Sea Ice Data Cut-off: Climate Alarmists Panic, But Is It Really a Crisis?
10 hours ago Anthony Watts
I’ve spent years at Watts Up With That debunking the overhyped narratives surrounding climate science, particularly the obsession with sea ice as a supposed “canary in the coal mine” for global warming. The recent Space.com article, dated July 10, 2025, titled “US military cuts climate scientists off from vital satellite sea-ice data,” has predictably stirred up alarmist rhetoric about the loss of data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) operated by the Department of Defense.
The article claims this move blinds scientists to a critical climate indicator, but let’s take a step back and examine why this might not be the catastrophe it’s made out to be—and why sea ice data, in the grand scheme, isn’t the climate proxy it’s cracked up to be. The Space.com piece details how the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will lose access to SSMIS data, which tracks sea ice coverage. The article paints this as a devastating blow, tying sea ice loss to catastrophic glacier melting and sea level rise, while also noting commercial benefits like shorter shipping routes.
It mentions NSIDC’s pivot to Japan’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) data, but frets about a temporary data gap. Their tone is predictably dire, framing the decision as part of a broader attack on science, with references to budget cuts, NASA mission threats, and evictions of scientific institutions (like GISS).
Now, let’s cut through the hyperbole.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/10/sea-ice-data-cut-off-climate-alarmists-panic-but-is-it-really-a-crisis/
