Antarctica – warming, ice melting – not yet

There’s lies, damn lies and statistics…
I do love it when old m. nature sticks two fingers (well one for all you non UK types) up at the supremely knowledgeable beings that we are :o)
Repeat after me: The science is settled, the science is settled, the science is settled.
Can you get a frostbitten brain I wonder – might help explain that original paper…
Cheers
Mark

Two things:
1- The sea ice extent in Antarctica is high this year, was low last year (see the graph). It’s fluctuating without any positive or negative trend.
2- The Antarctic is loosing 200 Gt of ice each year…
E. Rignot, J. Bamber, M. van den Broeke, C. Davis, Y. Li, W. van de Berg, E. van Meijgaard (2008) Recent mass loss of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from dynamic thinning, Nature Geoscience
So how exactly is this compatible with the above assertion that “ice is not melting” in Antarctica?
REPLY: Well Flanagan, look around. Some areas are losing mass, some are gaining:
http://www.physorg.com/news4180.html
or this one, contrasting what was thought to be losses
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/295/5554/476
The whole mass loss “Yes it is! No it isn’t!” schoolyard fight over Antarctic ice mass balance isn’t very convincing. You quote a loss of 200 GT out of the whole mass of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Hmmm what I found most interesting is that in all of the studies I researched, none seem to give the figure in relation to the total mass for the Antarctic Ice sheet. For example this one from NASA:
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/GRACE/publications/press/012308_jpl.pdf
“The team found that the net loss of ice mass from Antarctica increased from 112 (plus or minus 91)
gigatonnes a year in 1996 to 196 (plus or minus 92) gigatonnes a year in 2006.”
Wow such accuracy in measurement. At least they have the honesty to show error bands.
A commenter Ed Ring at Eco World, sums it up nicely (emphasis mine):

It isn’t easy to find information on the total land-based ice mass on Antarctica, but if we accept the claim that sea levels would rise 61 meters if 100% of it melted, we can impute the mass. There are 335 million square kilometers of ocean on the planet, so you can easily calculate the ice mass of Antarctica must be about 20.5 million gigatons. A net loss of 150 gigatons against a mass of 20.5 million gigatons is nothing. It is beyond the rounding error – certainly beyond the capability of the Grace satellites to accurately record.

Even the Eco World blog operator doesn’t believe there’s a problem:

“In the March 25 2008 issue of EOS, there was a News item by Marco Tedesco titled “Updated 2008 Surface snowmelt Trends in Antarctica” (subscribers only). It reports the following:
Surface snowmelt in Antarctica in 2008, as derived from spaceborne passive microwave observations at 19.35 gigahertz, was 40% below the average of the period 1987–2007. The melting index (MI, a measure of where melting occurred and for how long) in 2008 was the second-smallest value in the 1987–2008 period, with 3,465,625 square kilometers times days (km2 × days) against the average value of 8,407,531 km2 × days (Figure 1a). Melt extent (ME, the extent of the area subject to melting) in 2008 set a new minimum with 297,500 square kilometers, against an average value of approximately 861,812 square kilometers.”
This evidence suggests that Antarctica, where 90% of the land based ice in the world resides, is increasing in mass. And this fact is ignored or downplayed in virtually every mainstream report available today, and indeed the mainstream press continues to infer that Antarctica is melting at an alarming rate. But on balance, the ice mass in Antarctica is not melting, it is probably getting bigger.
As Pielke wrote me earlier this week, “My views have not changed… I agree that the alarmist view being widely disseminated is not supported by the science.”

Not to worry Flanagan. Your view is simply suffering from the annual “ice shelf cracks off a berg everybody freaks out kabuki MSM theater”. Will we get to see a frantic repeat of this photo again this year?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/media-addicted-to-melt-when-it-it-should-be-crack/
Spin from Reuters: Over 500,000 square kilometers gained is just “a bit”; while 55 square kilometers broken away was “huge”
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/09/spin-from-reuters-over-500000-square.html
As for your statement, ” It’s fluctuating without any positive or negative trend.” Wrong again Flanagan.
There is a positive trend in SH sea ice anomaly:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
or this view with a trend line if you like
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/south-ice-anomaly1.jpg
But don’t take my word for it (since I never take yours) read what others have to say:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/27/why-the-greenland-and-antarctic-ice-sheets-are-not-collapsing/
and the paper
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/OllierPaine-NoIceSheetCollapse-AIGNewsAug.2009.pdf
So yes Flanagan, your argument relies on media hype coupled with measurements that are not convincing and have large error bands, plus are miniscule in comparison to total mass.
To paraphrase Ed Ring using your 200 GT number: “A net loss of 200 gigatons against a mass of 20.5 million gigatons is nothing.
Not alarming. Go work for SMH or CBS News writing headines, you’d be good at it.
– Anthony

So it looks like a massive 2,500,000 square kilometers of new ice. As Darth Vader said to Luke in the “Empire Strikes Back”, “impressive, most impressive”.
I guess it’s a WHITE OUT this year in the antarctic!!! Ha ha… great film too!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteout_%282009_film%29

So where does that put 2009 in terms of the last few years when arctic and antarctic ice totals are added up? Graphs please.

It is my sad duty to inform you, that after a long illness, journalism is now dead….. Please send flowers.

You can’t tell if a gigantic continent is warming the last 50 years with so little weather stations.

Would it be possible/fruitful to produce an analysis of sea ice extent limited to the regions that Steig et al claim are warming?

They have to get rid of the “some areas have been cooling for a long time” to make it sound compelling, it goes against the laws of AGW 😛
Seriously, until Amundsen actually gets above the freezing mark enough to melt their snow cover I wouldn’t panic.

Cooling is the new warming….

Re: Flanagan (10:33:15)
Flip one or the other over for comparison:
1) http://i41.tinypic.com/29zxus7.jpg [credit: Bob Tisdale]
2) Figure 7 here:
Sidorenkov, N.S. (2005). Physics of the Earth’s rotation instabilities. Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions 24(5), 425-439.
http://images.astronet.ru/pubd/2008/09/28/0001230882/425-439.pdf
Also suggested: Read Yu.V. Barkin.
I get stunned that so few mention the very clear decadal/multi-decadal north-south oscillations. My guess is that many people don’t take into account the high latitude of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) (and erroneously expect that everything should be symmetric about the equator). So many miles to go with this discussion…

Anthony,
Flanagan just likes the attention from you and others each time he makes his unsustainable assertions. Admittedly, the responses make this blog lively and entertaining.

“bryan (11:51:15) :
RE: MikeC (10:25:45) :
Even when there is more ice we have to remember that changes in the northern ice pack are a product of wind, not temperature.
Wind alone can not melt ocean sheet ice. It takes heat to melt ice, either increasing air temperature or increasing ocean temperature”
For definition see:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
“The sea-ice extent is calculated as the areal sum of sea ice covering the ocean where sea-ice concentration (SIC) exceeds 15%.”
So if an area has 16% ice and wind in the appropriate direction removes enough ice to reduce this area to 14% there is a decrease in extent. No melting needed.

Thanks anthony for the answer
However, could you please point me toward more recent esitmate showing there’s no net loss of Antarctic ice shelf mass? The science study you mentioned, talking about some doubt over this, is 6 years older than the one I’m mentioning. 6 years, that’s a lot for research! The more recent NASA study you link to undoubtly gives an accelerating loss of mass – even including the error bars.
Concerning the sea ice “growing”, here is my problem, examplified on the August anomaly (maxima)
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png
the error on the slope is even larger than the slope itself! And August is the month where the confidence level is the highest… So one could say there’s a 0.4% annual increase at +-0.5%? Nonsense.
The rest of your links, alas, are simply blog science and op-eds. no real science.
Please for the rest of people here: do some research before qualifying my assertions as “unsustainable”.
REPLY: OK then you are on record saying NSIDC data is nonsense. So are the ice mass measurements and the worries from them, same problem, error is greater than the signal. As for the request you make, do it yourself, I’m not keen on doing work for you. You mention 6 years, but that assumes that the recent work is better. In normal science that might be true, but given the trend of polarization and politicization of climate science, I have less trust in more recent work that addresses these issues.
And you still haven’t addressed why 200 GT annual loss against 20 million GT is an issue to worry about. At that rate of loss it will take 100,000 years for the Antarctic to be gone assuming the trend continues. By then many other climate forcings like Milankovitch cycles will have kicked in. I’m not worried about your worries.
And given just a few years of measurements how do you know its not simply noise? As you point out, NSIDC’s own trend is below the noise band of satellite measurement. There’s been no physical weighing of the ice mass, it’s all estimates from sat/radar imaging with very little historical data.
I’m coming to Brussels soon by invitation. Don’t be surprised if I show up at your office at the University for a photo op. I’ll bring a funny hat for you to wear. – Anthony

And wind doesn’t just move the fringes, it moves the whole ice sheet. That’s why the North Pole station started out at 90 degrees and moved to below 83 degrees lattitude this year since April

I wintered at McMurdo Station this year. We had back to back storms that dumped almost 7 feet of snow on our station. It took weeks to clear out that mess. Late August at Pegasus Airfield (ICAO Identifier: NZPG) is horribly cold. -48 F one day late August this year if I remember correctly.

Anthony,
The proportional mass loss seen is tiny. But GRACE can make it out using differential measurements between a pair of satellites. After all GRACE is measuring such changes against the gravity of the entire mass of the Earth, not just the Antarctica ice mass!
The issue is the sea-level rise that comes from that loss, and as the volume of the ice is so large these become significant even if the ice loss is small. A 1% loss gives a two-feet increase in sea level.
The GRACE data indicate that the sea-level rise from this mass loss increased from 0.3 to 0.5 mm a year from 1996 to 2006, now close to the sea-level rise from Greenland ice loss. It all depends on how the trend works out to see if this is a real problem. I don’t think GRACE is the best tool in the short term for working out these trends to the accuracy required to quantify any threat here.
I certainly agree with your criticism of the errors. 110 +/- 90 to 200 +/- 90 gigatonnes a year is really all the precision the errors can justify. But the satellites of GRACE are determining to above a 95% confidence level that the Antarctic is losing ice.

Changes in the northern ice pack are primariy a consequence of the temperature of the water flowing into the Arctic Circle from El Nino events (or the lack of them) some 5 to 10 years earlier.
A secondary influence is wind but that depends on the position of the air circulation systems which are closely linked to the average global rate of oceanic energy emission with a lag of only a few weeks.
The sun is too low to have a significant effect even in the Arctic summer but it does have some effect.
At present we have a falling temperature of water flowing into the Arctic Circle because there has been a recent powerful cooling La Nina event which has led to a cooling of the other oceans as the effect spreads slowly around the planet.
In the meantime we have a moderate El Nino which has pushed the air circulation systems somewhat poleward but not as far as during the warming spell from 1975 to 2000. This effect is temporarily opposing the effect of the cooler water reaching the Arctic Ocean but not by much.
The sun is weaker than it has been for a century but that is not a large enough influence to have much effect at this stage.
The stage remains set for a substantial energy loss from the northern continents this winter. Only a very powerful El Nino will assist us. I see that such an El Nino was predicted by warming proponents for this year but so far it has failed to materialise.
The global air temperature is primarily dependent on the rate of energy release from the oceans. If the energy release from the oceans fails to match the energy loss from air to space we will see cooling of the air. To achieve warming of the air we have to get more energy released by the oceans than is lost to space.
I have previously suggested that the average latitudinal position of all the air circulation systems is the best indicator of net global warming or net global cooling but that is hard to measure
I think I can now be more specific.
The latitudinal position of the ITCZ can serve as a proxy for the average latitudinal position of all the air circulation systems.
There is a position at which it represents neither net warming nor net cooling. We do not yet know what that position is but it is north of the equator because there is more ocean in the southern hemisphere and the oceans set the point of balance. The rate of oceanic energy release dictates the size of the equatorial air masses.
During the recent warming period the ITCZ drifted further north from the equator. During the Little Ice Age it was approximately on the equator. I understand that it has recently drifted a little closer to the equator.
All we have to do is get the sequence of events in the right order and then consider the scale of the different inputs.
The fact is that oceanic energy release varies and that is the primary climate driver on at least up to century time scales. Solar influences operate on longer time scales but I am undecided as to whether they can have an effect over a couple of solar cycles. I think they do but Leif has made me doubtful.
Oceanic energy release operates on two time scales. Through ocean circulation over many (possibly 5 to 10) years and through the air in a matter of weeks.
Getting the balance right between the oceanic timescale and the air timescale is key and the movement of the ITCZ helps with the diagnosis.
The scale and timing of the solar effect needs further consideration.
Needless to say it seems that in the face of these natural forcings any change in quantities of GHGs seems to be unworthy of consideration.

Flanagan (10:33:15) :
“1- The sea ice extent in Antarctica is high this year, was low last year (see the graph). It’s fluctuating without any positive or negative trend.”
Reply: The reason there is no trend is that the amount of ice at any one time is the product of a mass of inter-connected climate mechanisms. As our climate is a dynamc chaotic system, trying to find linear trends is nonsensical, and any trends you see are dependent on time period and your personal beliefs – therefore meaningless.
Flanagan (10:33:15) :
“2- The Antarctic is losing 200 Gt of ice each year…”
Reply: Do you really believe that it is possible to measure the volume of Antartic ice to an accuracy of +/-200Gt at any moment in time? If you really believe it, I wish you’d send me some of the stuff your smoking – must be good!

Sensationalism sells. That’s at least part of the reason why the media hypes the AGW theory. A headline like this sells papers:
“Earth’s temperatures rising alarmingly fast. We’re all gonna die!”
On the other hand a more realistic headline like;
“Earth’s temperature about the same as it was 100 years ago. Ho hum.”
That doesn’t sell papers.
Now what happens if the media gets the idea the earth is cooling. I can picture the headline:
“Earth cooling alarmingly fast. We’re all gonna freeze to death!”
I guess that would sell papers too.

Steven Wilde,
Eh? What is all this mumbo jumbo based on? The wind pushes the entire ice sheet past Greenland where the sheet breaks up and melts. For discussion purposes, this makes the Alaska and Eastern Russia side of the sheet the back side of the sheet. The NOAA has a nice Arctic Theme Page with plots of the North Pole Station’s location plotted by the Argo system. It moved nearly 8 degrees lattitude twards the south. That is roughly half of the ice sheet getting pushed into warmer waters this year since April. The strength of the winds and the thickness of the ice are the major factors in how much ice will dissappear in a year (excluding my ignorance of the precipitation numbers during the same time, but if there is more precipitation in a year, you will have more ice for the wind to push. Lets include more cloudiness during the summer which will allow refreezing to start earlier). Now lets go back to the back side of the ice sheet. If temperatures are high enough, as they are in August, then no ice will re-form until temps drop. I doubt that heating caused by an El Nino 5 or 10 years before would cause enough changes in the Norwegian Current’s temps to melt the ice in place farther into the ice sheet (but if you run into any data showing correlation and a lag between ENSO and Norwegian Current temps or speed, please share). That’s why it takes a decades for the ice to thin. If the winds are blowing hard for 20 years, the older ice finally gets pushed out, making it easier for the newer and thinner ice behind it (currently 1-2 years old) to be pushed out of the arctic. But when the winds slow down for 20 or so years, then the ice slows down and gets thicker and older before it is finally pushed past Greenland.

metnav (13:45:53) : “I wintered at McMurdo Station this year. We had back to back storms that dumped almost 7 feet of snow on our station. It took weeks to clear out that mess. Late August at Pegasus Airfield (ICAO Identifier: NZPG) is horribly cold. -48 F one day late August this year if I remember correctly.”
Now that’s what I call a serious WHITE OUT!!! When living in Edmonton one year in the mid 1970’s we had a massive dump of about three or four feet over a week or so… quite fun for kids… but seven feet! Wow! Think of all the tunnels and forts you could build in that!
Hey Smokey, thanks for the graphs. What is interesting about the NH graph is that the last year shown, May 2009, peeked (correct spelling) over the median line and almost looks like 1987… heading to a new piling on of ice… oh and the graph is a half year out of date too… so the spike should be higher for today… this seems to be the case even though the red trend line is still headed downwards.
My observation is that Nature doesn’t follow neat happy statistics, she does what she does without our math games. Or put it another way the trend line follows the way she is leading by a gap. We only learn the trend line way after what happened. And we think that we can predict the future with trend lines from past data. That’s quite funny for complex systems that have inherent randomness in them not to mention many factors the best of us evolved great apes don’t understand. We certainly are the planet of the apes.
Anyone have links to the latest daily up to date NH, SH and NH+SH ice extents? Also Ice Mass estimates would be nice to see in a graph. Graphs that are kept up to date daily would be the best. If they are on the side of the site I can’t find them.
Oh, and these graphs show the extent above 1979 by a million or so sq km, so what’s the fuss about? Nada. Oh wait, the shape of the outline has changed! Oh noooooooo…. the shape has changed… http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_images/newspost_images/11_1979-2008_antarctic_ice_concentration_extent.jpg
I do have to say that this fuzzy graph, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/antarctic.seaice.bandw.000.png, sure looks cool.
I wonder if anyone is mapping the ICE extents onto the GRACE gravity maps of the Earth and taking into account the effects of the irregular gravity forces in the ICE flows and formations? Are these variations in gravity enough to put a noticeable force onto the ice caps and their surrounding water areas and water flows? Could these changes in the local gravity fields impact the NH ice cap, or the ice around the land mass of the antarctic? Or are the differences too small to be concerned with?
Oh wait I guess my question is a very good one considering one search with The Google on the Intertubes turned up this link at Nasa doing this research: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/ . Interesting stuff, he says scratching his head wondering what it means…
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/GRCprOceanCirc_Full.jpg
“Unless otherwise noted, images are provided by University of Texas Center for Space Research and NASA. Image credit: Courtesy of Steve Jayne at Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography and Victor Zlotnicki, JPL. The figure shows three datasets, whose arrows show ocean currents off the East coast of the U.S, 1000m beneath the surface. The top panel is obtained from the GRACE geoid, satellite altimetry, and ship measurements of temperature and salt. The bottom panel only differs from the top one in the fact that the best geoid prior to GRACE launch is used there. The middle panel shows direct measurement of those currents by floats deployed from ships. This region of the N. Atlantic, showing the Gulf Stream, is one of the best studied in the World’s Oceans, and where the amount and quality of data from shipborne instruments is highest. In data poor regions, the new information provided by GRACE together with satellite altimetry will increase our knowledge of ocean circulation. Colors: grey: land, white: lack of data; others: the height of the sea surface above the geoid. Currents flow around these highs and lows, much as wind flows around highs and lows of atmospheric pressure. ”
Yes, Al Gore does seem like he’s suffering from the pandemic of obesity in the NH although he might have to tighten his belt after the carbon markets crashed… oh wait he has a fortune in income from his science fiction slide show… which supposedly raked in USD$49,756,507! That should keep him in the fat for a long time. Wow… PT Barnum would be proud of Gore.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=inconvenienttruth.htm

Still relevant today 100%
The Greenhouse Conspiracy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5949034802461518010#

“No sir, I emphatically do not think they [Dr. Mann et. al.] deserve anything other than scorn and ridicule” – deadwood
How about a public spanking with a paddle broadcast on global television for scientific fraud? Oh wait, Dr. Mann was chastised by the NSA… too bad they didn’t break out the paddle.

TomP said;
“But the satellites of GRACE are determining to above a 95% confidence level that the Antarctic is losing ice.”
That is a far greater confidence level than the Met office believe, who are supposed to be the world authority on the subject.
This is a job advert carried on their web site recently;
****
Polar ice-sheet modelling scientist
Salary: £25,500 + competitive benefits, including Civil Service Pension
Generic Role: Senior Scientist
Profession: Science
Permanent post at the Met Office, Exeter
Closing date for applications: 11 June 2009
Background information
A significant uncertainty in future projections of sea level is associated with dynamical changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and a key aspect of this uncertainty is the role of ice shelves, how they might respond to climate change, and the effect this could have on the ice sheets. The goal of the post is to contribute to improved scenarios of sea-level rise, which is an important aspect of climate change, with large coastal impacts.
Specific job purpose
Incorporate a model of ice shelves into the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model to develop a capability to make projections of rapid changes in ice sheets, thereby leading to improved scenarios of future sea-level rise.
Specific job responsibilities
 Evaluate existing ice-shelf models and their appropriateness for coupling to a global climate model, considering the ocean and atmosphere boundary conditions required.
 Implement a suitable ice-shelf model into the Hadley Centre Earth System model. The resulting coupled model will be used to study the behaviour of the ice shelf under climate change conditions.
 Work on additional improvements to the land-ice component of the Earth System model, which will then be used to produce new projections of the ice-sheet contribution to future sea level.
 Collaborate with colleagues at the University of Bristol and elsewhere to ensure smooth delivery of ice-stream model components, and manage the links that directly relate to this project.
Qualifications, skills and abilities required
Essential
 A 2.1 degree or above (exceptionally a 2.2 may be considered if evidence of proven capability in relevant research) in physics, mathematics, oceanography, meteorology or a related subject with significant mathematics or physics content.
 A PhD or equivalent experience in a physical or mathematical science.
 Significant experience of either oceanography or glaciology models, and ability to acquire expertise in glaciology or oceanography, as required.
 Demonstrable experience in computer modelling.
***
tonyb

Smokey,
I’m sure people can form their own conclusions concerning your character from the posts about the bet you first offered.
Nevertheless, I’ll make sure that each month as the UAH measurements come out we’ll see if you hadn’t reneged what would have been the outcome.
I’m not interested in the money, but to see you squirm on a hook of your own making does provide compensation that money can’t buy
REPLY: The whole question is moot anyway, I don’t allow bets on WUWT. So nobody sends me anything. I wouldn’t take Smokey’s or your money anyway. You want betting action both of you meet up in Vegas. – Anthony

Bryan,
if you paid attention to NASA press releases on wind and current changes in the Arctic you would know that virtually all the ice loss there was due to the ice being blown south where it COULD melt.
You would also be aware that the last three years wind and current changes have moved back to earlier regimes where the ice was NOT being blown out of the arctic.
It NEVER warmed enough above the arctic circle to melt all the lost ice in-situ. The DMI Polar Temperature link Anthony has so kindly placed on the side bar can quickly erase this idea!!! Click through the history and you will see little change in the temps exceeding Melt Temp which is handily marked on the graphs.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

a jones,
The latest GRACE mass loss figure is 210 +/- 90 Gtonnes. Why are you confused that this is more than two standard deviations, or at a 95% confidence level, more than zero?
TonyB,
I said:
“It all depends on how the trend works out to see if this is a real problem. I don’t think GRACE is the best tool in the short term for working out these trends to the accuracy required to quantify any threat here.”
The Met Office says:
“A significant uncertainty in future projections of sea level is associated with dynamical changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets…”
How did you come to the conclusion there’s a contradiction here?

Anthony,
Now you have tackled the Global Ice Extend to a level where even Flanagan can be transferred to a department under a light observation regime, I would like to ask you if you could spend a publication on the latest Pro AGW commercial campaign which is launched this weekend with a commercial to stop climate change in order to save the rain forest, starring a.o Prince Philips and a frog (the frog is the animal with no ears).

And the new pro AGW movie (the follow up of An Inconvenient Truth), “The Age of Stupid”: http://www.ageofstupid.net/the_film
I think it is good to have our comments all over the web asap.

I do not doubt Mr. Brignell’s expertise, he is really very good indeed, but I find his website not quite to my taste.
But Mr. Briggs is very good too.
In the end all they are telling us what we knew and should know, and how to spot the charlatans who would bemuse us with faulty logic, numbers and pseudo scientific quackery.
Alas it is all too extant and we must do battle with it as best we can.
So call me an old fashioned curmugeon if you wish but I find Mr. Brignell’s clown a little florid for my taste, but i do find his incisive views on epidemiology excellent.
Mr. Briggs is very good too, if rather more classical and political in American terms which I neither understand nor can comment on.
No matter.
It is the electric light that slew the ghost and it is the light that exposes the mountebanks and their quackery, dress it in cod scientific jargon as they will.
Kindest Regards

Looking at the papers you posted in response to Flanagan, I note that the ones showing an increase in Antarctic Ice mass are for only part of the ice sheet – one being the Ross Ice Shelf, and the other being the ‘interior’ exlcuding the edges – and climate models have always predicted an increase in thickness in the interior (increased snowfall in warmer but still below freezing air), and loss around the edges.
It appears the only study to look at the whole Antarctic ice sheet mentioned in this thread (I did skim so perhaps I missed something) measures an overall ice loss.
I admit the result is probably uncertain. And that the current rates aren’t particularly alarming – sea level rise is 3mm a year and most of that is supposed to be thermal expansion not ice sheet loss. However the fact that observations show a loss of ice when models do not predict such loss should be at least enough concern to want to closely monitor and get better information?
And it is certainly a different picture from ‘sea ice is increasing’ therefore by unstated implication all ice in Antarctic is increasing that I think some people may have.

Sunny Greenland, currently:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/GL.html
Timeshare Vacations in Antarctica:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/AA.html
Lovely Yukon:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/CA_YK.html
Balmy Nunavut:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/CA_NU.html

Michael hauber (21:50:13)
“We show that 72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27+- 29 Gt yr-1”
“The change in mass of the interior (80% of the omitted area)
is likely to be small.”
http://www.cpom.org/research/djw-ptrsa364.pdf

Thanks Bender.
And the other 20% of the omitted area includes areas near the edge of the western peninsula which is melting rapidly but difficult to measure accurately. If I interpret a somewhat confusingly worded conclusion correctly, they esimate that when 100% of the Antarctic area is considered that overall there is an ice loss of 35 Gt/y, with uncertainty of +/- 115 GT/y – so overall no meaningful trend either way detected in that paper.

TomP said:
“I said:
“It all depends on how the trend works out to see if this is a real problem. I don’t think GRACE is the best tool in the short term for working out these trends to the accuracy required to quantify any threat here.”
The Met Office says:
“A significant uncertainty in future projections of sea level is associated with dynamical changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets…”
How did you come to the conclusion there’s a contradiction here?
***
Because you then spoilt that perfectly reasonable statement by saying:
“But the satellites of GRACE are determining to above a 95% confidence level that the Antarctic is losing ice.”
Clearly the confidence level is less than that.
tonyb

Layne Blanchard (17:32:22) :
That’s a lot of ice surrounding that red hot continent! Must be a scorcher down there! What’s the actual in that deep red area, -20C ?????
Layne, I don’t know about the red west but the pink east temps can be monitored at this link:
http://www.aad.gov.au/weather/aws/dome-a/index.html
Currently about -65C. The best I’ve seen this winter was about -79C. We’re starting to see diurnal movements in the temp so the sun must be back 🙂

I think the GRACE paper may be reasonable, even if it comes from the University of Colorado.
Climate scientists have repeatetly said, that Antarctic ice may increase in a warming environment, due to increased precipitation.
So the opposite is also true, Antarctic ice loss is compatible with COOLING temperatures, allowing less precipitation.

OT–
CNN this morning, we’re back to Greenland melting, with dire consequences:
“We accompany oceanographers in inflatable boats as they collect data on the warming water currents in the fjord. All this research, they say, points to sea levels rising beyond current predictions.
There are still those who question humankind’s role in the warming of the Earth’s climate, but these scientists are not among them.
“Things could be very bad,” glaciologist Dr Gordon Hamilton tells me. “If we don’t start to do something about it now we’ll very quickly reach a tipping point from which there’ll be no return. And the consequences for society as a whole would be catastrophic.”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/09/20/greenland.arctic/index.html
And this has to be true, because the scientists are “independent” this time:
“Joining Greenpeace on this expedition was a difficult decision for CNN. Does it compromise our editorial independence on what can still be a highly divisive issue? …
Traveling with Greenpeace allowed us to record powerful images of Greenland’s accelerating melt. And we met independent scientists who believe the world must act boldly to slow down change that science is struggling to keep pace with. ”
Wasn’t there a recent discussion about how much thicker the icepack is?…and how more ice in the center pushes ice out to the edges?
JimB

TonyB,
To repeat what I wrote earlier to a jones,
“The latest GRACE mass loss figure is 210 +/- 90 Gtonnes. Why are you confused that this is more than two standard deviations, or at a 95% confidence level, more than zero?”

RR Kampen (02:46:47) :
Re: Mark Fawcett (10:28:02) :
“There’s lies, damn lies and statistics…”
“Statistics have no truth value and therefore cannot be lies.”
Strictly speaking you are right but aren’t you splitting hairs? The quote (first noted in 1892 and attributed to Cornelia Augusta Hewitt Crosse) is particularly powerful exactly because statistics is supposed to be value-free but applied or interpreted wrongly could be used to deceive lay people.

RR Kampen
“More sea-ice around Antarctica may simply be caused by increased snowy precipitation on the sea-ice. Increasing precipitation belongs to global warming.”
You say sea ice MAY be caused by increased snow and that this belongs to global warming. Then again it may NOT be snow based at all.
And I remember having plenty of snow in the sixties, and it was supposed to be cooling then. Oh well, never mind!

Michael hauber (21:50:13) : “…the fact that observations show a loss of ice when models do not predict such loss should be at least enough concern to want to closely monitor and get better information?”
We should be aware of the difficulties of lumping all GCMs together, and certainly some model runs have forecasted declining ice in Antarctica. Yet GCMs have been grossly unreliable in forecasting ice trends at either poles. It appears that the models do not capture the key variables, or handles them incorrectly or that weather events (and ongoing variability) swamp the effect of GCM variables.
While there is a distinction between ice and snow, I think it is noteworthy that manmade structures in Antarctica have been buried in snow through the years. I do not remember any pictures where manmade structures have become more exposed through melt. When we discuss the ability of satellites to precisely measure ice thickness, we should remember what we observe on land.

Flanagan (13:25:08) :
I’ll bring a funny hat for you to wear. – Anthony
Suggestion?
http://www.l-page.net/funny/images/hat.jpg

Ubique of Perth WA (17:55:26) :
Why is the NSIDC still making comparisons with a 1979-2000 average? Twenty one years is a pretty ordinary baseline – why aren’t we seeing a 1979 – 2008 average?
Climate normals are set by international treaty to be an average over 30 years with the last year ending with a zero. After 2010 there will be updates.
Has anyone ever wondered about the choice of years for averages or normals of climatic variables? In case you have but haven’t found the answer, here is one:
“Climatologists define a climatic normal as the arithmetic average of a climate element such as temperature over a prescribed 30-year interval. The 30 year interval was selected by international agreement, based on the recommendations of the International Meteorological Conference in Warsaw in 1933. The 30 year interval is sufficiently long to filter out many of the short-term interannual fluctuations and anomalies, but sufficiently short so as to be used to reflect longer term climatic trends. Currently, the 30-year interval for calculating normals extends from 1971 to 2000.”
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/normals.html
Also, here: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/26747.pdf
ps: I re-post this about once a month.

Re: Vincent (06:07:47) :
“You say sea ice MAY be caused by increased snow and that this belongs to global warming. Then again it may NOT be snow based at all. ”
—
Sure. Well, the theory isn’t mine. It was suggested by NASA scientists, a preview explains it here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/sea_ice.html .
It’s just a theory, in my opinion quite plausible though (though I admit the connection more precip there + GW is spurious). Another NASA-study found the sea-ice season around Antarctica to lengthen except around the Peninsula, coinciding with the warming there that is not found around the rest of the frozen continent.

Indeed RR Kampen: “Muggenziften” (Sorting mosquitos) but I prefer the Dutch expression “Mierenneuken” (to F… Ants) which is an even more miniaturistic undertaking.

Interesting article in yesterday’s The Sunday Telegraph.
Extract from a new book by Sara Wheeler, called “The Magnetic North”
Refering to the Greenland icecap, she says
“Greenland’s frozen coating covers 80% of a country four times the size of France.Like the Musk Ox, summit ice is a relic of the last ice age.The cap has survived because its volume sustains its own climate. It reflects light & heat, its elevation keeps it cool and it is too largeto be dented by warm weather systems from the south. Its mass is even likely to protect it from substantial diminution as the climate warms, largely because increased melting at the margins will be offset by a rise in snowfall in the interior.”
Bang goes the “Warmists” terror about a melting Greenland turning us into “Waterworld”?

I see that the Artic temperature had a big upstep; pretty wild gyration; well it is probably just a dead cat bounce to entice some sucker kayakers.

See here for my opinion as to what the hydrological cycle really achieves:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3735

Bill Illis,
From the latest paper on the GRACE ice-mass measurements:
“We find that realistic constraints to the trend in ice mass loss derived from GRACE data determine a range of variation substantially wider than commonly stated, ranging from an important ice loss of -209 Gtyr-1 to an accumulation of +88 Gtyr-1 in Antarctica, and Greenland ablation at a rate between -122 and -50 Gtyr-1. However, if we adopt the set of most probable Earth parameters, we infer a substantial mass loss in both regions, -171 +/- 39 and -101 +/- 22 Gtyr-1 for Antarctica and Greenland, respectively.”
Geophysical Journal International, Volume 172, Issue 1, pp. 18-30, 2008
So although there are uncertainties mainly, as you say, from quantifying the post-glacial rebound, GRACE indicates that both Antarctica and Greenland are probably losing ice mass.

Your daily propaganda, delivered to you by Seth Borenstein.
Brace yourselves; It’s worse than we thought.
We have to resort to “warm water is melting glaciers” to keep the gravy train on the tracks.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090923/ap_on_sc/us_sci_big_melt_2
Seth has lost his hold on reality. He needs an intervention.

You have to look at the overall picture, ~snip~. Like the fact that arctic ice levels have showed a HUGE decline over the last 30 years. And the fact that mountains that used to be covered with snow no longer get ANY snow. And that glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates overall. If you take just ONE section of the world for ONE year, you are missing the big picture. Why are polar bears drowning all of a sudden, after living just fine for thousands of years in the arctic?