A few days I asked the question about the record Antarctic Sea Ice Extent in 2012 “Anyone wonder why NOAA isn’t making a fuss about this?”
One caveat is that I should have said NSIDC instead of NOAA (NOAA does partially fund NSIDC).
Today Justin Gillis took a cheap shot at bloggers (h/t Tom Nelson) and said:
“The National Snow and Ice Data Center uses a five-day moving average to track such matters, and always waits a few days before announcing a minimum or maximum in sea ice at either pole. That is to make sure the low or high point for the year has really been reached, given that sea ice can change abruptly in response to winds and other factors. The five-day averaging also helps smooth out small errors in the satellite tracking data.
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This longstanding practice has been explained publicly many times, but that has not stopped climate-change contrarians from asserting that the snow and ice center had been trying to hide this year’s record in Antarctica by supposedly failing to make any announcement.”
I checked. The Arctic record was broken on the August 24th and NSIDC waited 3 days to call a news conference for the media on the 27th,
The Antarctic Extent record was broken on September 24th. I wrote about the Antarctic Ice Area coming close to the record on September 24th, but I was 5 days late writing about the Antarctic Ice Extent breaking the record (NSIDC uses Extent and I had not come across the NSIDC data) and did not post until September 29th.
So of course NSIDC held a news conference on September 27th to announce the new record … didn’t they?
No. No news conference.
Obviously there was a media advisory on the 27th. Nope.
If you go the press page for NSIDC you will see that Antarctic Ice Extent record is not mentioned until October 2nd, 2012.
Justin Gillis and the NY Times owes a lot of bloggers an apology.
sunshine hours 