Greg Roberts | April 18, 2009
ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent’s western coast.
Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.
However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.
East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week’s meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades”.
Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.
“Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally,” Dr Allison said.
The melting of sea ice — fast ice and pack ice — does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water. Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps. In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.
Last week, federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett said experts predicted sea level rises of up to 6m from Antarctic melting by 2100, but the worst case scenario foreshadowed by the SCAR report was a 1.25m rise.
Mr Garrett insisted global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. “I don’t think there’s any doubt it is contributing to what we’ve seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica,” he said.
Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. “The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west,” he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.
“Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off — I’m talking 100km or 200km long — every 10 or 20 or 50 years.”
Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia’s Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.
A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.
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Robert Bateman (19:40:20) :
Now it will be the Southern Hemisphere’s turn to experience the winter the North had.
Do you mean temperatures at least half a degree above the 1979-1997 average? Why don’t you try looking at the data before making such statements?
Robert Bateman:
What exactly is the reason behind 1979-1997? Why not 1978-1996 or 1930-1940 or 1900-2000?
You know what?
Could you guys bribe the Head at Sasha and Malia’s new school(s) to teach this stuff to them?
Then they could be 21st century gals standing up to the evil bad man wolf (daddy!) and say: ‘Daddy: your climate change policy sucks! We learned all about this at school today and you’re talking shit out of your arse!’
Course, that might lead to bad language punishments from big bad momma wolf, but hey: they might learn the lesson that Daddy won’t answer questions when he doesn’t feel like it. So maybe they shouldn’t either. And when big bad momma wolf calls them spoilt little children for being like that, then they can say: ‘But we learned it from Daddy!’
I do but jest, since no loving family will behave like that….but just a thought…….
Juraj V.
“I have the IPCC report with projected ice loss graphs and BOTH poles should lose the ice, Arctic at faster rate then Antarctic.”
I may have overlooked them, but could you direct me to these graphs. The IPCC 4th assessment seems to be very cautious about the reliability of modelling sea ice, particularly in the Antarctic.
“Even in the best case (NH winter), the
range of simulated sea ice extent exceeds 50% of the mean, and
ice thickness also varies considerably, suggesting that projected
decreases in sea ice cover remain rather uncertain.”
IPCC 4th Assessment 2007, Chapter 8 p616
Why is it a reason to be excited that the Antarctic ice area is growing at the moment? It should be growing shouldn’t it, since the SH is entering winter.
I don’t see the significance of this graph.
John Finn (01:56:59) how about showing us the ‘data’?
Sea ice up 43% since 1980:
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/comment.php?comment.news.109.3
I haven’t seen this mentioned here much… Anyone tried to vet this story?
Antarctic sea ice is growing.
No wonder I have yet to find a simgle alarmists who will bet on their own dire predictions!!
I can’t find a single scientist that will bet sea levels will rise 6 cm or more in the next 10 years (60 cm in 1 century, which is far below what many of these crackpot alarmists insist on).
If anyone here in this forum finds a sucker willing to bet $1000 on the above scenario.
LET ME KNOW!
“The other reason is that if the world warms, the seas around Antarctica will warm and the models show the warming surrounding seas increasing precipitation on the continent and actually increasing snow pack. In fact, increases in Antarctic ice pack actually exceed decreases forecast in ice packs around the rest of the world. The entirety of the IPCC ocean rise scenario is driven by the thermal expansion of water, not net ice melting.
”
From climate-skeptic.com
(1)…AGW theory suggests that polar warming would be greater in the hemisphere that has more land area. That is the northern hemisphere. And its probably relevant that the Arctic is mostly surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is entirely surrounded by water. (2)…East Antarctica (with its ice averaging about 6500 ft in thickness) gets the cooling effect of altitude. The Arctic Ocean is, of course, at sea level. (3)…Warming can be global without being everywhere. There’s nothing contradictory about parts of East Antarctica cooling. (4)…Incidentally, The Australian is owned by Rupert Mordoch.
Bart van Deenen,
Look at the red line, not the black line. Of course the black line is rising – it is indeed a seasonal effect. The red line is “current ice – average ice” though, so any time the red line is above zero we have “above average ice” for this specific date of the year.
It would be interesting to see how wide the variance is on the anomaly though.
>And its probably relevant that the Arctic is mostly surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is entirely surrounded by water.
Water is surrounded by land and land is surrounded by water. Why is that relevant again?
To MikeN…”And its probably descriptive of this situation that the Arctic Ocean is mostly surrounded by land, while the Antarctic continent is entirely surrounded by water.”…improves only that sentence…To be more explicit: AGW theory suggests that polar warming would be greater in the hemisphere that has more land area. Since land can absorb less of the heat from the sun, the atmosphere above becomes warmer. Below the equator there is a greater expanse of oceans. The water can better absorb the heat from the sun, by moving it into the depths. So, the atmosphere in the southern hemisphere will be relatively cooler. And therefor there is less heat to move (thru the Westerlies) to Antarctica.
Laurence Kirk (20:48:48) :
Contributors may or may not be aware that the pleasant and sincere Australian Environment Minister, Peter Garret’s previous training and experience has been as a popular rock musician. Also that the prime minister, perhaps wary of Mr Garret’s sincerity and demonstrated propensity to say what he believes rather than what is politically expedient, excluded ‘climate change’ from his portfolio and appointed a sepecific Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong. Ms Wong’s background is in law, the trade union movement, the Labour Party and the Uniting Church, which would appear to align her far more closely with prime minister Kevin Rudd’s intentions and purposes.
What shocks me though is the complete lack of any scientific background or expertise in the people appointed to these positions. Without even a basic training in scientific method, nor any specific scientific background, how could such people be expected to judge the validity of the advice that they are being given? Without any scientific background, the tendency to evaluate and choose advice on the basis of whether it confirms their previous public positions and whether it suits their political purposes must be fairly compelling.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/15/2543797.htm
Laurence,
This is how it works.
The idea to promote AGW comes from the UN.
The IPPCC digests the scientific reports, cherry picks the data and creates models in order to deliver the proof of the hoax so to say.
At the same time they create a closed circuit of conferences.
These conferences are visited by scientists who are paid to follow the “UN party line” and advise the Governments.
The external consulting bureaus are also infested and biased in favor of the UN IPCC.
What is going on is nothing more but a coup against humanity.
Some people believe that the current world population needs five planets to sustain and expand the current consumption patterns.
Via the control over CO2 emissions they control every aspect of our civilization, our industry, our transportation systems, our consumption including food production and population growth/reduction.
We all know we don’t need five planets to maintain and or expand our life styles.
We have sufficient resources and we will be able create much more prosperity for all of humanity.
The idea’s are sick. The science is wrong, the motovation is based up on lies and deception.
We have all the reasons to stop the entire process at any price.
Hope you dig it.
Read http://green-agenda.com and Agenda 21 of the UN (this Agenda is already ratified by most of the countries in the world.
If a country that has not signed this Agenda is in need of Word Bank Support, the first document they have to sign is the Agenda 21 treaty.
It appears that, “The Australian’s ongoing war against climate science,” has won one….The source cited does not agree with the conclusions of the newspaper article….Despite the AGW diminishing of ice in the Arctic, Greenland, and Western Antarctica….Ian Allison’s, “only claim is that Eastern Antarctica is cooling, with anecdotal evidence confirming a ‘slight increase’ in sea ice. Moreover, this could be explained by the fact that the Antarctic is acontinent surrounded by the Southern Ocean, which may be absorbing global heat. The Antarctic also has an ozone hole above it…”….See scienceblogs.com/deltoid/ and following.
Might be something in this – still an on-line item on 20th April!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25349683-601,00.html
Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking
Greg Roberts | April 18, 2009
Article from: The Australian
ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
And to help Francis (12:39:33) :
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25359558-5003402,00.html
Oh they have an answer for everything and guess what its all our fault:
“It’s the southern ozone hole whatdunit. That’s why Antarctic sea ice is growing while at the other pole, Arctic ice is shrinking at record rates. It seems CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals have given the South Pole respite from global warming.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16988-why-antarctic-ice-is-growing-despite-global-warming.html
Seems to me AGW has alot of people chasing their tail. Theres evidence to show man-made global warming is causing it and theres evidence to show its natural. I think we need to look away from the ice and look to a paper trail showing this was a pre-meditated scam. Also the link that Ron posted is not correct for me does anyone have a different URL for it? I also belive innocent until proven guilty- so if it is still in debate how can they implement taxes on us, any lawyers able to answer this?
Sorry the link did finaly show and that is very interesting.