From the Australian
Ice shelves stable over six years
ANTARCTIC ice shelves are showing no sign of climate change, six years of unique research have shown.
Previously on WUWT we discussed the media’s fascination with “melt” when it comes to ice shelves cracking off. Then there’s also this picture that keeps getting recycled. Now there’s the “ice listeners” that hear no change. (see my note at the end)
http://www.ogleearth.com/wissm.jpg
Here’s the article in the Australian
Scientists from Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology are using acoustic sensors developed to support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to listen for the sound of icebergs breaking away from the giant ice sheets of the south pole.
“More than six years of observation has not revealed any significant climatic trends,” CUT associate professor Alexander Gavrilov said yesterday.
Professor Gavrilov and PhD student Binghui Li are investigating whether it is possible to detect and monitor significant changes in the disintegration rate of the Antarctic ice shelf by monitoring the noise of ice breaking.
The pair are using two acoustic stations, one 150km off Cape Leeuwin, the southwest tip of WA, and another off the gigantic US military base on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean.
“They are part of a network of underwater acoustic receivers, or hydrophones,” Dr Gavrilov told The Australian yesterday.
The stations have been used to locate nuclear explosions detonated by India.
More than 100 signals from Antarctica are detected weekly by the Cape Leeuwin station. They are then transmitted to Geoscience Australia in Canberra.
“Six years of results is not long in the scheme of things, so we will keep watching,” Dr Gavrilov said.
The pair will present their research at a conference in Europe later this month.
NOTE: While the science on this is questionable at this point, one should note that if the results went the other way, our valiant media would no doubt trumpet the news worldwide. No doubt we’d see catchy headlines like “Ice whisperers hear climate change in the Antarctic” – Anthony
John W. (10:52:47) :
I don’t understand the fuss.
[…]
Maybe I’ve missed something, but “whether it is possible to detect and monitor significant changes in the disintegration rate of the Antarctic ice shelf by monitoring the noise of ice breaking” doesn’t strike me as even slightly bogus research.
You make very good points about the potential value of such research. However, I don’t think that’s what all the fuss is about. It’s the quote by professor Alexander Gavrilov that “More than six years of observation has not revealed any significant climatic trends.” Knowledgeable people on both sides of the AGW debate are going to rip that to shreds but, as Anthony points out, MSM reporters are not so knowledgeable (to put it mildly) and would have most likely danced a jig over this article if the researchers had said they detected a global warming signal.
p.s. Cracks from freezing should be loud too, if we consider the pictures from the Catlin expedition where there were more than a meter high humps.
You can expect more alarmism from Britain’s ITV and Channel 4 in the future as they fall in line with the BBC. The government has unveiled plans for both ITV and Channel 4 to be funded by the TV licence as well as a monthly tax on fixed telephone lines which will go towards funding digital broadband and the aforementioned television channels which make their money from advertising but now are being enriched by government. Taxpayers are not going to be given a say on this matter. Bail outs for banks, taxpayers money towards “green companies”, taxpayers subsidizing the mortgages of politicians and now taxpayers giving money to commercial stations. Everyone bow the knee to thieving technocrats in government and the media.
Once again: Antarctica’s icecube dispenser on the news!!
Funny or silly?, wouldn’t it be better a live cam?
It’s like recording the sound everytime your wife takes some icecubes from the fridge!…are these guys paid for this?, surely they are, because it is terribly boring.
Well, here is an oposite opinion planned and sculptured by the President’s Office and his loyal scientific staff:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/16/obama-climate-change-impacts
From Climate Depot.
New Headline
Antarctica
Scientists confirm; the silent apocalypse continues its relentless march.
I would be willing to bet that the ‘sound signature’ from cracking due to breakup and freezing are able to be differentiated. Same thing from siesmic due to earthquakes and magma. Maybe call it an iceprint.
They probably had to prove that they could tell the difference, otherwise they wouln’t have gotten funded for long-term data set recording. If they couldn’t, thier funding would have been for research into how to tell the difference, and thier findings would be a paper on how the state-of-the art allows/doesn’t allow one to record data in a meaningful matter.
They surely would not be making a finding of no long-term change if they couldn’t tell the difference.
“Scientists from Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology are using acoustic sensors developed to support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to listen for the sound of icebergs breaking away from the giant ice sheets of the south pole.”
Maybe I am retarded, but I did not realize there are icebergs at the South Pole?!? There is a huge ice sheet that covers the South Pole, but icebergs are over water, and it is a very long distance from the pole to the southern oceans. How am I to take any study seriously these clowns may doing. The ice sheets virtually cover the entire continent of Antartica. Are icebergs going to break away from the ice sheet at the South pole and magically float across the land mass. I understand what data is to be collected, but one should be more careful in the description of who, what, when, where and how!
E french,
The article as written clearly states that it is looking for icebergs breaking away from ice sheets.
It does not say the bergs are forming and breaking off at the southpole.
I find it enlightening that this much scrutiny and sord parsing is expended on a report that may undermine AGW, but any bilge posing as *proof* of AGW is given unquesitoned attention, usually long after it has met the fate of most studies in favor of AGW- the trash heap.
What is the sound of no ice cracking?
or
If an iceberg doesn’t break off, will Al Gore still hear a splash?
Six years’ worth of data may not be very much but surely it was only about ten or eleven years between the present warming trend beginning and papers being published in the mid-eighties that led to the formation of the IPCC in1988. We’ve now had ten or eleven years of no warming, but, of course, that’s a statistical blip. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?
WUTW readers may enjoy exploring the related issue of “Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate”
How is sound used to measure temperature in the ocean?
# Acoustic Thermometry (ATOC)
# ATOC Project Homepage
# Spindel, R.C., and P.F. Worcester, “Ocean acoustic tomography,” Scientific American, 263, 94-99 (October, 1990).
# “Sounding Out the Oceans Secrets” by the National Academy of Sciences
# URI-GSO IES Group
Observing the Ocean in the 2000s: A Strategy
for the Role of Acoustic Tomography in Ocean Climate Observation
B. Dushaw, et al. 1999 Observing the Oceans in the 21st Century, C.J. Koblinsky and N.R. Smith (Eds), GODAE Project Office and Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne.
Acoustic thermometry in the North Pacific Brian D. Dushaw, Exchanges No. 26, March 2003
NPAL – 2004 Annual Report
With such superbly low uncertainty and long term accuracy, why not extend this research?
“”” E French (12:10:51) :
“Scientists from Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology are using acoustic sensors developed to support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to listen for the sound of icebergs breaking away from the giant ice sheets of the south pole.”
Maybe I am retarded, but I did not realize there are icebergs at the South Pole?!? There is a huge ice sheet that covers the South Pole, but icebergs are over water, and it is a very long distance from the pole to the southern oceans. How am I to take any study seriously these clowns may doing. The ice sheets virtually cover the entire continent of Antartica. Are icebergs going to break away from the ice sheet at the South pole and magically float across the land mass. I understand what data is to be collected, but one should be more careful in the description of who, what, when, where and how! “””
“Giant ice sheets of the south pole” no mystery there. “Icebergs breaking away” no mystery there either; we all know what ice bergs are.
So what is the probablility that a person can travel from the south pole to the edge of the giant ice sheet, and never set foot off that giant ice sheet.
From what I’ve seen, it’s a virtual certainty that such a journey is possible.
Ergo; icebergs breaking away from the giabt ice sheets of the south pole. QED
And E French it does say “of” the south pole, and not “at” the south pole.
Well, on this one I’ll hope for the best and expect the worst.
The best – this is a genuine unbiased research aimed at determining what’s really happening and if their acoustic tools are viable enough for measuring changes in ice.
The worst – after six years of collecting data, they’ve not found what they were looking for and have sent out preliminary findings in hopes that their colleagues will help them find a way to find the warming proof they’re looking for.
In any case, they’ll have to walk a fine line to keep up their funding.
I take your point Anthony about the media, but this is pretty lightweight material. I suppose you could use it to alert yourself to the breaking so that you can study particular satellite images. I gather the two units are for triangulating the sources, otherwise, the world’s glaciers, gas explosions, fault movements (and maybe aircraft landings in Antarctica, etc would make for a lot of noise.
Obama White House issues most unscientific alarming alarmist alarmism to date
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inRFaXp8ixkgLSc-zVGV8FwGGDSQD98RVKJ80
…but according to the UN, we are headed for “megadisasters” in “megacities” due to “climate change.”
Getting married in India soon. After spending a lot of time overseas, this is typical for what gets reported as fact:
http://www.ndtv.com/news/world/worlds_megacities_ripe_for_megadisaster_un.php
Surely, the colder it is, the more ice you have, the more (healthy) ice break up you have, every year?
The only thing this proves, is how desperate the Global Warming Taliban are becoming!
This sounds reasonable to me. The first step in the scientific process. Observation. Sounds were noted when chunks fall off (and when the whole thing makes noise as it slids down the slope into the sea). Someone thought we should be listening to these sounds and describe them. Maybe correlate them with frequency of observed chunk falling. The null hypothesis would be that sounds generated from ice sheet movements, growth or melt rate, would not correlate to their observed movement, growth, or melt rate. This is basic science at its best. Simple. Elegant. Informative. It reminds me of early listening to magma. It was eventually correlated to volcanic erruptions. Magma movement sounds different than erruption of lava and turns out to be predictive. Would anyone here who thinks that listening to ice movement is stupid also say back then that listening to magma was stupid?
“Ice whisperers hear climate change in the Antarctic” – Anthony
Ice whisperers deafened by silence in the Antarctic.
Speaking of ice…this just in…
http://wcbstv.com/local/washington.township.hail.2.1045714.html
Shoveling Hail In Sandals?
Hail Storm Pounds Parts Of Garden State With Several Inches; Residents Watch In Amazement As Plows Clear Streets
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBS) ―
Parts of New Jersey were pummeled by a massive hail storm on Monday afternoon, leaving it looking as if a June blizzard blew through with inches of dime-sized pellets piling up.
Washington Township residents were seen on their driveways breaking out the snow shovels and officials sent out bulldozers to act as snow plows to clear the streets after severe thunderstorms pounded the region. Children were seen forming hailballs.
CBS 2 HD’s Christine Sloan was in Washington Township and spoke to stunned residents. This as the snow and ice piled up around them.
It was a day for snow boots and a jacket as several inches fell in what’s being looked at as one freak storm.
Plowing snow, ice, whatever you want to call it on a street in Washington Township in June. It wasn’t an understatement to say folks in the neighborhood were shocked.
“Never in my lifetime, never,” Karen Yates said.
Yep! It’s stupid.
Because the media is going to have a run away story of :
Increased noise from Antarctic ice shelves = Global Warming.
Many people do not realize how sophiticated sound detection in the oceans can be.
Over forty years ago the “Thresher” , an early generation US Naval attack sub, was lost off the East coast of the US. It sank to crush depth and imploded, with complete loss of crew.
I have been told that a US listening post in Bermuda, hundreds of miles away, heard the sounds of the sub’s demise very clearly and distinctively.
Here is a link on the development of undersea listening techniques:
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2357
hunter:
In 1993 I vacationed on this ship.
When touring the research area below decks I got the steward (previously head research scientist) to wink wink nod nod in admitting that before the fall of the Soviet Union, they were actively participating in studying the propagation of sounds through internal waves (layers of different salinity). From my earlier classes in Oceanography it was pretty easy to see they were involved in researching submarine detection technology. Then, when the Soviet Union fell they became a tourist ship.
Dodgy Geezer (11:04:36)(if you’re still reading here): Thanks for the link! That whole post is great reading, and I had not known of it previously. And, while I’m at it, thanks to WUWT for existing.