Summer melt season is getting longer on the Antarctic Peninsula, new research shows.
New research from the Antarctic Peninsula shows that the summer melt season has been getting longer over the last 60 years — Increased summer melting has been linked to the rapid break-up of ice shelves in the area and rising sea level
New research from the Antarctic Peninsula shows that the summer melt season has been getting longer over the last 60 years. Increased summer melting has been linked to the rapid break-up of ice shelves in the area and rising sea level.
The Antarctic Peninsula – a mountainous region extending northwards towards South America – is warming much faster than the rest of Antarctica. Temperatures have risen by up to 3 oC since the 1950s – three times more than the global average. This is a result of a strengthening of local westerly winds, causing warmer air from the sea to be pushed up and over the peninsula. In contrast to much of the rest of Antarctica, summer temperatures are high enough for snow to melt.
This summer melting may have important effects. Meltwater may enlarge cracks in floating ice shelves which can contribute to their retreat or collapse. As a result, the speed at which glaciers flow towards the sea will be increased. Also, melting and refreezing causes snow layers to become thinner and more dense, affecting the height of the snow surface above sea level. Scientists need to know this so they can interpret satellite data correctly.
Dr Nick Barrand, who carried out the research while working for the British Antarctic Survey, led an analysis of data from 30 weather stations on the peninsula. “We found a significant increase in the length of the melting season at most of the stations with the longest temperature records” he says. “At one station the average length of the melt season almost doubled between 1948 and 2011.”
To build up a more complete picture across the whole peninsula, the team (funded by the European Union’s ice2sea programme) also analysed satellite data collected by an instrument called a scatterometer. Using microwave reflections from the ice sheet surface, the scatterometer was able to detect the presence of meltwater. The team were able to produce maps of how the melt season varied from 1999 to 2009, and showed that several major ice shelf breakup events coincided with longer than usual melt seasons. This supports the theory that enlargement of cracks by meltwater is the main mechanism for ice shelf weakening and collapse.
The researchers also compared data from both the satellite and weather stations with the output of a state-of-the-art regional climate model.
Dr Barrand, who now works at the University of Birmingham, says, “We found that the model was very good at reproducing the pattern and timing of the melt, and changes in melting between years. This increases confidence in the use of climate models to predict future changes to snow and ice cover in the Antarctic Peninsula.”
Trends in Antarctic Peninsula surface melting conditions from observations and regional climate modeling will be officially published in the Journal of Geophysical Research this week.
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More summer melting would have nothing to do with more ice?
The sea ice growth expanding out from the continent would naturally provide more ice to melt.
Other than that, more models, whoopee.Colour me unenthused.
and in another hundred years I guess we will be reading the same thing and the Antarctic ice will still be with us.
Report from 1906.
South Pole Warming Up.
Since the first visit to the ice cap of
the south pole was made, some fifty
years ago, there has been a steady re-
cession of the belt of some thirty miles,
and it is argued that in the course of
time it will be possible to make ap-
proach to the pole itself and that the
land in that vicinity may even become
inhabited. It is now believed that the
ice cap is but the remains of the glacial
period and that when the ice shall
finally have melted it will not form
again, the waters then being subject
to only such ice formations as occur in
any sea in wintry weather.
The melting season is longer – how much longer? Is it one day, one week, one month or what? Reminds me of the headline a few years back that stated men over sixty five diagnosed with prostate cancer who did not get treatment were twice as likely to die from prostate cancer than those who did get treatment. Buried in the details were the statistics – 2% of those who did not get treatment died of prostate cancer while only 1% of those who received treatment died from prostate cancer. Either way, probability of death from the prostate cancer was much lower than death from heart attack, stroke, accident or whatever in men of that age group.
So the melt season doubled at one station. From what to what did it double to? Five days to ten? 30 to 60? Without a context or baseline, the words are just a poor use of electrons.
I will be curious to see if the MSM somehow manages to leave out the ‘Peninsula’ portion, and smear this across the entire continent anyway.
“National Geographic,” Aug. 1899:316-317:
“Captain Drygalski has repeatedly emphasized a condition now prevailing in southern waters which is especially noteworthy in view of the statement of Dr Supan that we are now passing through an unusually warm-temperature period. This condition, as stated by him, is as follows: ‘The unusual quantity of drift-ice which first appeared in the South Atlantic ocean in 1891 and 1894, and then in the Indian ocean from 1894 to 1897, has each year advanced further toward the east and has now reached the Kerguelen islands, which are for the most part beyond the northern limit of drift-ice. From its nature we are able to determine that it is land-ice which has at last broken away after years of confinement to the mainland, a phenomenon well known as happening at long intervals in the northern parts of Greenland. Similar unusual variations in the conditions of the ice in the Antarctic region have been previously remarked. Though Captain Weddell, in 1823, from the South Orkney islands was able to advance unchecked as far as 74 degrees of latitude, and thence reported a sea free of ice as far as the eye could reach, all subsequent explorers have found an impenetrable barrier in front of them long before reaching that point.’ Inasmuch as a less obstructed advance than hitherto will be possible after the disappearance of this remarkable quantity of drift-ice, the next few years will be especially favorable for the resumption of Antarctic exploration.”
Coincidentally, Jeff Id from over at the Air Vent has a few new videos up concerning sea ice. This, the longer one on the Antarctic:
I am trying to get control of the panic attack, induced by the news of a +0.5 degree temperature anomaly in the Antarctic Peninsula……………./Sarc
Regional, not global. Oceanic and wind, not local CO2.
Check the new sea-ice page that shows the Arctic Ocean by sub-basin pieces, Greenland Sea, Chukchi Sea etc. Look to open water by date: only the eastern portion has more open water. Looks like SST, ocean currents, not to-down, CO2-induced ice melt.
Of course, SST could be atmosphere based temperature changes, but now we are one-step removed from CO2.
Is Arctic ice loss top-down or bottom up dominated? Global atmospheric warming from CO2 should dominate and pre-date oceanic SST warming: top-down is CO2. SST temperature, not energy content, is what drives bottom-up melting (it is the temperature differential, not the heat capacity, that warms ice to melting-point).
Presumably if big chunks of the ice sheet did not break off at regular intervals, it would continue growing until it reached Cape Horn. That would give the BAS something to write about.
Having inspected the near-surface air temperature “records” from Palmer and other stations, I will just ignore reading anything ‘published’ in the Journal of ‘Geophysical’ Research or any other journal of the American ‘Geophysical’ Union for good reason.
Well, last time I checked, the Antarctic Peninsula is outside the Antarctic Circle, which means that there never is a 24 hour night time there. The sun rises every day, just like clockwork.
And, I do believe that researchers claim that Antarctica glaciers are running down hill faster than they used to, a likely consequence of the increased snow pack build up in the interior highlands. More glacial ice running off the edge of the land, will make for longer cantilevered ice shelves on the peninsula. These will jut further out into the Southern Ocean where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans slosh back and forth twice a day, driving warmer ocean waters up under the ice sheles on the upstream side of the peninsula. Sooner or later, those extended shelves, are going to calve, and once the ice breaks off, then those same oceanic sloshes carry the ice to warmer waters; even up to New Zealand, so tourists can take a helicopter ride out and land on a big ice berg.
Ho hum ! So we know that ice melts in the ocean, once ocean currents carry it away from the poles. Happens in the Arctic, and in the Antarctic, and in the near Antarctic, as in Antarctic Peninsula.
Hey ! extra credit for guessing where all that snow pack and ice water came from originally, before it fell off into the ocean and melted. Guess hom much the sea level rises for each round trip, the water makes.
Otter- The Canadian tv network CTV did indeed leave out peninsula and make it appear the whole of the Antarctica is melting, when in fact it is growing.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!
That dark,dark red color sure makes it look like the Antarctic is on fire !!
A whopping .5 C ?
Change the color scheme a little bit and there wouldn’t be much concern.
Increased summer melting has been linked to the rapid break-up of ice shelves in the area and rising sea level,
Anyone have any photo`s of this rising sea level.
Once again we are presented a fatal case of stupid. Why don’t we narrow it down to a single sentence…
“Increased summer melting has been linked to the rapid break-up of ice shelves in the area and rising sea level.”
Item. Antarctic ice levels are well ABOVE normal. How does the author reconcile that fact with the above “linkage”.
Item. Ice shelves are floating ice cubes. How exactly does the melting of floating ice lead to rising sea levels. Inquiring minds want to know…
The stupid, it burns!
PDF here:
http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~broek112/home.php_files/Publications_MvdB/2013_Barrand_JGR-ES.pdf
The peninsula is full of underground hot water sea vents from volcanoes. This is a well known fact it has NOTHING to do with weather or climate the paper is 100% BS.as was the Steig paper
A simple analysis of the Antarctic peninsula (AP): observe that the summer ice increase is mainly to the east of the AP, while summer warming is on its west. So the temperature contrast between east and west has increased — there’s a mountain range running down the middle, you know — so it’s likely that wind conditions and the mountainous separator have sharpened the micro-climates there. The average temperature over all of it is likely to be little changed.
A similar contrast has happened in the Arctic this year, over Nova Zemlya — a long thin mountainous island. Temperatures to its west have been moderate and ice thin — but to the east, over the Kara Sea, very low temperatures and thick ice. Nova Zemlya’s mountains have kept these microclimates separate. Expect the Kara Sea ice to hang on grimly this coming summer, to melt out end-July or early August — my own prediction.
I refer you to a previous post here on WUWT… the preponderance of Volcanoes on the peninsula… not even mentioned in the post above… I’m not saying they may be more active… but the question is, are they?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/antarctic_temps_avh1982-2004.jpg
Wong link I gave the link to the map not the post – sorry…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/22/surprise-theres-an-active-volcano-under-antarctic-ice/
The thing that never gets discussed in all this talk of AP melting, is the ice sheets that are ‘melting’ are the Larsen icesheets (A, B & C) on the east side of the Peninsula. These icesheets are surrounded by 200km of sea ice that never melts and is currently at its largest summer minimum extent ever recorded. Strong evidence that temperatures to the east of the peninsula are in fact decreasing.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/antarctic-sea-ice-starts-growing-again-5-days-early/
How come the icesheets melt and the sea ice that surrounds them doesn’t? Warmer air temperatures should melt both equally.
Hint: Albedo
I’d add that an increase in westerlies over the peninsula would result in increased foehn winds on the east side of the peninsula, which would result in higher temperatures over the Larsen icesheets, but not over the sea ice further out.
Foehn winds probably play a significant role in icesheet melt, but have nothing to do with GHG atmospheric warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind
Norm, as you know, CTV is a Thomson Reuters network, thus biased to green mongering interests (Crispin Tickell etc…).
To the article now:
“The Antarctic Peninsula – a mountainous region extending northwards towards South America – is warming much faster than the rest of Antarctica. Temperatures have risen by up to 3 oC since the 1950s – three times more than the global average. This is a result of a strengthening of local westerly winds, causing warmer air from the sea to be pushed up and over the peninsula. In contrast to much of the rest of Antarctica, summer temperatures are high enough for snow to melt.”
Warmer air and moister air too explaining high snowfall rates there too. The late Marcel Leroux had explained this dynamic warming of the Peninsula long before this article. Yet, it is funny that the press release does not elaborate about the strengthening of these westerlies, and the deepening of the depressions associated to more frequent expulsions of mobile polar highs that are a consequence of the cooling of the rest of Antarctica. But I guess for BAS, it would seriously undermine their research funding cash cow: CAGW.
S Hem Sea Ice is well above normal
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
So how is this even a problem. If there wasnt one place that was melting faster, ice growth would be out of control