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Posted by Jeff Id on August 13, 2015
The Antarctic ice is melting and is well below average for the first time in 3 years. Global sea ice is also below minimum. It looks like the death spiral has come to pass….
From Cryosphere Today
![seaice.anomaly.antarctic[1]](https://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/seaice-anomaly-antarctic1.png)
Except that it is winter there and that means it is simply not freezing at a typical rate. It still spells doom though, I’m just not sure how.
A C Osborn said
What do you think has happened to all the Ocean heat required to bring about that melt?
The Ice is around -20 C most of the time so there is a lot of energy being drawn from the Oceans and Atmosphere.
Take a look at the Antarctic on NuSchool’s earth.
Jeff Id said
Actually, it is just freezing less but I get the point. I need to see how much of the extent loss is related to simple compression due to wind/current also. Sometimes it isn’t really less ice but this is a pretty major shift so that seems unlikely. It looks like it may be a current flow change bringing some warm water in contact with the ice..
Gary said
Checking for a measurement error is the first thing to do when the variation from the trend is this large.
gary23902003 said
Jeff, I don’t really know how to read all this “stuff” I found, but there may be something to it. You might understand it better than me. Sea ice data used to be recorded using something called Goddard. This is the first year data source is listed as NRTSI-G. Here: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/May/S_05_area.txt down at the bottom of the page. Then, there was a problem with the satellite reporting the sea ice data HERE: https://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/ There may be more dominoes yet to fall.
Jeff Id said
I really appreciate your notice of the red text on the seaice index. The timing is far too coincidental.
gary23902003 said
Thank you. What I meant to say is if you are changing the way you measure/record data, you no longer maintain the same error discrepancy. You’ve started a new one, like moving the benchmark closer to the sextant. You don’t start over, you just start from there.
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-new-high-in-may.html
Jeff Id said
I recall a situation with the temperature record in the past, a problem started with data loss and was later recognized to create a trend bias that required a satellite switch and some data replacement. It’s not likely that it will happen again but it is worth watching.
gary23902003 said
P.S. I think everything is just fine.
gary23902003 said
The West Antarctic Rift System contains five active sub-ocean volcanoes, with geologic thermal activity from the Mcmurdo volcanic group and Marie Byrd land area, and continues on to the Larsen b ice shelf area. http://www.plateclimatology.com/how-geologic-forces-are-melting-the-antarctic-larsen-b-ice-shelf/
Maybe I’m missing something in the translation, but I can’t understand how Antarctic ice goes from an all-time high to a three year low in a year. If so, the planet hasn’t warmed for the last 15-20 years. So it can’t be true unless something else is going on.
A C Osborn said
Gary, it didn’t even take a year, most of it has been in just the last 3 months.