Guest post by Steven Goddard
From The Washington Post :
According to the University of Illinois, Antarctic sea ice area is nearly 30% above normal and the anomaly has reached 1,000,000 km2. You could almost fit Texas and California (or 250 Rhode Islands) inside Antarctica’s excess sea ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
According to NSIDC, over the last 30 years Antarctic sea ice extent has been growing at a rate of nearly 5% per decade, and set a record maximum last year.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot.png
And as you can see in the NSIDC image below, some Emperor Penguins have an extra long walk to their nesting ground – due to excess ice in the Weddell Sea and around West Antarctica.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_daily_extent.png
Well fed polar explorers, dressed properly for the cold climate
Sadly though, biologists using computer models have forecast that some Penguins are headed for extinction due to loss of Antarctic sea ice. Maybe that gives the males something to think about as they huddle in -70C weather all winter long, trying to keep from freezing to death or dropping their eggs. I suggest a Catlin-like expedition to the South Pole for biologists.
Male Emperor Penguins huddling to stay warm
The 30% excess of ice has not been widely reported, but there has been lots of talk in the press the last couple of days about ice breaking off the Wilkins Ice Shelf – the broken area being about one pixel in the NSIDC image above. Looking at the Wilkins picture below, I’m having a very tough time seeing any evidence of melting around the fractures, or any evidence of water pooling on the surface. Normally, such fractures are caused by tensile or shear stress, likely due to a change in currents. Ice melts from the edges towards the center, and that ice is very thick – up to 200 metres. Blaming the clean fractures seen below on warming and melting seems highly questionable – at best. I suggest bringing some actual structural and mechanical engineers into the discussion – how’s that for a novel idea in the AGW world?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WilkinsIceSheet/images/wilkins_aerial_photo_bas.jpg
Meanwhile in the Arctic, sea ice area is about 500,000 km2 below normal, which means that global sea ice area (Arctic + Antarctic) is about 500,000 km2 above normal. You could fit Dr. Hansen’s home state of Pennsylvania plus Al Gore’s home state of Tennessee plus Gordon Brown’s Scotland plus Dorothy’s Kansas inside the excess global sea ice area. Sounds like a real global meltdown, doesn’t it?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
Perhaps we should be worried – about those poor penguins struggling across an extra 200 miles of ice.
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As a laymen, I don’t understand why warmer temperatures would cause an ice shelf to break off. If I place a block of ice outside in the summer time, its sides will melt down until the center is exposed and eventually melts… but it won’t just collapse at some threshold.
I realize that Antarctica is not just one uniform block of ice, but I have difficulty imagining that slowly rising temperatures can cause major breaks. Can someone explain how this mechanism works?
Great site by the way, at least in this neophyte’s eyes!
Phil,
The Terre Adelie Colony referred to in the Penguin extinction article has normal sea ice in the NSIDC map.
Zeke,
This article starts with a quote from a government official about declining Antarctic ice, yet every UIUC and NSIDC graph shows increasing Antarctic Ice. March ice is the most interesting because that is near the minimum, and it also shows the fastest increase on NSIDC maps.
So no, my article is not misleading – unlike most of the ice nonsense being propagated by the media.
Well the Wilkins ice shelf is on the West side of the Antarctic Peninsula, at about 70 deg South, so it just out into the Southern Ocean, and that southern ocean just happens to go sloshing back and forth twice a day, through the Drake Passage soth of South America; which build up a large tidal bore as the Earth Rotates Westward underneath the tidal bulge. And the Wilkins shelf is floating, so that tidal bulge goes right underneath the ice shelf and lifts it twice a day. Is it any wonder it breaks. It broke again in the last two years, and I have a picture from Svend Hendriksen in Greenland that proves that the adjacent piece broke off about 50 years ago and is already grown back but thinner than the neighborhood (50 years less precipitation).
Besides the total Antarctic floating ice shelves are negligible compared to the total area of Arctic sea ice that melts every single year; so ice berg calving in Antarctica is a non event.
The graph of Sea Ice content you have posted on the side bar, is that arctic sea ice or total global sea ice? From what has been presented in this article, the arctic sea ice deficiency appears to be made up in the antarctic sea ice.
the graph on the side is for the arctic. you can see that, as the maximum is around March and the minimum in September. it would be about the other way round for the antarctic and a pretty chaotic graph for global extent.
the antarctic can NOT “make up” the loss in the arctic. it can t prevent local feed back loops in the arctic. and a rather random process can NOT counterbalance a clear TREND.
imagine this:
you have a monthly fixed income, and occasionally win a minor price in the lottery.
now for the past 30 years, your fixed income has been nearly always decreasing, and the rate of this loss is accelerating. on the other hand, you won the lottery twice over the last 3 years, and currently have slightly more money in your briefcase, than you have on average. no need to worry? just hope for another lottery win?
Cryosphere’s chart data shown in the post look reasonable, that is until they adjust it.
Let’s just call that site Adjustosphere Today because they’re tampering with the data all the time.
Let’s just see whether or not there’s a big Arctic meltdown this year.
Your link to a forecast that some penguins are headed for extinction is based on the latest IPCC rates of sea ice melting. I think that means the 2007 report but it doesn’t say. French research began in the 1960s and they use anecdotal evidence from the 1970s.
Here is a quote:
“Over the last 50 years, climate change has been most pronounced in the Antarctic Peninsula, where Terre Adelie is located.”
All this leads to some confusion. Did Terre Adelie get moved? Isn’t it in East Antarctica – nowhere near the Antarctic Peninsula? Closer to Australia than to Chile? The NSIDC map you provide shows ice along the area where I think they are writing about is at least at the median extent or better.
Anyway this study seems to be more of a computer game played with rules made up by the IPCC and has nothing to do with reality. Well, in the following sense it does: If their IPCC inspired numbers ever do materialize then they, with some uncertainty, think they know what will happen.
Meanwhile, they don’t seem to know where they are, that the ice isn’t going away, nor what might happen to the penguin population if the climate turns suddenly cooler. I can see a new request for funding!
Its not the extent of ice, silly. Its not even the area of ice, its the AGE of ice thats now important. And when the age of ice approaches long term normals, then it’ll be the VOLUME of ice that is alarming. And when volume approaches normal, then the crisis will be because of catastrophic DENSITY declines and so on and so on until finally someone pulls the funding plug on the AGW creature.
Phil. (11:26:14) :
If you read the article you linked to you’d see that the data was collected by biologists on the ice in Adelie Land and that the concern was about that particular colony, which has shown population crashes in the past. It’s also part of the coast which doesn’t show an increase on the map you posted. A shame that the facts get in the way of a good rant!
Actually, the article does not really make that distinction immediately clear, and only once do they mention Terre Adelei. Nowhere do they point out that it is not widespread nor that this particular population has been subject to crashes in the past nor that overall, Antarctica ice is way above average.
I guess you are correct, it is a shame that the facts get in the way of a good rant, eh?
Mark
@ur momisugly Zeke Hausfather (11:35:29) :
When you link to images such as those graphs but don’t include the original posting from the blog or other website being referenced, it puts the data out of context.
For all we know, Lucia posted the graphic as an example of junk data. I’ve seen people deliberately do this just to throw out disinformation. To avoid any possibility of this, please include more details, such as the actual article, before posting an image.
Can’t or doesn’t? Sure it can. Suppose the Antarctic ice shelf grows so much that sea levels fall. Arctic ice floats, so if it melts there is no net change in sea level.
But you’re probably talking about some sort of hypothetical climate tipping point, aren’t you? Is that what happened in the Holocene Climate Optimum, when temperatures were estimated to be much warmer than today? And how did the polar bears and penguins manage to survive it? Did I hear somebody mention Noah’s Ark?
Dumb questions time:
1 – If lots of snow falls on a large glacier, part of which is floating, don’t you get “accelerated glacial creep” (!) causing compressive presure on any bits of the floating shelf that happen to butt onto islands? – and thus an increase the the rate at which large chunks break off to float free?
2- do the various press releases on the wilkins ice bridge and the decrease in 2nd year ice in the arctic look co-ordinated to anyone else?
Re Zeke
the “Lucia graph” is quite different to the official one
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
which keeps unchanged trend until 2001.
John Galt,
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/what-george-will-meant-why-its-wrong/ is the original context over at Lucia’s place. Judge for yourself.
Steven,
All Stoere said is that “the ice is melting”, which is correct when discussing trends in Arctic and global sea ice, but not Antarctic. It was the WaPo reporter who added “painted a stark picture of the climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic regions” which is incorrect. After the whole George Will thing, I’m really not that surprised that a WaPo article got the facts wrong on sea ice. I agree that implying that Antarctic sea ice is decreasing is patently false.
However, it is somewhat misleading to imply that Antarctic sea ice this year is particularly unusual. Its well within two standard deviations of the long term trend, though last year was a bit on the high side. None of this changes the basic facts that Antarctic ice is slightly growing and Arctic sea ice is significantly shrinking over the past 30 years (or 20 years, or 10 years, or 5 years).
David Madsen (11:38:59) :
Cryosphere Today tracks NH & SH ice individually and global ice. Over the recent several weeks, the global has broken through the 30 year average. View this at:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
The more I study this, the more I realize that ice extent is valuable only for bragging rights. The real question is why is ice increasing of decreasing. If you want to see what’s bleeding ice out of the arctic basin, NSIDC posted a great animation covering some decades showing the huge impact of the transpolar drift stream pushing ice out into the path of the gulf stream:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070822_oldice.gif
For more info, see this:
http://nsidc.org/seaice/processes/circulation.html
“Ed Zuiderwijk (12:34:40) :
Hey, Penguins in danger because of too much ice, Polar Bears in danger because of too little (at least that’s what we’re being told)?
Obviously these animals find themselves at the wrong Pole!
Solution: Noah Ark, 2009 style: ship Bears to Antarctica, and Penguins to the North Pole and Bob’s your uncle.”
And We Canadians will cull them along with the seals!!!
Preston Speed (12:36:52) : ice sheets break
Well, George (12:45:33) answered your question.
I will only suggest you walk out to the end of a long floating dock and wait for high tide. Now if that dock was made of floating ice — If the sloshing water is a bit warmer the ice will thin and break loose sooner. If the ice is growing some part of it is still going to break loose at some point. In a world climate sense, as George said, in Antarctica this ought to be considered a non event.
Forgive me if this is a little OT, but I’ve been looking for it for some days. New Scientist, January 14th:-
” …..scientists should also take a hard look at their techniques, but don’t expect anyone to rush back to reanalyse the data. Science is too competitive to spend time raking over old results.
This is not the first time …scientists have been criticised for over-egging …results (New Scientist, 21 September 2002, p 38). It probably won’t be the last. But at least there are signs that the self-correcting nature of science will win the day.”
The first two snips are “neuro”.
Adelaide island is off the west coast of the Western Peninsula of Antarctica, Adelie Land is in East Antarctica south of Australia. At least on my globe.
The Wilkins ice sheet is hundreds of feet thick. Given the low thermal conductivity of ice, it would take an extremely long time for a 1C change in temperature to propagate to the center of the ice sheet.
The claim that the very thick ice is fracturing due to warming air above, or water below, seems to be grossly incorrect.
Arctic sea ice well above 2007 and heading towards 1979-2000 mean – cant seeany signs of excessive melting there;
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
On a lighter note all those penguins standing there for the map of Australia
Juraj V.
Your eyes deceive you on this one, which is understandable given how squished the anomaly data is on http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg . The data is practically identical; the only difference between the two is that my/Lucia’s graph uses monthly averages rather than daily data. You can see them side-by-side here:
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture69.png
Zeke,
It’s probably not a good idea to trust CT much on sea ice extent.
See this:
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u43/gplracerx/SummerArcticIceExtent4-2-2009.jpg
Jerry,
Rotate the penguin cluster a half turn clockwise and its clearly a map of Australia. Penguins wouldn’t know how to do a USA impression, but they would be more familiar with Australia, given that its in the correct hemisphere.
Rob R
Interesting data.
Does this get through to decision-makers in Government?
Be careful with the “recent anomalies” charts. At least for the regional plots, I have spotted some glitches to which I have alerted Bill Chapman. He is looking into it, but you can see an example here:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.3.html
I think the problem is obvious…