This is amazing. I wonder when CT SIA is going to follow, because the combination of CT SIA stalling and IJIS/JAXA SIE dropping like a rock covered with armed concrete, is causing CAPIE to do crazy stuff:
From my point of view, this is distortion that could be related to satellite resolution and other ways to measure ice on NSIDC. With Wipneus comments, I understand that CT SIA is based on NSIDC figures. NSIDC SIE is 5.1 million km2 today (August 27) while IJIS/JAXA SIE is around 4.6 million km2. So, could we have the same distortion in NSIDC SIA, like we have it in SIE?
The comparative figure for NSIDC SIA / SIE jumped from 61.32% on August 18th to 70.58% on August 24th matching the jump on the CAPIE graph above.
IJIS and NSIDC SIE have been dropping at almost exactly the same rate over August although the daily NSIDC figures vary much more. Todays 177K drop on NSIDC is only the third biggest fall this month whereas the IJIS 137K fall yesterday was the biggest since July.
IJIS has fallen 1,883K km^2 since Aug 1st while NSIDC has dropped 1,865 K km^ 2 indicating that even with daily differences the decline has been very similar.
The differences between NSIDC and IJIS is primarily caused by IJIS using a smaller area to determine the 15% threshold. If I remember correctly NSIDC uses a 25 * 25 Km area whereas IJIS uses a 10 * 10 km area. This generally causes IJIS to be lower than NSIDC.