Satellite Problems

As noted earlier, there has been a failure of an instrument on one of the satellites used to measure sea ice. As a result, NSIDC (the National Snow and Ice Data Center) has suspended their sea ice extent reporting.

I’ve released the first file of daily data for the Climate Data Service, which includes both sea ice extent (from NSIDC) and sea ice area (from UIUC, the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). They make it easy to see that a glitch has indeed happened

Here’s the extent for the northern hemisphere, with four recent values circled in red:

Here are the anomaly values:

The glitch isn’t just evident, it’s glaring. It doesn’t just affect northern hemisphere data, but the southern as well:

There also appears to be some trouble with sea ice area as reported by UIUC. Here’s the northern hemisphere area:

Here’s the northern hemisphere area anomaly:

Here’s southern hemisphere area:

And, of course, southern hemisphere area anomaly:

The very recent data are so far out of line, that I doubt even the denizens of WUWT will spin conspiracy theories; it’s just an obvious instrument failure.

NSIDC says they’re working on the problem, I’m confident that UIUC is as well. I haven’t yet looked at data from JAXA, but I’ll be including it in future releases from the Climate Data Service. Just a few days ago, I considered it superfluous because of the better time coverage from NSIDC and UIUC — but it may turn out to be an important resource to fill in some gaps while they work on the other products.

---

This blog is made possible by readers like you; join others by donating at Peaseblossom’s Closet.

Advertisement