It looks as if we are about to see the turn in Arctic sea ice, and if so it will be earlier than last year. But right at that same time, JAXA has decided to switch horses mid-stream.
They say timing is everything, and this timing couldn’t be more wrong. You”d think they would have waited until after the minimum had been recorded, so that there would be no questions or issues with the timing. But for some reason, JAXA has decided that now is the opportune time, right when everyone is watching. An update on their Arctic Sea-Ice Monitor page dated September 6th shows that they are switching from Version 1 to Version 2, and revising 2012. Of course the revision is for less ice:
In Sep. 2012 the arctic sea ice extent renewed the smallest record in observation history, but as the result of the version 2 using AMSR2 data of 2012, minimum sea ice extent became 3.18×106km2 which was 0.3×106km2 smaller value than Version 1 result using WindSat.
Here is what they display, on the plus side, at least they are keeping version1 in place until September 30th:
I have overlaid the two graphs, and it looks like all of the sudden about 250,000 square kilometers of ice has disappeared.
Note: I don’t have issues with their methodology, which is to remove uncertainty/noise related to the land mask boundary, which is always a good thing. But, the timing is certainly odd.
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From their update page:
With the version upgrade of AMSR-E Level 1 brightness temperature data, geolocation errors were improved from ±10km to ±1km.
The Version2 sea ice extent was calculated after the analyzing the arctic sea ice concentration derived from the upgraded AMSR-E brightness temperature data.
In addition, the other satellite observational data (1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010′ s average of SMMR, SSM/I and WindSat) was used to calculate sea ice concentration after adjusting the brightness temperature of each sensor using AMSR-E as standard data, and the adjustment of the sea ice concentration threshold which counts the sea ice extent was applied to consist with the AMSR-E sea ice extent.
The modified processing point due to the improvement of the geometric precision of AMSR-E Level 1 brightness temperature data is shown on description below.
With version 1, sea ice can be falsely detected along coasts due to contamination of ocean pixels by the passive microwave emission of land (the false sea ice). To decrease this false sea ice, we applied the “land expanded mask” (See Fig.1).
By improvement in AMSR-E geometric precision and decreasing of the false sea ice, we stopped the land expanded mask in the processing of version2.
Compared to Version 1, Version 2 sea ice extent has increased.
For the purpose of eliminating the false sea ice near the coast, Land Expanded Mask consider horizontally and vertically adjacent pixels as land when the 3×3 box centered on the land pixel.
Version 1 used the land-ocean mask which is provided for SMMR and SSM/I, but for Version 2, due to the AMSR-E geometric precision improvement, we made new land-ocean mask which is adjusted for footprint size of the 18GHz band of AMSR-E (IFOV: 16×27km) and applied to the analysis of sea ice concentration.
Compared to Version 1, the sea ice extent of Version 2 has decreased.
![fig1-ii-1-SIC_AMSE_N_PS12_20030301_05diff_only-cncl[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/fig1-ii-1-sic_amse_n_ps12_20030301_05diff_only-cncl1.png?quality=75)
In version 2, the false sea ice near the coast has decreased by the geometric precision improvement of the AMSR-E. But the false sea ice still cannot be removed completely, so we applied the land filter which Cho (1996) proposes. When at least one of 3×3 pixels was inspect as land, as the considering that the central pixel is effected by land spill over and has increased in sea ice concentration, central pixel will be replaced with the minimum value within the 3×3 pixels.
By applying this land filter process, sea ice extent of Version 2 has decreased in the melting period compared to Version 1.
After the observation halt of AMSR-E, the sea ice extent was calculated by WindSat in Verion 1, but in version 2, it was replaced by AMSR2 since July 2012.
In Sep. 2012 the arctic sea ice extent renewed the smallest record in observation history, but as the result of the version 2 using AMSR2 data of 2012, minimum sea ice extent became 3.18×106km2 which was 0.3×106km2 smaller value than Version 1 result using WindSat.
Furthermore, there is no modification in ranking of the successive sea ice extent due to the latest upgrade.
![fig2-1-Sea_Ice_Extent_ver1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/fig2-1-sea_ice_extent_ver11.png?quality=75)
![fig2-2-Sea_Ice_Extent_ver2[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/fig2-2-sea_ice_extent_ver21.png?quality=75)
Fig.4 Arctic Sea Ice Extent during the minimum period
(Left:Ver.1, Right:Ver.2) – click to enlarge
The Danes haven’t updated their graphs for a couple of days . . . since Sept 3rd
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Hiding the incline !
the timing makes perfect sense. Now the minimums for the summer will be lower so everyone (alarmists and recipients of grants) can report that the crisis is still upon us and therefore more money needed to stop catastrophe.
RGB:
Adding to the “oddness” of this “correction” that you quantified by approximating the circumference is the following.
At this point in time – in the first weeks of September – the northern sea ice is at its minimum extent. As few km of the sea ice boundary as ever found during the year are now present, and almost all of the “borders” are ice-free completely. In fact, only the limited area around the Canadian Ellesmere Island channels, the Queen Elizabeth Islands, and a little bit more along the on the west side of north Davis Strait appears to be “touching” the coasts..
The entire coastlines of the Iceland, Franz Jospf Land, the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Siberian Islands, Severnaya Zelmya, Svalbard, Siberia itself, and even almost all of the east coast of Greenland are completely ice-free.
So, if only 20%^ of the potential northern sea ice perimeter of a cap of only 3,600,000 km^2 is potentially wrapped around coastlines, how much wider must your “new and improved error band” grow? 3,600,000 km^2 of sea ice area (if a true circle) would only have a perimeter of 6700 km. If 20% of that length is now ice-bound against islands and between straits, then the 300,000 km^2 “growth” would be distributed in only a length of 1344 km, right?
Well I thought that everybody everywhere knows, that you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube.
Take Coca Cola for example; well just “Coke” to most people.
It’s a formula that survived the great Pre-Cambrian extinctions; locked in a vault and maybe in the brain of just one person, who will be sure to pass it on to another, before croaking; like standing guard over the Holy Grail.
So some Ha’vid MBA genius comes up with a brilliant plan. Why don’t we change the shape of the Coke bottle; (well that in itself is going to screw up the whole of Optical Science; how the hell are we supposed to know now just what “Coke bottle” optics are any more).
But then we’ll come out with a different formula drink; everybody will love it; because we say so.
So we will call it “New Coke” or somesuch.
Well history records, that not everybody fell in love with “newcoke” Stuff tasted like hay that has already been once through the horse; ask Gail about that !
Well OOps, horse is out of the barn; genie is out of the bottle; toothpaste is all over everything; time to fire the MBA, and shovel this stuff back in again.
Well how are the yuppies supposed to know which one is real, and which one is faux.
Well we still have a ‘nother Ha’vid MBA; he says we label the original recipe “Classic Coke”, to distinguish it from the horse hay, once removed.
So outcomes “Classic Coke”.
Well we don’t want any “Classic Coke”. We want “Coke”; you know…Coca cola like we used to have. If it’s labeled “Classic Coke”, how the hell could it be the same as Coke, or else why would they not call it “Coke”. It’s gotta be different if they call it “Classic Coke”.
So now even the old geezer with the formula in his head, doesn’t have any idea what “Coke” is any more.
Well you see, these two excokemunicated Ha’vid MBAs are now washing test tubes at JAXA, and trying to recall from their Coke days; just how much ice are you supposed to put in that stuff ??
Why, one might believe that it’s IPCC report time again sometime soon.
rgbatduke says:
September 6, 2013 at 12:46 pm
“The second comment is even simpler. Why doesn’t anybody ever bother to validate this at the local level? Surely one can afford to fly a plane along the coastline and take high resolution photos that allow the correct classification of every coastal pixel to be unambiguously resolved.”
Of course one cannot go back to observe the 2012 coastline to validate whether the newer numbers are more accurate than the old.
” I agree. Does anyone keep track of these “one direction adjustments”? ”
Have you ever seen one in the opposite, in cooler or more ice direction? Not me. Why “keep track” when there are no opposites. This is one of the biggest reason I know this is not actual science, errors should always be symmetrical, both directions, you know, random errors, and this AGW “science” is not that, the real McCoy.
Here are a few related gems to enjoy and to pass along . Looks like reality is biting a few behinds. And maybe Jack Frost too. See, if they could have waited only 16 more days it would have been totally ice free and this could have all been avoided.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/global-warming-expedition-foiled-by-ice.php
http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674canadian_coast_guard_rescues_american_jet-skiers_from_nunavut_waters/
http://www.sail-world.com/Canada/North-West-Passage-blocked-with-ice%e2%80%94yachts-caught/113788
All the Jaxa differences are graphed here:
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/jaxa-version-2-all-the-other-graphs-compared/
george e. smith says:
September 6, 2013 at 10:33 am
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So nearly – good French red wine over the screen and keyboard.
Thanks!
Auto
Of course one cannot go back to observe the 2012 coastline to validate whether the newer numbers are more accurate than the old.
No, so instead you run the new algorithm for a year or so while collecting data and then compare old algorithm and new algorithm to the actual data on at least a sampling basis. With anything LIKE a decent sampling, the issue would be closed — algorithm a would be better, b would be better, or it might well be back to the drawing board to work out c (this time with data in hand to play with while doing so). Perhaps they did this — I dunno. TFA doesn’t really say (that I saw, anyway).
rgb
The entire coastlines of the Iceland, Franz Jospf Land, the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Siberian Islands, Severnaya Zelmya, Svalbard, Siberia itself, and even almost all of the east coast of Greenland are completely ice-free.
Perhaps they weren’t classified as ice free in the previous algorithm? Although that seems as though it would be stupid misclassification of a distinct land/sea boundary problem, not a pixellation problem. That is the sort of thing that would make the kind of error that would drop the estimate by so much, if land glaciers were being misinterpreted as coastal ice or the like.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
September 6, 2013 at 2:27 pm (replying to)
RACookPE1978 says:
September 6, 2013 at 1:17 pm
The entire coastlines of the Iceland, Franz Jospf Land, the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, Siberian Islands, Severnaya Zelmya, Svalbard, Siberia itself, and even almost all of the east coast of Greenland are completely ice-free.
Ah, true, true.
But, at the point of maximum northern sea ice extent in March-April of 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 virtually ALL of these coastlines WERE covered with ice and snow on the land side, and surrounded by sea ice and snow on the sea side.
So,the “new” algorithm for sea ice extent designation by pixel MUST somehow either “convert” (at some day-of-year) a physical or designation change from a “pixel of land-covered-by-ice” to “a pixel of open ocean water NOT covered by sea ice,” The nice neat 3×3 theoretical matrices of sea ice and land ice in the story is missing a logic step of logical geography and time. Fill in 4x of the upper left hand blocks in the matrices above with 4x white, then 4x brown-covered-by-white, then 4x green-surrounded-by-white, then 4x green-surrounded-by-blue.
V1->V2 is just fiddling at the edges really. The graph has bounced back about 50% of the perturbation from the mean of the past 30 to 35 years in only a year or two.
Now thats a comeback. Just more evidence of the utter hysteria created over AGW.
They are just expanding the extremes so the data from the next ten years as the global cooling sets in will still fit within the “normal” extremes. So the new larger extents out into the Pacific and Atlantic will still look “normal.”
The same process as the surface station reorganization in the early 1990’s when the temperature measurement station numbers were drastically reduced and the temperature started rising rapidly…
Recall what was done with Envisat:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/was-envisat-tortured-to-death/
You can see the old and new Danish graphs on the same page here on my blog from Agust 1.st.
The old graph (on top of the page) was updated today Sept 6th, but the new one Sept 3rd.
http://agbjarn.blog.is/blog/agbjarn/entry/1307824/
Does anyone know if any of these climate ‘science’ data repositories are ISO 9000-3 or ISO 8000 accredited? I thought that an ISO Quality Management System was a contractual requirement of receiving funds from government agencies. The behavior of these various repositories and climate metrics groups does not seem to be inline with the use of a QMS.
Steve Keohane Adjusting sea edges NH ice,, so that’s what CT has been doing. Fortunately they could not do that for Antarctica and of course we can see the real picture
Why don’t they run both versions for a period of time; a year perhaps?
Why did the 1980s max jump so much? That’s rediculous…
Here is a more clear chart of the changes between Jaxa’s new Version2 and Version1 (note this is probably about the fifth change in methodology from Jaxa actually).
The seasonal cycle has been amplified but the timing of the date which has the greatest change varies from year to year. (I’m not sure this is the final word on revisions).
http://s10.postimg.org/6sgr25au1/Jaxa_V2_Changes_Sep6_2013.png
Why the rush? These chaps now use motorized goalposts. Next up is Antarctica. It’ll be worse than we thought.
Pick a version.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/old_icecover.uk.php
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php