12 years ago, I pointed out to NSIDC in this post: Errors in publicly presented data – Worth blogging about?
Because they told me it “wasn’t worth blogging about” in this comment that was posted on WUWT by NSIDC’s chief research scientist, Dr. Walt Meier:
Anthony,
We’re looking into it. For the moment, we’ve removed the data from the timeseries plot.
You need to remember that this is near real-time data and there can be data dropouts and bad data due to satellite issues. While the processing is automatic, the QC is partly manual. Thus errors do happen from time to time and one shouldn’t draw any dramatic conclusions from recent data.
I’m not sure why you think things like this are worth blogging about. Data is not perfect, especially near real-time data. That’s not news.
Walt Meier
Research Scientist
NSIDC
In the prior thread I raised a question of why there was a large downward jump in sea ice extent on the graph presented by NSIDC’s Artic Sea Ice News page. The image below was the reason, a million-plus square kilometers of Arctic sea ice went missing. Note the blue line.
Click for larger image
Well, it turned out that is WAS worth blogging about and it WAS news, because the satellite sensor failed, as we published later:
It sure looks to me like it has happened again.
NSIDC says now:
NSIDC continues to investigate errors in our sea ice processing, and we are upgrading software to address the errors. Daily Sea Ice Index/Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis values after February 19 are erroneous. We will post new data as soon as the software upgrades are implemented.
The old image from Feb 23rd they have on the website now only shows a dip.
But the interactive chart they have shows a clear dropout of data:
I wonder how long it will be before they fess up and say the satellite sensor has failed rather than bluster about “processing errors”?
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Daily Telegraph: Polar twin cubs with their mother take their first steps in the snow outside their den. Churchill, Canada.
Caption:
Cub – “Mom, is that seal I can smell on your breath?”
Mom – “No dear. It’s one of those field researchers from Polar Bears International who tells the world that we’ve all disappeared”
Aw… so cute. Thanks for the smile, Vuk.
“Mama.”
“I LLLOOOOOVVVE YOU, baby mine.”
(I know they don’t speak in English outside the pop-company-who-shall-remain-nameless recording studio — that’s my translation of their “polarbearish.” 🙂 )
Hi Janice, nice to hear from you.
Little Poly is cute, but I’m reliable told that that grown up Poly-bears talk in Polish.
Hi, Vuk 🙂 “polish” 😆
Did momma eat the other cub? I only see one.
The second one is the one she is yelling at: “LEROY!!! Get away from that dumpster!!”
When I was responsible for data and producing reports, I would have been very ashamed if some of my reports were as bad as what “climate scientists” regularly submit.
It seems that a large proportion of us here are retired, and have similar complaints. It may reflect a general decline in the competence or professionalism of those who replaced us.
Most of these so-called “climate scientists” are of the generation who got prizes just for showing up. They were never taught to pursue excellence, let alone competence.
Over at EOSDIS there is the following warning:
8 November 2020 Notice: The MODIS instrument aboard the Terra satellite experienced a Printed Wire Assembly (PWA) failure on 5 October 2020. This has resulted in a reduction in the overall Terra daytime coverage and many of the MODIS/Terra imagery layers have a slightly jagged appearance with less coverage over the northern high latitude regions. This issue will affect land daytime MODIS/Terra products that primarily rely on the Reflective Solar Bands (RSB) (i.e. visible bands) indefinitely.
The odd part is that the warning has only been highlighted in the past couple of days – I have been monitoring the breakup of iceberg Larsen 68 daily (there is a lot to be learned from the way in which its fragments have gyrated in ocean eddies).
There is a fuller confessional here:
https://landweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/QA_WWW/displayCase.cgi?esdt=MOD&caseNum=PM_MOD_20280&caseLocation=cases_data&type=C6
At the least it reduces corroborative cover.
Merely standard practice in climate ‘science ‘ they have after all recently claimed the temp’s of the Atlantic current is the lowest its been in 1000 years , despite have no measurements at all , indeed no knowledge if even existed , for the vast majority of this time scale. All they have is ‘MODELING’ otherwise known as ‘guess work’ from an area where their ability to forecast weather more than 72 hours ahead is of the order ‘in winter its colder than summer’
The JAXA one seems to be still working OK.
Alert, alert !!
All Arctic climate scare programs are suspended for 24 hours. This alert does not apply to polar bear scares since those scare programs are unaffected and unscientific anyway.
The Day the Gaia Scare Stood Still…..That’s a B movie.
If all else fails, just say it was hacked.
A touchy response…
Walt Meier appears to be less appreciative of being informed his sensors are bad than last time.
The question arises whether that sensor has been slowly degrading for some time and painting a false image of Arctic ice loss.
Spotting when sensors suffer sudden cascade failure should be easy.
Well, easy for people who pay attention.
Here only a temporary and smaller dip is visible: https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent
Will this be saved for future use in Congressional hearings and HuffPo special reports for ‘premium’ subscribers only?
I noticed a few days ago that one of the largest differences from Arctic average sea ice extent this year is in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Isn’t saying that ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is “Arctic” sea ice about the same as saying Great Slave Lake is a large lake in northern Montana? Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with this science…
i told you it was suicide to harvest the core
I don’t see an issue: it isn’t as if they are presenting this dip as the ‘real’ data… sea ice online forums noticed this and NSIDC responded days ago.
And this is why you fail…
With griff failure is not a bug, it is a feature.
Meereisportal tells quite a different story. …
Look at the huge high in the north that carries Arctic air into Europe. In Europe, winter temperatures return.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/webAnims/tpw_nrl_colors/europe/mimictpw_europe_latest.gif
OMG, a piece of electronics failed. It must be a conspiracy. I hear they lost a couple days of data. When they figure it out, the record will be updated with best available measurements/estimates. Life goes on.
“When they figure it out, the record will be updated” to show the politically driven agenda they have already been caught, repeatedly, putting out.
The “pros” don’t wear egg on their faces well.
While catastrophic failures (suddenly stop working) of sensors can occur, in many cases you are looking at a period of time where erratic performance occurs. To me, this brings into question whether recent readings are accurate at all for quite some time.
From what I see in the graphs, the errors are always downward… Makes me wonder if perhaps there is a small piece of code somewhere that is always working to lower the ice area just a wee bit…
One would think a smart engineer would write themselves a script that is called by a cron-job, which would calculate the slope of the line for the past X days. Then send a daily/weekly email addressed to relevant persons, with a report saying “all is well”/”some-ting wrong” and provide a relevant plot.
But that would require an open source system … and you don’t want me to jump on that horse …