Arctic Sea Ice (part 3)

A bracing analysis of the poster child of globalist alarmism: what you always wanted to know about Arctic sea ice but were afraid to ask

Before I put down the error-laden Sea Ice Index (SII) and pickup up NSIDC’s canny Multisensor Analysed Sea Ice Extent (MASIE) project I’d like to do one more thing and that is to run spectral analysis over the daily means. Spectral analysis is a familiar tool to sound and other engineers who work with oscillating signals over time, and the simplest plain English explanation I can offer is that it is a mathematical technique that detects all the periodic frequencies that may be embedded within a complex signal. ‘Periodic’ simply means regular, like a tuning fork that gives off a pure tone at the international concert tuning pitch of A = 440Hz when struck. If we took a tuning fork into a loud and brash New Year party and recorded the mayhem on our smartphone then spectral analysis would reveal that pure tone hidden within all the chatter, clatter, thumping, popping, clapping, slurping and stomping.

So what ‘pure tone’ may we expect to discover within the daily series for mean Arctic sea ice extent? Well, the thing is, I have absolutely no idea! There may not be a periodic signal of any description that can be detected. Then again we know there is strong seasonality so we should see something that marks out the passage of 365 days. In frequency terms this would be 1 / 365 = 0.00274 and I’m placing all my betting money on seeing a single, massive spectral spike at this frequency in the periodogram.