In the past I have often suggested that bias is – or could become a problem in climate science. Most people hope that our best scientists would be the least likely to fall prey to various forms of bias, but we are all human. I am biased. Just like everyone, I find it difficult sometimes to put on “blinders” and approach issues, data, papers as objectively as possible. Thankfully, there are a lot more resources online nowadays to help filter fact from fiction and to verify what other people say and report. Transparency and openness gain traction every year.
One nice online tool is arctic ice visualization. We hear stories all the time about how the arctic ice is melting and the world as we know it is going to be destroyed by anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Sometimes, you might wonder if there is a little hyperbole in the environmental reporting. Thankfully you can view satellite images and graphics of the ice yourself. As long as computer programmers at the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) are not “massaging” the data before it reaches our eyes, there is little reason to doubt what we see.
Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent on March 21st of this year. Take a look at the images here and compare the ice this year to last year on March 21st. Just eyeballing it, you would say it looks fairly similar to last year. You might notice less ice in the North Sea region. This March has a little less than last March. Something else you might notice with a casual glance is that the magenta color looks darker this year. This is an increase in ice concentration. You could think of it as being “thicker” this year, even if it was not as expensive.
March 2014 vs. March 2013
In fact, multi-year ice in the arctic expanded dramatically this past Winter. The seems like a good thing, doesn’t it. If the ice gets thicker and sticks around for multiple years, then it becomes more stable and less prone to completely melting. One might think that this would be heralded as positive news. You would be wrong. It wasn’t heralded. Not in this popular media article or this original from the NSIDC. The headline was framed in order to highlight the fact that the maximum extent of the ice this past winter was close to a record low – the fifth lowest on record. The focus is on the negative aspects of the data. The headline could have easily read “In a good sign for the arctic, multi-year ice expands by 350,000 square miles!” If the writers were looking for readers, a positive headline could have drawn just as many (or more, because it is somewhat surprising). Sadly, the doom-n-gloom headline is all too familiar. Are people just generally negative about the future? Is it bias in environmental reporting?
Before anyone starts to think that arctic ice is definitively on the rebound, remember that the long term trend over the last couple of decades is downward. Whether or not you think AGW is the sole cause of temperature changes around the planet, conditions, on average, are warmer (even though we just had one of the coldest winters on record in Northcentral Wisconsin). It the globe continues to warm up another couple of degrees in coming decades more arctic ice will melt. It is basic physics. It might not be the end of the world (which I have discussed many times before), but there will be less ice.
Have a swell Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew