From the first IPCC report. Between 1974 and 1978 (when satellites went up) Arctic sea ice extent increased by 15%.
By using the 1978 peak as a starting point, alarmists have driven themselves into a mindless and nonsensical frenzy about death spirals and an ice-free Arctic. The graph below adds in the missing data (red) from prior to 1978.
Tells a completely different story, when you look at the complete data set.
“the complete data set”
Which is only on (1) single climate data point.
Why bother?
Can we surmise that maybe some other force (wind direction?) has more to do with ice extent than simply air temperature. The early 70′s was the era of “we are headed for a new ice age” was it not?
Exactly, the Arctic Sea is a big tub of ice slurry, stirred by two big sticks, wind and current with varying temperatures.
Aka weather.
But the current ice is rotten and full of holes….caused by CO2, just ask the bedwetters.
Hey! Show some respect. Those are professional bedwetters, who spent years working on synchronized head nodding, and mattress irrigation.
Oh, yes, professional bedwetters, or anyone on the public dole that gets their paycheck by scaring people about the weather. The ones that have advanced training in scaring the public are promoted to department heads at their respective public institutions. Very noble work.
…and today the Arctis sea ice area anomaly is over 1.3million km2.
That’s over 2 million km2 less than on this date in 1979, when the satellites first reported:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
According to NORSEX, the current extent anomaly is almost identical to what was reported by the IPCC in 1974
Are we being deliberately obtuse, jak? Or are you just kindly pointing just out how egregious was the cherry-picking for the starting date of official recorded Arctic ice coverage. How convenient that Nimbus 7 went up in 1978 and Arctic ice coverage data prior to this date could be forgotten. Steven dug up this gem that shows that the IPCC FAR showed ice coverage data prior to 1979 despite the fact that said prior ice coverage data seriously diluted their message of catastrophic lose in Arctic ice coverage.
Damn! Nice one Steve, I’ve been looking for just that data!
Here’s some else for you……..
https://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/bitstream/handle/1912/4953/Kleppe-etal_QSRpdf.pdf?sequence=1
Turns out medieval times held for much worse droughts in the Tahoe area than today…….
Here all over WA state, there is a similar record. Many lakes contain a stand of trees from a drier former period. Quite the boating hazard as some stumps and waterlogged segments are not far below the surface.
There is Island fisheries story, that north sea ice increased after warm period.
“After a generally warm period in the northern North Atlantic from 1920 to 1964, the period from 1965 to 1971 was characterized by very low temperatures and salinity typical of polar water. This was often accompanied by sea ice over the northern shelf. In some of those years, the sea ice covered the whole north and east coasts of Iceland. Temperature differences in the waters north of Iceland between these two periods were up to 3°C.”
http://www.fisheries.is/ecosystem/oceanography/climate-variability/
There is also new study finding that end off seventies was actually big freeze in hundred year scale.
That’s right. 1965-69 are well known in Iceland as “The Sea Ice Years”.
As a result the Iceland economy completely zonked out. Now though GISS have magically disappeared these times.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/icelands-sea-ice-years-disappear-in-ghcn-adjustments/
And here is the study I meant, it was Greenland, not just sea ice.
“The large values of ice [melt] extent observed in recent years are much less unusual when compared against conditions typical of the early to mid 20th century, than when compared against conditions at the beginning the of the satellite record.”
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13010
And you wonder why the IPCC no longer has this report on its website…excellent post, Steve.
In any case, even if you throw out the pre-1979 data, it’s ridiculous to draw conclusions from such a short period of time. We know that several ocean cycles play out over scores of years, and there are surely more things we don’t know about (think about how vast the ocean is and how little we know about it in general – just consider recent discoveries). It’s a joke to say that Arctic sea ice is in an unprecedented decline with 30 years of data, just like it’s a joke to say temperatures are increasing in an unprecedented fashion with only 50-70 years of decent data at best.
R. Gates usually shows up for Arctic ice discussions. Where is he when we need an explanation for how this IPCC chart is consistent with the alleged Arctic ice death spiral.
SG: Boy, wouldn’t it make sense to plot them using the same baseline? Oh wait, <a hrfef="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html#/supplementary-information"it's already been done. LOL. you’re a loon. As in lunatic.
I did dumbass, and I already gave you the link once.
http://www.real-science.com/arctic-ice-cherry-picking-funding
The ESMR and SMMR are not the satellites being discussed in IPCC AR1 on sea ice. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given that the curve starts before ESMR’s Dec 1972 launch, and has no break between ESMR (end December 1976) and SMMR (start 28 October 1978). This makes for quite a large difference between data source/types versus present figures.
A full discussion is at my blog.
What nonsense. The National Ice center doesn’t distinguish between pre 1979 and post 1979 satellite measurements. Any difference in measurement error is in the noise, compared to the large swings in ice area between 1974 and 1979.
http://www.real-science.com/more-ice-in-2012-than-1974
Unless the shape of the Arctic changed between 1978 and 1979, the pre-1979 data is highly detailed and completely adequate. Your attempt to obfuscate is just FUD.
Some people are concerned about the differences between irreproducible weekly analysis by relatively inexperienced analysts on 100 km grids and those produced by well-trained analysts at few km resolution. Between having observations every day and having to guess what is going on for the weeks you can’t see the ice for clouds.
And some people aren’t.
It is hardly news that we know something about what’s been going on before the satellites. For a modest sampling, see:
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/ice-before-1979.html
The 1979-2012 trend is the one which is constantly presented to news sources and policy makers.
Are you implying that data is being intentionally hidden? What is your point?
Er, it was you who was contending that data was being hidden, in your main post. Per my link, http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/ice-before-1979.html pre-1979 data has been known for quite some time. My post itself being 3 years old.
What is not trivial is making a self-consistent in all details time series of the pre-1979 data with post-1979 data. Those of us who want to base policy on self-consistent data, rather than seeing ‘trends’ that are due merely to analysts learning how to do their job better, or differences in grid size, or observation/analysis frequency, have favored the 1979-present (well, 10/28/1978-present) series as it can relatively easily be made self-consistent. Splicing in the pre-1979 data, if you’re interested in matters of 0.2 million km^2, is not trivial. Different land masks, for instance, can easily differ by 1 million km^2.
Sea ice professionals, such as me, and the folks at NSIDC, are concerned about those possible sources of fake trends. NSIDC is working on it. See Julienne Stroeve’s comments at WUWT.
Anyhow, it’s you talking about ‘fraud’ and data being ‘hidden’. I was posting about additional data 3 years ago. You really could do worse that read my posts on sea ice if you’re interested in sea ice. If nothing else, you wouldn’t have gone after a conspiracy to suppress data when we’re (sea ice people) putting out observations from pre-1979 and have been for years.
People like me are concerned with the hyperbole and fear mongering that comes out of agencies that are tax payer funded.
Here’s an example of hyperbole that I found in about 2 minutes at nsidc …
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/glacier_balance.html
———-
Because they are so sensitive to temperature fluctuations, glaciers provide clues about the effects of global warming (Oerlemans, J. 2001). The 1991 discovery of the 5,000 year-old “ice man” preserved in a glacier in the European Alps fascinated the world, yet the discovery meant that this glacier had reached a 5,000-year minimum.
———
The implication that a “5000 year minimum” was reached is unsupportable. I’d be much happier with an NSIDC that did research and didn’t try to shape policy with their product.
I think it’s a great that we monitor snow and ice and I’m sure you do excellent work. I’d hope you’d convince your coworkers to be a little more careful about drawing conclusions with scant amounts of data.
I don’t work at the NSIDC, so they’re not my coworkers except in the broadest of senses.
At my blog, I regularly post ‘question place’ notes, where all are welcome to ask questions about science (and distance running). http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2012/03/return-of-questions.html is the most recent one and still open.
Thanks for the link Robert.
The same data set showed a large increase from 1974-1979. The national ice center has weekly maps on line since 1972. There is no question that ice extent increased sharply from 1974 to 1979. Why are you trying to obfuscate?
Uhmm horse shit. The damned information is damned hard to find and its buried. Your personal blog isn’t really a referenced source of information. Nor did you really provide information.
But, your blog states, “the Navy realized that in the 1950s when it issued an atlas of Arctic ice cover normals. (I have a copy.) ……”
Is it publicly available? Where? Why is it any fcking sea ice publicly funded site only shows data from 1979?
You’re saying its always been there? Fine. Where? I do hate civil servants blowing smoke up my ass.
I know that damned charts exist. We’ve all known the data existed all along. What I don’t know, (but suspect) is why in the hell do all of the agencies hide them? You say they’re available? Put your money where you mouth is and show them.
The Russians kept excruciatingly precise records, where is it translated to historical data? Where’s ours? And why, do sea ice people then allow NOAA to put this insipidly stupid graph up on their site? http://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/noaa_thumb.jpg?w=600&h=456
steven: I’ve worked with data. So I understand that all data have problems. I encourage anyone trying to draw conclusions from data to pay attention to what problems there are with their particular data set. Those data issues affect what kinds of conclusion can reasonably be drawn. Paying attention to that is clarification, not obfuscation.
suyts: Perhaps you find the information hard to find. I provided links to online data sets 3 years ago. If you were, or are, interested, you can follow those. For the Navy atlas, the full reference is: Oceanographic Atlas of the Polar Seas: Part II Arctic, 1958. H.O. Publication #705. (H.O. = US Navy Hydrographic Office.) Unless google has scanned it, it’s probably very hard to find an actual copy now.
In your quest to decide whether the sources I linked to, or this one, existed prior to some date of interest to you, I’ll suggest Google Scholar (to see if print scientific articles were citing these sources before your cutoff date) and the Internet Wayback Machine (for the links; unfortunately, NSIDC has had several major site name and structure revisions since the Wayback Machine started in 1995).
The Soviet data on ice pack became available in the mid-1990s, as a result of the Gore-Chyrnomrdin accords. The digitized archive is at the World Data Centers for Glaciology. WDC-A for Glaciology is, roughly, the NSIDC. Look there for the AARI ice analysis files. (AARI = Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute; iirc, AARI is WDC-B for Glaciology). It’s rather less frequent and much less extensive than you seem to be thinking. But it’s there, and has been for over a decade.
You complain about there being no public data before 1979, and then post a figure yourself that goes to 1901.
As to graphics, irrespective of NOAA connection, there’s the unfortunate reality that scientists generally are not good graphic artists. As you consider that graphic to be poor, send the site owner a sample of your own rendition of the data and comment as to what makes yours better. And, of course, how you made it, so that they’ll be able to incorporate the methods and ideas.
I love the idea of sea ice people telling NOAA what to do. The reality, unfortunately, is that there are few of us and NOAA takes its orders from places with greater numbers (especially numbers of dollars).
Robert,
The National Ice Center Maps from the 1970s are very detailed and show significantly expanding ice. Your attempts to obfuscate are pointless.