I noted in my previous article that NSIDC did not advance the age of the week 37, 2010 ice in the animation in Walt Meier’s WUWT article. The week 37 blink comparator above makes two important changes to the ice representation.

First I, advanced the age of all of ice marked as 2+ on the NSIDC week 37, 2010 map. Second, I changed the colour of all non-MYI ice to black, in both maps. This makes it much easier to see what is going on. What becomes clear is that the 3 year old ice (green) is much better situated in 2010 than it was in 2009. In 2009, most of it was doomed to be pushed out the Fram Strait east of Greenland. In 2010, it is much further west, where most will probably survive the winter.

The animation below is one I created last week – which advanced the age of the “end of September” ice from the NSIDC October 4 newsletter.

Again, NSIDC had not advanced the age of the ice by the end of September, so I had to do it for them. Note in the blink comparator below that the position of the ice  in the  “end of September” map and the “week 37” map are identical.

What this tells us is that NSIDC’s “end of September” map from their October newsletter was actually a week 37 map, and probably did not accurately represent the age of the ice at the end of September.

Below is their original animation.

The blink comparator below from 1995 shows how NSIDC normally advances the age of the ice around week  37. Note that all the surviving ice gains a year in age between week 33 and week 37.

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Reader “diablobanquisa” posted some more information on his blog, showing another inexplicable change in two different versions of the week 30 map.