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.
Francis,
Does it look to you like the ice is “breaking up in West Antarctica?”
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_daily_extent.png
quoting:
“In the context of climate change, global sea ice area may not be the most relevant indicator”
commenting:
That’s odd, I heard it was the “canary in the coal mine”, the undeniable, in-your-face evidence that global warming is real and dangerous… (yadda, yadda)
😉
geophys: the canari in the mine is the arctic, and the disintegration of antarctic peninsula ice shelves, as was predicted already more than 30 years ago…
But considering the “increase” of sea ice extent in March. What’s exactly the point in saying there is an increase of 4.7% with an error of 4.4% ? Especially if you compare with the error in the arctic.
Steven: yes it really looks like it’s breaking up. Wilkins ice sheld, 10 000 years old, on april 2
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_IMM_1PNPDE20090402_051637_000002062077_00434_37061_8858_100m_img.jpg
on April 5
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_IMM_1PNPDE20090405_052222_000002522077_00477_37104_3010_100m_img.jpg
and April 8
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_IMM_1PNPDE20090408_052759_000002622078_00019_37147_6171_100m_img.jpg
While the exact causes of this breakdown must still be found, I would be really surprised if the increase of temperatures in the peninsula didn’t play a role. Please remember the following quote:
“One warning sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica, will be a breakup of ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula just south of the January 0C isotherm; the ice shelf in the Prince Gustav Channel, and the Wordie Ice Shelf; the ice shelf in George VI Sound, and the ice shelf in Wilkins Sound.”
Mercer, Nature, 1978, v271 pp.321-325
Guess what happened to all the mentioned shelves?
But NASA says all this new ice is thin and will melt and all be gone……Who is leading NASA now anyway? How long before NASA cannot even launch a bottle rocket?
I have lost total confidence in NASA
Phil. (11:26:14) :
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.
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!
From the paper: “…emperor penguins could be headed toward extinction in at least part of their range before the end of the century…”
Two paragraphs later: “the median population size of a large emperor penguin colony in Terre Adelie, Antarctica, likely will shrink from its present size of 3,000 to only 400 breeding pairs by the end of the century.”
Five paragraphs later: “One fluctuation and subsequent sea ice reduction in Terre Adelie during the 1970s led to a population decline in emperor penguins of about 50 percent.”
Six paragraphs later: “One is what the march of this population toward extinction tells us about the prospects for the emperor penguin throughout its range.”
I could keep going, but I think you get my point, and maybe you can grasp Steven’s.
So we have a paper by biologists who don’t know the definition of “extinction.”
I agree with you on one point, however, and think it’s a shame that the facts get in the way of a good rant.
Zeke Hausfather (11:35:29) :
Steven,
This analysis is somewhat misleading. …
While it is true that Antarctic sea ice is unusually high this month (and has generally, though not significantly, been growing), that really doesn’t have any bearing on what is happening to Arctic sea ice. Combining both into a global sea ice trend really isn’t that meaningful, since the two out-of-sync periodic datasets result in a lot of monthly noise. The folks at Cryosphere where you got your graphs explain this pretty well:
“In the context of climate change, global sea ice area may not be the most relevant indicator. Almost all global climate models project a decrease in the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area over the next several decades under increasing greenhouse gas scenarios. But, the same model responses of the Southern Hemisphere sea ice are less certain. In fact, there have been some recent studies suggesting the amount of sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere may initially increase as a response to atmospheric warming through increased evaporation and subsequent snowfall onto the sea ice.”
Look at the trends in the data. Singling out individual months in noisy data sets makes it too easy to cherry-pick an anomaly to make a point.
Zeke Hausfather (12:05:25) :
To forestall the obvious question of “how could global sea ice be decreasing significantly when Antarctic sea ice is increasing”, it is useful to look at the trends in each. Over the past 30 years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a rate of 0.516 million km per decade, while Antarctic sea ice has been increasing at a rate of 0.125 million km per decade. This means that global sea ice is decreasing at 0.391 million km per decade.
You might object, saying that there has been a fundamental shift in the last few years, and using data from 1979 to present obscures this change. However, if we use data from 2001 to present, for example, the rate of decline in global sea ice is even greater: 0.765 million km per decade. Granted, its too soon to tell if the last decade was anomolous, just as its too soon to tell if the last few months were anomolous.
I agree about the cherry picking. If you want to claim that the “melting Arctic” will catastrophically raise sea levels, a growing Antarctic is an inconvenient truth. Far better to cherry pick the Arctic data and dismiss the Antarctic.
George E. Smith (16:43:24) :
”’ when the arctic floating sea ice melts, it absorbs 80 calories per gram from the warmer sea water it is floating on.”
I have no disagreement with your analysis, but it assumes a static ice pack vision, i.e., the ice sits there and is melted by warmer waters. I hope some people will start taking a serious look at the currents that are the biggest impact on ice loss. Google “transpolar drift stream” and take a look at some of the info. Here’s a visual link that really shows the rapid streaming of ice out of the arctic basin and into the gulf stream where it melts:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070822_oldice.gif
Flanagan,
Wilkins is not in West Antarctica, and from the photos the breakup appears to be mechanical rather than due to melt.
Barry Foster (11:29:23) :
So Norway has its share of idiots too?
Indeed we have. The sad thing is that Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre is actually an intelligent person with a lot of wise things to say about many things (although I have never voted for his party). This has not always been the case for his predecessors.
I suspect he is too busy to invest in what the science says and trusts the climate scientists too much. I thought he was more clever than that. Apparently not.
mikef (14:19:07) :
About the Norwegians…..
Its moot to remember the recent trip by the worlds enviroment ministers to Antartica was organised by the Norwegian government (I had this confirmed by our UK ministers office) and by a strange quirk of fate they all arrived there just after Steigs ‘Antartic is warming after all’ report had done the rounds. One wonders about the time frame to organise such a jaunt…well….you are talking best part of a year I’d guess. Wonder how long Steigs time frame was…? Ah well, never know.
This was the work of Environment Minister Erik Solheim. He also “sponsored” the trip to the Antarctic for several ministers from other countries, apparently to gather support in anticipation of Copenhagen. I also suspect, but this is not confirmed (so be skeptic), that the BBC, the NRK (=the norwegian equivalent to the BBC) and “climate journalists” from the newspaper Aftenposten also were “sponsored” to participate. They all reported back.
And its the Norwegian politico’s that gave Al Gore & the IPCC thier gong.
What do you mean? I didn’t think we were that important.
The Norwegians do tend to like thier AGW.
That is true for the politicians. But I think reality creeps in nowadays. At least I hope so.
“”” Arn Riewe (07:22:14) :
George E. Smith (16:43:24) :
”’ when the arctic floating sea ice melts, it absorbs 80 calories per gram from the warmer sea water it is floating on.”
I have no disagreement with your analysis, but it assumes a static ice pack vision, i.e., the ice sits there and is melted by warmer waters. I hope some people will start taking a serious look at the currents that are the biggest impact on ice loss. Google “transpolar drift stream” and take a look at some of the info. Here’s a visual link that really shows the rapid streaming of ice out of the arctic basin and into the gulf stream where it melts: “””
Sorry arn, I made no such assumptions. I simply recalled the simple fact that any 8th grade high school student learns in science; that the latent heat of freezing of the water-ice phase transition is about 80 Calories per gram.
Where abouts in the ocean that ice decides to melt is irrelevent; the water it is sitting in will give up a total of 80 calories, and being salt water it will contract to a smaller volume and the sea level will go down. It doesn’t matter much whether a cube of water roughly 4.3 cm on a side cools 1 deg C or whether 1000 times that much water cools 0.001 deg C, the total volume contraction is the same (assuming the Tc is constant over the temp range). So why are you raising a red herring? I don’t care WHY the ce melts, just the fact that it does.
Unless of course you imagine the energy does not come mostly from the water. For anyone who believes something else is the source of the latent heat energy; I have a wonderful wintertime experiment for you to perform at your favorite iced over lake.
To Hotrod,
Now I’m intrigued. Wikipedia; the people’s “encyclopedia” says some water is 1600 years old !
So how do they know that; what was it before it was water; and how did it get here.
Did it crash into the earth as a comet 1600 years ago?.
As for the “thermohaline circulation”, don’t look for it to stop anytime soon; well it might in 2012 when some folks say the earth is going to stop and start rotating in the opposite direction. Something to do with Coriolis affect or some such thing. Get rid of all the salt i the ocean and it will still continue to circulate in the exact same direction.
In reality, each pixel in the cryosphere graph represents 1/20 of 1.000.000 Km2, which is 50.000 Km2. Being the case, the Wilkins platform is about 1/4 of a pixel in the first graph.
Ecotretas
Not sure how far your tongue is in your cheek on that 🙂
That is an estimate of the maximum time a parcel of water takes to make its deep water transit in the thermohaline circulation since it descended. I have seen other estimates of various legs of the journey. I think the transit time for the surface loop from the Indian ocean area to the north atlantic is about 50 years. The water now near the UK up welled near India, or passed southwest out of the Pacific during the Korean war period. Likewise the oldest water in the loop which sunk near the UK about the time the Roman Empire fell in about 410 BCE is just now upwelling in the Central Pacific.
The point I was trying to make was the ocean might have a thermal memory in that long loop current, that periodically brings to the surface water that sank decades or centuries earlier. If it does not fully equalize in temperature during its travel, there should be a small bias imposed on the solar heating by the starting point of the heating as this water up wells.
I have no clue if or how big this bias might be, but since the thermal anomalies AGW is so concerned about, (total range from hot to cold anomaly being about 4.5 deg C, with most of the sea surface anomaly much smaller) even a very small bias in absolute terms for the upwelling water temp would/could be a significant fraction of the total anomaly.
Larry
“A shame that the facts get in the way of a good rant!”
And what facts were those? It’s a model not a fact.
When are you people at WUWT going to learn that you can’t trust data? You have to rely upon feelings! Sure, data tells us that the ice pack is growing, but who can forget those poor destitute polar bears struggling to survive on that melting iceberg? It’s not worth it, friends, it’s not worth it.
(how do I turn sarcasm off on this blog? I hope someone can tell me soon, because I’ve got a hunk of polar bear on the grill and it won’t flip itself!)
Err, Steven, to me it really looks like wilkins is on the west part of Antarctica
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/20080325_wilkins_figure1.jpg
and I don’t quite understand what you mean by “mechanical” collapse, as opposed to “melting”. The melting of ice shelves always results in rifts and subsequently in collapses, they do not slowly become liquid, do they?
“I don’t quite understand what you mean by “mechanical” collapse, as opposed to “melting”. ”
Sorry, but it beggars belief that an Ozzie from somewhere near Melbourne would pose as an authority on glaciers, or ice, or snow, or even fresh water!
While I’ve never stood astride a glacier I at least can watch the progress of ice out on a lake every spring. I have a half-dozen adjectives for snow, like scraffle or powder, that I use most winters.
High comedy.
Flanagan,
Perhaps you could get 2 large tubs of water, take them to a commercial freezer, keep watch on them til about 2″ of ice forms on top of the water. Now carefully remove the tubs to a warmer area. In one of the tubs you might slosh the water around, while the other will remain completely still. I have not done this but I have a feeling it just might illustrate the difference between mechanical collapse and melting. Please report the results of the experiment here.
Thanks,
Mike
Flanagan (22:34:05) :
…and I don’t quite understand what you mean by “mechanical” collapse, as opposed to “melting”. The melting of ice shelves always results in rifts and subsequently in collapses, they do not slowly become liquid, do they?
As the ice sheet advances from land to water, only part of the mass of the ice is supported by water. The rest is “cantilevered” over the water. This creates a bending moment, which induces tensile stress across the top of the sheet. When the tensile stress exceeds the yield stress of the ice, it fails. The physical process is an initial failure in tension, which acts as the fracture initiator. The fracture propagates down across shear planes in the ice sheet, relieving the stress.
If you look at this – http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/larseniceshelf/photos/AP-tabular-iceberg.jpg – you can see the roughness at the top of the sheet typical of tensile failure, while below it’s smooth, the characteristic of shear failure.
This is a mechanical collapse.
I assume that the reference to “melting” refers to a process where melting at top or bottom of the sheet lowering the mechanical strength of the sheet. However, even in that case, the process will still occur as I’ve described – unless someone want to make a silly assertion about ice sheets magically “melting” through across arbitrary planes away from the surface in fashion bearing an uncanny and mysterious resemblance to shear failure.
Hope this answers your question.
In my post above, “away from the surface” should be “at an arbitrary distance away from the face.” Sorry.
There is something important that needs to be remembered. When ice is supported by water, it will displace an amount of water equal to it’s weight. (Archimedes Principal) If you place a piece of ice in a glass of water and mark the level of the water, when the ice melts, the level will be the same. The ice on the Arctic Ocean that is supported by water has already displaced it’s weight and caused water to flow out from the Arctic Ocean. There is probably no net change in Ocean levels because the water in the form of snow came primarily from the other Oceans. When any ice not supported by land melts, there will be no change in the level of the Ocean. The important ice pack levels of those of Greenland and the portions of Anarctic supported by solid land. The Anarctic ice over land changes sea levels.
“Steven Goddard (07:29:44) :
Flanagan,
Wilkins is not in West Antarctica, and from the photos the breakup appears to be mechanical rather than due to melt.”
I agree with Steven. Perhaps the winds are driving what you are seeing?
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/shemjet_archloop.html
Thats the antartic jet stream animation builder. Put in your dates and watch how the wind patterns go.. looks like the area you are showing is gettin slammed.
Retired Engineer John (17:44:08) :
There is something important that needs to be remembered. When ice is supported by water, it will displace an amount of water equal to it’s weight. (Archimedes Principal) If you place a piece of ice in a glass of water and mark the level of the water, when the ice melts, the level will be the same.
Agreed.
The ice on the Arctic Ocean that is supported by water has already displaced it’s weight and caused water to flow out from the Arctic Ocean. (Emphasis added.)
Disagree. You’re overlooking the mechanical properties of the ice. The sheet ice ice only displacing part of it’s weight. The remainder is cantilevered. See my post regarding what happens when the mass of ice not supported by water exerts enough force to exceed the yield strength of ice. After the ice fractures off of the main body, it is just as you say.