is predicated on the Serreze “arctic death spiral” mentality and picture like this tend to make people wonder why there’s still ice in the Arctic when they have been told repeatedly it is disappearing at “unprecedented rates”.
So as to prevent the on cue wailing and gnashing of teeth from folks of that ilk, here is their favored presentation:
It sure would be nice if University of Illinois could learn to time stamp their images like I finally convinced NSIDC to do. That would be the scientific thing to do.
The offset right now is minus 726,000 square kilometers, an area slightly bigger than the state of Texas (695,621 sqkm). Most of that missing ice extent is in the Barentz and Greenland seas, as noted in this image from NSIDC I have annotated below:
Source: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_extent.png
And according the the Naval Research Lab, the extent loss in those areas appears to be entirely the result of wind patterns compacting the ice northward. There are strong northward drift vectors in the Barentz:
Source: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicespddrfnowcast.gif
And the air temperature in the Arctic is well below freezing, so air temperature induced melt is likely not a factor…
…but wind driven warmer sea water incursions into the Barentz sea from more southern latitudes seems to be happening in that area and may be contributing to some edge melt:
In other news.
The Antarctic continues along happy as a clam, above normal, with a positive 30+ year trend.
I await the usual condemnations from the excitable folks that are terrified that the world will lose the ice caps soon.
UPDATE: Now the Arctic Institute has added a caveat:
*** [edit: Even the latest available ice extent chart from the NSIDC released on March 3, 2012, one day after Mr. Johnson’s article was published, shows ice extent well outside the one standard deviation area.]
I wonder what they will say tomorrow when NSIDC updates again?
Can anyone guess the media headlines from this August? “Arctic Ice: 10th lowest extent this century! Its worse than we thought!”
Sorry, in the above comment, I left out the “connection” to normal=30.
Johnson says he is using NORSEX SSM/I data. This sea ice graph from NORSEX SSM/I clearly shows that ice extent is NOT at a seven-year high as Johnson claims.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice.png
@Mark Johnson can you please explain how this graph goes together with your statement “Sea ice extent is at a seven-year high”
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice.png
the graph clearly shows that ice extent was higher in 2009 and 2010! and this is using the NORSEX SSM/I data that you are talking about.
also, can you please show prove that USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole in 1958? Because according to most sources including this news reel this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf97e8yX0k8 is did not surface at the pole until 1959.
REPLY: “karl williams” is a fake name with a fake email address created specifically for sock puppetry here. The owner of this persona has admitted this to me when confronted with solid evidence. – Anthony
The NSIDC chart focuses on 2007, as if that was the lowest reading for February and March. In fact 2006 was lower, which is odd, as 2006 was one of the higher recent readings, in September.
Check out the green line on the DMI graph. If you click the “Sea Ice Page” on the right hand side of this site, it is the fourth graph down. The green line is 2006. The graph can also be seen at: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current.png
If we play the “let’s all freak out” game, then, back in 2006, Alarmists would all be jumping for joy around March 25, for the lack of ice would be proving their alarmism “well founded.” But by late summer they would be garlic-faced and changing the subject.
What the heck happened in 2006? I think the winds packed all the ice like a child packing a snowball, making the ice-area less during the winter, but the ice less-easy-to-melt in the summer.
The same thing may be happening this year, as it has been quite windy in the arctic. It is difficult to notice the compression of ice using satellites, for the compression takes the form of pressure ridges. Even when you zoom in with a satellite picture, only the biggest pressure ridges can be seen, for even when they stick up 20 feet (and therefore stick down 180 feet,) they are seldom half-the-length-of a-football-field wide. Many smaller ones are unseen, visually, and I imagine they are hard to pick up with the pinging of a radar. Therefore all “volume readings” seem dubious, to me, and I am betting my nickel (and no more) that the ice this year is well compressed and will be stubborn, when it comes to melting.
However does this mean anything? Many times less arctic ice than usual goes hand in hand with the hounds of winter charging much further south than usual. A great example is after Tambora Volcano exploded in 1815, leading to the “Year Without A Summer.” Though people around here, (in New Hampshire,) had to import hay from Pennsylvania, and many dairy cows had to be slaughtered because they lacked fodder (and humans lacked food,) to the far north the arctic became relatively ice free, leading to that famous quote from the year 1819 which begins:
“It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has been during the last two years greatly abated.”
If a volcano as huge as Tamboro could have the counterintuitive effect of melting arctic ice, what might a “Quiet Sun” do?
steve radner says:
March 4, 2012 at 4:35 pm
. This sea ice graph from NORSEX SSM/I clearly shows that ice extent is NOT at a seven-year high as Johnson claims.
============================================================================
Except he didn’t claim that.
He claimed that “This year’s ice extent is the highest since 2006 at this point in the year”.
See the difference?
The Arctic Institute people should be banished to Barrow until the Arctic minimum in September, then report back.
Just wondering what the gulf stream is doing lately and wasn’t there another current moving past Alaska?
He says “Sea ice extent is at a seven-year high” which is not true. It’s right there in the first sentence!!! http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_news/ice-ice-baby-arctic-sea-ice-on-the-rebound
Ice extent is not at a seven year high! it was higher in 2009 and 2010.
REPLY: Mr. “Radner” (which appears to be a fake name and a fake email address, used with multiple identities here) what eco-organization do you work for in Washington DC and why do you feel it necessary to emulate Dr. Peter Gleick by assuming false identities and fake email addresses?
If what you say is so true and important, why can’t you stand behind it? – Anthony Watts
I am in the middle of reading “The Worst Journey in the World” By Apsley Cherry-Gerrard and in it he is amazed that the whole of Mucmurdo sound in front of hut point can be bound in ice 12ft thick one day and completely clear to the open ocean the next,
Eeek!
Only 14.56 MILLION sq kilometers of sea ice!
We’re doomed I tell ya….doooomed!
Hey, Steve. Its called an intro sentence. Its how great, highly respected writers like Revkin do it. The next sentence gives the specifics and so on…
You shouldn’t get to call yourself an ‘Arctic’ anything
unless your founding members have each spent
many years above the Arctic circle.
@anthony
You may want to consider making false accusations in the comment feed about fake names and fake email accounts. Please feel free to email me at steveradner(at)gmail.com if you have doubts about the existence of that email account or my person.
[REPLY: Bluster all you like. You have commented under several different identities. It’s called “sock-puppetry” and is pathetically dishonest. -REP]
so when you don’t like comments you accuse people of being dishonest. excellent.
[REPLY: Brazen to the end. There are quite a few comments here we “don’t like”. They get posted. Comments from ethical posters get posted. You’re done here. -REP]
oh great now you won’t even post my comments.
Ah, annual harbingers of spring. The first robin. The lilacs beginning to bud. The annual bemoaning of how bad “extent” sucks when “volume” is what really matters –and yet we don’t have enough historical volume information, both length of time and granularity (i.e. number of data points over the course of the length of time), to make volume observations actually interesting.
From trbixler on March 4, 2012 at 10:58 am:
Old and feeble,
young and stupid,
middle aged and mighty tired.
At what age don’t we make such simple dumb mistakes, with a presumably-suitable excuse?
Speaking of Arctic Institutes– any word of the recent Hanson-Gore expedition pushing towards Ninety South, trumpeting -30 degree F temperatures as conducive to a diminishing Ross Sea? “March of the Penguins,” not to say Shackleton in 1914, strikes a chord.
From their mission statement: “The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, interdisciplinary, and independent source for information”
OK. So how are they planning to become an “independent” information source?
— Did I miss their large scale effort to instrument the Arctic?
— Are they launching any polar observation satellites?
— Are they funding others to do these functions for them?
— Do they employ any “real” scientists? (Political Science, Anthropology, “Indigenous Knowledge” Studies, History, etc., DO NOT COUNT AS SCIENCE!)
I think we all know the answers to all these questions are NO.
The weatherman was off just by just a year. The USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole on March 15, 1959, according to Wikipedia.
REPLY: The user “john christie” is an admitted fake name with a fake email address created specifically to act as a sock puppet. The person doing this confessed to me after our moderation team figured out he was also posting as “Steve Radner” and also as “karl williams” and I confronted with solid evidence. It is “Gleick” all over again and there’s a backstory developing. I haven’t decided yet what to do with it all. – Anthony
The Arctic Institute seeks to establish itself as an authoritative, (We demand stuff) interdisciplinary (Hey, it’s a religion to us.), and independent (We won’t listen to ANYONE who disagrees!) source for information (Ours) and in-depth analysis (except, don’t expect us to stay current) about the developments (imagined ice loss) in the High North. The Institute was founded in 2011 (All the good scams were taken) and currently aims to bring together scholars and researchers (GRANT MONEY!!! Beautiful, beautiful grant money!) to build a growing stock of (Money) knowledge and expertise on the Arctic region. In contrast to (people who know what they’re talking about) existing platforms for Arctic affairs, The Arctic Institute is not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the Arctic states. (We’re like that crazy uncle nobody’s related to…..)
A quick peek at the AI’s site reveals that of the entire staff only one member has any kind of technical degree (Bachelors Anthropology), and it appears precious little disciplined experience. This does not include:
Malte Humpert
Founder and Executive Director
M.A. European Studies (2011), Georgetown University
B.A. Political Science (2007), California State University Northridge
malte.humpert@thearcticinstitute.org
Looks like a crop of needy alarmist babies. Look out – they may try to prose us to death!
It does appear that the AI kids are very interested in the arctic area resource rights issues – and probably controlling them. I believe they are betting on making a killing as the ice melts away (in their world). Here’s hoping they have a Plan B.