NASA scientist says that error has long since been corrected and the increase in sea ice in Antarctica is real.
As readers know, we announced this paper (which was under embargo): Claim: Antartica record high sea ice partially an artifact of an algorithm
Cato’s Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger said the whole thing was not an ice mountain, but a molehill: Of mountains, molehills, and noisy bumps in the sea-ice record writing:
“If the reason that the shift was undetected is because the data is so noisy, how important can it be?”
“The change since the turn of the century is about 1.3 million square kilometers, a mountain of ice,” “The step change is about 200,000, a molehill. That doesn’t sound like ‘much’ to us.”
“But, hey, if you don’t look too close — and we are sure our greener friends (or the reviewers) won’t (or didn’t) — you might believe that everything is OK with the reigning, model-based paradigm. In fact there’s’‘much’ that is wrong with it,”
The Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch noted that other scientists agree.
Scientists with NASA, who developed the disputed algorithm to calculate sea ice extent, also challenged Eisenman’s view, including the scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who developed the algorithm that is being criticized in the study.
“The apparent expansion is real and not due to an error in a previous data set uncovered by the Eisenman et al paper,” NASA’s Josefino Comiso told Live Science. “That error has already been corrected and the expansion being reported now has also been reported by other groups as well using different techniques.”
Antarctic sea ice continues to grow, well above that 200,000 sqkm value:
Source: CryoSphere Today, Univ. of Illinois. 7/28/14
I hate it when that happens. On the plus side, once again, Joe Romm of ‘Climate progress’ looks like the chicken little for hire he truly is.
“The most important thing to know about Antarctica and ice is that a large part of the South Pole’s great sheet of land ice is close to or at a point of no return for irreversible collapse,” ThinkProgress’s Joe Romm wrote in his piece about the new study. “Only immediate action to sharply reverse CO2 emissions could stop or significantly slow that.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/28/whats-really-happening-in-antarctica/#ixzz38nXpNqXe
Yep: sure looks near it is “at a point of no return for irreversible collapse” to me: /sarc
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent (with land ice visible):
Source: NSIDC 7/28/14
Once again, this Josh cartoon is relevant:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
![seaice.anomaly.antarctic[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/seaice-anomaly-antarctic1.png?w=640&resize=640%2C520)
![S_bm_extent_hires[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/s_bm_extent_hires1.png?w=640&resize=640%2C640)

There is no simpler measure in all of science than Antarctic sea ice *extent*.
But you skeptics won’t say that.
You won’t call out blatant laugh test fraud. You just clog up the debate with minutiae, week after week, triumphantly, way outside real news cycles.
Takes you two weeks to build up your old guy confidence to post, then well within friendly territory, preaching to the mere choir.
Attack creationism already!
Attack your bellwether friends.
“If you decide to wage a war for the total triumph of your individuality, you must begin by inexorably destroying those who have the greatest affinity with you. All alliance depersonalizes; everything that tends to the collective is your death; use the collective, therefore, as an experiment, after which strike hard, and remain alone!” – Salvador Dali (The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, 1942)
No one seems to care and the public is already brain washed the study was true.
It seems the first Alarmist out of the gate with lies about something climate related is more believable is the general public mind.
They are all Sheep awaiting slaughter.
The libtards are ruining the planet!
That ice is getting too close (Invercargill, NZ)
Romm/Mosher: “I thought I was wrong…. but I was mistaken!
Romm and Mosher makes a nice pair….
Record the measurement in July. Currently, a little ice falls because of blocking.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/blocking/real_time_sh/500gz_anomalies_sh.gif
Shoot. First the impossible deep water heat storage battery was proven to be not only wrong, but impossible, now they say the photographs, radar, software readings were correct all the time and the ice extant observed by every vessel actually existed. What next? Only Pinky and The Brain know!
I guess that cold front that came out of the Antarctic and just hit Tasmania, dumping a months rainfall for July in just one day was real, cold, and not due to the ice collapsing!
I do expect that the usual Australian climate suspects and the Greens will be falling all over the original press release, using that report to bolster their attack on the Abbott Government for ignoring Green warnings of unstoppable Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change that is causing our cold weather you know the stuff that is really 97% rampant warming, but we just don’t understand the urgency of the message!! sarc/
Apparently we will need corrective re-education for the rest of our cold miserable lives !
The message hasn’t reached the BBC. Recently they reported the calving of a huge iceberg as being due to warmer “temperatures”, and gave the impression that Antarctic ice was breaking up fast.
That’s why I have kept a copy of the rebuttal quote and link to the source as well as WUWT (just in case). I know they’ll bring up the error issue and will probably never have read the rebuttal.
The Arctic ain’t doing too badly either now.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Cold headed south too (for the meantime)
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It’s simply not going according to plan. Their two icons are failing when they need them most. It’s a travesty of climate justice.
NASA seems to imply that they knew about the error in the old algorithm and never let anyone know when the new algorithm came out with it fixed. Personally I think a processing error that leads to a 10% difference in the results is significant, but hey, I’m not a climate scientist.
Once in the MSM, always in the hearts and minds of the target audience (voters) – as we well know, that is where the real battle exists. Here is the LA Times article link reagrding this issue, which was reprinted in my local pulp just the other day:
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-satellite-antarctic-sea-ice-20140724-story.html
Think there will be a retraction of this statement/article, widely distributed and reprinted in the MSM throughout the US? Do pigs fly? If I held my breath and waited until a retraction was distributed, would I survive the ordeal? Or perish from a lack of oxygen/increasing concentration of internal CO2?
No. As others have said above, once out there for the masses, it becomes another talking point for like-minded individuals, as well as part of the mindset that perpetuates the myth of AGW. And, as the MSM continues to go forward with printing/publishing articles for the future world state, based upon the premise that >CO2 = >Globull Warming and what we all “need” to do to “combat” AGW – those who cannot pull themselves from the latest electronic gizmo or other modern distraction to actually research the issue will have been led (brainwashed?) into believing the world is literally going to Hades in a hand-basket because of our collective wanton, capitalistic ways. And unfortunately tend to vote that way in federal, state, and local elections……
We’re all gonna die! Someday…
“Mosher take was to tell you to read the source data
And the atbd and the bootstrap paper and code
Before you comment.
That’s still my advice
REPLY: and still gibberish writing with no citations – Anthony
##################################################
You will note that I took no position on this paper. WHY?
simple because one should read the underlying data and docs first.
My advice to read the ATBD
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/22/claim-antartica-record-highs-partially-an-artifact-of-an-algorithm/#comment-1691839
my advice to look at the actual data and source code before commenting
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/22/claim-antartica-record-highs-partially-an-artifact-of-an-algorithm/#comment-1691922
My advice to read the documentation
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/22/claim-antartica-record-highs-partially-an-artifact-of-an-algorithm/#comment-1691925
Again
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/22/claim-antartica-record-highs-partially-an-artifact-of-an-algorithm/#comment-1691928
boootstrap
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/22/claim-antartica-record-highs-partially-an-artifact-of-an-algorithm/#comment-1692063
one of your commenters
Steven Mosher has provided very good comments here. Thanks.
=================================================
I’ll second that! I learned quite a bit from the comments here, and Mosher’s were quite helpful in pointing me in a useful direction.
Of course some comments can be frustrating, but patience Steve:), we are all learning from different starting points and at different rates, plus, separating the politics and the science isn’t always easy for us.
Bottom line.
lots of people opined about the paper.
my suggestion is the same in every case
READ more before you Comment
In this case
1. Go get the data. no I wont give you links. Im not google. folks will learn by searching
2. see what platform and sensor the use, read the ATBD. this tells you how the raw sensor data becomes a processed file.
3. read the science papers
4. go look at the bootstrap code or paper.
Otherwise most comments will just be canned responses.
My take? nobody here has done the work required to comment about the science.
I havent so I wont comment. I can only suggest that others do more reading before they pass judgment.
or just say its a fraud and move on
Hmmmn.
But, Sir Mosher,
Seven years of continually and steadily INCREASING Antarctic sea ice extents is “only due” to an error in processing of less than 0.050 million sq kilometers?
Even “IF” this error did happen – and frankly I do not believe these government-paid writers at all – pretending that a trivial change over-reaches a very large, very significant long-term frightening trend of steadily increasing Antarctic sea ice is foolish.
2.0 Million square kilometers of “excess” Antarctic sea ice in late May, 1.5 Million square kilometers of “excess” Antarctic sea ice two days ago? But somehow, your writers – the writers you are trying to create an excuse for – can “wipe out” the difference, can ignore an inconvenient 2.0 million square kilometers of sea ice?
Antarctic sea ice INCREASE every year since 2007 (as a positive anomaly) and a 20 year general increase from -0.50 million square kilometers to today’s 1.5 million square kilometers?
Antarctic sea ice is INCREASING at latitudes between 65 and 59 degrees south latitude. In September, when Antarctic sea ice is at its maximum and Arctic sea ice at its well-publicized minimum, the edge of this steadily INCREASING Antarctic sea ice is reflecting five times the solar energy that is hitting the what little bit of Arctic sea ice is below average up at 81, 82, and 83 north latitudes! It is NOT “total sea ice” that matters, but “total energy reflected” that counts towards a cooling earth.
And, seven months of a twelve month year, the edge of the rapidly advancing Antarctic sea ice is hit by more radiation than the edge of the receding Arctic sea ice. The MINIMUM Arctic sea ice can get SMALLER than today’s 3.5 Mkm^2 … and the world will cool even more because of increased evaporation, increased convection, increased conduction, and increased LW radiation losses. But, regardless of losses or gains, that 3.5 Mkm^2 is the “most” Arctic sea ice can reduce.
There is NO “maximum” limit to how far the Antarctic sea ice can expand to: Blocking the sea route around Cape Horn within 8 -12 years at today’s rate of increase.
From Steven Mosher on July 29, 2014 at 8:09 pm:
Hold up a sec, Moshy.
By your lights, before one comments they should obtain voluminous raw data that may not be publicly available and require advanced computer skills to process, study many archaic technical documents which you assume are available for public viewing despite propriety construction and trade secrets, read lots of published papers of which the norm is they are behind expensive paywalls and the majority out there are crap that is already rebutted or superseded, and then one should study the code (the paper may not show what is actually coded and used) which should involve getting the version processing the data you are studying which presumably they’ll freely hand over because Mosher indicated they would willingly do so.
And you haven’t verified this is possible. This could easily turn into a wild goose chase, with denied access and missing links. And despite Science! there could be valid reasons for it, Homeland Security may not want satellite data handed out to non-credentialed passerby, for example.
You say people should not comment about the science unless they follow a path you have not verified as possible, therefore it is possible no one here could ever be qualified to comment on it by your criteria.
Clearly then the one not qualified to comment about who is qualified to comment is Mosher.
Steven Mosher says:
July 28, 2014 at 6:16 pm
Mosher take was to tell you to read the source data
And the atbd and the bootstrap paper and code
Not all of us are programmers, able to understand “code”.
Steven Mosher:
Your post at July 28, 2014 at 6:16 pm says in total
Ah! Yet more typical ‘wisdom’ from the Mosher keyboard.
Your post is typical of your contributions to threads in that it is a brief comment which contains only arrogance, ignorance and stupidity.
So, only those who – like you – can read and assess the “code” are entitled to “comment”. Such arrogance!
And, you think only faults with “the source data And the atbd and the bootstrap paper and code” are worthy of comment. Such ignorance!
While you are not aware that assessment of an activity does NOT always require expertise in the conduct of that activity. Such stupidity!
I have never played golf but I can see when a golfer misses a hole, and I can often see why.
Richard