Next month, NASA will launch into space the most advanced laser instrument of its kind, beginning a mission to measure – in unprecedented detail – changes in the heights of Earth’s polar ice.
NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) will measure the average annual elevation change of land ice covering Greenland and Antarctica to within the width of a pencil, capturing 60,000 measurements every second.
“The new observational technologies of ICESat-2 – a top recommendation of the scientific community in NASA’s first Earth science decadal survey – will advance our knowledge of how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute to sea level rise,” said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
ICESat-2 will extend and improve upon NASA’s 15-year record of monitoring the change in polar ice heights, which started in 2003 with the first ICESat mission and continued in 2009 with NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne research campaign that kept track of the accelerating rate of change.
A Technological Leap
ICESat-2 represents a major technological leap in our ability to measure changes in ice height. Its Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) measures height by timing how long it takes individual light photons to travel from the spacecraft to Earth and back.
“ATLAS required us to develop new technologies to get the measurements needed by scientists to advance the research,” said Doug McLennan, ICESat-2 project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “That meant we had to engineer a satellite instrument that not only will collect incredibly precise data, but also will collect more than 250 times as many height measurements as its predecessor.”
ATLAS will fire 10,000 times each second, sending hundreds of trillions of photons to the ground in six beams of green light. The roundtrip of individual laser photons from ICESat-2 to Earth’s surface and back is timed to the billionth of a second to precisely measure elevation.
With so many photons returning from multiple beams, ICESat-2 will get a much more detailed view of the ice surface than its predecessor, ICESat. In fact, if the two satellites were flown over a football field, ICESat would take only two measurements – one in each end zone – whereas ICESat-2 would collect 130 measurements between each end zone.
As it circles Earth from pole to pole, ICESat-2 will measure ice heights along the same path in the polar regions four times a year, providing seasonal and annual monitoring of ice elevation changes.
Tracking Ice Melt
Hundreds of billions of tons of land ice melt or flow into the oceans annually, contributing to sea level rise worldwide. In recent years, contributions of melt from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica alone have raised global sea level by more than a millimeter a year, accounting for approximately one-third of observed sea level rise, and the rate is increasing.
ICESat-2 data documenting the ongoing height change of ice sheets will help researchers narrow the range of uncertainty in forecasts of future sea level rise and connect those changes to climate drivers.
ICESat-2 also will make the most precise polar-wide measurements to date of sea ice freeboard, which is the height of sea ice above the adjacent sea surface. This measurement is used to determine the thickness and volume of sea ice. Satellites routinely measure the area covered by sea ice and have observed an Arctic sea ice area decline of about 40 percent since 1980, but precise, region-wide sea ice thickness measurements will improve our understanding of the drivers of sea ice retreat and loss.
Although floating sea ice doesn’t change sea level when it melts, its loss has different consequences. The bright Arctic ice cap reflects the Sun’s heat back into space. When that ice melts away, the dark water below absorbs that heat. This alters wind and ocean circulation patterns, potentially affecting Earth’s global weather and climate.
Beyond the poles, ICESat-2 will measure the height of ocean and land surfaces, including forests. ATLAS is designed to measure both the tops of trees and the ground below, which – combined with existing datasets on forest extent – will help researchers estimate the amount of carbon stored in the world’s forests. Researchers also will investigate the height data collected on ocean waves, reservoir levels, and urban areas.
Potential data users have been working with ICESat-2 scientists to connect the mission science to societal needs. For example, ICESat-2 measurements of snow and river heights could help local governments plan for floods and droughts. Forest height maps, showing tree density and structure, could improve computer models that firefighters use to forecast wildfire behavior. Sea ice thickness measurements could be integrated into forecasts the U.S. Navy issues for navigation and sea ice conditions.
“Because ICESat-2 will provide measurements of unprecedented precision with global coverage, it will yield not only new insight into the polar regions, but also unanticipated findings across the globe,” said Thorsten Markus, an ICESat-2 project scientist at Goddard. “The capacity and opportunity for true exploration is immense.”
I have a problem with the claims about precision. On the poster it says the precision is 1 inch, or 3 cm, not a pencil-width. Which is it?
Next, and I presume they compensate for this but don’t talk about it: the speed of light.
It turns out the speed of light is not constant. It varies depending on the direction you are travelling at the time. There is a difference between moving towards or away from the constellation Leo. The difference is quite easily measured. So, if they make a measurement on a certain date the Earth will be moving in some direction, and the satellite moving relative to it, and the get some number. Then 8 months later they measure again but now the Earth is in a different place, heading in a different direction, and the satellite too. There will be a time to return variation even if the ice is exactly the same height. That will be recorded as either an increase or loss in surface altitude.
Has the magnitude been evaluated?
How are they going to compensate for that?
” It varies depending on the direction you are travelling at the time.”
…
NOPE, you have not heard about Einstein’s paper on special relativity. The speed of light is ALWAYS constant, and is independent of your frame of reference.
How hard can it be, the satellites are being affected by gravity differentials, the sea surface and ice move at a different rate determined by air pressure, nothing that can’t be adjusted to the land based GPS stations connected to the continents floating atop the mantle.
One more variable and we can make it wiggle its trunk.
The speed of light in a vacuum is constant. It varies in other mediums.
The speed of light is constant however, moving towards or away from it changes the frequency like sound. It also changes the time variation. The db level also changes.
The irony is that a green laser is usually a co2 one. There are too many problems with this.
The speed of light is only constant in vacuum. In an Einstein-Bose condensate it has been measured below 40Mph.
Green lasers are not ‘usually a CO2 one’, they’re usually an Argon ion or a frequency doubled Nd:YAG. The wavelength used on ICESAT-2 is 532nm which is the wavelength of a Nd:YAG.
And co2 lasers are not?
CO2 lasers operate in the IR, typically between 10.6 and 9.4 microns,so no, not green.
“The speed of light is ALWAYS constant”
Except when its not.
imagine this
they post their algorithms
here is icesat1
https://www.csr.utexas.edu/glas/atbd.html
Find an error, NASA is hiring.
In other words, don’t stare upwards.
I was thinking of aircraft pilots.
Now there’s a horror.
Laser blinded pilots.
A new plot for a new “Airplane!” movie.
“Roger, Roger”
“will measure the average annual elevation change of land ice covering Greenland and Antarctica to within the width of a pencil, capturing 60,000 measurements every second.”
Do these guys understand LLN or is it a panacea for all sorts of errors? Using satellites taking many measurements sounds fantastic but when the billion tonnes of ice is mm changes over millions of square kilometers, I suspect the only trend will be the systematic error not corrected or due to corrections to better fit measurements from an instrument gaffer taped to an off-season crop duster.
Surely measuring temperature trends would be easier?
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/uah5/plot/rss/plot/uah6
Why measure sea ice if it all melted years ago?
Please fix the headline: “it’s” —> “its”.
The USA has finally gone mad!
There’s no ‘business case’ for this toy.
It’s a left wing NASA funded nerdity to bolster their global-warming scare campaign.
They would’ve been better designing a weapon to destroy China & India who are the current # 1 enemy if you believe CO2 is going to kill us (as NASA does).
So what NASA really decided is . . . ok let’s send ‘observers’ to the genocide and we’ll report back on casualties as they occur. But under no circumstances will we intervene in the killing.
The Trump administration must stomp on NASA overreach now.
Overreach perniciously underlays the demise of every great civilization . . .
Greenland!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are scared of it melting. Ha Ha HA Ha Ha Ha Ha
Greenland has 2,850,000 km3 of ice.
All of it would have to melt to raise sea level by 7 metres. This is just not going to happen especially even with a 4C average global temperature rise which is at the high catastrophic range of IPCC predictions. You just cannot melt that large a block of ice with air temperatures 4C higher . This is because you are dealing with averages here. The summit which is 2 miles above sea level in the interior has an air temperature range of -26C in winter to 0C in summer. Summer in this part of Greenland is only 2 months long. Temperatures in the other 10 months of the year are below
-10 C. So 2 months of summer is just not enough time to melt an appreciable amount of ice. Increasing the average global temperature by 4C will not make the interior go above freezing because of the elevation.
Additionally, the weight of the Greenland ice has depressed the interior of the continent and disrupted any drainage that existed prior to being covered in ice. If the ice should be completely melted, a significant fraction of the water won’t make it to the oceans until isostatic rebound removes the ‘bowl.’ The bottom line is that theoretical calculations converting the ice volume of Greenland to an increase in ocean level overstates the immediate effect.
I would also like to draw your attention to this graph
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/new-record-temperature-southwest-greenland
It shows the alltime record summer temp for Summit station in inland Greenland. Notice that it barely got above 0C. Since summers are only 2 months long here how in the hell is Greenland supposed to melt any appreciable amount even if global temps went up 4C. The summit is 2 miles high and the mean thickness of the ice in all of Greenland is 2135 metres or 7000 ft. Since this total of ice is 2850000 km3 , how would this melt in 2 months? It wouldn’t. Fall and winter would come and the ice would refreeze. Spring would come again and as you see on the graph there wouldn’t be any melting in the spring even if global world temperatures soared above an increase of 4C. Sure Greenland has been losing ice mass over last 20 years but this has happened thousands of times in the past. There was less ice at the end of the 1930s in Greenland than there is today. A new study by Niesen et al.,2018 shows that 8000 years ago was 2-3 C warmer than today with peaks as high as 5C higher and the Greenland ice mass diminished only 20% in 3000 years at those increased temperatures.
To further cement this hypothesis of Greenland ice sheet not melting from of top, there have been studies that the melting is happening from underneath because of a volcanic ridge extending from Iceland right to the Arctic. Even the alarmist scientists are admitting that the top of Greenlands interior ice sheet is not melting and that the upper surface every year gets fresh snow/ice and the reason that there is a net loss of ice is the amount of icebergs calving off on the shore line. These icebergs have calved off for millions of years and the volcanic activity has come and gone for millions of years.The alarmists will argue that the calving of the icebergs on the coast of Greenland is increasing with global warming.
However, that demonstrates a lack of understanding of just how calving works. Calving is a breakup of ice shelfs at the coast caused by pressure from the ice sheets as the ice is forced to the sea. Calving is just as likely to happen when it is cold or warm. Calving has been going on ever since Greenland formed ice sheets.
All of Antarctica melting is a worse farce 1000 times over for basically the same reasons.
The global alarmist position is a farce on every level.
NASA still doesn’t understand what specular reflection is: “The bright Arctic ice cap reflects the Sun’s heat back into space. When that ice melts away, the dark water below absorbs that heat.”
I’m familiar with the instrumentation on this satellite. It’s known as the Coherent Radiation Altimeter Package (CRAP).
https://www.csr.utexas.edu/glas/atbd.html
err no.
my guess is you know nothing
“I’m familiar with the instrumentation on this satellite. It’s known as the Coherent Radiation Altimeter Package (CRAP).”
That’s 10 seconds of my life I can’t get back. Is this what passes for humor on WUWT?
It took you 10 seconds to read one line?
Aren’t you special.
Unlike you, I don’t live on WUWT. I prefer to read comments that are related to the post.
60,000 times per second. Any chance that might be overkill?
if it was less people would opine that it was not enough.
One thing is for sure- soon as the new measurements start we will get: ” It’s much worse than we thought!”
“Although floating sea ice doesn’t change sea level when it melts, ”
The ice is not uniform in salt content, therefore there is a small increase in sea level rise. the estimate of the Arctic melting would be 20mm. Not worth worrying about.
Note they are going to track ice melt and sea level rise even if it stops melting and sea level goes down. Talk about bias! They should at least have been neutral on the tech at this stage – simply will monitor sea level and measure ice would have made me less suspicious. Carl Mears showed us you could, without skipping a breath, wrench a 2 decade temperature pause upwards into a galloping warming at will by fiddling the instrument data. How are we to straighten all this destruction out when this virus is over?
Laser distance measurement technology won’t cut any ice with the BBC[1], who, presumably with the blessing of Roger Harrabin, will continue to measure ice with their traditional method: counting the number of “unprecedented” journeys by ships through the cyclically-ice-free Arctic passages.
“Until now the the [Arctic] route has required an escort of expensive nuclear icebreakers to accompany any vessel. But global warming, which has raised temperatures along the route during the summer to over 30°C, is changing its viability.”
[1] BBC (unattributed author): Container ship to break the ice on Russian Arctic route [because global warming] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45271766
Wonder how they did it between 1933 and 1957 when the first nuclear icebreaker (Lenin) was completed.
Icebreakers are usually needed, yes. Nuclear no, not necessarily.
By the way swedish conventional icebreaker Oden is currently at the North Pole with a research team. It had considerable difficulty getting there though. The captain reports the worst ice conditions he has ever experienced, starting 2005.
NASA’s 2015 Antarctic Land Ice Report announced Antarctic Land Ice has been INCREASING at 80 Billion tons per year since 1992..:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
Now CAGW advocates say Antarctic Land Ice is decreasing “at an alarming rate” and adding to Sea Level Rise.
And Leftists wonder why people don’t trust them…
So a compliment to CryoSat 2. Which showed increasing ice volume in the Arctic.
Nothing new, Cryosat 2 is already doing this:
http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/seaice.html
However the technique has limitations. Ice freeboard can only be measured if there is open water nearby to measure the freeboard from, so no data for fast ice without leads near the coast.
Also no measurements in summer since there is no way to distinguish open sea and meltwater pools on top of the ice.
Also ESA (which operates Cryosat 2) is honest enough to admit an uncertainty of several decimeters in measurements. However NASA who measures sea-level (vastly more difficult) with 0.1 mm precision will undoubtedly overcome such problems with the aid of some magical algorithm.
here are the algorithms
https://www.csr.utexas.edu/glas/atbd.html
go check them
Are not algorithms just another computer model.
With a better name ?
given the speed of light,
given the time for the laser signal to hit the surface and return….design an algorithm…ie formuls,,ie model… to calculate the distance.
hey dummy… do you think we measure distance to the moon with a ruler.
nope.
algorithm.
You must love that link since you keep pushing that at us, regardless of what the commentor states. Already basic errors in the link have been pointed out, like the “accurate to a pencil-width” actually is a very fat 3cm, and the uncertainty in the distance measured is going to be approx 15 cm based on 800 picosecond measurement accuracy and variable speed of light through a heterogenous medium. So since you keep cutting/pasting the link without revealing how to overcome these and other problems, maybe you should take a break from trolling and read it for yourself.
read it.
you didnt.
if you want to know the system
IGNORE the press release.
dummy
mosher,
From the ATBD document, which I suspect you didn’t bother to read:
“The predicted radial orbit errors based on recent gravity models (e.g., JGM-3 or GM-96) are 19-36 cm.” This is from existing Earth gravity models. It doesn’t address the concern I raised about annual changes in gravity through the addition or loss of snow. In any event, I don’t see how the claim of 5 mm measurement error is justified when the altitude of the orbit will have an estimated error of 190 to 360 mm!
Instead of insulting people, how about showing that you actually understand the problem?
In many fields of science, researchers are forever hoping for instruments that detect and measure lower and lower quantities. I went through this with analytical chemistry in the 1970s, noted for the invention of the Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer and other instruments.
What happens is that every Tom Dick and Harry, irrespective of ability and qualifications, can eventually get access to greater and greater sensitivity. As was demonstrated so vividly with the Geiger counter for radioactivity, this generated huge numbers of alarms, scare and zany amateur theories.
Now we see it happening again with laser range finding. One of our sons is a graduate surveyor who warns us from time to time about expecting too much from instrumentation. Other surveyors here just now are alert to the same problem. Also, I spent a couple of years working with modern lasers of various types, so I can but agree with his caution based on what I learned.
We have seen some consequences from satellite laser estimates of sea level change. I do not get the feeling that genuine surveyors endorse stretching the technology so far, so fast.
Problems arise, big problems, when premature policy changes are made in governments, based on cutting edge speculation from instrument performance that really should be wound back until the uncertainties are properly assessed and understood. The bogey man is often bias, not precision, for those who know the difference. Geoff.
The problem with sea level is that the sea is not level.
This subject provides a great opportunity to watch skeptic group think in action.
lets start with a typical skeptic claim
the ice is thicker now
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/06/arctic-sea-ice-volume-highest-in-eleven-years/
You can see this claim and the DMI charts all over twitter and even from Joe B
here is joe B using DMI products
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/16/bastardi-dropping-ocean-temperatures-may-increase-east-coast-hurricane-risk/
But DMI thickness and volume charts are MODELLED DATA, not measurements, but MODELS
Make note of this.
1. Skeptics who use DMI never point out that it is modelled data.
2. Skeptics never question this data.
3. Skeptics never raise the question of how the thickness was measured.
4. They only use the data when it suits their narrative.
hey skeptic, have you ever seen anyone use DMI data? did you questio it? did you know it was a model?
or did you like what it showed and never paused to ask questions? Did you just accept it without
asking “hey? how do they measure thickness?”
Now, read this thread.
See how many times people question the collection of real data. before its even done
See how many people cant believe the measurements before they even happen
See how many people want to see proof of the height accuracy.
Then ask yourself. where were these skeptical questions when Joe B presented
MODELLED data of thickness
where were these skeptical questions when heller presents DMI as if it is measurements.
I mean seriously guys. none of you have guts to challenge other skeptics when they present modelled data that you happen to like. And when someone at nasa builds a system you could only dream of working on, you trash it before reading the engineering documents.
In one case you are eager to believe and in the other case no amount of sound engineering will convince you.
Completely true. Paywalled papers that support AGW are immediately attacked here, even though 90% or more of commenters have not read the paper. Any paywalled paper that casts any doubt on AGW – for example one a few years ago saying that year’s CA fires were not linked to AGW – are immediately cheered. Once again, by folks that haven’t even read the paper.
Yet those same posters call themselves “true skeptics” that don’t have preconceived notions. It’s laughable – when folks trash a paper that supports AGW even before they read it, or attack a new satellite that will allow better measurements on ice thickness before it even launches, they have zero credibility in claiming they are an open minded skeptic. Zero.
Open minded, yes.
So open minded that the brain falls out, no.
Facts contained in your comment, zero.
Prove me wrong. Provide a link to a WUWT post about a paper that supports AGW that was given a reasonable evaluation by commenters here.
Chris,
You said, “…attack a new satellite that will allow better measurements on ice thickness before it even launches…”
In my case, I’m looking for evidence that the accuracy will be what is claimed. I have raised questions about the control on altitude (which is critical!) over regions where the ice is melting actively. The satellite should be able to measure floating-ice free-board with greater accuracy than ice on Greenland or Antarctic. However, I’m concerned that the data for the continental ice sheets will be misused and once the data are published, they take on a life of their own. I have yet to see anything from you or Mosher that allays my concerns about altitude determination over the interior of either ice mass. AND, the GLAS document provided for ICESat-1 suggests an error almost 50X that claimed for ICESat-2!
I’m just asking for clarification for what appears to be contradictions and oversights.
go read harder.
did you find the calibration and validation work on icesat 1?
thought not.
mosher,
As a matter of fact, I DID give the ICESat document (GLAS) a ‘hard’ read. And, as I quoted elsewhere, the document gives a total system error of 245 mm for a claimed error (accuracy/precision?) of 5 mm. I’m left with the impression that you didn’t bother to read the links you provided, or perhaps, didn’t understand what you were reading.
You should be embarrassed by your ‘drive by’ comments. Strangely, you aren’t! That says a lot about your personality.
Use sci.hub.tw
chris, note none of these genius guys caught that joe b used modelled data.
they have zero engineering integrity.
that is some claim. personally i don’t think any of the data is fit for the purpose to which it is currently used. temp data,satellite data the lot. i applaud the fact that people are (in some cases) trying to improve the situation but there is a long way to go to claim certainty anywhere near the level it is claimed today.
Maybe we will finally get a satisfying explanation of why, some 30-40 thousand years ago, Mammoths in Siberia were flash-frozen with green plant matter still in their stomachs.
They weren’t. Actually most are pretty well rotted. And almost all dead animals will have food matter in the stomach.
Surely one day all these satellites are just going to collide with each other lol. Every other day new satellites seem to be launching into space. Then again, the size of space is unfathomable.
Even this, is insufficient. Let’s get a ball-park estimate of the annual ice-mass loss, and compare that to the width of a pencil.
Greenland’s ice area: ”The Greenland Ice Sheet extends about 1.7 million square kilometers (656,000 square miles), …” https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html
One millimetre of ice, across 1.7 million square kilometres:
(0.001)(1.7•10⁶ ㎢) = 1.7•10³ ㎦
1.091 cubic kilometres of ice equals one Gigatonne, Gt.
(1.7•10³ ㎦)÷1.091 = 1,558 Gt of ice. The DMI .DK blog complains of Greenland loosing ice at 200 Gt per year.
If one millimetre of ice accumulation, on the existing ice area of 1.7 Million kilometres squared, adds 1,558 billion tonnes of ice, then, how many millimetres of ice represents the DMI .DK complaint of 200 Gt?
(200÷1,558)=0.12837 … a bit more than one-tenth of one millimetre. Do you really think that ICEsat is able to measure ice thickness to better than 0.2 mm, which is a small fraction of the width of a pencil lead, let alone, the pencil itself?
Even if the frickin’ lasers were absolutely precise and accurate, in their ability to measure the distance between a flat surface and the orbiting satellite, the active areas of glaciers, aren’t flat. This is the precision attitude determination (PAD) problem.
Martin 2005:”For example, a 1 arcsec pointing error to a 2° slope produces a 10 cm error in derived elevations, rising to more than a meter per arcsec for a 20° slope.”
King 2017: ”ICESat-2’s attitude determination requirement is more stringent at 3.7 micro radians or 0.76 arc seconds in attitude determination knowledge [2],[8].” That’d be around seven centimetres of error.
The satellite data has to be manipulated. Altimetric satellites, like ICEsat, cannot tell what caused the height change, like the land moving down or up, compared to ice being lost, or accumulating. In order to subtract out the solid crustal movement, a GIA fudge-factor is involved. This is arrived at, by using measurements, massaged with computer models.
The GIA reported by Khan 2016 was “1.4mm ±0.1mm”, yet, a year later, van Dam 2017 reported “1.44mm ±0.144 mm” … so, we’re anticipating that the satellites can resolve a less-than 0.2mm per year change of ice mass, when the GIA fudge factor is ±0.144 mm?
0.2±0.144 mm? Horse poop.
Then, there is POD … Precise Orbital Determination. Geodesy, the problem with determining, exactly, where the planet’s centre of mass is, at the moment. Given the vague PR statement, ❝… will measure the average annual elevation change of land ice covering Greenland and Antarctica to within the width of a pencil, …❞ I will, for the moment, assume that POD and Geodesy problems have been solved (though, I doubt it).
King, Jennifer Michele 2017. “Investigation of a nonorthogonal gyroscope model for ICESat-2.” Master’s Dissertation, M.S.E. University of Texas at Austin
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/60401/KING-THESIS-2017.pdf?sequence=1
Martin, C. F., <iet al. 2005 “ICESat range and mounting bias estimation over precisely‐surveyed terrain.” Geophysical Research Letters
https://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/icesat/publications/GRL/martin-1.pdf
van Dam, Tonie, et al. 2017 “Using GPS and absolute gravity observations to separate the effects of present-day and Pleistocene ice-mass changes in South East Greenland.” Earth and Planetary Science Letters
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.epsl.2016.11.014
Again this is one of those expensive data collection schemes that will mean what exactly? Until it has been up and operating for a decade or long it will mean little since we have never measured the ice this way before. However I will bet that the year after it has done the four seasons we will be reading headlines of gloom and doom.
Yesterday, Arctic sea ice extent was higher than on that date in 2007, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2017. The NW Passage is still closed, and it’s looking as if it won’t open this year at all.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Two Arctic cyclones lowered extent in 2016, as had single cyclones in the record low years of 2007 and 2012. Wherever sea ice ends up this year, it’s likely to be higher than 2016. So the upward trend in place since 2012 and flatter trend since 2007 should remain intact.
Meanwhile, Antarctic sea ice is in the normal range, after peaking in 2014. Antarctic sea ice grew in the satellite record since 1979, while it was falling in the Arctic. Thus, no CO2 signature in sea ice data.
Maersk is trialing the Northern Sea Route for a container ship:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-world's-largest-shipping-company-is-trialing-an-arctic-route-%E2%80%94-and-it's-a-worrying-sign-for-the-future-of-the-planet/ar-BBMkgHI?OCID=ansmsnnews11
Of course, no mention that the route was open during the 1930s and World War II.
Anthony, I couldn’t wait till Sunday for this… Wind Scamster and Senator Angus King (I-ME ..and his son who wasva VPbat UPC Forst Wind ) has their sights set on Greenland.
He used his office as Maine Governor in conjunction with UPC/ IVPC/ Evergreen/ First Wind et. al. To further his crony interests. As a Senator on the Intelligence Committee has his offshore banking and energy interests focused on this very issue.
The satellite will not measure ice but will be looking for mineral resources.
Mosher,
Too tired to scroll down to find your contradiction again. Controlling attitude by GPS would require an awful lot of fuel, of which they are limited. Gyros, can be done from the solar cells. Think, man…
read the atbd.
dunce.
Worth the price of admission, if you can get Mosher to call you names.