Historical Ice Information Is Worthless

Cryosphere Today has this graph on their website, purporting to show accelerating ice loss since 1900. It appears entertaining, except for the fact that the data is garbage.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2010.png

Note the two circles which I drew for 1974 and 1979. It appears there was a lot less ice in 1979 than  1974. Sadly for the data fabricators, we have satellite data from that period (which NSIDC chooses to ignore) that shows that there was a lot more Arctic ice in 1979 than 1974.

www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf

Similarly, the CIA reported in 1974 a 10-15% increase in Arctic ice over the previous few years. 

www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf

The Cryosphere Today graph shows the exact opposite. It is complete garbage, and looks like someone just took a pencil and made up data.

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
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21 Responses to Historical Ice Information Is Worthless

  1. gator69 says:

    If observations do not match your predictions, change the observations.

    “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”

  2. Tim says:

    Note that before 1960 all the curves are almost straight lines. This indicates that they don’t have a clue as to what the actual data was: no good data – lets fabricate a straight line.

  3. Eric Webb says:

    Thanks Steve for showing that, now I can see why the NSIDC only goes back to 1979, pure cherry picking for their own agenda

  4. johnmcguire says:

    It seemed that cryosphere today was one of the few sites where honesty prevailed. Until now . I guess they decided to be a team player.

    • miked1947 says:

      johnmcguire:
      Sorry to tell you this but I have ignored Cryosphere today after the first Summer I was watching their fairy tales. I agree the others are worse. All of the reported ice conditions are subjective rather than objective, but it is treated as objective. Major Fail!

  5. Dave N says:

    Which satellite(s) were they measuring from in 1900?

  6. Peter Ellis says:

    The bottom figure shows an anomaly of ~-0.2 in summer (July/August/September) 1974, and about the same in J/A/S 1979. Statistically indistinguishable, much like they are shown by CT. The big difference between 1974 and 1979 on the bottom figure occurs in the winter months at the start of each year.

    Note also that the NOAA graph at bottom is based on a 10% concentration threshold and is digitised from a 2.5 by 1 degree grid, so is extremely coarse resolution.

  7. Peter Ellis says:

    Oh, and I hope I shouldn’t have to point out that the CIA report refers to “world snow and ice”, and says nothing specific about northern hemisphere sea ice.

  8. u.k.(us) says:

    Not sure about quoting the CIA, anything they say is only to influence things 3 or 4 perturbations after the information has been utilized 🙂

  9. Peter Ellis says:

    Of course, you could always refer to the NSIDC’s own graph, here:
    http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/images/mean_anomaly_1953-2011-v2.png

    It does indeed show a substantial rise between the start of 1974 (anomaly a little above zero) and the start of 1979 (anomaly slightly over 2). It also gives enough context to make clear that this doesn’t affect the conclusion that Arctic ice is being rapidly lost in recent years. Julienne’s already linked you this graph once, it’s a shame you choose not to discuss it.

  10. Peter Ellis says:

    And before you complain it’s hidden away somewhere obscure, let me point out that it’s the main graph on the front page of their section on “Sea Ice”.
    http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html

  11. gator69 says:

    Ice Melts?! How long has THIS been going on?

    Billions of years… :zzz

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