Interesting. It seemed to work for me, at least at first.

You didn't include a closing italic tag at the end of the paragraph you quoted (and, I assume, intended to italicize). You included a second "opening" italic tag - you left out the required slash that indicates a closing tag (e.g., opening tag has just an "i" between the brackets; closing tag has "/i" between the brackets). I added a closing italic tag at the start of this post, so italics should now be turned off on subsequent posts.

Paul, This is the brief explanation of how the sea-ice extent is calculated, from IJIS: "The sea-ice extent is calculated as the areal sum of sea ice covering the ocean where sea-ice concentration (SIC) exceeds 15%. SIC data of JAXA’s AMSR-E standard products are used for this purpose (http://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/AMSR/products/pdf/alg_des.pdf). The algorithm for calculating SIC was developed and provided by Dr. Comiso of NASA GSFC through a cooperative relationship between NASA and JAXA." (See http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm) This appears to be the relevant journal article for understanding JC Comiso’s algorithms: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1196042

Don't know if this will help, Rob... but try using "compatability mode" in IE8. I'm afraid I don't know how to turn that on (I don't use IE8, or IE in general - they stopped supporting the Mac years ago).