From the Australian
Ice shelves stable over six years
ANTARCTIC ice shelves are showing no sign of climate change, six years of unique research have shown.
Previously on WUWT we discussed the media’s fascination with “melt” when it comes to ice shelves cracking off. Then there’s also this picture that keeps getting recycled. Now there’s the “ice listeners” that hear no change. (see my note at the end)
http://www.ogleearth.com/wissm.jpg
Here’s the article in the Australian
Scientists from Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology are using acoustic sensors developed to support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to listen for the sound of icebergs breaking away from the giant ice sheets of the south pole.
“More than six years of observation has not revealed any significant climatic trends,” CUT associate professor Alexander Gavrilov said yesterday.
Professor Gavrilov and PhD student Binghui Li are investigating whether it is possible to detect and monitor significant changes in the disintegration rate of the Antarctic ice shelf by monitoring the noise of ice breaking.
The pair are using two acoustic stations, one 150km off Cape Leeuwin, the southwest tip of WA, and another off the gigantic US military base on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean.
“They are part of a network of underwater acoustic receivers, or hydrophones,” Dr Gavrilov told The Australian yesterday.
The stations have been used to locate nuclear explosions detonated by India.
More than 100 signals from Antarctica are detected weekly by the Cape Leeuwin station. They are then transmitted to Geoscience Australia in Canberra.
“Six years of results is not long in the scheme of things, so we will keep watching,” Dr Gavrilov said.
The pair will present their research at a conference in Europe later this month.
NOTE: While the science on this is questionable at this point, one should note that if the results went the other way, our valiant media would no doubt trumpet the news worldwide. No doubt we’d see catchy headlines like “Ice whisperers hear climate change in the Antarctic” – Anthony
6 years?
Is that really long enough to allow us to deduce anything about climate change? I keep hearing from the other side that the cooling over the last 10 years is also not long enough to discern a climate trend.
Not sure you can expect a meaningful or significant trend from 6 years of data, but that’s never stopped you before.
But our friends in the AGW community seem to have little interest in hearing this kind of news.
With apologies to Adrian Mitchell.
I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I’ve walked this way
So stick my legs in sediment
Tell me lies about global warming.
Heard the media hacks screaming with Pain,
Couldn’t find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with cornstalks
Stick my legs in sediment
Tell me lies about global warming.
Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames
It’s Al Gore on the TV again
So coat my eyes with graphics
fill my ears with cornstalks
Stick my legs in sediment
Tell me lies about global warming.
I smell something burning, hope it’s just coal trains.
They’re only dropping data which causes iron stains.
So stuff my nose with tree rings
coat my eyes with graphics
fill my ears with cornstalks
Stick my legs in sediment
Tell me lies about global warming.
Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the skating rink drinking iced wine
so chain my tongue with liquor
stuff my nose with tree rings
coat my eyes with graphics
fill my ears with cornstalks
Stick my legs in sediment
Tell me lies about global warming.
You put your parameters in, you get your garbage out,
You take the raw data and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with coral,
chain my tongue with liquor
stuff my nose with tree rings
coat my eyes with graphics
fill my ears with cornstalks
Stick my legs in sediment
Tell me lies about global warming.
Glug (09:16:38) :
Not sure you can expect a meaningful or significant trend from 6 years of data, but that’s never stopped you before.
If you can say “an ice-free North Pole in five years”, then it opens the door for discussions on this sort of timescale.
It’s too darned cold down there in Antarctica for the likes of Al Gore and the Warmers latest smash hit: Wasted Cracks & Floating Ice, Why do I keep listening to you? (with apologies to the late Freddy Fender).
Headline for the story; Final Proof of AGW;
Even with recent solar remission, no discernable reduction in the pace of antarctic ice melt.
Bet me.
Hmm … okay, icebergs cracking or breaking off from glaciers and such make sounds. These instruments can detect those sounds. Fine.
Or can they? They haven’t “heard” any [significant] “melting” in six years. Did they hear any previously? How much? What did it sound like and was it supported by other data.
Is this a sound methodology? (And I really do mean, no pun intended.)
The “6-year” argument is ridiculous. I *guaruntee* that if the 6 year trend was in the direction they wanted to see, they wouldn’t shut up about it over at Reallywrongclimate.
Bob: you are 100% correct.
Anthony – as a dedicated WUWT reader and as a hydro engineer who has worked in some of the hottest, coldest and mediumest climate areas in the world, I have to say that monitoring noise from the Antarctic as a way of providing either pro or con justification for climate anything is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard.
This is a complete joke – as anyone who has spent time in polar regions (or on planet earth) will tell you – this is completely unscientific. All it tells us is how easy it is to get huge amounts of funding for any irrational scam that mighy provide some (however tainted) support for the Alarmistas.
Don’t give them even peripheral credibility by repeating this nonsense.
REPLY: I guess I didn’t make my issue with media coverage of such events clear in the first couple of paragraphs, so I’ve added a note at the end. If the findings went the other way, we’d never hear the end of it. – Anthony
That must be an old ice age photo…there’s no ice on the planet now. We are hockey stick sky rocket burning up all over the planet.
The scientists doing this research differ from many “AGW” alarmists in a couple of ways. They are making observations rather than computer model projections. And, they are candid about the amount of data: “Six years of results is not long in the scheme of things, so we will keep watching,” Dr Gavrilov said.
6, or even 30 years of coling isn’t long enough to prove anything:
“…the Earth has been cooling since 2001 and projected that due to “global variation” the climate would continue to cool for the next 20 to 30 years. […] We are not saying there is not warming due to human activity,” Tsonis told CNSNews.com. ‘We are saying that there are natural shifts on top of that.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44431
But, on the other hand, 6 month of melting in the Arctic, year 2007 or if it would have occured this summer/autumn, should be enough to force radical politics i Copenhagen, where all nations have to pay a few percent of their GDP (into the cap-and-crash) to save us from the by 6 month of Arctic melting proven climate change catastrophe.
Can any warmist believer approve this …suitable methodology?
Well, on top of the “hearability” of changes, the best this study shows is that melting has remained stationary over the last years, not that there is no melting. To summarize: I really think they’re loosing their time (an money).
Since AGW promoters freely assert that one storm, one drought, one heat wave is *proof* of AGW, I think we can enjoy this study as one more refutation of the underlying claims of AGW- that the Earth is under going dangerous global warming.
jlc
As a research engineer having measured “acoustic emissions” in composite fracture, acoustic monitoring of ice cracking makes perfect sense to me. Each acoustic “emission” or pulse gives information as to the magnitude and rate of cracking or rupture. (They also detect collapse of bubbles in cavitation which is critical to monitoring location and degree of cavitation damage.) In the 1980s hydrophones on one side of the Atlantic could detect a hammer dropped on deck on the other side. e.g., See: The Hunt for Red October
Evidence for universal intermittent crystal plasticity from acoustic emission and high-resolution extensometry experiments, Jérôme Weiss et al. Phys. Rev. B 76, 224110 (2007) [8 pages]
For more universal interest see:
Real-Time Underwater Sounds From the Southern Ocean Obel et al. Eos, Vol. 87, No. 36, 5 September 2006 pp 361, 366
I don’t understand the fuss.
1. They are listening for the crack and possible splash when an ice berg calves. That seems to be legitimate data.
2. They can potentially combine the acoustic signature with visual observation and measurement of the size of icebergs.
3. This may provide objective, quantifiable data to show any trend, positive, negative or non-existent, in ice berg formation.
4. I think some of the posters have underestimated the sensitivity of these acoustic sensors, which were designed to detect submarines at great distance and tested to a fare-thee-well.
Maybe I’ve missed something, but “whether it is possible to detect and monitor significant changes in the disintegration rate of the Antarctic ice shelf by monitoring the noise of ice breaking” doesn’t strike me as even slightly bogus research.
The implications are crystal clear: “Warm ice makes less breaking noise than cold ice; same noise, more breaking ice.” We’re all gonna’ burn up and die!
Who knows whether this type of data gathering will yield any results or not. But one can make an absolute bet that is a sure winner. You will never get any results if you never do any experiments.
Can you say Tycho Brahe ! Someone who just gathered a lot of data; very careful accurate data, to the limits of his availablke tools.
But that accurate data gathering enabled Johannes Kepler to formulate his laws of orbital mechanics, with the foreknowlede that it fitted the best available experimental observation.
This doesn’t sound like a high budget experiment; you put some well designed gear out and you record and store tons of data. In six years you may not get any aha! insight; but if you don’t start somewhere you’ll never get anywhwere.
How long do particle physicists collect data on weird particle decays, either from cosmetic rays or accelerator generated critters, before they finally stumble over that mystery that leads to new insight.
Actually I think those Aussies are on to something clever; that may lead nowhere; but is just another piece of data tot hrow in with all the other.
Just think how many gigabytes/terrabytes of totally useless data on random depth ocean water temperature measurements, were gathered over more than a century, before anybody started to question whether it was valid to assume that the water temperature was a valid proxy for the lower atmospheric pressure, and lead climatologists astray fornearly 150 years or so.
If butterflies move a couple of miles from where anecdotal recollections remember seeing one; it’s a big deal in climate change; or maybe just evolution; so why not listen to the planet’s growing pains too.
We must always remember the words of the late, great Julian Simon. Fresh from his victory over the doomsayer Ehrlich,
“He always found it somewhat peculiar that neither the Science piece nor his public wager with Ehrlich nor anything else that he did, said, or wrote seemed to make much of a dent on the world at large. For some reason he could never comprehend, people were inclined to believe the very worst about anything and everything; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they’d been medically vaccinated against the force of fact. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bizarre reverse-Cassandra effect operating in the universe: whereas the mythical Cassandra spoke the awful truth and was not believed, these days “experts” spoke awful falsehoods, and they were believed. Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker. ”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
These should be taught in schools….
JLC, could you elaborate a little bit why you think these measurements are a stupid idea. Referring to your vast experience in “hydro engineering” is a bit vague explanation.
For example, the Whillans ice stream generates seismic waves which are as strong as magnitude-7 earthquakes. Twice a day. But because the energy is released over several minutes, the earthquake does not feel the same as a normal earthquake.
I think listening to the ice movements is a brilliant idea.
I’m skeptical, too. I can’t see being able to tell a medium ice break from a significant one, and I can see large ice chunks already broken off breaking up after colliding. Perhaps the sounds have already been differentiated, but I doubt it.
This research makes perfect sense to me because NSIDC’s very own Mark Serreze says “the Arctic is screaming” (see link below).
http://globalwarming.house.gov/resources/articles?id=0018
It therefore follows that the antarctic could be screaming too…
I find this very amusing. I had been creatively talking of hearing the glaciers creaking as cooling advances, but never thought that people would realy be doing that !! I think I got the idea from hearing the lake cracking while it froze, back in 1960 in the US.
How would they distinguish a crack from breaking to a crack from extra freezing?
I would believe this experiment before I would believe that stupid “global warming causes less wind” research (or what is trying to pass as research).
This experiment seems completely plausible to me. I have worked for the DOD and Navy in the past, it is very impressive what can be done with this type of instrumentation, and this technology has been around for a very long time, improved over and over again through the years. I suspect this method could tell one a lot about a whole lot of other things as well. And yes, I would have said the same thing even if the study showed the Antarctic is breaking up more than we thought.