A few years ago in 2009, I was the first to notice and write about a failure of the instrumentation for one of the satellites used by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) to show Arctic Sea Ice extent. I was told initially by NSIDC scientist Walt Meier that such an observation “wasn’t worth blogging about”. Later, after chastising me, they had to pull the plug on the data. Today, we have what appears to be a similar problem with satellite sea ice measurement. Note the big uptick similar to (but opposite in sign) what happened before in 2009:
There is this small notice on the NSIDC page:
The daily sea ice extent images are currently displaying erroneous data. NSIDC is investigating.
It looks to be a problem with the DMSP F17 satellite.
Makes you wonder how long this has been going on and if the anomalously low readings we’ve seen for awhile are due to a slow sensor degradation.
Time will tell.
Added:
DMI looks even worse:
Added:
The NSIDC graph for Antarctica has a similar glitch, in the opposite direction.
Should have added that the Canadian Ice Service data stops at the boundary of Canadian waters.
DMI daily mean temp chart for 80º N is not updating either.
It’s worse than we thought!!!
I’m sure they will recalibrate it a few days as we’ll see that it’s worse than we thought. The new lowest sea ice maximum will be even lower…..
Seems that they just get the Kepler spacecraft back under control.
It started acting up April 4th that puts it close to the time when the F-17 Sat. started to act up.
Some here have mentioned possible problems with one of the Sats covering the Antarctic.
Makes one wonder. Be interesting to see if any other satellites or spacecraft start to have problems.
most likely Gremlins pesky obnoxious Gremlins.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/04/11/nasa-kepler-emergency-over-spacecraft-now-stable.html
michael
I don’t see how they can get accurate data daily since clouds block the view on a daily basis.
What if someone’s ‘math is wrong’ and is off by a magnitude or more and the transmission from the satellite is good ?
Maybe I should have wrote ‘an order of magnitude’ above.
The Univ. of Bremen’s ice cap thickness image hasn’t updated since April 4th. The day before was missing most of the eastern hemisphere data:
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/smos/png/20160403_hvnorth_rfi_l1c.png
Oops – it has filled in the 5th-10th with decent looking data. I copy the latest image for the WUWT sea ice page at https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/ . I’ll let the automated update do its thing tomorrow AM.
Yay, Bremen’s back:
+ cd /home/werme/python/wuwt/bremen
+ python bremen_fetch.py
__main__
Called as main
Opening http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/smos/png/20160411_hvnorth_rfi_l1c.png
Wrote bremen_hvnorth_latest.png, len 286411 bytes.
+ convert bremen_hvnorth_latest.png -quality 75 bremen_hvnorth_latest.jpg
+ convert bremen_hvnorth_latest.png -quality 75 -geometry 312 bremen_hvnorth_latest_small.jpg
What I hadn’t noticed until tonight is that Cryosphere hasn’t updated since March 27th. I assume it’s unrelated to the satellite problems. I have no idea what the problem is and they usually don’t reply to Emails, so I won’t bother to look into it for a while.
Last image (I’m not sure why the Bremen .png image didn’t display for me above):
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20160327.jpg
It is a rough year for sea-ice freaks. Three of the four Mass Balance Buoys are down; only 2015F still reports. Two of the six O-buoys bit the dust in the late fall, and two more during the winter, and only O-buoys 13 and 14 remain.
(Don’t tell anyone, but I have a highly suspicious side of me, due to dealing with Climate Scientists, and I was wondering if they were blowing up buoys with drones, because the buoys refuse to see Mark Serreze’s “Death Spiral”.)
Then the Russians have been having a terrible time setting up their blue-ice airstrip for their Borneo base. If that doesn’t pan out we might not get a North Pole Camera this year.
But I can handle all that. I have a toughness and resiliency above the normal standards of internet dweebs.
But messing with my sea-ice extent graphs? That is going too far, I tell you! Too far!
Thx. +1
My knowledge of Arctic sea ice is very limited at best so let me know if I am wrong. NSIDC declared Mar 24 as maximum arctic sea ice. When AW forecasted a cold snap on Apr 4, I thought it would be amusing if NSIDC had to revise the maximum sea ice so I started tracking the Arctic sea ice. I found this website that posts daily satellite images and data for the Arctic (http://www.arctic.io/explorer/). The site doesn’t have specific url for the daily images so I snipped copies to paste here.
http://www.davidsahlstrom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Arctic-2016-03-24.png
This is maximum arctic sea ice (Mar 24) and then it receded.
http://www.davidsahlstrom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Arctic-2016-03-31.png
Check out the area around Svalbard in the Barents Sea. Broken patches of sea ice to the north.
http://www.davidsahlstrom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Arctic-2016-04-07.png
The ice extent started to grow. The broken patches north of Svalbard have started to fill in.
http://www.davidsahlstrom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Arctic-2016-04-10.png
The identified sea ice area continues to expand. However yesterday there was no official sea ice extent page posted. But the infrared image is there.
http://www.davidsahlstrom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Arctic-2016-04-11.png
The interesting thing is that yesterday’s infrared image has extensive red areas in the Barents Sea between Svalbard and Scandinavia and in Davis Strait.These red ocean areas were not there in the earlier images . This is either the artifact the NSIDC is referring to or there is a resurgence of the arctic sea ice.
More and more evidence is pointing to “a resurgence of the arctic sea ice”.
Of course the Arctic is beginning the melt season, so the increase is only temporary. But, it is interesting how a sudden increase coincides with “equipment problems”…
(Thanks for your research, David.)
Did it start The Day After Tomorrow? OMG!
There has been a very strong Beaufort Gyre for a week now, so, yes, ice is expanding on the Atlantic side. But despite strong winds it still hasn’t quite reached the northern shore of Svalbard yet.
Yes I noticed ice expanding in that area from wind, whilst it was thinning and retreating in other areas.
In making the post above, I made 2 errors. The broken ice area is west of Svalbard and the infrared image is from “today” not “yesterday”.
The arctic sea ice map doesn’t show snow cover but the 2007 one does?
I forget the details, but I concluded that Cryosphere lost its source of snow cover.
NSIDC has temporarily suspended their sea ice product, see here:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/04/sensor-on-f-17-experiencing-difficulties-sea-ice-time-series-temporarily-suspended/
Sat problem resolved?
Notice (04/19/2016):
“Daily sea ice concentration updates have improved. On 04/05/2016 a change in the solar panel position to shade the nitrogen tank on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite was made. In doing so, the integrity of the vertically polarized 37 GHz channel (37V) of the Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS) was compromised. This is a primary channel used in the sea ice processing. On 04/13/16 an additional change in the solar panel position was made.This change has improved the problems we were seeing in the 37V GHz channel. The affected daily files from 04/05 – 04/13 have been removed from distribution.”
https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0081