Guest post by Steven Goddard
Two days ago I questioned how Antarctic ice could be both “melting faster than expected” and “expanding” at the same time. Yet (as WUWT has noted before) the answer is obvious – according to NASA, most of Antarctica is both cooling rapidly and heating rapidly at the same time.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6502
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WilkinsIceSheet/images/wilkins_avh_2007.jpg
Since nearly the entire continent is both cooling and heating simultaneously, it makes perfect sense (using AGW logic) that the ice would be rapidly expanding and rapidly retreating simultaneously. In 2004, NASA thought that Antarctica was cooling by as much as 15 degrees C per century. But after three more years of cooling, they changed the map to show a warming trend in 2007.
The hot red warming trend seen in the second map has a stated uncertainty of “between 2-3 degrees Celsius” which means that it might actually represent a rapid cooling trend, rather than a warming trend. Vostok is averaging -96F this week. Does that make anyone think of hot, red colors?
Penguins trying to keep cool in NASA’s rapidly warming world
Nylo posted a link to an excellent parody of the state of Antarctic climate science, written by Dr. John Christy.
“What we believe,” Dr. Frost told ecoEnquirer, “is that a new paradigm is needed in scientific thought. Since mutually exclusive sets of scientific results usually are published in respected scientific publications, we suggest that they are both true. There is a higher level of physical understanding that must be developed, one where the Yin and Yang of scientific findings are reconciled, better understood, and appreciated.”
Good to see tax dollars hard at work, supporting serious and coherent science from the same organisation which put men on the moon – 40 years ago this July.
Shakespeare apparently saw AGW coming:
Much Ado About Nothing
The Comedy of Errors
All’s Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Tempest
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Since the vast majority of the Antartic is one of the driest places on earth, a simple sampling of absolute humidty should indicate an increase of some kind in water vapor (assuming that AGW is occuring to the degree Mann, Steig et als say it is). I wonder if NOAA has archived polar orbiting satellite films which include the vapor channel (IR)? Otherwise, a sample of dry bulb and wet bulb temps could derive the needed info. Of course, what intrepid artic explorer is willing to that?
The Arctic seems unwilling to cooperate. Could it be that cold AMO and PDO phases are introducing waters that are not so warm into the Arctic and thus delaying the melt?
I guess the computers are down at NSIDC.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
slowtofollow(03:52:57)……….Adding-on would seem to be the appropriate correction for public theorizing. The only popular discussion of calving from floating ice shelves was:…..ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITTANICA…..The ice behind the floating ice shelves, “moves seaward at…(().2-1.6miles) per year. The exposed seaward front of the ice shelf experiences stresses from subshelf currents, tides, and ocean swell in the summer and moving pack ice during the winter. Since the shelf normally possesses cracks and crevasses, it will eventually fracture to yield freely floating icebergs…Iceberg calving may be caused by ocean wave action, contact with other icebergs, or the behaviour of melting water on the upper surface of the berg.” Also, they’ve “been able to link the breaking stress occurring near the ice front to long storm-generated swells originating tens of thousands of kilometres away.” For Larsen B, the fractures are believed to be due to “frost wedging”, after meltwater filled crevasses…..FROM AN ABSTRACT…..(I’ve not been very successful at getting to page 2.) By the Amundsen Sea, “Warmer ocean waters are circulating beneath the (shelf) ice and melting their bases at a rate of 50 meters a year.”…PS…Another theory…In the age of Google…Informally, it will become acceptable to omit references when giving a (proper) quote???
ccpo (06:42:54),
You don’t indicate who you are responding to, but if you think data isn’t manipulated by the government, you are very mistaken:
click1
click2
click3
click4
click5
click6
click7
So you see, the government is spoon feeding you data that has been tampered with. And the gov’t resists releasing the unadjusted data.
Anyone who still believes that CO2 = AGW at this point is suffering from cognitive dissonance.
In the article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok,_Antarctica – it specifies that: Vostok in Antarctica is a place where “A lack of carbon dioxide in the air leads to irregularities in a person’s breathing mechanism.”
Why not send some of our politicians who want to label CO2 as poison and pollutant a few weeks to Vostok?
There is apparently a pattern of both short-term (200-300 years) and long-term(1,500) years periodic warming of the West Anarctic Peninsula. Two studies supporting this notion are discussed in http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/melting-antarctic-ice-part-natural-cycle.
~snip~ [Ad-hom attack on this site and its readership, with no specifics. ~dbstealey, mod.]
I think Anthony willl be interested in this. While the well-publicized Catlan expedition has been underway at the Arctic. there has been a non-publicized Google (and Virgin) funded expedition going on in the Antarctic area –an attempt to circumnavigate the Antarctic continent by a Brit in a rowboat!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/2367225/Rower-determined-to-make-it-on-his-own