Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to It's the mean calculation that stops at 2000, not the data.

I don't understand what you're saying
ER — (archived)

The graph goes all the way to Feb 2009, and the trend is both unambiguous and dramatic. Over the last 30 years the pole has lost well over a million square km of February ice, a significant amount considering the '79 measurement, the first and highest on the graph, was well over 16 million sq km.

This is a continuous and systematic drop in the regression line fitted to those points, and upon a visual inspection, the negative slope is unmistakeable. Now, there may conceivably be some other explanation besides global warming for this drop in Feb sea ice, but you certainly just can't dismiss it out of hand as some statistical blip or clever misrepresentation...

This is the text NSIDC captioned Laurie's graph with:

"Figure 3. Monthly February ice extent for 1979 to 2009 shows 2009 as the fourth-lowest February on record.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center"

"Monthly average ice extent for February 2009 was the fourth lowest in the satellite record. February 2005 had the lowest ice extent for the month; February 2006 was the second lowest; and February 2007 is in third place. Including 2009, the downward linear trend in February ice extent over the satellite record stands at –2.8% per decade. "

http://nsidc.org/

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (46 posts)