To show the effect of climate change by determining whether the sea ice area (or extent) has decreased over the years and to further, predict the extent for the coming years.
In this practical case, we pose the question: Is the climate really changing? More concretely, we want to show the effect of the climate change by determining whether the sea ice area (or extent) has decreased over the years. Sea ice area refers to the total area covered by ice, whereas sea ice extent is the area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice. Reliable measurement of sea ice edges began with the satellite era in the late 1970s. Before then, sea ice area and extent were monitored less precisely by a combination of ships, buoys, and aircraft.
We will use the sea ice data from the National Snow & Ice Data Center which provides measurements of the area and extend of sea ice at the poles over the last 36 years. The center has given access to the archived monthly Sea Ice Index images and data since 1979. The archived data reside at an FTP location (web-page instructions can be followed easily to access and download the files). The ASCII data files tabulate sea ice extent and area (in millions of square kilometers) by year for a given month.
In order to check whether there is an anomaly in the evolution of sea ice extent over recent years, we want to build a Linear Regression Model and analyze the fitting.
DataSet on National Snow & Ice Data Center - https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives.html
Archived Data residing at an FTP location - ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
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