According to the CIA, Arctic ice cover increased by 10-15% before the mid-1970s
http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
The graph below shows what ice extent must have been before satellites were launched. Right where it is now.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/01/20110105_Figure3.png
artic ice age, cia 1974 report ice increase 15%, polar ice extent 2012
Whew….thank goodness things are getting back to normal
..it was getting scary there for a minute
What a bunch of bedwetters………………………….
..and dumb as a bag of rocks
It seems pretty obvious that most if not all of the warming after 1978 was simply a rebound from the 1958-1978 cold period, back to the pre-1958 normals.
So lets get this straight, your evidence regarding sea ice extent in the mid 1970s is a line in a CIA report, with no supporting reference? A bit like going to the AGU publishing a report on international terrorism or the WWF for a report on quantum physics.
Note also that the report says “the world snow and ice cover has increased by at least 10-15%”, so using that as a basis for suggesting that Artcic sea ice extent has increased by 10-15% is a non-sequitur as (i) not all of the increase is in ice cover (ii) the Artic is not the world and (iii) not all of the ice cover in the Arctic is sea ice.
So the line you have drawn labelled “10-15% below 1978″. Is that 10% below or 15% below?
Did you take forget to take your paranoid meds today?
http://www.real-science.com/walt-meier-1980-anomalously-high-arctic
O.K., so you have a credible scientist saying that 1980 was an anomolously high year. Does that mean that the anomaly was of the order 10-15%? No.
Note that it isn’t paranoia to suggest that the CIA are not a reliable source of information on climate. It simply isn’t within their remit, just as quantum physics is not the remit of the World Wrestling Federation. The quip about paranoia is nice rhetoric, but some real science (or better still data) would have been a better reply.
Since you brought “reliable sources” in: the CIA collects more information on climate than wikipedia. It should be obvious to even a child that a government agency whose members can be criminally prosecuted for providing false information would be far less reliable than an internet encyclopaedia written by known serial liars.
The CIA don’t collect data on climate. National meterological offices do. The CIA can buy data from them, just as anyone can. That doesn’t mean they are experts in the data or qualified to interpret it correctly.
I am happy to accept that Arctic sea ice extent was lower in the 1970s, providied there is some actual DATA that establishes that contention. Lines taken from a CIA report, that doesn’t actually specify Arctic sea ice extent, with no references so I can check their sources, and emails from scientists that don’t actually say how anomalous ice extent was is 1980 are not data.
Dikran, recently, Kev called Stark short_….
GIven your first name he might be referencing you. Unless you have any proof that the CIA is incorect — maybe spies are against AGW etc. STFU.
Steven does not necessarily present snippets as all encompassing truths. IMO they are just data points against the alramist. YOu know death by a thousand cuts.
Dikran, download the PDF, their sources are listed. If you’re familiar with climatology, I’m sure you’ll recognize some of the names in the bibliography.
http://dynaweb.cis.ec.gc.ca/IceGraph20/csod?charttype=sdtt&ssnsta=1971&ssnend=2012&histdtsta=0122&histdtend=0122®ion=ncw&nrmlsta=1971&nrmlend=2010&showwarn=false&plotnormal=false&plotmedian=true&plottrend=false&plotwarn=false&plotscaled=false&cachelife=1&errorpage=errorPage.jsp&format=csod&sizex=1100&sizey=850&lang=en
The Canadian Ice Service website has regional information going back to 1968 or 1971, depending on the plot. The data prior to 1978 consistently shows less ice than the 1979 to 2008 term that’s regularly applied for the averaging.
Why would they skip that data?
I would sure like to see a satellite image of the Arctic in 1974 based on this chart. Unfortunately, all the disparate evidence prior to the satellite era is bogus, so we are told.
Crashex, I tried to replicate your graph, but at Graph Options I opted for ‘Shade interpolated data’ and ‘Show warning for interpolated data’, and this is what I get for the same week (122) in Northern Canadian Waters:
http://dynaweb.cis.ec.gc.ca/IceGraph20/ct?charttype=sdtt&ssnsta=1971&ssnend=2012&histdtsta=0129&histdtend=0129®ion=ncw&nrmlsta=1981&nrmlend=2010&showwarn=true&plotnormal=false&plotmedian=true&plottrend=false&plotwarn=true&plotscaled=false&cachelife=1&errorpage=errorPage.jsp&format=ct&sizex=1100&sizey=850&lang=en
Does ‘interpolated data’ mean they didn’t actually measure ice cover prior to 1978? Maybe it’s an answer to your question ‘why would they skip that data?’.
They do not actually measure sea ice after 1978 either. They take reading from the satellites and interpret them to extrapolate the ice conditions in the polar regions.
They call it as if they had measured it but they provide computer graphics based on model outputs, not real measurements.
Neven,
If you’re replicating, first, choose the “Stage of Development” not the “Total Concentration” graphs; if you look close they give different results. Stage of Development always indicates more ice than the other options. I emailed them to ask why; they didn’t have an explanation as to why they should be different. Even the download data values show the error.
Second, Interpolation indicates an estimated value located between two points. So this particular week may not be measured directly, but measurements before and after this date are used to interpolate, i.e. estimate this week’s value. Which years have shaded bars for a particular week vary. For this selection, that combines all the other regions, you get shaded values more often because an interpolation of any of the individual regions will rate this selection as interpolated.
Extrapolate, is guessing a value beyond the range of the available information; like saying what the ice level is going to be in 2020.
Interpolation is reasonable, extrapolation is bad.
http://dynaweb.cis.ec.gc.ca/IceGraph20/csod?charttype=awtt&ssnsta=1971&ssnend=1981&histdtsta=0101&histdtend=1225&isrange=1®ion=car&nrmlsta=1981&nrmlend=2010&showwarn=false&plotnormal=false&plotmedian=true&plottrend=false&plotwarn=true&plotscaled=false&cachelife=1&errorpage=errorPage.jsp&format=csod&sizex=1100&sizey=850&lang=en
The data prior to 1982 is trash except for some summer time estimates. It’s not interpolated, it’s fabricated. It shouldn’t be in the database as a value.
Oh, and don’t forget to select last week’s date for the week to do the comparison so that you get 2012 data. Your plot is for this week, and the 2012 data isn’t available yet.
Note how the 2012 ice level is above the average and median line and higher than most of levels for the last decade. You don’t want to miss out on this year’s data.
I just realised that Ill Wind Bowling is probably correct. The Arctic shows far greater fluctuations, so one would expect that the Arctic sea ice would have grown by some 30-40% in that same time.
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the President of Iceland, and First Lady Dorrit Moussaieff, are currently sailing to Antarctica, according to the President’s office near Reykjavík. Al Gore, Nobel laureate and former US Vice President invited them to visit the southernmost continent on the planet.
the goal of the expedition is to investigate the fast melting ice
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2012/01/30/icelandic-president-en-route-to-antarctica/
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
What’s wrong with these people. Poor Icelanders with such a president. Why can’t they all be like Vaclav Klaus.
http://youtu.be/uKnfiGYoeCs
maybe they will get stuck in the ice around Antarctica.
If we’re returning to Maunder conditions, the 70s will look like Hawaii. I don’t care for cold weather, but if Gore and his minions finally STFU I’m all for it.
Don’t think the cold weather will be the problem. It will be the extreme weather that will kill the crops.
I see the meteorologists back then were just as smart as they are now, not buying the catastrophe-du-jour.
If the author’s conclusions are right, the ice extent for the last few years should have been seen from 1900-1960. So, let’s see. The NW passage has been open each of the last 5 years. There is no evidence since Henry Hudson that it’s been open until then. Before 1900, people didn’t try it each and every year, but since then, they had…and it was well shut it. So, if the ice extent was the same, why was the NW passage closed? If you look at the fine print, you can see the author’s mistake: he equalized “snow and ice extent” with ice extent. And, it didn’t say minimum extent. So, the author came to a conclusion that is extrodinarily impossible (it is more likely that you buy two lottery tickets in two weeks and win both weeks than the author’s conclusions are correct). because the author compared apples and oranges.