This came to me via a tip, but to be honest I get so many daily emails and comments I’ve lost the original source of the tip.
This is via the Canadian Ice Service, and it’s a view I have not seen before. It shows a polar view looking down at the North pole which is a composite of several days worth of MODIS views via NASA Goddard to create a Composite of the Arctic image. The actual image is very high resolution and I can’t show it fully here, but the detail is quite good. To help orient you, I’ve annotated some landmarks on this preview image.
You can see the full image here, and click the image again to zoom in on it. The sheer magnitude of area covered by ice and snow is quite impressive, and it’s a useful image to show to “I read the headline only” alarmists who believe that the North pole is either burning up, missing most of its ice and snow, or both.
I’d love to include this on the WUWT sea ice page, but unfortunately, Environment Canada has chosen to produce this image from a Perl Script, rather than an image URL, and I have no way that I know of to parse the most current image out of the URL:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/cgi-bin/getprod.pl?prodid=MODISCOM-T&wrap=0&lang=en
If anyone has any ideas, please leave a comment.
This image now available as an hourly updated jpeg at
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/downloads/MODIS.jpg
I used C CURL lib to get the image, and placed it on the server n an accessible location.
This server is 100% 24×7 .
I hope that helps, Anthony.
Oh drat it. WordPress has eaten the URL
http: // gridwatch.templar.co.uk / downloads / MODIS.jpg
remove spaces
I’d have thought that image is misleading unless you know the altitude or define the horizon. After all a camera in your hand pointed at your feet will show all white to the horizon.. That proves nothing about the extent of Arctic Ice. Adding geography as Anthony did helps, but it is such an unusual view that it needs a bit more thought than just ‘golly there’s a lot of white stuff there’.
The image is centered on the North Pole and the edge is at 55 degrees of latitude, i. e. about 2400 miles from the pole or 39% of the distance to the Equator.
I suggest it is very obvious form the image directly – Greenland, Northern Norway to Murmansk, Alaska, Aleutian chain and Sakhailin are all very, very obvious. Draw your own latitude. Roughly 70 degrees plus or minus. A basic knowledge of global geography is required to study and hence be able to comment meaningfully on global climate, I suggest.
You mean Kamchatka. Sakhalin is outside the image.
Muddled my peninsulas. Point is the same, latitude is plain to see by goegraphic imputation. Not misleadig at all. As long as you have the basic formation required to discuss the image meaningfully.
I agree, there are ample visual clues to the exact extent of the image.
Misleading to post a photo that shows what it shows?
I say it is misleading to suggest there is anything misleading about it.
The .pl extension is a red herring; the file is a PNG and can be saved with that extension.
No. it is a jpeg
RACookPE, 1978. Sorry but I once knew several of the top oceanographers and remote sensing experts studying the Gulf Stream System. While you are correct the Gulf Stream System has been studied since Ben Franklin, actually before that if you know about the Basque Cod fishermen, we knew damn little about the system until the 20th Century. Until then we generally were looking just at the surface, at the most the top hundred meters. For example, warm Core and Cold Core eddies were considered extremely rare events. Then, as my remote sensing friend told me, “when I was in grad school no one studied the Gulf Stream anymore because we were convinced we knew everything we needed to know about the system; then we put a satellite up, looked back and realized almost everything we knew was wrong.” For example, eddy formation is common, though when formation starts was not appreciate until the late 20th Century. One of the oceanographers I knew was working on mass flow of the Gulf Stream/ Florida Current. He had a large grant. He a hydrographic array stretching across the Straits from Florida to the Bahamas at about 26 degrees north. One of the issues he was concerning with was how much mass flow changed as at that time the tropical oceans heated up. The hypothesis was that either tropical storms carried the energy north or the Gulf Stream. At the time we were in a relatively slow period for tropical cyclones. While the Stream moved east and west, sometimes fairly dramatically (my professional interest at the time), mass flow was relatively constant. I can go on for a couple of hours but that is enough, I haven’t even started discussing the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico. Like most components of our climate system, including Western Boundary Currents in the northern hemisphere while some, even so called climate experts believe we somehow know everything, we have at best an incomplete understanding of the individual components and at worse a very poor understand of some very critical components.
From such a deficit as this is settled science crafted! Remarkable achievement! What could be accomplished if absolutely nothing was known?
Thank you, Edwin! I think you illuminated the state of climate science quite a bit. All the so-called scientists who could be studying actual climate factors are programming computers to prove what they already think they know.
Rob Bradley
What I see is a vast area where nothing is growing and people need to buy and wear warm clothing and find money and materials to heat their homes. the AGW apparently believes that we should have more of this white area for more of the year and at even lower temperatures.
I don’t call that a useless image. I say it’s a wake up call!
Hey Rob Bradley: Does the picture distinguish between sea ice and open water? If so, then it’s not worthless, because it debunks the meme of alarmists that sea ice is “crashing”. To be worthless + distracting, one could post a picture of a porn actress at the (excuse the expression) “tail end” of her career, seeking new sources of revenue. But nobody would go that low, would you?
Perhaps the 2nd most striking element outside of the vast coverage is the obvious impact that the ocean currents play on the ice extent. It always amazes me how people forget the awesome power of nature and so they think CO2 controls sea ice, but the image shows it is the ocean currents that does that.
Europeans should know this well because despite their warm climate, Europe is actually positioned to the north but is warmed by ocean currents. The city of Quebec in Canada is south of Paris France, but Quebec is far colder. That is ocean energy not your cars that makes Paris warm and Quebec cold.
I think Europeans who were listening in class knew that. But thanks for the lesson, for those under 11. It’s also why solar PV is utterly pointless in Northern Europe, at 50 degrees North there isn’t enough sun of adeqaute intensity during the average 12 hours of daylight, especially when it’s needed for long winter nights WE don’t have aircon in homes, because its not hot enough long enough. Offices are a different problem. The subsidies for those who get them at everyone else’s expense are the only significant benefit, for a rich few and less affluent but still wealthy property owning minorities outside cities. And we are all doomed, like Canada and Russia, when the next real climate change occurs, and the ice returns to claim the Northern hemisphere, as it has every 100K year Milankovitch eccentricity maximum for the last 900K years. THAT is climate change, not interglacial noise.
Another interesting thing is how well the northern forest limit shows up. Pure white = tundra. Light grey = forest.
Do you know what the vivid and bright blue areas east of Greenland are?
great image. thanks!
Why cant I find this at the Canadian Ice Service web site?