Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturboPanicky predicitions of future ice-free Arctic summers are based on less than two years of data
Posted By: MrFusion [Send E-Mail]
Date: Tuesday, 14-Aug-2012 20:11:58
More evidence that Chicken Little is alive and well in the Mainstream Climate Change community:
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Arctic ICE PANIC sparked by half-baked sat data
Did someone just jump the gun?
By Andrew Orlowski • August 2012 08:43 GMT
Listeners to Radio 4's Today programme - and this includes much of the political elite - will have been alarmed to be told that "the Arctic could be ice-free on a summer’s day by the end of the decade".
Yet the evidence for this "trend" turns out to be drawn from less than two years worth of data.
Dr Seymour Laxon of University College London raised the alarm using radar altimeter observations made by the European-funded Cryosat-2 satellite, a project he helped devise. This allows scientists to gain more accurate mapping of the sea floor and also sea ice extent and thickness.
Cryosat-2 began observing the Arctic ice cap in October 2010, and has been acquiring data since. So scientists have two winter seasons and one summer season on which to base any claims.
Is this a problem? Actually, according to the European Space Agency, it is. "Three to four years of data from Cryosat-2 can be averaged to reduce the 'noise' due to currents and tides and better chart the permanent topography related to marine gravity," it stated.
Using less than three or four years of data is frowned upon - and that's official.
In addition, Dr Laxon himself recommends using much longer timescales. As he wrote in a 2003 paper (High interannual variability of sea ice thickness in the Arctic region Laxon, Peacock and Smith, Nature), "the sea ice mass can change by up to 16 per cent within one year" and "this variability must be taken into account when determining the significance of trends".
~~~~~ CONTINUE AT: ~~~~~
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/14/arctic_ice_everybody_panic/
Posted By: MrFusion [Send E-Mail]
Date: Tuesday, 14-Aug-2012 20:11:58
More evidence that Chicken Little is alive and well in the Mainstream Climate Change community:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Arctic ICE PANIC sparked by half-baked sat data
Did someone just jump the gun?
By Andrew Orlowski • August 2012 08:43 GMT
Listeners to Radio 4's Today programme - and this includes much of the political elite - will have been alarmed to be told that "the Arctic could be ice-free on a summer’s day by the end of the decade".
Yet the evidence for this "trend" turns out to be drawn from less than two years worth of data.
Dr Seymour Laxon of University College London raised the alarm using radar altimeter observations made by the European-funded Cryosat-2 satellite, a project he helped devise. This allows scientists to gain more accurate mapping of the sea floor and also sea ice extent and thickness.
Cryosat-2 began observing the Arctic ice cap in October 2010, and has been acquiring data since. So scientists have two winter seasons and one summer season on which to base any claims.
Is this a problem? Actually, according to the European Space Agency, it is. "Three to four years of data from Cryosat-2 can be averaged to reduce the 'noise' due to currents and tides and better chart the permanent topography related to marine gravity," it stated.
Using less than three or four years of data is frowned upon - and that's official.
In addition, Dr Laxon himself recommends using much longer timescales. As he wrote in a 2003 paper (High interannual variability of sea ice thickness in the Arctic region Laxon, Peacock and Smith, Nature), "the sea ice mass can change by up to 16 per cent within one year" and "this variability must be taken into account when determining the significance of trends".
~~~~~ CONTINUE AT: ~~~~~
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/14/arctic_ice_everybody_panic/
