While we have record high sea ice in Antarctica, the Australian research council is figuring that a collapse of Antarctic ice is imminent, followed by 3-4 meters of sea-level rise. It’s all based on a model that they took back in time to 14,000 years ago to model “meltwater pulse 1A” seen in the graph below. The only problem is, we aren’t coming out of an ice age.
From the “Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science”:
Current changes in the ocean around Antarctica are disturbingly close to conditions 14,000 years ago that new research shows may have led to the rapid melting of Antarctic ice and an abrupt 3-4 metre rise in global sea level.
The research published in Nature Communications found that in the past, when ocean temperatures around Antarctica became more layered – with a warm layer of water below a cold surface layer – ice sheets and glaciers melted much faster than when the cool and warm layers mixed more easily.
This defined layering of temperatures is exactly what is happening now around the Antarctic.
“The reason for the layering is that global warming in parts of Antarctica is causing land-based ice to melt, adding massive amounts of freshwater to the ocean surface,” said ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science researcher Prof Matthew England an author of the paper.
“At the same time as the surface is cooling, the deeper ocean is warming, which has already accelerated the decline of glaciers on Pine Island and Totten. It appears global warming is replicating conditions that, in the past, triggered significant shifts in the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet.”
The modelling shows the last time this occurred, 14,000 years ago, the Antarctic alone contributed 3-4 metres to global sea levels in just a few centuries.
“Our model simulations provide a new mechanism that reconciles geological evidence of past global sea level rise,” said researcher UNSW ARC Future Fellow Dr Chris Fogwill.
“The results demonstrate that while Antarctic ice sheets are remote, they may play a far bigger role in driving past and importantly future sea level rise than we previously suspected.”
The accelerating melting of land ice into the sea makes the surface of the ocean around Antarctica colder, less salty and more easily frozen, leading to extensive sea ice in some areas. It is one of the reasons ascribed to the increasing trend in sea ice around Antarctica.
To get their results the researchers used sophisticated ice sheet and climate models and verified their results with independent geological observations from the oceans off Antarctica. The geological data clearly showed that when the waters around the Antarctic became more stratified, the ice sheets melted much more quickly.
“The big question is whether the ice sheet will react to these changing ocean conditions as rapidly as it did 14,000 years ago,” said lead author Dr Nick Golledge, a senior research fellow at Victoria’s Antarctic Research Centre.
“With 10 per cent of the world’s population, or 700 million people, living less than 10 metres above present sea level, an additional three metres of sea level rise from the Antarctic alone will have a profound impact on us all.”
Paper: Antarctic contribution to meltwater pulse 1A from reduced Southern Ocean overturning.
Abstract
During the last glacial termination, the upwelling strength of the southern polar limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation varied, changing the ventilation and stratification of the high-latitude Southern Ocean. During the same period, at least two phases of abrupt global sea-level rise—meltwater pulses—took place. Although the timing and magnitude of these events have become better constrained, a causal link between ocean stratification, the meltwater pulses and accelerated ice loss from Antarctica has not been proven. Here we simulate Antarctic ice sheet evolution over the last 25 kyr using a data-constrained ice-sheet model forced by changes in Southern Ocean temperature from an Earth system model. Results reveal several episodes of accelerated ice-sheet recession, the largest being coincident with meltwater pulse 1A. This resulted from reduced Southern Ocean overturning following Heinrich Event 1, when warmer subsurface water thermally eroded grounded marine-based ice and instigated a positive feedback that further accelerated ice-sheet retreat.
No mention of the turtles, odd.
Its models all the way down.
Yes, we all know how sea ice around Antarctica grew rapidly at the end of the last ice age, in response to global warming… 🙂
“With 10 per cent of the world’s population, or 700 million people, living less than 10 metres above present sea level, an additional three metres of sea level rise from the Antarctic alone will have a profound impact on us all.”
===============================
This is nonsense. The current population estimate is being used to scare people on an event that might rake almost a 1000 years to develop. So even if it happens, each generation will barely see a few centimeter rise in the seas. Are they expecting people to just marvel at that miniscule a rise and not respond.
Yes. Plus, I think if you asked the 9 out of 10 of those people affected who are gut-wrenchingly poor whether they would mind hauling their tin shacks 12 feet further up the beech in return for a life-changing mains electricity connection, they’d probably say it was worth it…
*beach, but you make the most valid point ever.
The rate of change is slow enough that people will make minor adjustments, invest in safer properties, etc… no disaster looming.
However, if a real disaster were looming, we could just install water-brakes under the sea ice during the summer to prevent warmer water from reaching the land ice (since that is the only possibly explanation for why stratification of warmer water under sea ice would cause land ice to melt…).
Did they happen to mention just HOW MUCH WARMER things were during the Holocene Climate Optimum, than they are now?
Didn’t think so.
“The reason for the layering is that global warming in parts of Antarctica is causing land-based ice to melt, adding massive amounts of freshwater to the ocean surface,” said ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science researcher Prof Matthew England an author of the paper.”
Global warming in parts of Antarctica? And this guy is a professor?
Reminds me of the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in The Field of Excellence!
Yes, I know. It doesn’t seem to take much nowadays for someone to become a Professor. Brian Cox is one!
LOL – excellent comment – well deserved!
Readers might recall that even just a couple of years ago, Prof Matthew England would not accept that warming had stalled. Then more recently, when The Hiatus® passed the 17+ years mark, he proposed that the non-warming was due to trade winds increasing. I’m not sure which number that excuse has been given out of the 50+ so far advanced.
“With 10 per cent of the world’s population, or 700 million people, living less than 10 metres above present sea level, an additional three metres of sea level rise from the Antarctic alone will have a profound impact on us all.”
They’re not going to stand there for a couple of centuries and wait for the water to go over their bloody heads are they?
My taxes are paying for these crystal ball predictions and there is not a damned thing I can do about it.
This “sophisticated” model that cost tens of thousands to develop will be as good as the others.
I’m still having trouble getting my head around how the “snake oil salesmen” continue to try to sell the “crystal ball gaze” that the heats being trapped deep in the oceans by the cold.
Simply because they can’t find it.
Have they ever thought its just not there?
“They’re not going to stand there for a couple of centuries and wait for the water to go over their bloody heads are they?”
We can only hope the smart ones will leave in time to save humanity.
“the last time this occurred, 14,000 years ago, the Antarctic alone contributed 3-4 metres to global sea levels in just a few centuries.”
Yeah, how can we possibly adapt to a surge of 1 meter per century? That means we have to build up our sea barriers at the staggering rate of 1 cm per year to keep up with it. Do you know how many bricklayers that will require? How will all the monuments to Dear Leader ever get completed in B.H.O’s lifetime if we divert them to this herculean task?
At 1 cm year you will outrun the current rise by about 9 mm. At that rate you would need a course of standard brick every 75 years or so. So every second generation of bricklayer can be assured of a job which are better odds than the professor’s grandchildren having a job in the climate sciences.
I am sure glad that “the researchers used sophisticated ice sheet and climate models” . If they had used ordinary game console quality models, I would be concerned about their conclusions.
“sophisticated ice sheet and climate models”.
Oh I do wish people would choose their words with so much more care & thought! Sophisticated does NOT mean “clever”, nor “complicated”, nor “technologically advanced”, nor does it mean “correct” or “right” rather the opposite! Besides they’re using models which by default means they are not real!
In climate they are not only unreal, but always wrong. I’m really,really worried!
“Full Definition of SOPHISTICATED
“1 deprived of native or original simplicity:
a highly complicated or developed : complex (sophisticated electronic devices)
…
“2 (Of a machine, system, or technique) developed to a high degree of complexity:
highly sophisticated computer systems”
The wild use of adjectives in Climate Science papers is now so embedded that it has become an intrinsic part of CAGW propaganda/grant seeking. ‘Sophisticated’ is a common one, as is ‘unprecedented’. In this paper we have ‘massive’ amounts of water- a meaningless adjective unless a comparator is provided (which it isn’t) – but it has the right alarmist flavour.
We need to be assured that this is the “sophisticated” model in use, as opposed to the “rustic” model that might have been used by mistake.
The adjective sophisticated derives from sophistry, which is the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving. On that basis the entire AGW scam is sophisticated.
SLOPhisticated models: that class of models especially attractive to troughers…..
At the rate that this change could happen, even our dear friend the three toed sloth could run away from the shore in time. Though by the time it had all melted he would have been superseded by his approx 700th generation children.
(The three-toed sloth is the slowest moving land mammal. On the ground, the sloth moves at an average speed of 0.030 m/s, considerably slower than the giant tortoise, which walks at 0.075 m/s.)
Perhaps evolution will have made him a sprinter by then.
The three-toed sloth is the slowest moving land mammal.
You haven’t seen my mail carrier…
Well at least he is a dogged character…
Why don’t the three or more of them move there now, along with fellow catastrophic believers like Turney …
… Dr Gollege said “With 10 per cent of the world’s population, or 700 million people, living less than 10 metres above present sea level, an additional three metres of sea level rise from the Antarctic alone will have a profound impact on us all.”
All that ice melted and hot penguins to eat would make a ‘New Greenland’. Just like the Vikings did a number of years ago, without polar bears to worry about!
You must always worry about the polar bears. If not, you’re dead meat.
Pssst… Antarctica.
Yet another meaningless statistic. Why not tell us how many people live 3 metres above sea level? That number could be zero, or it could be 700 million.
And btw…if you ever figure out what that number is, you need to subtract the number that own boats.
They won’t care.
Jim
Yes it must be true because they used “sophisticated ice sheet and climate models”. This obviously sounds better than unsophisticated models, though I would like to see the results using the latter. Did they run them on unsophisticated models and not get the scary results? They didn’t say.
However, joking aside, even sophisticated ice sheet models are modelling the past, and the fact that they find one condition – stratified water temperatures – that was similar then as today, doesn’t mean that the events that happened then will happen now. How many of the other conditions that they never even looked at where similar – or totally different? What was the extent of sea ice 14,000 years ago? What was global sea levels like? I’m guessing they were a lot lower than they are today.
Does it follow that because you got a 3 meter rise when sea levels were 100 metres lower you would get the same today? And how do we know that stratified water temperatures only started to happen when we “got global warming”? Are they saying that water temps were all nicely mixed up for the last 14,000 years, now suddenly they’ve become stratified? Why now, when it was warmer during the MWP and Roman warm periods?
There’s a lot of questions that need answering.
“Current changes in the ocean around Antarctica are disturbingly close to conditions 14,000 years ago that new research shows may have led to the rapid melting of Antarctic ice and an abrupt 3-4 metre rise in global sea level.”
So they really can know what the the temperature layering of water were like 14,000 years ago and that what is happening now mirrors that time period and that these conditions have not happened for 14,000 years. Or is there a bit of guessing going on here?
No guessing.
They have models.
Sophisticated ones.
Created by top men.
Top men.
@Patrick B Raiders of the lost Ice sheet!!! Pffffft
When a suspect is ‘breaking down’ under the expert questioning of an experienced interrogator what happens is they lose their bearings within the framework of their own false narrative, at the beginning this is manifest by small flaws and contradictions in their story it usually ends up with wild, floundering disconnected claims and assertions.
The Warmists and particularly the Australian Warmists have literally ‘lost the plot’; no droughts, no floods, no cyclones, no heat waves, growing ice extent and no warming.
So now they are saying the first thing that comes into their heads…the axe is about to fall on their funding…they’re desperate.
Love it.
Tipping point leading to catastrophe => temperatures greater than 2 degrees C creating climate refugees => Arctic spiral of death => huge sea level rise = no more snow => extreme weather => Antarctic ice collapse
They never give up do they. Hasn’t Matthew got previous with alarmism?
This “Antarctica is melting, causing the growth in sea ice” that serves as the latest cliamte obsessed excuse does not hold up under scrutiny.
If the Antarctic were melting at the continental center, then we would see signs of it there. Instead, we see no evidence of mass loss of any significance from the continent, and we do see massive sea ice growth.
The massive growth and persistence of the Antarctic sea ice is blocking a massive part of the ocean from receiving insolation, is dropping cold water into the abyss, and is serving as a high albedo reduction in solar energy reaching the ocean.
Once again the climate obsessed are grasping desperately to their apocalypse, and making predictions that will fail.
Yet it was the models that projected a DECREASE in Antarctica’s sea ice extent.
Please send me some global warming for my garden.
land based ice melts, freshens the surrounding ocean. more floating ice results.
that’s not controversial.
Mathematics, Mosh. Let’s see the amount of melt water required to increase the ice – from the predicted decreased levels to substantially increased levels that actually are occurring – at considerably further north latitudes. And while you’re at it do tell us where the billions of little fresh water carrying gnomes are coming from to do the frantic sprint from the continental edge -where freshwater hits the sea – to the freezing edge, which is a long way away by carrier gnome. Or do you assume it magically teleports, unmixed, across the large intervening distance? Perhaps from zombie climate station to zombie climate station… .
If the new ice from your hypothesised melting land ice is now ‘floating sea ice’ then the sea levels would already be rising – or have you forgotten Archimedes Steven? Ice sheets floating cannot melt and raise sea levels. The ice closer inland that is land anchored might cause a little rise, but the large expanse of sea ice that is now at record levels is floating. Or is that reasoning too sophisticated for you?
Not controversial? Not thought through maybe… When does the melting happen? Summer. Then melting slows and stops and freezing starts and that process of reversal happens over perhaps a month or two. Plenty of time for mixing and currents to nullify any “freshwater pulse” that you might want to blame.
Sorry Steve. As you always say…. show me the data. And by “data”, I dont mean model output.
show me the data please Mr Mosher..
The surface water around Antarctica has been cooler then average relative to the last thirty years. They get their estimates of ice melt from satellites. Indeed, GRACE, and the more sensitive ESA’s GOCE, is problematic. The shape of the geoid changes yearly, in some places by meters, due to tectonic movements and mantel density flux; thus making MM estimates meaningless.
Volcanism is the likely cause of any warming in the ocean waters under the WAIS….http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/surprise-west-antarctic-volcano-melts-ice/
Temperature in the overall region are low…https://twitter.com/NJSnowFan/status/511790636677472256/photo/1
a 2012 paper reduced grace estimates of loss to 1/2 to 1/3rd of their previous modeled estimate….”substantial technique-specific systematic errors also exist3. In particular, estimates of secular ice-mass change derived from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data are dominated by significant uncertainty in the accuracy of models of mass change due to glacial isostatic adjustment7″
Also, there has been no detectable acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. In fact, some studies have detected small a deceleration (slowing). Here are some papers which have reported the lack of acceleration in rate of sea level rise (h/t to Alberto Boretti, Robert Dean & Doug Lord):
1.Douglas B (1992). Global Sea Level Acceleration. J. Geophysical Research, Vol. 97, No. C8, pp. 12,699-12,706, 1992. doi:10.1029/92JC01133
2.Douglas B and Peltier W R (2002). The Puzzle of Global Sea-Level Rise. Physics Today 55(3):35-40.
3.Daly J (2003). Tasmanian Sea Levels: The ‘Isle of the Dead’ Revisited. [Internet].
4.Daly J (2004). Testing the Waters: A Report on Sea Levels for the Greening Earth Society. [Internet].
5.Jevrejeva S, et al (2006). Nonlinear trends and multiyear cycles in sea level records. J. Geophysical Research, 111, C09012, 2006. doi:10.1029/2005JC003229. (data)
6.Holgate SJ (2007). On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century. Geophysical Research Letters. 34, L01602.
7.Wunsch R, Ponte R and Heimbach P (2007). Decadal trends in sea level patterns: 1993-2004. Journal of Climatology. 5889-5911.
8.Woodworth P, et al (2009). Evidence for the accelerations of sea level on multi-decade and century timescales. International Journal of Climatology, Volume 29, Issue 6, pages 777-789, May 2009. doi:10.1002/joc.1771
9.You ZJ, Lord DB, and Watson PJ (2009). Estimation of Relative Mean Sea Level Rise From Fort Denison Tide Gauge Data. Proceedings of the 19th Australasian Coastal and Ocean Engineering Conference, Wellington, NZ, September 2009.
10.Wenzel M and Schröter J (2010). Reconstruction of regional mean sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks. Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans. 115:C08013.
11.Mörner N-A (2010a). Sea level changes in Bangladesh new observational facts. Energy and Environment. 21(3):235-249.
12.Mörner N-A (2010b). Some problems in the reconstruction of mean sea level and its changes with time. Quaternary International. 221(1-2):3-8.
13.Mörner N-A (2010c). There Is No Alarming Sea Level Rise! 21st Century Science & Technology. Fall 2010:7-17.
14.Houston JR and Dean RG (2011a). Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. 27:409-417.
15.Houston JR and Dean RG (2011b). J. R. Houston and R. G. Dean (2011) Reply to: Rahmstorf, S. and Vermeer, M., 2011. Discussion of: Houston, J.R. and Dean, R.G., 2011. Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. Volume 27, Issue 4: pp. 788-790. doi:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11A-00008.1
16.Watson PJ (2011). Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia? Journal of Coastal Research. 27:368-377.
17.Modra B and Hesse S (2011), NSW Ocean Water Level. 21st NSW Coastal Conference. (or here)
18.Mörner N-A, (2011a). Setting the frames of expected future sea level changes by exploring past geological sea level records. Chapter 6 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
19.Mörner N-A, (2011b). The Maldives: A measure of sea level changes and sea level ethics. Chapter 7 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
20.Boretti A (2012a). Short Term Comparison of Climate Model Predictions and Satellite Altimeter Measurements of Sea Levels. Coastal Engineering, 60, pp. 319-322. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2011.10.005. (Also, an article about this paper.)
21.Boretti A (2012b). Is there any support in the long term tide gauge data to the claims that parts of Sydney will be swamped by rising sea levels? Coastal Engineering, 64, pp. 161-167. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2012.01.006
22.Hughes W (2012), Continued existence of Maori canals near Blenheim in New Zealand indicates a stable relative sea level over 200 years. [Internet].
23.Boretti A and Watson T (2012). The inconvenient truth: Ocean Levels are not accelerating in Australia. Energy & Environment. doi:10.1260/0958-305X.23.5.801
24.Burton D (2012). Comments on “Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island, New York,” by Shepard, et al. Natural Hazards. doi:10.1007/s11069-012-0159-8
25.Lüning S and Vahrenholt F (2012). Fallstudien aus aller Welt belegen: Keine Beschleunigung des Meeresspiegelanstiegs während der letzten 30 Jahre. (Case studies from around the world: no evidence of accelerating sea level rise over the last 30 years – English translation.)
26.Homewood P (2012). Is Sea Level Rise Accelerating? [Internet].
27.Schmith T, et al (2012), Statistical analysis of global surface temperature and sea level using cointegration methods. Journal of Climate, 2012, American Meteorological Society. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00598.1 (or draft)
28.Mörner N-A and Parker A (2013). Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case, Environmental Science, An Indian Journal, ESAIJ, 8(2), 2013 [43-51]
29.Scafetta N (2013a). Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes. Climate Dynamics. doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1771-3 (In press; preprint here.)
30.Scafetta, N (2013b). Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics. 1, 37-57, 2013. doi:10.5194/prp-1-37-2013.
31.Plus, according to news reports, several papers suppressed by the New South Wales, Australia government. [1] [2&2b]
So, we have no measurements of warm water getting to the deep oceans. The NH from 0 to 2000 meters maybe warmed about .067C; while the SH warmed about 1/5th of that. No measurements showing warm water moving into the areas around Antarctica. The only areas around Antarctica showing warming waters are in areas on the WAIS showing increased volcanism. No increase in SL rise. hum, so no C in CAGW, and no G and no W in it either. Just people (“A”) speculating in the guise of scientists. While the work of real scientist above is not reported in IPCC reports.
Will people be able to get out of the way in time? Will they be submerged in a brutal tidal wave?
Our grandchildren will not know what to do. They will stand their as the waters lap at their feet.
Arrhrhhhh! I meant…
They will stand there as the waters lap at their feet.
There, there…..feet.
Glad you clarified that.
I read it as “stand their ground…”
Well, just standing up gains you half a meter. It’s a start.
This institution’s name says it all – “Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science”. This grandiloquent title demonstrates that this group of so-called “scientists” are more interested in obtaining research grants than in advancing scientific knowledge. To call themselves a “Centre of Excellence” is quite comical. The truth is that these people are an embarrasing ot money-grubbing urgers, preying on the unsuspecting Australian taxpayer with their “pretend” science. They are leading us into an age of post-modern disenlightenment where ignorance and superstition prevail over common sense. .
“Current changes in the ocean around Antarctica are disturbingly close to conditions 14,000 years ago that new research shows may have led to the rapid melting of Antarctic ice and an abrupt 3-4 metre rise in global sea level.”
“This resulted from reduced Southern Ocean overturning following Heinrich Event 1”
A Heinrich event is a massive breakout of icebergs in the North Atlantic. Odd we didn’t notice that.
“The reason for the layering is that global warming in parts of Antarctica is causing land-based ice to melt, adding massive amounts of freshwater to the ocean surface,”
Ah, this must be the explanation for the “ship of fools” stunt. The “Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science” obviously is badly in need of an actual visit to Antarctica. They don’t even know that the ice in Antarctica doesn’t melt it either sublimates or calves.
It would take a tremendous amount of heat to melt all that ice. Where would it come from? The inflow/outflow energy balance is pretty even, so melting the southern ice would chill the ocean much as dropping ice cubes in a glass of water chills it.
My nickel’s on < 10 inches rise by 2100.
This was the point I was going to make, melting that much water in any short time would cool the earth quite substantially. Melting ice is a cooling effect not a warming one. As usual England the catastrophist talks about ridiculous sea rises of up to 3m that are still easilly dealt with with a few sea walls and some landfill over the next thousand or so years.
None of this is at all possible with just 0.6W per square meter of warming. England ignores energy conservation yet again. I should write to Nature, too many papers they publish ignore the energy balance. They attribute to global warming (0.6 Watts per square meter) effects that cost 20 times that in energy terms. These effects may well be happening but if they are, the fact that the energy cost is orders of magnitude above what CO2 warming is capable of supplying shows that the effects can’t be due to AGW.
So I guess that with all this “layering” the laws of thermodynamics can’t apply to Antarctic ocean waters? So there is no convection or conduction. Terrifying. Where do I donate?
Well Said Chris – I have often wondered how the heat can get to the deep and be kept there via a mechanism that is consistant with the laws of thermodynamic.
The heat in the deep is possible (though I don’t personally ascribe to the idea). The water in the abyss is saltier and thus denser than the water above, thus it could actually be slightly warmer than that above it and still be more dense and thus float below the cooler less salty water. Now, how the heat gets down through that cooler water to the denser saltier water I have no mechanism which is why I don’t ascribe to this theory.
Heat rises. Warmer water will rise above colder water. Until that discrepancy is credibly explained, I don’t buy the claim that there is a layer of warmer water that remains below cooler water.
No one has detected any warmer water rising from the depths through the cooler ocean above. This looks like an off-the-cuff explanation based on the tactic of “Say Anything”.
dbstealy
Look at the temperature/density graphs of the Red Sea. The water at depth there is warm (22-24C) but is extremely salty. If it were to escape the Red Sea basin it would sink below the much cooler water in the Indian Ocean bottom because of its salinity density.In fact it is held in the basin by a lip at the southern end even though the temperatures to the south of this lip are cooler than the Red Sea bottom water. It is not the temperature that determines its buoyancy, but its density. As long as nothing acts to mix that salty water to dilute it and decrease its density it will stay below water that is cooler but less salty.
The ancient oceans were thought to have this problem of a warm hypersaline bottom water – it causes a bottom death zone because of lack of oxygen.
No, I don’t think this is what the argument is.
The discussion is about increased amounts of energy going to lower layers of the ocean, right or wrong. I don’t think anybody is saying the lower layers are getting relatively warmer than the lower layers.
But as always I could be wrong, frequently am in fact. 🙂
lower layers are getting relatively warmer than the upper layers, I meant. :/
“The big question is whether the ice sheet will react to these changing ocean conditions as rapidly as it did 14,000 years ago,” said lead author Dr Nick Golledge, a senior research fellow at Victoria’s Antarctic Research Centre.
Actually the big question is how much did this drivel cost Australian taxpayers. Talk about producing a paper that screams confirmation bias.
Antarctica ice loss weakens gravity
OF all the effects of climate change, the loss of gravity caused by Antarctica’s ice meltdown could be the weirdest — and one of the most worrying.
THIS above in todays adelaide advertiser..and I cant access due to a limit of 2 free page read please, someone go read it and post..it is bound to be hilariously stupid!
Hmmmm…positive side effect, we’ll all finally lose weight.
What impact would the body heat of 35,000 Walrus hauled out on the ice have on polar ice extent…and how big would the tsunami be if something spooked them and they jumped in the briny all at once…we live in dangerous times!
I remember when the sofishticated models told us Antarctica would actually gain ice mass due to global-warming causing increased precipitation…
Actually the main fault with this scenario is that it requires that the MWP-1A was to large extent due to a collapse of the Antarctic Ice-cap rather than the Laurentide and/or Eurasian ice-caps. The big problem with this is that MWP-1A was so big 14-20 meters of sea-level in just 500 years, while the total Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise since the glacial maximum 18,000 years ago to the present day is only about 20 meters.
So however you turn and twist, most of that meltwater was from the northern hemisphere. Some of it was certainly from Antarctica, because the sea-level rise would by itself have caused the edge of the Antarctic ice to retreat. The Antarctic ice at that time was at the edge of the continental shelf almost everywhere, and such an ice-edge isn’t stable when water depth is >500 meters, so any sea-level rise will cause increased calving and ice-edge retreat. No need for fancy “layering” of sea water, or anything else, simple knowledge about the mechanical strength of glacial ice is enough. However this simple explanation is politically useless since there is no large amount of Northern-hemisphere ice available to destabilize ice edges in Antarctica today (Greenland is small fry, and has an inherently stable icecap). Hence the need for a more complicated mechanism that can be catastrophically modelled.
The climate scientists used Meltwater Pulse 1A as their assumption.
How did they not have the basic understanding of the event that tty outlined here?
Do they sit in a room and ask themselves just how much fantasy can we make up and get away with it? They must have done exactly that.
Hence the need for sophistication in said model.
Climate models are confirmed not to reflect reality. They do not show “the pause” for instance.
I think that the main reason for that is that the “sophisticated” climate models are not even able to reflect the simple lapse rate in the atmosphere – and therefore miss the energy budget of the atmosphere.
So what is being done is to use simple weather models to model climate. Climate is about long term energy balance, not local weather the next 2-3 days, so they use innapropriate models on the principle… ahmmm what principle?
Tell me somebody I am wrong and these “scientists” do not make such “mistakes”?
So these models which fail the energy budget of the atmosphere are used for further studies in conjunction with other models?
I’m still trying to get this story straight. Global warming concentrates warm air over the Antarctic land, so the ice melts. So the air is warmer than 0C. The resulting water pours into the sea, where it sits on top of a layer of heavier, warmer, salt water. The warmer water doesn’t warm up the fresh water. And the warm air stops at the shoreline. Antarctica Is surrounded by air cold enough to freeze the fresh water. But this cold air does not spread inland under the warm air.
Is that what is supposed to be happening?
What’s happening is sea ice extent has grown in line with it getting colder.
===========
“Study Finds Antarctic Sea Ice Increases When It Gets Colder”
August 17, 2013
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/study-finds-antarctic-sea-ice-increases-when-it-gets-colder/
Another thing these modellers forgot to tell you is this. Extreme snowfalls observed will offset some of their
hypothesizedmodeled collapse. I vaguely recall that the IPCC has projected enhanced snowfalls over Antarctica. I maybe wrong, will try and check.Here it is.
Jimbo;
reread the article we are discussing here, the Antarctic is warming, it says so right in the article it has to be true stop with the evidence crap!
sophisticated ice sheet and climate models and verified , sophisticated or not gigo is still gigo especial when there is motivation to get the ‘right results . But sooner or later it was clear they would have to come up with ‘some-way’ that a growing Antarctic is a problem rather they pretend it was not an actually reality.
I’ll bet this is another peer reviewed article so i must make sense!
How do people like these sleep a night when they know that they are spreading falsehoods and alarmism?
Then add in the press as this is how they get the public’s attention/circulation. They will no doubt represent the 500 years as “could happen tomorrow”.
Lets see what the seals say-
http://news.agu.org/press-release/elephant-seals-help-uncover-slower-than-expected-antarctic-melting/
“Here we simulate Antarctic ice sheet evolution over the last 25 kyr using a data-constrained ice-sheet model forced by changes in Southern Ocean temperature from an Earth system model.”
So they are using a model based on a model. Yep, it’s models all the way down.
Kind of like zero + zero = zero. And yet they really believe the more zeroes added together the more significant the result.
When did the primary function of science become administrative and bureaucratic as in clueless?
so how again are they able to measure water layers from 14,000 years ago ? I’m calling BS …
“The reason for the layering is that global warming in parts of Antarctica …”. Really, global warming in only parts of Antarctica? Does anyone ever read these papers before publishing to eliminate idiotic statements like this? When I was an auditor, if I had written something this stupid that made it into an issued audit report, I’d have been roasted alive by my superiors.
I don’t know, but it would seem to me that the increase in sea ice would increase the amount of cold water at the surface, which would then sink, causing more mixing and an increase in the ocean current circulation. I think what we are going to see is a massive La Nina period when all that cold water starts welling up in the central pacific, causing global temps to cool even more.
But like I said, I’m just guessing.
No mention of increased albedo.
No no noooooo!
The cold water CAN’T sink. It’s being held in place by the WARM water below it!
I thought the cold water was fresh and therefore less dense than the warm salt water under it. No one has told me why the warm water doesn’t warm up the cold water, but I’m guessing some major sorcery is involved.
That pulse, 14k years ago, did it correspond to the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet?
We know it was there, and now it isnt, that ice must have caused a big rise in sea levels when it melted. Could the melting of this ice sheet explain the data here?
If so, it suggests that the ice sheet melted very rapidly? Why would that happen so quickly?
Were there any other ice sheets of this thickness so far south at the time just before the melt?
Shouldn’t they be renamed the “Australian Research System Excellence and Wisdom In Theorising Science” (sarc tag not necessary, surely).
To accomodate US spellings/usages, they would need the alternate “Australian Science System Wisdom In Theorising Service”.
Just saying…
To get their results the researchers used sophisticated ice sheet and climate models = Magic Eight Ball autographed by Jean Dixon
“The reason for the layering is that global warming in parts of Antarctica is causing land-based ice to melt, adding massive amounts of freshwater to the ocean surface,” said ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science researcher Prof Matthew England an author of the paper.”
I see. So “parts of Antarctica” is pretty vague. If he means Western Antarctica then he has some splainin to do to get that fresh water thousands of kms away to the other side of the continent without it mixing. I expect the models can manage it, though.
And that is the problem. They will admit anything except give into the cold.
“This resulted from reduced Southern Ocean overturning following Heinrich Event 1, when warmer subsurface water thermally eroded grounded marine-based ice and instigated a positive feedback that further accelerated ice-sheet retreat.”
One more thing. If the ice really is melting at a fantastic rate underwater and melting Antarctica from below then are we measuring that? Is the ice sheet retreating underwater?
Sophisticated ice sheet and climate models mean they used 20 lines of code instead of 10. 🙂
Chevy, “But, Emily, the temperature isn’t going up.”
Gilda, “Oh, never mind.”
I’m surprised the report didn’t include an estimate of the proportion of the world’s population which lived within 10 metres of sea level 14000 years ago. Imagine the social upheval which would have resulted in having to move back so unexpectedly.
Yeah, Noah’s flood perhaps?
GJiven the time-frame of 14,000 years ago, the paper is talking about the Bolling Oscilation, wherein it is estimated that the global temperature rose by 12 C in about a century – how is that for unprecedented warming? First let them explain how this happened without much less CO2 in the atmosphere than there is at present. Well, the Melankovitch cycles can explain it. But did they mention what happened after the Bolling Oscilation? Nope, but what did happen, and rather quickly, was a massive cooling that made the “ice age” return for another few thousand years.
Only one thing is certain from this paper, these are times of desparation and despair in Australian climate science. Their grant funding is far more likely to collapse before any Antarctic glacier does.
It t’was 2 or 3 years ago or so that I conjoined these two (2) proxy graphs so that I could better see the relationship between the two.
Thus, please note on the following that Meltwater Pulse 1A occurred almost 4,000 years prior to the Holocene Climate Optimum, ….. and thus it is my opinion that surface temperatures had to have been extremely “warm” during that 700+- years period for enough glacial ice to melt resulting in a 30 meter increase in sea level.
Maybe a lot “warmer” than during the height of the Climate Optimum simply because of the “melting properties” of large volumes of solid ice.
Post Glacial Sea Level Rise and Holocene Temperature Variations
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/HoloceneInterglacialmeltwatertemperatureMediumWebview.jpg
It’s worse than that…
https://www.facebook.com/topic/Antarctica/104098646292810?source=whfrt&position=3&trqid=6065626731714258710
I cannot find any other source.
I ‘m getting sick and tired of the garbage being produced by this group.. As my mentor used to say “they wouldn’t know the difference between sh*t and clay”.
More ice because of warming fails the Occam’s [razor] test
But it passes the politically correct total bollocks test.
Please show us the evidence for deep water cooling (again conveniently where measurement is hardest) and decreased salinity.
Decreased salinity can also be due to accelerated cold water formation and downwelling which pulls down the salt, BTW.
Occam’s razor I meant. Android word processing sucks.
I don’t quite understand. Are they claiming that the ice sheet floating on fresh water will melt and that this will raise the level of the ocean? Somebody had better go back and take physics again, if so, right after they withdraw the paper in abject humiliation.
If they claim that the ice sheet on the ocean will melt (triggering basically no increase in sea level because the ice is floating already) and that this will suddenly warm the nearby land and melt the kilometers-thick ice sheets on Antarctica proper from the top down, that’s a lot more complex of an assertion and I’d have to see some serious backing for it. Even if the freshwater ice melted suddenly (where all ocean ice is freshwater ice, BTW, because salt water is concentrated, melts through it, and leaves behind freshwater ice) in order for the inland waters to warm, the surface waters have to warm, and once they warm, they will cool. All they can really hope for is a sudden change in albedo or a sudden and permanent change in global atmospheric circulation patterns to be driven by the change in ice coverage, and in truth we have no idea what will happen as everything is different now relative to 14,000 years ago. Different point in the orbital cycle, different atmospheric composition, different positions of the continents and above all, different distribution of ocean and land ice everywhere. What they really should be asking is why “sudden” melts and freezes appear in the climate record at all. This is qualitatively understandable from chaos/catastrophe theory — folded hysteretic surfaces of local stability reaching a critical point and “suddenly” falling over to another sheet — but quantitatively predicting a transition to a still warmer state is pure conjecture, in particular the conjecture that there is a still warmer sheet out there to fall through to or a critical point on the sheet we are on.
Since the “sheets” of local stability in climate dynamics probably have ten or twenty important dimensions (at least), with attractor orbits in at least this number of dimensions being projected down to just a few, I very much doubt that there is much merit to this claim. It could be true, sure! Or, the growing Antarctic sea ice could be a symptom of a global cooling due to slow but stead orbital changes, or due to the changing state of the sun, or it could be pure oscillation and variation of atmospheric circulation patterns utterly beyond our control or influence. The Earth could be getting ready to cool, to warm suddenly, to remain about the same. These things are all true, all of the time. That’s the thing about chaotic systems, after all. Difficult to predict.
The worst thing about the report above is it is utterly impossible to refute, or even address. No one can prove it false, and the events it “predicts” could take place a century from now and they’d still claim — if they were alive — to have predicted it even if the causes proved to be completely different. Yes, we can imagine a series of events that would lead to sudden SLR, thank you. Yes, since we know damn-all about the actual state of the planet a century ago, we know even less about its state 14,000 years ago and what we don’t know has error bars large enough for you to be able to claim that some variables are similar now to then, even though the actual state of the globe is vastly, overwhelmingly different.
Meh!
rgb
I chased up the link and , unusually for a paywalled paper, it gives a list of the cited refs , 2 of which were free access. One of them was the BEDMAP2 summary of ground icesheet thickness and underlying bed topography which is of interest in its own right , but not obviously relevant to what I had been looking for – the geological data that they claim underpins their model of warm water underbelly melting 14000 yrs BP .
There is a lot of information on that meltwater event and to the role of insolation and post glacial degassing of CO2 but you need academic credentials to get further than the abstracts.
I simply could not ascertain what geological data they could find for an event that occurred 14000 yrs ago in an open ocean involving ice on water.
I’m sure everyone when going through grade school remembers the science experiment where the teacher put an ice cube in a cup, and then filled the cup to the brim. The teacher would ask the students what would happen when the ice melted. Would the cup overflow? Sea ice melt does not cause sea levels to rise; melting land ice does.
“With 10 per cent of the world’s population, or 700 million people, living less than 10 metres above present sea level, an additional three metres of sea level rise from the Antarctic alone will have a profound impact on us all.”
——————————————————
“Metres” ??? Is this how they spell meters? Anyhow, the problem I have with such bombastic claims (i.e. “imminent”, “disturbingly close”, “3-4 meters”, “profound impact”, …), as well as their coverage by the MSM, is that they are only intended to cast doom and gloom onto uninformed public. Most laymen reading this get a first (and lasting) impression that it will be like some giant tsunami that will wash them away while asleep in the middle of the night. The fact that such changes in ocean levels happen over long periods of time on the human’s time scale (100’s or 1000’s of years) is usually obscured somewhere deep in the article, if anywhere.
The fact that these “changes” of SL rise are not happening period,, will likely not be conveyed.
I see a hockey stick in that graph. Anyone else see it? You have to lie on your side, then look at it using a mirror. But it’s there. We’re doomed.
Fine. Nice tale. I’ve heard it before, but strangely, not one person has ever showed measurements even hinting it is true.
So, show me the measurements:
Antarctic sea ice area = 100% coverage = 16.6 million sq kilometers a few days ago.
15% ice coverage = 20.0 million sq kiloeters.
Antarctic sea ice area has been steadily increasing every season of the year, every year since 1992.
Antarctic sea ice has been increasing rapidly since 2011 at a rate of 500,000 sq kilometers per year.
Antarctica has enjoyed a frightening sea ice anomaly as large as 2.0 million sq kilometers back in June, has had an anomaly the past weeks of 1.4 to 1.6 million sq kilometers.
What WAS the previous salt water salinity for the region every year since 1992?
What is the salinity now? For the entire 20,000,000 kilometers?
How deep is this supposed fresh water run off diluting the seawater? 10 meters? 50 meters? 100 meters? 1 meter?
How many trillion tons of seawater was required to dilute the seawater so far so WHAT temperature of air is now freezing more seawater faster? Again, show me the measurements.
The actual measured average air temperature for Antarctica has been decreasing since 1992 … WHAT CAUSED THE LAND-ICE TO MELT when are temperatures are actually measured across the continent as going down?
How much fresh water is required to “dilute” 20 million sq kilometers of sea ice?
Oh! Right. Land winds have been blowing the Antarctic sea ice away from the continent, so more sea ice forms near the continent mass, so the edges keep extending.
Try another one: Actual Antarctic winds do NOT always blow that direction (away from the pole, only certain area. Sea winds around the continent swirl and eddy in large circles. And, there are NO measurements establishing the claim either: Merely your hype and exaggerations based on a “assumed knowledge” that the “global air above Antarctica is “hotter” … But it is NOT hotter. The whole premise is false.
There is a myth that sea ice does not contain salt.
It does. Here is an x-ray micro-tomograph (29 micron pixel) of sea ice:
http://i1374.photobucket.com/albums/ag415/ozymandius2/sea_ice_rtd_0320_zpse00cb3e7.png
The white lines are salt trapped inside the ice (the dark spaces are air bubbles).
So when sea ice melts it does not change local salinity by much.
Actually it does, the salt is progressively forced out of the ice, the older the ice the lower the salinity. Multiyear ice can be melted for drinking water.
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/brine_salinity.html
Thanks, good to know. How much Antarctic sea ice is multi-year?
More to the point, how much of the expanding new Antarctic sea ice is multi-year?
I have the impression its quite a small fraction – maybe I’m wrong.
Easy to calculate:
Antarctic Sea ice area at minimum (in mid-February) has been increasing for many years: It has been 2.5 Million sq km’s the past 2 years. So, a few days ago during the all-time record high Antarctic sea ice of 16.6 mMkm^2 means no more than 15% of the Antarctic sea ice could be multi-year.
Earlier, when the planet was colder and the Antarctic sea ice was measured oscillating between a low of 1.75 Mkm^2 and a maximum of only 15.5 Mkm^2, at most, only 11.3 % of Antarctic sea ice could be multi-year ice.
Published references use a 10% value for multi-year Antarctic sea ice.
Notice the difference between Arctic and Antarctic multi-year sea ice: The Arctic multi-year ice is piled up by the wind against the northern Canadian coast and between the Canadian coastal islands. 3, 4, and even 5 year ice is commonly measured. The Antarctic multi-year ice is isolated in little coves and bays all around the continent where it was pushed by the prevailing winds BACK TOWARDS the coastal rocks!
This behavior is exactly opposite what the “consensus excuse” when it claims offshore winds blow the sea ice away from shore and cause more sea ice to form. Also, the steady increase since 1992 in Antarctic sea ice anomaloy occurs across all seasons and all years. If land-ice meltwater were causing the Antarctic sea ice anomaly by diluting the oceans around the Antarctic continent, then Antarctic sea ice anomaly would differ (slow) as the distance between the Antarctic sea ice edge and the coastal glaciers changed during the year. It has NOT changed.
(Anarctic glaciers) “…may play a far bigger role in driving past and importantly future sea level rise than we previously suspected.”
Give me a break! Along with Greenland, what other sources did you previously suspect? The CAGW cliched language used by all the Team is a measure of the absence of thought in these papers.
““The big question is whether the ice sheet will react to these changing ocean conditions as rapidly as it did 14,000 years ago,” said lead author Dr Nick Golledge …”
Dr. Nick, this is not the big question! A bigger one is, “how the heck do you know that it reacted at all to these highly contentious conditions 14,000 years ago. You are completely out of phase with the cycle. We are closer to going into a new glacial max than just coming out of one!!! Geology hand waving 101 taught at your self-styled ‘Centre of Excellence’ notwithstanding. You Aussie clime stalkers are showing the hysterical signs of imminent Fundalectomies. Chris Turney, who terminated his own career when, as a swashbuckler on the Ship of Fools, he was looking for signs of global warming in Antarctica and needed to be rescued from freezing in for the winter, is now impotently raising alarm that, with the effect of global warming, the Antarctic Ice is going to dump the emperor penguins onto the shores of Tasmania and NZ or some such…I didn’t bother to read that paper, although I was able to surmise it because it was going to be worse than “previously expected”.
Here is a bulletin for you guys. You know the game is up and I feel for your desperation, but odds are you guys are going to be getting a lot of cooling weather from Antarctica not “previously expected”. If you push the global warming causation too far, then you emasculate it. It can be ascribed to the glacial maxima, the interglacials and everything in between, then where are you? That’s even a bigger question.
Now the antartic ice loss is affecting gravity itself!
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20140210-26272.html
Dirk Pitt: While I agree with everyone here that these tossers at the UNSW and the Centre of Excellence-yadda-yadda are a little off this planet (what colour is the sky in their world?), you display mental insularity as well. The measurement unit in the metric system (SI) is described as “metre”, in French; and the French developed the first stage of the SI.
“Meter” is an American version. Other countries use other terms based on their own languages. When Australia adopted the SI back in the early 1970s, we also decided to use, in the main, these French spellings.
Your comment is a perfect example of insularity.
Back in your box …
“The research published in Nature Communications found that in the past, when ocean temperatures around Antarctica became more layered – with a warm layer of water below a cold surface layer – ice sheets and glaciers melted much faster than when the cool and warm layers mixed more easily.”
They reversed cause and effect. The layering of water is the effect. Melting of ice sheets and glaciers is the cause. Cold surface layer will not melt more ice. More ice water will cool the surface layer.
“The big question is whether the ice sheet will react to these changing ocean conditions as rapidly as it did 14,000 years ago,” said lead author Dr Nick Golledge, a senior research fellow at Victoria’s Antarctic Research Centre.
No because the glacial period is over 11,700 years ago. The ice sheets are gone except in Antarctica and Greenland. Have seen lately the kilometer-thick ice sheet in New York?
I particularly like the scare stories the warmists like to spin with sea level change. I wonder how many of them lie awake at night lamenting on the foot or so of sea level rise that resulted in displaced people and land loss over the last 150 years or so. The horror.
“I wonder how many of them lie awake at night lamenting “
Well, well:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/31/green-psychologists-confirm-climate-alarmists-are-making-themselves-mentally-sick-doomer-depression/
“It turns out the alarmists, with all their climate doom and gloom, have only succeeded in spreading depression among themsleves and those around them.”
Corroborated proof is the last thing they want. Thank you very much, now here’s your redundant cheque.