Guest post by Steven Goddard
From The Washington Post :
According to the University of Illinois, Antarctic sea ice area is nearly 30% above normal and the anomaly has reached 1,000,000 km2. You could almost fit Texas and California (or 250 Rhode Islands) inside Antarctica’s excess sea ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
According to NSIDC, over the last 30 years Antarctic sea ice extent has been growing at a rate of nearly 5% per decade, and set a record maximum last year.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot.png
And as you can see in the NSIDC image below, some Emperor Penguins have an extra long walk to their nesting ground – due to excess ice in the Weddell Sea and around West Antarctica.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_daily_extent.png
Well fed polar explorers, dressed properly for the cold climate
Sadly though, biologists using computer models have forecast that some Penguins are headed for extinction due to loss of Antarctic sea ice. Maybe that gives the males something to think about as they huddle in -70C weather all winter long, trying to keep from freezing to death or dropping their eggs. I suggest a Catlin-like expedition to the South Pole for biologists.
Male Emperor Penguins huddling to stay warm
The 30% excess of ice has not been widely reported, but there has been lots of talk in the press the last couple of days about ice breaking off the Wilkins Ice Shelf – the broken area being about one pixel in the NSIDC image above. Looking at the Wilkins picture below, I’m having a very tough time seeing any evidence of melting around the fractures, or any evidence of water pooling on the surface. Normally, such fractures are caused by tensile or shear stress, likely due to a change in currents. Ice melts from the edges towards the center, and that ice is very thick – up to 200 metres. Blaming the clean fractures seen below on warming and melting seems highly questionable – at best. I suggest bringing some actual structural and mechanical engineers into the discussion – how’s that for a novel idea in the AGW world?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WilkinsIceSheet/images/wilkins_aerial_photo_bas.jpg
Meanwhile in the Arctic, sea ice area is about 500,000 km2 below normal, which means that global sea ice area (Arctic + Antarctic) is about 500,000 km2 above normal. You could fit Dr. Hansen’s home state of Pennsylvania plus Al Gore’s home state of Tennessee plus Gordon Brown’s Scotland plus Dorothy’s Kansas inside the excess global sea ice area. Sounds like a real global meltdown, doesn’t it?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
Perhaps we should be worried – about those poor penguins struggling across an extra 200 miles of ice.
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Imagine how much larger the positive Antarctic sea ice extent would be if all of those “Texas-sized” slabs hadn’t calved-off over the past decade or so!
Sadly though, biologists using computer models have forecast that some Penguins are headed for extinction due to loss of Antarctic sea ice. Maybe that gives the males something to think about as they huddle in -70C weather all winter long, trying to keep from freezing to death or dropping their eggs. I suggest a Catlin-like expedition to the South Pole for biologists.
If you read the article you linked to you’d see that the data was collected by biologists on the ice in Adelie Land and that the concern was about that particular colony, which has shown population crashes in the past. It’s also part of the coast which doesn’t show an increase on the map you posted. A shame that the facts get in the way of a good rant!
Wait for the next winter.
It will be worse than this one and arctic ice will reach record levels.
So Norway has its share of idiots too?
“Sounds like a real global meltdown, doesn’t it?”
Damn when I think the models don’t predict such a global meltdown, I feel much conforted in ther validity.
Why not mention the fact that this is exactly what is predicted?
Here’s a question for ice watchers: what is the total area and mass of Antarctic ice shelves, and what percentage of these have been lost due to the recent cracks?
There you again citing facts. Like, whatever….
Steven,
Nice work. I especially like the “Well fed polar explorers, dressed properly for the cold climate”, and the comparisons of area to the various states, and the “ice breaking off the Wilkins Ice Shelf – the broken area being about one pixel in the NSIDC image.”
I advocate globes for reference rather than printed maps in an atlas because – in the US at least – the countries of Europe generally get a full page map while other places such as the US or Canada or Africa or Middle America are shown at very different scales. Many folks grow up thinking France and Africa are the same size. Thus, your comparisons are greatly appreciated.
Good charts, nice photos – well put together.
If we could just get some of the politicians to read some of this information instead of spouting off as H. Clinton and C. Gregoire have done this week.
Someone posted this the other day, and it fits these folks:
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Sir Winston Churchill
John
Steven,
This analysis is somewhat misleading. Based on data from the NSIDC (which you can download yourself here: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/), March 2009 had a global extent anomaly of 0.216 million km (relative to the 1979-2000 baseline that NSIDC uses), and February 2009 had a global extent anomaly of -0.728 million km. You can see the global sea ice trend over the past 30 years with the latest two months highlighted here:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture65.png
The decline in global sea ice area is statistically significant, as per Lucia’s analysis:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/iceanomalywithuncertaintyintervals.jpg
While it is true that Antarctic sea ice is unusually high this month (and has generally, though not significantly, been growing), that really doesn’t have any bearing on what is happening to Arctic sea ice. Combining both into a global sea ice trend really isn’t that meaningful, since the two out-of-sync periodic datasets result in a lot of monthly noise. The folks at Cryosphere where you got your graphs explain this pretty well:
“In the context of climate change, global sea ice area may not be the most relevant indicator. Almost all global climate models project a decrease in the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area over the next several decades under increasing greenhouse gas scenarios. But, the same model responses of the Southern Hemisphere sea ice are less certain. In fact, there have been some recent studies suggesting the amount of sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere may initially increase as a response to atmospheric warming through increased evaporation and subsequent snowfall onto the sea ice.”
If you are interested in the trend in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice separately, you can see them at:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
and
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
respectively.
Look at the trends in the data. Singling out individual months in noisy data sets makes it too easy to cherry-pick an anomaly to make a point.
Norway’s Foreign Minister? Now there’s an unbiased scientific observer. These AGW folk seem to be so focused on staying on message that they’re missing what’s really been happening with polar ice. When will they awaken? When the ice sheets start to cover North America and Europe again?
Meanwhile, one of President Obama’s science experts(?) is proposing, as reported in this AP story ( http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97ECHLG1&show_article=1 ), that we consider geoengineering as a possible step to take in solving the problem of warming. {What problem? When did warm become a problem?} Perhaps John Holdren ought to get out of politics and go back to physics. Last time such silliness abounded was in the 70’s when a looney idea of spreading soot over the Arctic ice was being talked about as a means of preventing a new ice age.
Actually, closely reading of the articles/studies on penguins does’nt refer to extinctions, but rater, “local extinction”, a process where they move their rooking locations southward or northward depending on climate change.
There are areas that have been studied where some species gave up a loction thousands of years ago, but the species lives on.
Gotta use these politically correct scientific terms that convey one meaning (extinction) while not telling lies.
So, Anthony, I have a question:
The graph of Sea Ice content you have posted on the side bar, is that arctic sea ice or total global sea ice? From what has been presented in this article, the arctic sea ice deficiency appears to be made up in the antarctic sea ice.
For the picture of the male Emperor Penguins huddling to stay warm, I think it is fake. If you look at it it looks like a map of the lower 48 US. Flip the picture, rotate it a bit and and strech and it looks like the USofA.
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3704/218/
Antarctic sea ice up 43% since 1980. Sounds dire indeed. If you’re a hungry penguin and can’t find open water.
It all the aerosols’ fault…Who knew?! http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html
Zeke Hausfather makes some cogent points, but those comments make it even more puzzling that the those promoting the global warming hypothesis continue with great gusto to release emotive news releases about the Antarctic’s shelves breaking off BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING.
If they have confidence in their GCM (and it would appear they should not) they would surely find the phenomenon they trumpet rather a nuisance since it confounds their “increase in Antarctic ice through global warming” thesis
If only those damn pinguins could hold on to some floating ice, that could give a prime picture to show the WORLD they are in grave danger. Wait! Darn, pinguins only have wings, they can’t cling!!! @ur momisugly#&^%^$#@ur momisugly%
The interesting thing is that ice has very little strength in tension, and is very weak if stressed in bending. If you have ever seen those dramatic Karate demonstrations where the martial arts master breaks a stack of ice blocks, it is a classic example of a stage illusion that exploits exactly that weakness in ice. Long blocks of ice as used in those demonstrations can barely support their own weight when supported at their ends, and all the martial arts master needs to do is shock the top block enough to initiate a crack in its lower surface. Once that is accomplished all the work is done by gravity and the ice itself.
It is actually remarkable that large floating ice sheets are able to resist tidal flexing. The breakage of large slabs is to be expected.
Larry
To forestall the obvious question of “how could global sea ice be decreasing significantly when Antarctic sea ice is increasing”, it is useful to look at the trends in each. Over the past 30 years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a rate of 0.516 million km per decade, while Antarctic sea ice has been increasing at a rate of 0.125 million km per decade. This means that global sea ice is decreasing at 0.391 million km per decade.
You might object, saying that there has been a fundamental shift in the last few years, and using data from 1979 to present obscures this change. However, if we use data from 2001 to present, for example, the rate of decline in global sea ice is even greater: 0.765 million km per decade. Granted, its too soon to tell if the last decade was anomolous, just as its too soon to tell if the last few months were anomolous.
“The ice is melting,” Stoere said. “We should all be worried.”
The ice is melting every spring, Mr. minister.
Wow, I owe Flanagan a huge debt of gratitude. I had never before realized that the warming models had predicted a steadily increasing ice sheet in the antarctic and a recovering ice sheet in the arctic. In fact, silly me, I mistakenly thought they had predicted just the opposite. My world view is turned upside down.
“So Norway has its share of idiots too”
Yes but here in the UK, we lead the world.
David Madsen (11:38:59) :
Its Artic sea ice.
Phil. (11:26:14) :
If you read the article you linked to you’d see that the data was collected by biologists on the ice in Adelie Land and that the concern was about that particular colony, which has shown population crashes in the past. It’s also part of the coast which doesn’t show an increase on the map you posted. A shame that the facts get in the way of a good rant!
Reading that article confuses me, as it says this:
Certain predictions even suggested that the geographic range of Antarctic penguins may shrink following climate warming because the continent limits their movement south. Over the last 50 years, climate change has been most pronounced in the Antarctic Peninsula, where Terre Adelie is located. In the future, the Ross Sea-where sea ice actually has increased in recent years-may be the last sanctuary for penguins.
But Terre Adelie is on the other side of the continent from the Antarctic Peninsula, an area with average or above average sea ice.
Hey, Penguins in danger because of too much ice, Polar Bears in danger because of too little (at least that’s what we’re being told)?
Obviously these animals find themselves at the wrong Pole!
Solution: Noah Ark, 2009 style: ship Bears to Antarctica, and Penguins to the North Pole and Bob’s your uncle.