2 ms·

If you want to show a trend, give us a diagram that shows a trend. A scatter plot with a trend line would be a start, maybe. One can equally interpret the diag

If you want to show a trend, give us a diagram that shows a trend. A scatter plot with a trend line would be a start, maybe. One can equally interpret the diagram from the article as showing a fairly constant level - somewhat varying within a limited range - with 2023 being an outlier. All it tells about is the variance and without at least more year labels there is no way to read anything about the trend from it. [I'm not saying the article is wrong or right, just that it does a very bad job supporting its thesis.]

penteract 3y ago
From the article: > Until 2016 Antarctica's winter sea-ice had actually been growing in size. >"There is a chance that it's a really freak expression of natural variability," [Dr Mallet] says There isn't an obvious trend. I'm pleased that they aren't trying to hide this and that the article is clear that we don't know everything about Antarctica (I'd imagine it's very hard to get data for annual sea ice maxima before we started measuring them). This isn't supposed to single-handedly convince anyone that climate change is happening, but show a piece of evidence that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.
frumiousirc 3y ago
> trend You can play with the data a bit here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-i... Be sure to click the Antarctic button. Arctic (the default) shows 2012 as the lowest record. For Antarctica, last year was the previous minimum and was 2-sigma from the mean. Additional iso-sigma curves are not shown but I'd guess this year is at least one more sigma off the mean. I progressively activate past years and do not spot an obvious trend. So, last two years have deviated significantly with this year deviating yet more so. On the other hand, given the number of measurements, we would expect about two measurements to be outside of 2-sigma. If we do not attribute anything to 2022 and 2023 being correlated, then this is just a fluctuation. On the gripping hand, 2022 and 2023 may be the first two points of an explosive trend.
- weinzierl 3y ago
  Thanks for pointing to the source data. As much as I would be careful eyeballing a trend I would be with eyeballing the absence of one. I really would love to see a proper analysis of this data, but I am in my phone right now. Arctic doesn't really matter much in this regard because the arctic ice doesn't influence the sea level, which I think is the main (but not only) point of the article.

penteract 3y ago

From the article: > Until 2016 Antarctica's winter sea-ice had actually been growing in size. >"There is a chance that it's a really freak expression of natural variability," [Dr Mallet] says There isn't an obvious trend. I'm pleased that they aren't trying to hide this and that the article is clear that we don't know everything about Antarctica (I'd imagine it's very hard to get data for annual sea ice maxima before we started measuring them). This isn't supposed to single-handedly convince anyone that climate change is happening, but show a piece of evidence that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.

frumiousirc 3y ago

> trend You can play with the data a bit here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-i... Be sure to click the Antarctic button. Arctic (the default) shows 2012 as the lowest record. For Antarctica, last year was the previous minimum and was 2-sigma from the mean. Additional iso-sigma curves are not shown but I'd guess this year is at least one more sigma off the mean. I progressively activate past years and do not spot an obvious trend. So, last two years have deviated significantly with this year deviating yet more so. On the other hand, given the number of measurements, we would expect about two measurements to be outside of 2-sigma. If we do not attribute anything to 2022 and 2023 being correlated, then this is just a fluctuation. On the gripping hand, 2022 and 2023 may be the first two points of an explosive trend.

weinzierl 3y ago
Thanks for pointing to the source data. As much as I would be careful eyeballing a trend I would be with eyeballing the absence of one. I really would love to see a proper analysis of this data, but I am in my phone right now. Arctic doesn't really matter much in this regard because the arctic ice doesn't influence the sea level, which I think is the main (but not only) point of the article.