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New research suggests that Antarctic sea ice may not be expanding as fast as previously thought. A team of scientists say much of the increase measured for Southern Hemisphere sea ice could be due to a processing error in the satellite data. The findings are published today in The Cryosphere, a journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
Arctic sea ice is retreating at a dramatic rate. In contrast, satellite observations suggest that sea ice cover in the Antarctic is expanding albeit at a moderate rate and that sea ice extent has reached record highs in recent years. Whats causing Southern Hemisphere sea ice cover to increase in a warming world has puzzled scientists since the trend was first spotted. Now, a team of researchers has suggested that much of the measured expansion may be due to an error, not previously documented, in the way satellite data was processed.
A team of scientists led by Ian Eisenman of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, said that much of the increase measured for Southern Hemisphere sea ice could be due to a processing error in the satellite data.
Arctic sea ice is retreating at a dramatic rate. In contrast, satellite observations suggest that sea ice cover in the Antarctic is expanding albeit at a moderate rate and that sea ice extent has reached record highs in recent years. Whats causing Southern Hemisphere sea ice cover to increase in a warming world has puzzled scientists since the trend was first spotted. Now, a team of researchers has suggested that much of the measured expansion may be due to an error, not previously documented, in the way satellite data was processed.
Antarctic sea ice may not be expanding as rapidly previously thought - with much of the increase potentially down to a data error, scientists have said.
While Arctic sea ice has been melting significantly in recent years, satellite observations suggest sea ice cover in the southern hemisphere has been increasing and has reached record highs in the past few years.
The increase in Antarctic sea ice despite rising global temperatures has puzzled scientists and been highlighted by climate change sceptics as evidence of flaws in the theory of man-made global warming.
Read more: Is Antarctic sea ice really expanding as quickly as scientists claimed? Data error found in key climate change data | Mail Online
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The referenced paper “A spurious jump in the satellite record: has Antarctic sea ice expansion been overestimated?” was from Ian Eisenman et al and stated that “much” of the expansion could be due to a processing error:
New research suggests that Antarctic sea ice may not be expanding as fast as previously thought. A team of scientists say much of the increase measured for Southern Hemisphere sea ice could be due to a processing error in the satellite data.
The press release starts with defining the problem. It was the increase in the Antarctic sea ice cover in a warming world that puzzled the scientists. In the paper they also mention the inability of the models to capture the observed increase. The investigators in the paper now try to explain these contradictions by suggesting that much of the measured expansion just may be due to an error in the way the satellite data was processed. Culminating in the title that questions whether antarctic sea ice cover really is setting setting record highs.
In science,…novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially, only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where the anomaly is later to be observed.
–Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
One of global warming’s “novelties” is that satellite measurements show the extent of ice surrounding Antarctica is growing significantly, something not anticipated by our vaunted climate models.
Thomas Kuhn would predict “resistance”, and today we see yet another verification of how stubborn science can be in the face of results don’t comport with the reigning paradigm. The paradigm, in this case, is that our climate models are always right and any counterfactuals are because something is wrong with the data, rather than with the predictions.
“Resistance” means that peer-reviewers aren’t likely to find much wrong with papers that support the paradigm (and that they will find a lot wrong with ones that don’t). Further, the editors of scientific journals will behave the same, curiously avoiding obvious questions.
Perhaps as fine an example as there is of this process appeared June 21 in the journal The Cryosphere, which is published by the European Geosciences Union. It is a paper called “A spurious jump in the satellite record: has Antarctic sea ice expansion been overestimated?”, by Ian Eisenman (Scripps Institution) and two coauthors.
Some researchers now say that the Antarctic trend may have been inflated by an error in the decades-long record of satellite observations of Southern Hemisphere sea ice1. Scientists process data from microwave-sensing satellites using one of two standard algorithms to distinguish bright sea ice from dark open water.
Researchers led by Ian Eisenman, a climatologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, discovered a mismatch between an older and a newer version of the same NASA sea-ice data set that occurred when a satellite sensor was replaced in December 1991. Such “jumps” in data are caused by slight differences in the satellites' sensitivity, and are usually corrected when scientists process the data collected by the probes.
But the error that Eisenman identified — reported July 22 in The Cryosphere — wasn't obvious. He found it only by comparing an old version of the data set with a 2008 version, and says that the data were too noisy to tell which version had been mishandled.
Gains and losses
The finding raises two possibilities, Eisenman and his colleagues say. Either much of the recent mysterious growth trend is actually spurious, or the current figures are accurate but the trend could have been detected years earlier.
The climate scientist who maintains the data set, Josefino Comiso of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, says he is confident that the current data set is correct. Comiso says that he inadvertently introduced a mistake into the record — known as Bootstrap — at some point after 1991, but corrected it unknowingly when he updated the file in 20082.
Comiso and other climate scientists reject the suggestion that his data set may overestimate the recent trend in Antarctic sea-ice growth — by as much as two-thirds, according to Eisenman's analysis. Another NASA sea-ice data set, processed using the other standard algorithm, shows a growth trend similar to that in Comiso's current data
Don't guess you saw much about this over there in climate nazi land..
Remember that claim from NSIDC and Walt Meier that the Antarctic ice expansion was due to a processing error? never mind
Posted on July 28, 2014 by Anthony Watts
NASA scientist says that error has long since been corrected and the increase in sea ice in Antarctica is real.
Remember that claim from NSIDC and Walt Meier that the Antarctic ice expansion was due to a ?processing error?? ?never mind | Watts Up With That?
Im thinking this is posted in the wrong forum!! The AGW climate k00ks never want to talk about Antarctica......its as if it doesn't exist. Watch any Antarctica thread in here.....very, very low turnout by the AGW climate crusaders.
Im thinking this is posted in the wrong forum!! The AGW climate k00ks never want to talk about Antarctica......its as if it doesn't exist. Watch any Antarctica thread in here.....very, very low turnout by the AGW climate crusaders.
they are getting a bit more wary. they have been burned quite often lately when a story comes out that supports their side but goes down in flames within hours or days.
of course this story is about a mistake, either before or presently. doesnt exactly match the 'settled science' paradigm.
"the data was too noisy"... Never stopped any zealots that I know from making claims.
This is why I don't do ice.. Unless it's covering all of the Great Lakes.
It's funny how the step change in Cowtan and Way didn't get any publicity because it went in the 'right' direction but this one does get a lot of media attention because climate science is looking for excuses to explain increasing Antarctic sea ice.
It's funny how the step change in Cowtan and Way didn't get any publicity because it went in the 'right' direction but this one does get a lot of media attention because climate science is looking for excuses to explain increasing Antarctic sea ice.
When global temperatures have been rising for 150 years and Arctic ice extents have decreased dramatically - as well as every other measure of snow, ice and glacier mass maintaining a steady decline, what makes you think it odd that scientists should find increasing Antarctic ice odd? What climate behavior have you seen lately that would make one expect Antarctic ice extents to increase?
It's funny how the step change in Cowtan and Way didn't get any publicity because it went in the 'right' direction but this one does get a lot of media attention because climate science is looking for excuses to explain increasing Antarctic sea ice.
When global temperatures have been rising for 150 years and Arctic ice extents have decreased dramatically - as well as every other measure of snow, ice and glacier mass maintaining a steady decline, what makes you think it odd that scientists should find increasing Antarctic ice odd? What climate behavior have you seen lately that would make one expect Antarctic ice extents to increase?
It's funny how the step change in Cowtan and Way didn't get any publicity because it went in the 'right' direction but this one does get a lot of media attention because climate science is looking for excuses to explain increasing Antarctic sea ice.
When global temperatures have been rising for 150 years and Arctic ice extents have decreased dramatically - as well as every other measure of snow, ice and glacier mass maintaining a steady decline, what makes you think it odd that scientists should find increasing Antarctic ice odd? What climate behavior have you seen lately that would make one expect Antarctic ice extents to increase?
One does not need to 'expect' something before being able to observe it
As I have said for many years here; the slack in the system has been used up to produce results favourable to the consensus, but that can only go on for so long before corrections need to be made to restore realistic figures.
The Antarctic may be just the tip of the iceberg, with other areas following suit. SLR in particular seems ripe for a large correction because the satellite data do not match the tide gauge data.
