Sea Ice Area vs Latitude
Posted by Jeff Id on February 17, 2012
I’m not sure the best way to present these results but I’ll start with just the photos. I was curious how the sea ice looked by latitude band. We know from previous posts that there is a minimum sea ice level which contains some noise bias. This post shows sea ice area in each degree of latitude band by area for each day of the year.
the Air Vent 
StuartR said
That’s amazing. Thanks. I love visual depictions of data and I can see the three dimension make sense immediately not that I have any expert conclusion to make!. Now to squint and scroll and see if my brain picks up any patterns.
Genghis said
I know it is a Rorshach test : )
I see a damn bursting and flooding the entire world. No wait, I see a butterfly flapping its wings around a Lorenz attractor. No wait, I see a waterfall getting rebuilt every year.
Can I have my pills now?
Brian H said
Hm. Can you make them into a sequence film clip? Hard to see changes year to year.
Carrick said
Here you go:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4520911/Climate/jeff_3d_ice.avi
Brian H said
Carrick;
Thx, but stops at 1996!
HLx said
Hi jeff! Could you organize in a video?
Matthew W said
That is certainly a different perspective.
I saved the photos to my desktop and just ran them through Windows picture and fax viewer and could see it like an animation.
Interesting that below 70 Latitude, there doesn’t seem to be much real changes in the pattern of ice.
And above 70, it certainly doesn’t look catastrophic.!!! (or worse then we thought !!)
HLx said
@Carrick:
The video only shows 1 image.. 😦
Matthew W said
# 8
I see 22 images, did the video play for you?
Jeff Condon said
I’m working on a video but need to get the plots back to 1978 working. Missing data caused those images to not plot. This post took a lot of hours to make so when I got tired yesterday, I just put the images up so others could see what I’m seeing.
Laymen Lurker made the statement that all of the sea ice below about 72degrees latitude melts every year. It seems to be a very accurate representation from these plots but the first years of the series are the ones which show the most ice, so we need those to verify it fully.
The poor little quad-core laptop which powers tAV central is chunking away.
Matthew W said
#10
“The poor little quad-core laptop which powers tAV central is chunking away.”
I hear Heartland Institute is funding projects…………………………………….!!!!
Chris Law said
Nice graphics Jeff, you’re going to made Tisdale step up his game
Thanks for the avi Carrick
Interesting line about 42 degrees that appears non zero for almost all years even in the summer
Nic L said
Thanks, Jeff: very interesting and informative plots, beautifully presented.
[thanks Nic]
Carrick said
For those of you with problems seeing the full video, I suspect you need to download the avi and play it locally. On a slow internet, it may not play properly via streaming.
Layman Lurker said
Jeff – very nice post. Carrick, sweet video.
#11 Matthew – actually, there is a downward trend in ice extent south of 71 lat. Here is a plot of the Ice Extent maximums since 1979 (minimums S of lat 71 are always near 0)
Layman Lurker said
Interestingly, while total ice extent is dominated by the values north of 71 lat (roughly 80% of total at annual max), up until about 2004 or 2005 the trend in the ice extent maxima – at lat 72 and north – was upward. There is only a weak correlation between the maximums north and south of lat 71.
Verity Jones said
I have graphics envy – very effective way of showing this Jeff.
@Carrick
no problem watching the video, but it’s unfortuate that WordPress doesn’t host .avi files directly – upload to Youtube would allow embedding.
Verity Jones said
Ah I should have checked this https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/warning-anti-science-data-video/ before posting