Posted on 11/10/2015 5:09:52 PM PST by ForYourChildren
Last week a study was published in the Journal of Glaciology by a group of NASA researchers reporting that satellite data shows that, as a whole, Antarctica has been gaining-rather than losing-ice mass during the past two or more decades.
So was NASA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrong about Antarctica's ice loss? Is the Antarctic ice growing?
The short answer is best summarized by the title of Andrew Freedman's article on Mashable (which everyone should read): "No, NASA has not reversed itself on the dangerous melting of Antarctica."
However, in less enlightened (or maybe honest) circles, the study's finding is being reported as a massive turnabout of previous research showing the continent to be shedding ice at an increasing rate.
The study does not contradict the troubling trends seen in Western Antarctica.
According to this study, the gains in ice from increased precipitation in the continent's interior, particularly across the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, is enough to offset the melting occurring in the West Antarctic and Antarctic Peninsula.
What these reports usually are missing are several critical points:
- This is one NASA study. Other NASA studies say different and research continues. It is a mistake to simply assume that this one is right and the others are wrong.
- Even if the study is correct, it doesn't indicate that global climate change is not occurring. The increase in ice mass is the result of increased precipitation, which is the result of increased atmospheric water vapor, which is the result of increased global temperatures. (There are numerous other indicators that our climate is changing).
- The study's lead author, Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, agrees that the overall global rate of ice discharge into the oceans is increasing. "The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away," said Dr. Zwally. "But this is also bad news," he added. "If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for."
- The lead author also notes that the state might be temporary. It could take only a few decades for the ice melt in Antarctica to outweigh the ice gains.
What's Going on in Antartica?
According to this study, the gains in ice from increased precipitation in the continent's interior, particularly across the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, is enough to offset the melting occurring in the West Antarctic and Antarctic Peninsula.
However, the study does not contradict the troubling trends seen in Western Antarctica where there has been widespread loss of ice along the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas.
And what this study really illustrates is how difficult it is for scientists to measure small changes in ice. Fortunately, NASA is developing new tools-due to launch in 2018-that will help scientists more accurately measure long-term ice changes in Antarctica. The research on this continues, but is hardly a reason for not taking action on climate today.
Thank you for the link. I very much agree with Moerner when he talks about the financial incentive for small island countries to perpetuate the “sea rising” hoax.
I was in the Kiribati Islands two years ago and had a conversation with a local congressman about this. He told me bluntly that when they need money, they just invite some minister from a western nation to see a subsiding area in the island of Abaiang, moan about this terrible global warming/sea rising problem caused by the west and the visiting party would quickly open its wallet to clean their mind of any wrongdoing....
It was truly an eye opening conversation.
We're played for fools by people all over the world... but that is an eyeopener ch.man...
1. Antarctica is big.
2. Don’t take it as a single climate entity.
3. Often what happens on one side of big does NOT happen on the other side of big.
4. In the past, the ecoNazis will often scream that two feet of ice has melted from Antarctica.
5. What they do not tell you is that the ice loss was on the western slope. On the eastern slope, the ice has increased by three feet.
6. Ice increases need to be measured in both square mileage AND depth (volume). Another trick is that they will measure square miles and scream how Antarctica has lost X square miles of ice but will leave out how the ice that is left has increased in depth, or vice-versa.
6. Never, ever trust ecoNazis.
Well, we can thank God for Nils-Axel and the few like him. In 2003, as a world geography teacher (and one who added as much sanity and level-headedness to this issue as I could muster), I obtained a scientific journal article where I learned the vagaries and pitfalls of trying to measure sea level (many of them mentioned here), and was startled and enlightened to find that the satellite laser-measuring system had followed sea levels from its objective perch aloft and found that the sea level had risen 4mm in the prior decade, plus-or-minus 7mm. Like Morner said: “no trend whatsoever”.
My jaw hit the floor with a big thud. I had my answer for all the global warming alarmists from then until now: please, can you tell me how much the sea level has risen these past two decades? And, of course, they can’t. Like the article says, their fears and conjectures are not based on evidence, just requirements which fit their theories.
This is another great article to augment my point. Thanks.
Ah, that explains it. In Gore’s world, his brain boiled off the instant he was born.
Thanks for sharing Migraine - glad you enjoyed the piece. We can fight back...
Here’s one that just plain old fashion fun:
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