A new paper published May 15th in the the journal The Cryosphere utilizes 12 years worth of RADARSAT data to determine the rate at which some well known ice shelves in Antarctica have been moving and changing, and the answer is: “not much”. In fact it appears there has been a slowing down. First a map of Antarctica and the most worrisome Ross Ice Shelf (marked by the red x) is in order:
If you follow the alarmosphere and MSM related to the Ross Ice Shelf and others, you get these kinds of stories:
- West Antarctic ice sheet collapse even more catastrophic for U.S. coasts
- West Antarctic ice shelf – a nudge and a push from collapse?
- Antarctic ice shelves ‘tearing apart’, says study
- Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World
Clearly, there’s lots of gloom and doom surrounding Antarctic ice shelves for the worry that they’ll cause catastrophic sea level rise if they cut loose.
This study Twelve years of ice velocity change in Antarctica observed by RADARSAT-1 and -2 satellite radar interferometry (Full paper here) with radar data seems to indicate there not much change in the past 12 years, the authors write:
Overall, however, the observed changes have little impact on the mass balance of the region. We therefore conclude that in contrast with their counterparts in the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas (Rignot et al., 2008) the ice streams and ice shelves in the broad region under investigation herein have not been changed in a significant way in the past 12 yr, which suggests that the ice dynamics of the entire region does not have a strong impact on the mass budget of the Antarctic continent.
That’s quite a statement compared to the news headlines. To paraphrase NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze famous “The Arctic is screaming” quote, I suggest that from the perspective of the data presented in this paper, I’ll say “The Antarctic is snoring”.
Here are some highlights and graphics from the paper:
Fig. 2. Ice surface velocity maps for Central Antarctica for 1997 (a) and 2009 (b) overlaid on MOA. (c) shows the velocity difference dv (2009–1997) for the entire region. Superimposed on (c) are velocity contour lines taken from the IPY ice velocity map (Rignot et al., 2011b). Blue tones indicate a slow down. The two dark red regions on the ice shelf edges (Ross Ice Shelf near Roosevelt Island and Filchner Ice Shelf) indicate pre-calving events.
