The ice at Antarctica has been increasing ever since it was first measured. There is more ice at the south pole now than at any time in human measured history. Which is a surprise as all the climate prediction models show that the Antarctic should be ice free by this time. Looks like reality just isn't cooperation with the climate models.

http://nsidc.org/

I think the issue in the article is that the adjustment is small relative to the overall ice gain, yet it is being played up by the authors as significant.

It will be interesting to see how this gets sorted out. I know one of the authors a little bit and another quite well. The one that I know well is very intelligent and cautious in his work, which would make me believe there's something to it.

It's funny to watch the denier spin-meisters on this: wilds_of_virginia says the "ice always gets adjusted down", when the entire point of this article is that it got adjusted up! Jim Z sees this as a nefarious plot backfiring. In reality there is a strong disagreement about what is going on, so no "adjustment" has yet been made.

Please people, remote sensing is not that easy. How many times did Roy Spencer and UAH get the temperature wrong before they got something that approximated the temperature as measured with thermometers? If Figure 2 in the paper is really correct, there is definitely something funny that happened to the processing. If that's true, was it an evil plot? No, it was almost certainly some error in the algorithm or coding.

The increase in Antarctic ice is real, as explained by this article http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/0...

Yes. We have global cooling.

Knowing how satellite measurements are obtained, the explanation provided in the article you referenced is unlikely to make any sense. I say unlikely as there is always a possibility of some kind of compounding error in the measurement process. If you remember, the UAH and RSS temperature records had omitted to take both orbital decal and satellite drift into consideration, as these issues become more pronounced there was a corresponding reduction in observed outgoing radiances that introduced a cooling bias.

The same error can’t happen with the ice measurements as these are obtained in a completely different way, but it does demonstrate that errors are possible.

However, the claims in the article are completely at odds with ice mass and balance distribution. This would mean that two different satellite observations would each have to be providing erroneous data, at the same time, in the same place, but for very different reasons. It’s not impossible but it’s highly unlikely.

The reference to the bootstrap algorithm also doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The first assessment is to determine whether ice exists within a given pixel – it’s a yes or no outcome. If it’s a yes then the next task is to determine the percentage of ice area (not extent) within the pixel. If it exceeds 15% then the pixel is deemed to contain ice and for the purposes of calculating extent, it is the full area of the pixel (usually 525km2 or 600km2) that is counted; thus extent always exceeds area.

The algorithm could fail or have some bias when determining if the threshold percentage had been reached, not in determining if ice were present or not. Therefore errors from an errant algorithm could affect calculations such as ice mass balance or ice extent, but not ice area.

Now, the supposed error does relate to extent, but the scale of the error is in no way correlates to the difference in size between extent and area.

Unless something has gone horribly wrong and ice is being erroneously recorded in areas far away from any actual ice then, from the information currently available, it does indeed look like both extent and area are increasing.

Hope this makes some sort of sense, it’s hard to explain without getting technical.

Do you have a relevant issue with the adjustment itself such as evidence or scientific reasons that it is inappropriate, unnecessary, or incorrect – or are you just whining about something you know nothing about, but just do not like?

Funny how the ice always gets adjusted down and the temperature always gets adjusted up (at leastrecent temperatures).

It is the job of scientists to adjust data. Until we build a 100% perfect measurement device (which would, by its very nature, contradict the laws of thermodynamics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) you're just going to have to accept it.

http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/8/273/2014/tcd-8-273-2014.html

Another adjustment to climate data. Can you guess which direction the adjustment goes before you read the link?

Hey, I thought expanding Antarctic sea ice was expected?

Apparently not, IF YOU READ MORE THAN THE HEADLINE.

"Here, we show that the increase in the reported trend occurred primarily due to the effect of a previously undocumented change in the way the satellite sea ice observations are processed for the widely-used Bootstrap algorithm dataset, rather than a physical increase in the rate of ice advance."

So it seems likely that there was a error processing the satellite data, rather than an actual increase in the area of sea ice.

<<< ....a previously undocumented change in the way the satellite sea ice observations are processed for the widely-used Bootstrap algorithm dataset, rather than a physical increase in the rate of ice advance. >>>

I wonder if they were using the algorithm to exaggerate the Arctic (yes I am that cynical) and it backfired on the Antarctic.

LOL,

On the good side they do not YET claim to know for sure and they do NOT claim that the artifact accounts for all of it.

I'd like to see how they explain why empirical data for deep oceans temps shows cooling and not warming. Wasn't this where all the missing heat was going?