NASA, Scripps researchers fact-check Antarctic sea ice measurements
Arctic ice (Credit: Pink floyd88 a, via Wikimedia Commons)
The amount of sea ice floating around the Antarctic appears to be growing, according to The Guardian. Scientists want to know why.
Those putting forth hypotheses have recently come up with a new one: satellite measurements may not be trustworthy. So researchers at NASA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography put together a study to investigate possible changes in measurement quality.
They found that changes in sensor calibrations may be to blame for data sets showing ice acceleration. Scientists identified a 1991 sensor transition as a pivotal moment. They post-processed the data after that point, adjusting for the variation they found, revealing a much different trend line for Antarctic sea ice.
Full results of the study are published in The Cryosphere.
Image: Arctic ice (Credit: Pink floyd88 a, via Wikimedia Commons)
2 Comments
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Alec aka Daffy Duck
August 13, 2014 at 5:03 pm
Antarctic, see your link. Not arctic
Jeff Gillies
August 15, 2014 at 12:08 pm
Thanks. We’ve corrected the error.