Steven Goddard looks at trends in Antarctica and compares to NASA’s recent article.
A January 12, 2010 Earth Observatory article warns that Antarctica
“has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002” and that “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet).“
If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy. Sadly for them though, Antarctica contains 30 × 10^6 km3 of ice which means that it will take 300,000 years for all the ice to melt at NASA’s claimed current rate of 100 km3 per year. (Chances are that we will run out of fossil fuels long before then.) The surface area of Antarctica is 14.2 million km2 which would indicate an average melt of less than 7 millimeters per year across the continent. (Is NASA claiming that they can measure changes in Antarctic ice thickness within 7 millimeters?) But even more problematic is that UAH satellite data shows no increase in temperatures in Antarctica, rather a small decline.
NASA themselves appear very confused about Antarctic temperature trends. As you can see in the two images below, sometimes they think Antarctica is warming and other times they think it is cooling.
According to NSIDC, sea ice extent has been increasing over time around Antarctica – this is consistent with the idea that temperatures are cooling.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png
The University of Illinois Cryosphere Lab shows that Antarctic sea ice area has also been increasing over time.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
One of the key features of Hansen’s global warming theory is that the polar regions are supposed to warm much faster than the rest of the planet. The image below is from his classic 1984 paper, and shows that Antarctica is supposed to warm up 6C after a doubling of CO2. If the cooling trend which UAH shows continues, it will take Antarctica a very long time to warm up six degrees.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/Challenge_chapter2.pdf
Hansen also predicted that sea ice would diminish around Antarctica and significantly decrease albedo. Clearly that prediction was wrong as well.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/Challenge_chapter2.pdf
Some are quick to come to Hansen’s defense by saying that “climate science has improved since that paper was written, we now know that Antarctic shouldn’t warm as fast as the Arctic.” That is indeed a fine explanation, but the problem is that most of Antarctica is not warming at all.
According to the University of Colorado Sea Level Lab, sea level is rising at about 32cm/century. At that rate it will take 18,750 years for sea level to rise 60 meters (per the NASA article.)
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
Temperatures in Vostok, Antarctica average -85F in the winter, and warm all the way up to -25F in the summer. If global warming raises the temperature there by a mere fifty-seven degrees, we may seem some melting occurring in the summer.
Difficult to see what NASA is worried about.
So, is it still just one thermometer data for the whole of Antarctica (By the airfield) that is fed into the NCDC database?
NASA: Newsspreat Alike Some Amateurs
It’s time to defund NASA, or at least the propaganda arm of it… They are following Pachauri, CRU and East Anglia into laughingstock territory.
Nasa, it’s not too late to save your reputation, but it’s almost too late.
Maybe what NASA is worried about, is loosing funding?
I don’t get how anyone can take this seriously?
I’m stunned……..
The word Farce has been bandied about quite a bit lately….even from MSM sources…
I think it’s a pretty good word to describe what this whole thing is becoming….
So I think I’ll just leave it at that…
FARCE
I think it’s catching on….:)
It will take some time for NASA to turn off its propaganda machine.
It has been operating full time since the Apollo landing on the Moon in 1969.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Did those Penguins wipe their feet before traipsing all over Antarctica?
On topic, I’ve identified a few ways of melting the Antarctic ice.
1) The Sun goes into it’s red giant phase.
2) A large mass passes through the solar system and drags us into a closer orbit.
3) A large body smashes into the earth knocking us off our axis and pointing Antarctica towards the Sun.
4) Antartica drifts northwards into the Mid latitudes or tropics.
Using an SUV doesn’t really cut it against these potential disasters.
With 300,000 years one would expect most persons to have time to step back from the rising waters. I don’t know if anybody has done any calculations but it seems likely that the population that could be fed on the slightly reduced land area would, bearing in mind increased temperature & rainfall, let alone increased CO2 & Antarctica being, in Sir David King’s words, a “habitable continent” would be likely to be significantly greater.
FWIW – I think the high temp trends shown on the ice shelf edges is a result of the changes of reflectivity due to calving. Otherwise is it quite an interesting phenomenon.
From the linked article:-
“Michael Schodlok, a JPL scientist who models the way ice shelves and the ocean interact…”
And:-
“Glaciologist Robert Bindschadler of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center…”
Sorry, I may be obtuse, but WTF is NASA doing employing people to model ice shelves at the Jet Propulsion Lab and glaciologists at the Space Flight Center?
No wonder there isn’t a viable replacement for the space shuttle. Nobody’s doing any space stuff.
If I did the math correctly, Antarctica has a volume of 30X106 KM3. The world oceans have a surface area of 351419000 KM2.
That calculates out to 0.008 meters of rise in the ocean height to absorb all of the ice that would melt!
What information am I missing? Help I am confused!
At what point does NASA become responsible for their ongoing baseless alarmism?
Just another example of how a once proud government agency has been hijacked by activists with an agenda. Can we believe ANYTHING published by NASA?
Obviously, they haven’t got the memo that the climate change house of cards is in a state of collapse.
If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
NASA themselves appear very confused about Antarctic temperature trends. As you can see in the two images below, sometimes they think Antarctica is warming and other times they think it is cooling.
No confusion: part of Antarctica is warming, particularly the West Antartic ice sheet. While this is going on, other parts are cooling. This has been observed by other independent lines of research.
Some are quick to come to Hansen’s defense by saying that “climate science has improved since that paper was written, we now know that Antarctic shouldn’t warm as fast as the Arctic.” That is indeed a fine explanation, but the problem is that most of Antarctica is not warming at all.
Not so the trends in the Arctic. Can we expect a post on the Arctic just like this one on the Antarctic?
And more worries from the BBC. If it’s not too little snow, it’s too much ice. All due to climate change:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8494000/8494397.stm
30 x 10^6 not 30 x 106
I understand why Obama dont want to spend more money on Nasa.
Oliver K. Manuel (04:28:26) :
“It has been operating full time since the Apollo landing on the Moon in 1969.”
——————————————————————-
Um, I assume you are not questioning the moon landings themselves, but rather that you are refering to other aspects of research on the material that was brought back…. Yes?
It’s a scam.
When it’s summer in Antarctica, as it is now, NASA publishes press releases saying Antarctica ice is melting.
When it’s summer in the Arctic, NASA publishes press releases saying the Arctic ice is melting.
As someone above me mentioned, NASA doesn’t do a lot of space stuff any more. They get funding by publishing press releases that scare people
Oh my. Some here don’t read much here. By the way, I would like to know the name of the peer-reviewed paper NASA used to state this terrifying 300,000 years from now prediction that the Antarctic is falling. Don’t tell me its Dr. Seuss. I’ve only enough popcorn for today!
It would help if these people would do the math.
You need to melt 97,000 cubic miles of ice to raise sea level just 1 meter.
For 60 meters you need in the region of 5,820,000 cubic miles of ice.
Then factor in the energy needed to melt that ice.
Antarctica is not going to melt any time soon.
Herman L (04:54:48) :
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
-Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
Find more, similarly crazy stuff at http://www.infowars.com/enviroment-eugenics-quotes/
Not so the trends in the Arctic. Can we expect a post on the Arctic just like this one on the Antarctic?
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_70-90N_na.png
Yeas I think Anthony can easily make a post on the Arctic. It has unprecedentedly warmed to the level observed in 40ties and begun to cool down since.
Randy (04:45:20) :
“If I did the math correctly, Antarctica has a volume of 30X106 KM3. The world oceans have a surface area of 351419000 KM2.
That calculates out to 0.008 meters of rise in the ocean height to absorb all of the ice that would melt!”
I think the number for ice should be 30 x 10^6 or 30,000,000 km3 rather then 30×106.
“Randy (04:45:20) :
If I did the math correctly, Antarctica has a volume of 30X106 KM3. The world oceans have a surface area of 351419000 KM2.
That calculates out to 0.008 meters of rise in the ocean height to absorb all of the ice that would melt!”
If you divide 3*10^7 km^3 by 3.5*10^8 km^2 you get 8.5*10^(-2) km = 85 m
Oliver K. Manuel, in no way am I challenging you, but I’m curious what you mean when you say that NASA’s propaganda machine has been running since the moon landing?
The TOPEX/Jason measurements of sea level is just a short term natural increase as can been seen in this in situ observation in Sydney. http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=680-140. There is no accelaration in the trend at all.
The actual long term global sea level rise is half this, at 1.74mm/year with decdal variations up and down. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028492.shtml
Thus it would take more than 30,000 years to get to the 60 meters.
” Herman L (04:54:48) :
Can we expect a post on the Arctic just like this one on the Antarctic? ”
Look for the post from the time when “DMI Polar Temperatur” was introduced (upper right, the picture that looks like a bell curve); you might have a look at “Sea Ice” (like a sine curve), too, and all that was written around August to October of last year.
>> Randy (04:45:20) :
If I did the math correctly, Antarctica has a volume of 30X106 KM3. The world oceans have a surface area of 351419000 KM2.
That calculates out to 0.008 meters of rise in the ocean height to absorb all of the ice that would melt!
What information am I missing? Help I am confused! <<
Dividing 30 million by 351.419 million gives 0.085 km or 85 meters. Presumably it's reduced to 60 meters because some of that goes on top of current land.
Alright, that’s it. NASA has ceased being needed for space exploration, with it’s remaining usefulness dwindling fast. Sure, they with their public funding made sense back during the Cold War, when the “space race” was about bragging rights and the “peaceful exploration of space” put a nice public face on the development of missiles and other weapons. But now we’d have a better chance at getting back to the Moon by following the technical specs of Salvage 1. Hey, Issac Asimov was the scientific advisor so there should be solid usable info there.
Time now for full-out commercial space exploration. We’ll have corporate sponsorships. Coming soon, Martian lander sponsored by Coca Cola, with the proud Coke logo emblazoned on the sides and clearly visible in the video footage. Followed by McDonald’s, which will proudly erect a small Golden Arches thus becoming the very first fast food franchise, and restaurant period, to advertise on another planet. All data will be released publicly, no “intellectual property” claims, which is what we want so the science progresses. So what is there to complain about?
First commercial mission to the Moon: The full cremated remains of a loved one, in a suitably hardened container, will be crash-landed in a crater. $200,000 each, minimum of 100 sales needed to commence project, buying will also get you access to exclusive encrypted live video and telemetry feeds over the internet. Pets are accepted. The piece of hardware that actually launches the block of containers will monitor the impact with full spectrographic data analysis, then assume a lunar orbit for mapping purposes.
Yeah, that’ll work.
“If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.”
Well, it would also make some Republicans happy, because most of those people would be foreigners and/or brown skinned.
“One of the key features of Hansen’s global warming theory is that the polar regions are supposed to warm much faster than the rest of the planet. The image below is from his classic 1984 paper, and shows that Antarctica is supposed to warm up 6C after a doubling of CO2. If the cooling trend which UAH shows continues, it will take Antarctica a very long time to warm up six degrees.”
There is very little difference between what Hansen is doing and the old time soothsayers. Sure Hansen has computers with to ply his magical tricks of math and dead tree entrails at the core of his predictions. It’s the same confidence game just different means of deception.
When a “theory” (actually a hypothesis, well not even that as a hypothesis needs to have proper tests that would falsify it should the tests fail to validate the hypothesis) fails to “connect” with objective reality it’s no longer a theory and it’s repugnant to science call it that. At best it’s a failed hypothesis and more likely just another pile of steaming mind poop that needs to be shoveled into the dust bins of history, just like millions of other failed hypotheses in the meandering progression of hard science.
Objective Reality is a Harsh Mistress ™ and she is very unforgiving.
http://www.PathsToKnowledge.NET?s=soothsaying
Neil Craig (04:30:54) :
“With 300,000 years one would expect most persons to have time to step back from the rising waters.”
Neil erosion and plate subduction would out pace that.
“Hansen also predicted that sea ice would diminish around Antarctica and significantly decrease albedo. Clearly that prediction was wrong as well.”
But that (an increase in libido) requires the land ice to melt, as almost all the ice down here is on land. That is miles thick!
Hermon! Great reply!
I look forward to your rebuttal of the other points of the post.
So HRM Prince Philip won´t need to reincarnate as a mortal virus to reduce human population. All malthusianists praise goddess Gaia for her intelligence cheering with koolaid.
Re
Phillip Bratby (04:56:36) :
And more worries from the BBC. If it’s not too little snow, it’s too much ice. All due to climate change:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8494000/8494397.stm
see this article
http://www.currentresults.com/Wildlife/Endangered-Species/Endangered-Mammals/wolverine-709211.php
which says
On mainland BC, wolverines are estimated to number 3,520. They comprise part of the western Canada population that spans boreal and arctic regions. Western Canadian wolverines in 2003 probably totalled 15,000 to 19,000 animals. Their populations, however, have lately fallen in Alberta, Ontario and southern BC.
The same factors that have removed wolverines from much of their range – overharvesting and human encroachment into their habitat – continue to plague them. Wolverines suffer from unsustainable hunting and trapping in 21% of BC’s population units. A 2005 study in western Montana found that licensed trapping largely contributed to wolverine population declines of 30% a year in four mountain ranges.
300,000 years? That’s only if it continues to melt through the next three ice ages, LOL.
The actual temperature stations show a decline too over that time period. The whole story by NASA is as disingenuous as it can get. If there is one thing we don’t need to worry about, it’s ice loss in the Antarctic.
Herman L (04:54:48) :
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
Here you are the answers you are in need of:
:
http://www.green-agenda.com/index.html
Hey Playing the Urgency card. If it won’t happen for 100 years, we can fund the research in 100 years minus some time cushion. If the ocean is poised to rise tommorrow, we need to have research and solutions in place to day. Show us some tangible rising but until then,
fogetaboutit
“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
http://www.green-agenda.com/index.html
A question for Dr. Manuel – would I be correct in assuming you are the author of “EARTH’S HEAT SOURCE -THE SUN”? I hope you continue to provide your views on the matter here!
” Herman L (04:54:48) :
If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?”
Try
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
http://www.vhemt.org/
Ano (04:40:06) :
From the linked article:-
“Michael Schodlok, a JPL scientist who models the way ice shelves and the ocean interact…”
And:-
“Glaciologist Robert Bindschadler of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center…”
Sorry, I may be obtuse, but WTF is NASA doing employing people to model ice shelves at the Jet Propulsion Lab and glaciologists at the Space Flight Center?
No wonder there isn’t a viable replacement for the space shuttle. Nobody’s doing any space stuff.
This is standard stuff. There’s little funding for NASA’s primary mission so they create new reasons to keep those tax dollars flowing in.
Only that impossible object God is an umoved mover. Everything else is caused. But nothing can be the cause of itself – and changes in climate cannot be put down to climate change.
What’s more there cannot be increasing effects of a warming that isn’t at present available to be a cause.
The current problem with so called climate science is that it’s not a hard science anymore. It’s gone limp with wild agenda driven speculations taken as if they are what is happening in objective reality without the hard science to back it up.
Sure they have instruments and gauges and satellites and what not that can record data so thus it seems like hard science. Unfortunately the instruments is where the tiny bit of hard science in climate science ends. It’s at the point after data collection that the hard goes limp and we end up with the wild agenda driven speculations jokingly and tragically called a “theory” as if it was true.
Objective Reality is a Harsh Mistress ™ as Hansen, Mann, Jones, et. al. are finding out the HARD way.
Keep up the work insisting that climate science become a hard science again with Publicly Open Source Analysis, Auditing and Verification Processes where anyone with the skills can Peer Review and Audit and Verify or Falsify it.
Part of what makes a hard science hard is the rigorous auditing and verification and testing against that harsh mistress of Objective Reality.
A hypothesis or theory is ultimately only a map of objective reality. We need to make sure that we have the best map possible for the climate of Earth in order to ensure or maximize the odds of the survival of our species. Geo-engineering terrorfroming our one Earth based on junk science is not going to achieve that. Hard science that is verified and then verified again hundreds of times is what is needed.
Hansen, you soothsayer of doom, you’re fired.
pwl
http://www.PathsToKnowledge.NET?s=soothsaying
NASAs toy GRACE is the main point that should be discussed here. most in the agw camp proclaim grace as showing the ice reducing in antarctica, not surface ice. this needs to be covered.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic_melting.html
ah but the cooling of antartica, is causing a heating or vice versa..
Re.
Herman L (04:54:48) :
If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
Well M Mann & his mate Keith Farnish, author of a new book called Time’s Up
see http://climategate.tv/?p=776
Prince Phillip
Plus you obviously haven’t read some of the Rants on RealClimate lately.
Antarctic sea ice extent is above average and been so all of 2009:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images//daily_images/S_timeseries.png
It is just about to break the record!
Hmmmm, rocket scientists watching ice cubes…. nothing to see here folks, now just move along and pay your duties. Keep moving. Don’t look.
A quote from “Sir Hubert Wilkins-His World of Adventure” by Lowell Thomas (1961) p. 250. Wilkins and his pilot had been exploring the Antarctic peninsula by air in the summer of 1928 and had returned in the summer of 1929 to continue.
“We found the planes in perfect condition, not even covered with snow. In a few days we had them ready to fly, and with a light load, Cheeseman and I took off from our rough-but-ready runway and flew south to scout for sea ice. We were amazed to find the edge of the pack lay as much as 300 miles south of the island. (Deception Island) This meant the floating icefield had receded about 600 miles since the previous year, and the weather was still inexplicably warm. In 1928 the unusual warmth had broken the ice loose from the polar icecap and sent it drifting northward. The continuing warmth had now melted the floating bits and the great mass of ice at the South Pole was still diminishing in size.”
Wilkins goes on to posit a link between unusual warmth in the Antarctic with the memorable drought in the U.S. in 1930.
Randy:
If you followed the link you would see that the figure for icecap volume is in fact 30×10^6 Km3 (ie 30 Million, which goes to show blogs come short in presenting figures like this). In any case it gives you an 85 m rise using your 351 Million Km2 ocean area. To get to a 60m rise the article must have used different estimates of icecap volume or ocean surface area.
In my humble opinion, Hansen is insane. He reminds me of the mad Colonel in “Apocalypse Now,” the one who has gone native and is leading his militia ever deeper into the jungle. He should be locked away.
Herman L (04:54:48) :
If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
Paul Ehrlich,various people in the Sierra Club,WWF,Natural Resources Defense Council,
PETA,AlQueda….
Gee, do I need to get all sweaty and exercised about something 300,000 years down the road? I seem to recall that there are a number of other catastrophe’s predicted to happen long before that. Yellowstone super volcano, giant asteroid hits, etc., etc. Don’t these people have something better to do with their time and the money they get from the public trough? Like maybe surfing porn sites?
“Difficult to see what NASA is worried about.”
Not to me. They are worried we aren’t scared enough.
Global warming is where grant money is. As soon as grant money leaves global warming so will the scientists.
Who will care about the polar bears then?
One other thing here’s an article that reinforces my idea that the biggest fear of
various groups menitioned in my previous posts are;Healthy,happy prosperous
dark skinned people:
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2010m2d2-Robbing-the-poorest-to-pay-for-climate-change?#comments
I say this from my own genetic make-up to put it bluntly-I wouldn’t pass an
Aryan test…
Herman L,
Prince Philip (founder of WWF) said “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation”
Do you think the two NASA trend maps are consistent?
I feel some sympathy for the enthousiasm of earlier climatologist like Hansen who came up with some findings of an isolated mechanism in climate and believed they had solved the puzzle. Alas their predictive power is as we now know negligible. The sobering truth is that we still know very little about the interacting mechanisms in climate and are still decades away of coming up with predictive models that are any good. It is fascinating all the more. By the way, it is a blunt statement, that a sea level rise of 60 meters would wipe out most of the world’s population, the odds are, that many people will prefer moving or floating to drowning. Meanwhile alarmism remains speculative, unjustifiable and unscientific.
Randy,
That should read 30X10^6 KM3. The formatting got lost in conversion.
“If I did the math correctly, Antarctica has a volume of 30X106 KM3. The world oceans have a surface area of 351419000 KM2.
That calculates out to 0.008 meters of rise in the ocean height to absorb all of the ice that would melt!” – Randy
The math, as calculated, inherantly asssumes that the worlds interconnected water bodies are contained like water in a glass with vertical sides. But if the average slope of the shore line is 5* (what is it?), then the rise in sea levels is inversely proportional to the degree of melt on a logarithmic scale. How fab ulous is that?!
“If I did the math correctly, Antarctica has a volume of 30X106 KM3. The world oceans have a surface area of 351419000 KM2.
That calculates out to 0.008 meters of rise in the ocean height to absorb all of the ice that would melt!” – Randy
The math, as calculated, inherently assumes that the worlds interconnected water bodies are contained like water in a glass with vertical sides. But if the average slope of the shore line is 5* (what is it?), then the rise in sea levels is inversely proportional to the degree of melt on a logarithmic scale. How fabulous is that?!
Spelling corrections included 🙂
Well some simple math, and the earths history states that during the time for all the ice to melt we will have gone through several ice ages and inter glacier periods, so we get some ice and then lose some, nothing to see here, move along…
Move to block EPA .
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?F….8a 59&Issue_id=
Excerpt:
A trio of House lawmakers yesterday introduced a bill to block U.S. EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, marking the latest in a string of bipartisan attacks against forthcoming climate rules.
The measure from Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Missouri Reps. Ike Skelton (D) and Jo Ann Emerson (R) would amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit EPA from regulating greenhouse gases based on their effects on global climate change.
100 cubic kilometres a year for 8 years, 800 cubic kilometres.
Divide that by 350 million cubic kilometres and you get a seal level rise of a little over 2 millimetres according to my spreadsheet. Where do they get 60 metres from?
that second cubic should be square
Herman L (04:54:48) :
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
Obama’s Science Czar for one.
To prevent ecological disasters, including “global warming,” Holdren argued the U.S. Constitution would permit involuntary abortions, government-imposed sterilizations and laws limiting the number of children as steps justified under the banner of “sustainable well-being.”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=110720
I think you’re being way too harsh on NASA here. I read the article and I don’t really see a problem with it.
The article does say that sea level would rise 60 meters IF the East Antarctic sheet melted, but there is no suggestion that it is going to. Indeed, it goes straight on to say that ‘little, if any, surface warming is occurring over East Antarctica’. It is clear enough that the 60 meter figure is simply illustrative, to give some idea of the size of the East Antarctic sheet.
The article makes clear that there is no problem with this part of Antarctica, the possible problem it points up is in West Antarctica.
There is no suggestion that surface melting is ocurring anywhere – the article points out that the continent can quite easily lose some ice without melting taking place, since ice moves.
What it does point up is evidence that some parts of the West Antarctic sheet are melting below sea level due to ocean currents. It does not attribute the phenomemon to global warming. It says that too little data has been gathered to know if this is a normal variation or not. It describes an upcoming project to get more precise data by positioning a sub-surface buoy.
All in all, it looks like good science to me. Data first – theory afterwards, like it’s meant to be. My only issue would be with the misleading headline ‘Is Antactica melting ?’. Reading the article, the short answer is clearly ‘No’.
Randy (04:45:20) :
If I did the math correctly, Antarctica has a volume of 30X106 KM3. The world oceans have a surface area of 351419000 KM2.
That calculates out to 0.008 meters of rise in the ocean height to absorb all of the ice that would melt!
What information am I missing? Help I am confused!
Randy-
I think you have a case of galloping decimal place. You are dividing km^3 by km^2, so your result is km. I get 85 meters.
IanM
Losing organizational focus; due primarily to leadership at the very top levels which selects activities, projects, must approve those proposed, etc., but I digress …
We can bring some of this home by looking at “9 Signs of a Losing Organization”
1) Fuzzy Vision: corporate vision and mission don’t inspire people; lack of strategic alignment; people don’t know where the organization is going and what it is trying to achieve in the future.
2) Lack of Leadership Skills: … weak leadership development program.
3) Discouraging Culture: corporate culture does not inspire people; no shared values; lack of trust; blame culture; focus on problems, not opportunities; employees are not energized; … people lose confidence in their leaders and systems.
And so on. See link above for rest of list.
Without a clearly identified goal like a moon or Mars mission, expect that void to be filled with ‘political’ objectives rather than technical objectives (e.g. ‘glowbull warming’).
.
Isn’t it almost that time of the year for Dr. Ted Scambos (love the name) to issue his annual “rarely occurring ice shelf disintegration” report.
Herman L
“Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?”
Richard Attenborough for example:
““All serious environmentalists know perfectly well that population growth, exploding in the 20th century, has been a key driver of every environmental problem. It’s a fact, not an opinion, that total human impact is the average per person multiplied by the number of people.”
Optimun Population Trust
Randy (04:45:20)
Divide 30 x 10^6 km3 by 351 x 10^6 km2 = 30 / 352 km = c. 1/12 km = c. 80 meters
Are you kidding? For someone to see the fulfillment of their predications –
Would that not be an “I told you so moment” and schadenfreude against those who would not listen to their prior dire warnings?
Are you kidding? THAT would be human nature …
.
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I forgot to say, the reason it comes to c. 60 meters rather than 80 meters is:
1) The density of glacier ice is only about 88% of seawater
2) Much of West Antarctica is below sea-level so a lot of the water is needed to “fill out hole left by itself”.
Hmmm
“Antarctica contains 30 × 106 km3 of ice”
Should that be 30 x 10 to the power of 6 km cubed ? (Otherwise it would be gone in just over 30 years).
“Sadly for them though, Antarctica contains 30 × 106 km3 of ice which means that it will take 300,000 years for all the ice to melt at NASA’s claimed current rate of 100 km3 per year.”
Sadly, either I can’t read or you didn’t get the numbers right, cause I get it to little more then 30 years. :p
The image of Antarctica superimposed on the globe….
Isn’t that a map of the volcanos, with the red locating the areas of known volcanic activity, both surface and sub-sea?? Somebody told me that a volcano can make water hot.
Friends, the battle against Global Warming is alive and well in Washington. I’m surprised that more has not been made here of the President’s budget proposal which de-funds the Constellation program to build new rockets and space craft, out-sources launch capability and manned missions to the Russians, Chinese and private industry and focuses NASA’s attention on the urgent problem of climate change.
As a child of the sixties, Star Trek, Space Odyssey and even Lost In Space allowed us to dream that the stars themselves might soon be in our grasp. These climate change hucksters are killing that dream and won’t rest content until we all live sustainable, peasant farmer lives.
Have I got my maths wrong?
Supposedly there are around 100km3 of Antarctic ice melting every year.
The surface area of the oceans is around 335,258,000km2.
So every year the ocean levels supposedly should increase by around 100/335,258,000kms = 0.000000298kms
Or: 0.000298 metre per year
Or: 0.298 millimetres per year
Or: 0.298 metres per thousand years
Or: 0.98 feet per thousand years
Unless I have my maths wrong, this looks like a typical alarmist scare story with no absolutely no substance.
0.298 metres (0.98 feet) per thousand years is statistically irrelevant.
**** PENGUINS !!!
All I care about is my Hum Vee
Dan (04:46:46) :
Can we believe anything published by any government agency?
Hmmm…
I believe what is published by the National Transportation Safety Board.
I believe what is published by USGS regarding maps and earthquakes.
Take a look at this website http://www.shadowstats.com/
Herman L (04:54:48) :
Your comments are well understood by those who have been here a while. The probable reasons for difference in trend in the West aren’t very alarming.
If you wish to learn more about the Arctic, simply look at the archives. This is a good one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/09/was-2007-arctic-ice-really-a-historic-minimum/
I loved the line in the BBC article:
‘He had previously researched how declining levels of snow in the US Yellowstone National Park, caused by climate change, was changing the abundance of alpen trees and how elk feed on them.’
Alpen is a brand of cereal in the UK! Glad to know it grows on trees.
Robert E. Phelan (08:03:31) It seems that it won’t be enough to write down a thousand blogs with as many hits as WUWT to discourage the Green Agenda/UN’s Agenda 21, these Gaia guys will need something more convincing.
…like laughing openly at them, to show them how stupid they are.
Ice, shmice, I’m sure you’ll all be reassured by this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7140840/Global-warming-data-is-rock-solid.html
Herman,
Search for “Wilkins” and you’ll see more on this issue. This is one of my favorites: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/17/the-antarctic-wilkins-ice-shelf-collapse-media-recycles-photos-and-storylines-from-previous-years/
Can I extend this to the NHTSA?
Are you familiar with the very basic error the NHTSA made in their ‘database’ (Excel spreadsheet) concerning the Ford Explorer and Firestone tire fiasco?
Are you aware of the continued foot-dragging that NHTSA has show re: Toyota and unexpected sudden uncommanded acceleration? (Steve Wozniak of Apple fame just went public with his experiences with his Prius)
Sorry for ‘coat-racking’ on this thread, but ‘appeal’ to gov’t agency authority or accuracy has its limitations.
.
.
But even more problematic is that UAH satellite data shows no increase in temperatures in Antarctica, rather a small decline.
What temperatures are these, MSU/AMSU doesn’t have the capability to measure Antarctic temperature?
Oh well thats just great ! Thanks a bunch !
At the time I spotted the “30 x 106” formatting error there were only about 16 posts and no-one had mentioned it. By the time my post went up, a million and one other people had pointed it out. Is there ANY chance that you people could stick to the difficult, technical, scientific, analytical stuff and let us mere mortals have our moment of feeling that in some (very) small way we might have acutually had a teeny weeny little bit of involvement.
Anyone who does not know the names of environmentalists who would like to see massive human extermination/extinction isn’t worthy of a response. It takes an incredible amount of evasion to pretend not to know this.
_Jim (08:21:47) :
I was not aware of those examples, but just provides more evidence of the inaccuracies of our govt agencies.
I will consider information from the govt, but will verify before I make any decisions based on the information.
Sad isn’t?
Antarctica it’s warming as intensely as in the US right now!. Global warming is directly propotional to truthfulness of surface stations measurements.
http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/penguin-cartoon-global-warming-direction-of-causation.gif
In response to: “If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.”
Boris (06:06:13) wrote: “Well, it would also make some Republicans happy, because most of those people would be foreigners and/or brown skinned.”
You’re projecting Boris. It seems that some liberals can’t see the world without viewing it through flesh-colored glasses. Oh, and you’re wrong too. I’ll wager you that more conservatives have donated to Haiti than liberals thus far, (and you don’t get to count government-funding as liberal funding.)
Oh, and it must really gall you that the liberal nemesis, George W. Bush, did more to combat AIDS in Africa than either his predecessor or replacement.
Love the photo caption on the BBC site re: Wolverines
The Wolverine is the largest TERRESTIAL member of the weasel family.
Are there larger ones on Mars, Venus or Alpha Centuria?
they have given up hard science for voodoo
Phil,
You can see UAH Antarctica coverage at the link below. Much better than GISS.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/AAT_Browse.php?chan=6&satnum=15&aord=a
Boris (06:06:13) :
>>“If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the
>>world’s population – which would no doubt make some
>>environmentalists happy.”
>
>Well, it would also make some Republicans happy, because
>most of those people would be foreigners and/or brown
>skinned.
Good one Boris. Most of the posts stay on the science, but you slipped this one by. Of course, these Republicans tripled US aid to Africa just 3 years ago, but let’s throw out unsubstantiated accusations for the fun of it.
The fact is, there are numerous environments who look at people as a blight on the planet. How about this from Ted Turner?
“The simplest answer is that the world’s population should be about two billion, and we’ve got about six billion now,” Turner told E Magazine, an environmentalist publication. Turner went even further in an interview with Audubon magazine, stating that “A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
http://www.seattlepi.com/dayart/20090522/cartoon20090522.jpg
Heck with it. Let Washington DC continue to make “space exploration” something for outsourcing with unlimited international dealings, and let NASA keep following the Critical Issue In The Press Today. Then they can offload the old organization as the new UNASA with international funding and get it off the books.
If there is any worth to the concept at all, in under ten years Americans will realize why we need a US space agency, know exactly what it should be doing, and we can build a new one that can actually do what the old one did fifty years earlier.
I read the article and they may be right. It is known that as you increase the pressure on water that it will melt even below freezing. It is postulated that this was the mechanism that created the “Scablands” in Western US – catastrophic flood as an an ice dam broke from below (where pressure is highest) releasing a huge volumes from an inland sea (created by ice daming).
The idea is that as the ice gets 2 KM thick the pressure at the bottom is such that it melts from the bottom.
It is much the same idea as hockey skates – ever wonder why the slides so effectively – well the pressure melts the ice and creates a cushion of water.
Anyway all this is idle speculation as we have little observational data to know what is going on. All on can say is that this is very likely a natural process and it in no way threatens teh ice caps or sea levels.
[snip]
Thus it would take more than 30,000 years to get to the 60 meters.
And in 30,000 years everyone now alive will be dead. Don’t you see how much trouble we are in? More than six billion dead people. A catastrophe.
Does anybody know since when koolaid began being produced only as a GREEN beverage?
REPLY: These sorts of comments aren’t helpful. – Anthony
“If global warming raises the temperature there by a mere fifty-seven degrees, we may seem some melting occurring in the summer.”
If the temperature were even to rise to 0C for a few days, consider that the ice at the South Pole is 10,000 feet thick. If it melted an inch or two per year, it would still take 100,000+ years to melt the ice down to rock.
What would really change things, though, is rain. If the weather pattern changed and there were significant rains on that ice, things could change in a hurry. But as the air is very dry and there are no plants so no transpiration of moisture, it would be difficult to get enough water in the air to result in rain at 10,000 feet altitude even if it was warm enough.
Jeremy,
The heavy weight of an ice sheet causes the ground underneath it to depress into a bowl (isostasy.) The ice can’t slide off or “collapse” as alarmists love to speculate.
Sadly, either I can’t read or you didn’t get the numbers right, cause I get it to little more then 30 years.
Sanity check:
85 m in 30 years ~= 3 m (10 ft) a year. Some one would have noticed.
I dispute the claim that the wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family.
As long as Al Gore, Pachauri, members of the IPCC, hell the entire UN, walk the face of the earth the wolverine will have to satisfy itself with being the largest 4 legged weasel on earth.
Steve Goddard (08:47:38) :
Phil,
You can see UAH Antarctica coverage at the link below. Much better than GISS.
That’s the temperature around 25,000 feet ASL, are you suggesting that’s what was plotted in the original post? That height is about the position of the tropopause over Antarctica so that data has a large contribution from the stratosphere!
Quote: Mike Bryant (04:10:18) :
“It’s time to defund NASA, or at least the propaganda arm of it… They are following Pachauri, CRU and East Anglia into laughingstock territory.
Nasa, it’s not too late to save your reputation, but it’s almost too late.”
It is now at least 41 years too late for NASA!
NASA really went to the Moon in 1969 and discovered an inconvenient truth:
Under the direction of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), NASA became a propaganda machine in 1969, when analysis of the Apollo lunar samples revealed an inconvenient truth – the Sun is not a ball of Hydrogen (H) and H-fusion is not its source of heat.
I warned the NAS President of NAS (Dr. Ralph Cicerone) and members of NASA’s Space Science Board (SSB) of impending damage to NASA’s reputation on 26 June 2008.
To help get to the bottom of the NASA-gate filth, I will post the question that I asked and the names of NAS and SSB members at the 50th Anniversary of NASA and the IGY on the Kirt Griffin’s Neutron Repulsion server.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=42879/*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/neutron_repulsion
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Sciences
Former NASA PI for Apollo
” Steve Goddard (08:47:38) :
Phil,
You can see UAH Antarctica coverage at the link below. Much better than GISS.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/AAT_Browse.php?chan=6&satnum=15&aord=a”
But there still seems to be a hole at the poles.
They must use a polar-orbiting satellite, too, TIROS-N and its successors.
Antarctic Ice “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet).“
Why would anyone but an absolute, complete imbecile put out a statement like that. Well, I guess a “scientific” body could put out a statement that “if the sun went out there is a high probability we all might die”. I so glad they are making high salaries from funds taken from less fortunate taxpayers.
Just how is this vicious slam at ‘Republicans’ (a) germane to this discussion, and (b) appropriate for this blog?
On topic, isn’t a great deal of the world’s land mass higher than 60 meters above current sea level? Most of the world’s people don’t live right on the coasts, do they? Sure, a world-wide 60-meter tsunami would drown a lot of people, but gradual sea-level rise would allow plenty of time for people to move inland.
/Mr Lynn
hmmmmm. I must have misunderstood something very basic about the antarctic….
I allways have had the impression the mean tempearature there was around -40 Dec Celcius….and colder…
Meaning; If it was to warm up to over zero degrees celcius….that would be at least 40 degrees celcius warmer…
And if the antarctic is heating up 40 degrees celcius, so must the rest of the planet. Or more.
Meaning , we would be all dead, long ago. So , who would care about sealevel? What is more imortant; Who, except a voodoo-maker, would believe that would happen?
Or am I completely lost here? Somebody?
Herman L (04:54:48) :
“If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy.”
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
Well, Herman, maybe the statement is a little hyperbolic, or maybe you’ve simply missed the association between Environmentalists including AGWers, population control and eugenics?
For example, there’s Obama own Science Advisor John Holdren who co-authored a book with the Erlichs a while back. Some rather troubling info on him can be found at:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-science-advisor-called-for-planetary-regime-to-enforce-totalitarian-population-control-measures.html
Or see http://climategate.tv/?tag=eugenics , Carbon Eugenics, where the matter relating to Environmentalism is discussed, involving for example, the following which leads to the WWF:
Julian Huxley, brother of the famous writer, helped organize UNESCO in 1945. In the founding document of UNESCO entitled UNESCO: its philosophy and its purpose, he argues that one of the key aims of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization would be the re-legitimization of eugenics so the idea would once again become thinkable. He also went on to co-found the World Wildlife Fund with Nazi SS officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Herman, the link between Environmentalism and Population control, and various methods to decrease population is all over the place. Check out Jeremy Rifkin, a noted Environmentalist, who I read about a while back and found to be a radical “sustainability” kind of guy, and totally out of his mind in regard also to population control, which he apparently considers nearly a good in its self.
As you may recall, even Andy Revkin got himself into some trouble along these lines.
I’ll throw in Ezekial Emanuel, Obama’s principle Healthcare advisor who is no doubt an Environmentalist too. He wants to ration healthcare based upon it being made a scarce resource, then he uses a “complete life” metric which judges a person’s worth by means of his own self-annointed as enlightened societal worth metric to see who should get what healthcare and when. Naturally he wisely excludes himself from the metric because he in fact produces nothing of worth along the lines of the kind of thing he wants to use as his metric in determining a person’s worth.
Btw, President Obama is an Environmentalist. He’s asserted that an elderly person’s quality of life or worth would not enter into his calculus as to the provision of healthcare.
In both Emanuel’s and Obama’s ‘overarching’ view, there are too many people, so a gratifying decrease is effected, even a ‘good’ decrease. Obviously, this ‘good’ would keep on increasing and invading into other enligntened areas of judgment regarding the question of who “should” live.
Phil,
You should probably go to the UAH website for an explanation of how they use microwaves to measure temperatures at various altitudes. The graph in this article uses their readings from the lower troposphere at 14,400 ft.
Alexej,
There is a hole at the South Pole, but much better coverage than GISS – which only has a dozen readings across the entire continent.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=12&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=12&year1=2009&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg
Phil,
Here is the UAH map of today’s surface temperatures.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/AAT_Browse.php?chan=03&satnum=15&aord=a
Arn Riewe (07:47:55) :
Isn’t it almost that time of the year for Dr. Ted Scambos (love the name) to issue his annual “rarely occurring ice shelf disintegration” report.
The annual Antarctic media melodrama commences between March and April.
All flights are booked out by the BBC, MSM, assorted politicians, back packer scientists and Ban Ki-moon with his entourage of free loaders.
Rajendra Pachauri won’t be there because he’s working on another novel, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report
The above link may not work. To see the document posted on Kirt Griffin’s Yahoo Group, “Neutron Repulsion: An Alternative Energy,” neutron_repulsion@yahoogroups.com
To subscribe, go to
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/neutron_repulsion/join
Or send e-mail to:
neutron_repulsion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
I nteresting -USA superimposed over Antartica
http://lima.nasa.gov/img/us_vs_antarctica.tif
If it were divided up, every person on Earth could have a chunk of ice larger than the Great Pyramid.
It rarely snows either; the South Pole gets less than 6 inches of snow a year!
Antarctica’s average elevation is three times that of other countries.
The South Pole itself sits on a plateau 10,000 feet above sea level.
Antarctica’s highest peak is 16,066 feet, just over three miles high.
Volcanologists eagerly crowd the cone of Antarctica’s active volcano, 12, 447 foot-high Mt. Erebus, to monitor its continual small eruptions. A permanent lava lake in the center serves as a “window to the Earth’s mantle.”
MrLynn (09:31:16) :
On topic, isn’t a great deal of the world’s land mass higher than 60 meters above current sea level?
Has anyone involved with an analysis of “Climate Change” studied if or how many new Tropical Islands would result from or along with a 60 meter warming caused increase, or if Coral Atoll Islands could be increased? We’d find a way to adjust, which is one thing the disasterizing Alarmists always seem to play down or ignore.
The last few years seem to provide a good test of the ‘decreased albedo feedback’ theory – the summer arctic ice extent dropped very low in 2007, exposing an additional 2 or so million square kilometres of sea to the blazing sun (as compared to 2003). As a direct result, the peak ice extent for the following winter, 2008, was…. completely normal.
Where did the extra heat go? I wouldn’t deny that some extra heat must have been absorbed – that’s O-level physics – but apparently the heat didn’t stay in the arctic and didn’t cause any extra melt.
Layne Blanchard
I read (or reread) that interesting thread regarding the breakup of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Later in the chapter of Wilkins biography that I quoted above, he mentions that he is charting the coastline by Charcot Land which was thought to have been an extension of the mainland. He confirms that instead it is clearly a group of islands, and says “these and other islands were located and mapped, and several hundred miles of coastline explored.”
Since Wilkins was a famous explorer and photographer, wouldn’t it be interesting to view his charts and photos from the aerial survey of the coastal iceshelf named after him? I believe his archives are housed at Ohio State, but my memory may be wrong.
G R – is it cold in here? (08:40:53) :
Love the photo caption on the BBC site re: Wolverines
The Wolverine is the largest TERRESTIAL member of the weasel family.
They were just distinguishing it from very large ocean going weasels.
Herman L et al.:
WUWT articles on the Arctic, and a score of other topics, can be located by clicking on the “Categories” pop-up list in the sidebar.
“Just how is this vicious slam at ‘Republicans’ (a) germane to this discussion, and (b) appropriate for this blog?”
I’m glad you don’t like my vicious slam. It is an absolutely absurd statement. Now, look at the vicious slam that Steve Goddard made and ask yourself these same questions.
Steve Goddard (07:11:28) : Do you think the two NASA trend maps are consistent?
That is impossible to tell, because the author has not provided us with a legend for both maps to identify the timeframes associated with the images.
Following the hyperlinks, the first map (showing both warming and cooling depending on location) is named “antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg,” which suggests that the data covers the change over a 22 year period of time (1982 to 2004). The second one is named “wilkins_avh_2007.jpg” which offers no suggestion for the timeframe other than “2007.” But who knows what the change refers to: Jan 2007 until Dec. 2007? 2007 average compared to the previous year average? 2007 compared to fifty years ago? A comparison just three months apart? I have no idea.
So, when I read this in the body of this post: “NASA themselves appear very confused about Antarctic temperature trends. As you can see in the two images below, sometimes they think Antarctica is warming and other times they think it is cooling.” I retort that the author of that statement has not sought to clarify the confusion at all. He has not told us what NASA really “thinks” because these images relate to some data and timesframes that he has not provided, and I haven’t found. I ask for that information before I pass judgment on if NASA is “confused” or not on this matter until we have this information.
When I was young I wanted to be a rocket scientist. By 1959 it was plain to me that rocket science could never yield true space flight. The numbers just don’t work. you can move a few tons over a long time in near space. But not real human space travel.
Maybe the real rocket scientists realize this, and are looking for something better to do. Only EMF warpage of the aether can yield true space flight.
Right now the people that control the PUBLIC purse strings only want AGW proving science done. For the last few years public grant funded science papers always have a AGW positive paragraph in it no matter what the whole paper says. If you want to work in your field you have to pay the price.
Peter (09:30:08) :
Antarctic Ice “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet).“
Why would anyone but an absolute, complete imbecile put out a statement like that. Well, I guess a “scientific” body could put out a statement that “if the sun went out there is a high probability we all might die”. I so glad they are making high salaries from funds taken from less fortunate taxpayers.
…and it’s such hyperbole parroted by many AGW supporters. But actually, this is quite a fun game when you get into discussions with colleagues about Global warming (climate change).
It’s important to shift the emphasis from the result [60 feet of sea rise] to the conditional [if all the ice melted] in such arguments. 60 feet of sea level rise would certainly be a catastrophic environmental disaster, no one would disagree with that. Skeptics are arguing the conditional, environmentalists are arguing the result.
As demonstrated, using a variety of ‘If [very bad thing occurred] then [we will all die]’ examples demonstrates the absurdity of such statements – although they do make good propaganda.
“”” “has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002” and that “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet).“ “””
Well you can tell this chap is not an English major, or a mathematician.
100 cubic kilometres is a slab that is one square km area by 100,000 metres thick, so dividing that by 60 metres, and you get only 1667 square km for the total ocean surface area (adjusted for the increase due to land coverage.)
So there is no way that melting 100 cubic km of ice can raise the ocean level by 60 metres.
And if the 100 cubic km of ice is lost each year, and doesn’t melt; where does it go; and we know it hasn’t melted since the ocean has not risen by 60 metres.
Must be something wrong with this story.
Herman,
Good point. The first map is 1981-2004, the second is 1981-2006.
The really awful thing about the second map is that NASA states “The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius.” So they are trying to claim a warming trend of less than 0.1 degrees with an uncertainty 20-30 times greater than the trend. Many an undergraduate has failed for claiming accuracy greater than the measured precision.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8239
Billy Liar- I believe Purina has developed a whole series of new trees for food based products; Alpen for Elks, Alpo for Dogs, and Algore for Politicians.
Steve Goddard (09:12:01) :
The heavy weight of an ice sheet causes the ground underneath it to depress into a bowl (isostasy.) The ice can’t slide off or “collapse” as alarmists love to speculate.
I seem to recall reading that some mountains and assorted areas are getting higher, not from volcanic activity but from the tectonic plates still “springing back” from when they were weighted down with glaciers during the last major ice age.
Has anyone else heard of this, and have these rises been confirmed by accurate satellite measurements?
Add an additional 6m of sea level rise for greenland melting.
kadaka,
Ice is about one-third as dense as rock, so for each meter of ice melted, the land springs back up 30cm or co.
The Hudson Bay area is still rising rapidly due to glacial rebound from the last ice age.
http://www.unavco.org/research_science/science_highlights/glacial_rebound/glacial_rebound.html
kadaka (10:37:54) :
Steve Goddard (09:12:01) :
The heavy weight of an ice sheet causes the ground underneath it to depress into a bowl (isostasy.) The ice can’t slide off or “collapse” as alarmists love to speculate.
I seem to recall reading that some mountains and assorted areas are getting higher, not from volcanic activity but from the tectonic plates still “springing back” from when they were weighted down with glaciers during the last major ice age.
Has anyone else heard of this, and have these rises been confirmed by accurate satellite measurements?
Yes, most recent accurate measurements have been made by GPS, notably in scandinavia and N America, below is one paper to get you started.
http://www.colorado.edu/engineering/GPS/Papers/gGPS.pdf
There’s three things that’s pretty darn amazing if you ask me.
1. Not even NASA, with all their space toys, can quantify an accurate surface area of our little blue marble.
2. No one seem to take into consideration that if all the ice of antarctica melted, a whole lot wouldn’t make a difference what with a lot being ice on top of water, and a bet ya a pretty penny that the land mass of antarctica would actually behave a lot like every other land mass on our little blue marble, i.e. a lot of water stays on land, and beneath it.
3. They never seem to give a specific time period when they present their demagog logic or green-rocket-sciency-stuff. So wouldn’t it be better to just ask ’em to present the time period as well, after all a government agency has to follow certain standards lest they want to get into legal problems.
One of the biggest difficulties I have with this is that they are trying to paint a picture that the ice loss is increasing at an accelerated pace. “Her work shows that the ice sheet is not only losing mass, but it is losing mass at an accelerating rate. “The important message is that it is not a linear trend. A linear trend means you have the same mass loss every year. The fact that it’s above linear, this is the important idea, that ice loss is increasing with time.” How can they even possibly think that they can make that kind of extrapolation knowing full well the very short time horizon that they have been making measurements. The only reason I can think of for taking such a position is to secure more funding to be allowed to study the Antartic. No one wants to fund you if there is not looming catastrophe.
I read some report last year which was refered to by the warmist coming to the same conclusion. When I read it, I could see that almost all the loss was constraint to the peninsula. The mainland saw a slight growth in overall ice volume. Shame that graph isn’t shown here. It looks like the above temp anomaly maps, with all the nice colours, but then for the ice anomaly.
I Also seem to remember that some attributed that to some possible geothermic activities under the peninsula.
Can’t provide the links so I guess this is all anecdotal
Steve Goddard (10:24:42) : The first map is 1981-2004, the second is 1981-2006.
Thanks for the hyperlink at the end. If I follow it back to the orginal map, I find this updated notation regarding the difference between the two maps:
“The new version … was based on a revised analysis that included better inter-calibration among all the satellite records that are part of the time series.”
Not confusing at all, IMHO (scientia vincere tenebras).
The really awful thing about the second map is that NASA states “The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius.” So they are trying to claim a warming trend of less than 0.1 degrees with an uncertainty 20-30 times greater than the trend.
I don’t see NASA claiming a warming trend. Where do you read that? NASA is reporting data with the caveats stated. This is not confusing. This is reporting that there’s a significant level of uncertainty regarding the overall Antarctic temperature trends. I read similar uncertainties in the IPCC report.
“Jason (06:18:17) :
300,000 years? That’s only if it continues to melt through the next three ice ages, LOL.”
LOL is right. Good one.
Well, NASA looks like they’re planning to “hide the Antarctic decline” in their credibility – by burying it under glaciers.
According to the University of Colorado Sea Level Lab, sea level is rising at about 32cm/century. At that rate it will take 18,750 years for sea level to rise 60 meters (per the NASA article.)
Great. Now, I have a bone to pick with skeptics and alarmists: Where are the before & after pictures….like these
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/real_estate1.jpg
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/real_estate2.jpg
Every time there is a discussion about sea-level rise, I look for somebody’s post that gives a before & after. No such luck. I post my pics hoping that someone will either confirm or challenge. Nothing doing.
WUWT???
If someone has actually posted before & after Sea-Level images, and I missed it, I apologize ahead of time. Please correct me.
You mean this remark of Steve’s: “that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy”?
That was no slam; it was the truth, as several commenters above have documented, quoting prominent enviro-ideologues, not least of whom is John P. Holdren, Faux-Science Advisor to the amateur President of the United States.
/Mr Lynn
rbateman,
Ever been to the Bristol Channel in the UK? I’ve seen boats in Wales stranded twenty feet above the water due to tidal changes which happened over a few hours. When the tide comes in, people actually surf on the tidal front.
Point is that before/after pictures of sea level are not necessarily a lot of use.
“Difficult to see what NASA is worried about.”
Same thing the AGW academics are worried about. Budget.
Steve Oregon (09:51:11) :
I nteresting -USA superimposed over Antartica
http://lima.nasa.gov/img/us_vs_antarctica.tif
Thanks for that image. I’ve been looking for one like it for a while. Since most images of Antarctica don’t include anything that gives a reference for its true size, most people I encounter don’t have any real mental concept of its scale. Thanks to our wonderful educational system, the ability to deal with large numbers is not wide spread, as evidenced by a number of the comments above. My sister in law, who is one of the brightest people I am personally acquainted with, had no idea that the amount of sea ice that is lost and recreated annually in the Antarctic is almost twice the area of the lower 48. She was completely incredulous when I tried to explain it to her. The alarmist tactic of always refer to the potential”collapse” of Antarctic ice without mentioning that any such “collapse” would take many millenia to eventuate has been very effective. Especially with journalists and politicians, whose relative intelligence is revealed by the overwhelming majority of them who consider Obama to be absolutely brilliant.
Herman,
What could possibly motivate NASA to change from the earlier map (showing cooling) to the later map (showing warming) based on data that which they acknowledge is not precise enough to determine a trend in either direction?
Politics (Hansen’s earlier predictions) perhaps?
Herman L (04:54:48) :
Do you have any names of the environmentalists who you assert would be happy to see this?
Prince Philip…something about reincarnating as a virus
[quote Phil. (08:25:36) :]
What temperatures are these, MSU/AMSU doesn’t have the capability to measure Antarctic temperature?
[/quote]
Yes it does.
See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/12/how-the-uah-global-temperatures-are-produced/
http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-uah-and-rss-temperatures-are.html
Those are some worried looking penguins.
Re: For example, there’s Obama own Science Advisor John Holdren who co-authored a book with the Erlichs a while back. Some rather troubling info on him can be found at:
Compulsory abortion? absolutely horrific
Steve Goddard (11:32:50) :
There are a lot of issues involved in sea levels, I get that.
There is also a lot more to a before/after image of a coastline than the water.
You have a point, though, I don’t see cherry-pick image #1 from the alarmist camp.
What bothers me is I don’t see anybody trying.
Are we wasting our time here?
Boris (10:10:26) :
I’m glad you don’t like my vicious slam. It is an absolutely absurd statement. Now, look at the vicious slam that Steve Goddard made and ask yourself these same questions.
But there are major differences between the two.
Your statement is factually accurate, but its fault lies in not being inclusive enough. Besides Republicans, people like that are found among Democrats, Communists, independents, all over the political spectrum.
However, people that seriously and consistently declare that the world would be better off if the majority of the population was dead and gone, even actively support and engage in measures to that end, are normally considered to have deep-seated psychological problems, often a pathological self-loathing, and to be in immediate need of professional help to ensure they are not a danger to others as well as themselves. Unless of course they cite “concern for the environment” in which case they are perfectly fine and everything is sunshine and rainbows and fresh-smelling free-range puppies.
Thus if you want to find people that would be happy if most of the world’s population was wiped out, and excluded mental wards and those otherwise under psychiatric care for a condition leading to that belief, you would look among environmentalists. And no doubt you would find some as that belief is often cited in the environmentalist dogma, just as no doubt you could find Christians who believe in miraculous spiritual cures and would be happy to see them. Mr. Goddard’s statement is, also, factually correct.
So then, Mr. Goddard made a valid observation, which although you took it as a vicious slam, could easily be interpreted as commentary on a certain sad state of affairs. You, however, carefully crafted a comment that tried to link dark motives to a specific political group for the purpose of making a vicious slam. Oh yeah, there are differences alright.
Besides, I thought it was “common knowledge” among the liberal circles that Republicans, of which I am one, don’t have problems with “foreigners and/or brown skinned” of any number, provided they follow our orders, know their place, and don’t get uppity. Come on Boris, help me out here, we Republicans have a reputation among the liberals to uphold!
😉
Steve Goddard (11:00:59), Phil. (11:01:18), thanks for the confirmations, and the links.
I remember when I heard that, there were questions about how accurately the mountain heights were measured in regards to sea level, so having a long-enough satellite record for confirmation is nice. Then there was the imagined issue where if there is enough pressure exerted from below to cause volcanic eruptions and related phenomena, how could a plate possibly be pushed down against that pressure?
kadaka (13:01:32) :
Steve Goddard (11:00:59), Phil. (11:01:18), thanks for the confirmations, and the links.
I remember when I heard that, there were questions about how accurately the mountain heights were measured in regards to sea level, so having a long-enough satellite record for confirmation is nice.
The elevations of mountains and other surface features are quoted from a reference MSL datum that is fixed and has only changed a couple of times in a century, 1929 and 1988 I believe. Given the incredible variability of the oceanic surface elevation across the planet, talking about sea level is essentially as meaningless as talking about average global temperature.
rbateman (11:23:14) :
rbateman (11:26:38) :
WUWT?? Unless you can prove to me, tide! Those are some great photos you put up. Wish I could locate a before-after I saw years ago, absolutely awesome. Miles and miles of land, add some time, mostly ocean! Oh the shock and awe!
(Careful those are not pre-Photoshop magic, actual photos with cause and time being the illusion.)
An interesting point that I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. It is easy to show that the direct greenhouse impact of rising CO2 COOLS the antarctic rather than warming it.
The action of a green house gas is to absorb the emissions from the surface of the earth at the greenhouse wavelengths. The gas in turn emits energy to space at the same wavelengths from the top of the atmospheric column. Since the top of the atmosphere (in fact the tropopasue for reasons too lengthy to explain here) is normally far colder than the surface of the earth, the emisison from the top of the atmosphere is generally substantially less than the surface emission hence net emission to space at the green house wavelengths is reduced ; thus causing warming.
HOWEVER over the antarctic the situation is very different for two reasons. Firstly the antarctic is very cold. In fact the surface is not much warmer than the tropopause. Secondly the antarctic is covered with ice and snow. Ice and snow as has been pointed out ad nauseum is very reflective (high albedo). This means it has a very low emissivity which means it radiates far less energy than would a black body at the same temperature. A green house gas column if thick enough (and the atmosphere is about 1000 times thicker than thick enough) by contrast will always have an emissivity of 1 at the green house gas wavelengths. When these two factors are both taken into account, it turns out that the surface emission is less than the emission from the top of the atmosphere. The Nimbus satellite data taken over the antarctic proves it beyond doubt. The equivalent surface temperature either side of the CO2 absorption line is 180K (ie: the temperature of a black body emitting as much energy as the surface does) whereas the emission to space at the 14 micron CO2 emission line is equivalent to a black body at 220K. The Nimbus data shows am emission peak at this wavelength not an emission trough as occurs at other latitudes.
This means that the presence of CO2 causes more emission from the tropopause than would otherwise have been emitted by the surface thus cooling the region!
Of course it can be argued that this effect is small compared to warming such as from ocean currents and that may well be true for the arctic but the antarctic is a very large land mass and ocean current warming can only impact the costal fringe not the bulk of the land mass. So AGW should cool the antarctic and if so how can that cause more ice melt?
wayne (13:39:43) :
Those were the ONLY images I have been able to come up with, from a Realtors site (that might be a source for others).
Aside from actual images, what did those before-after scenes tell you about sea-level rise (or increasing height of wave-induced storm erosion)?
Ocean Two:
“60 feet of sea level rise would certainly be a catastrophic environmental disaster”.
You are not wrong. 7.5 million Londoners would move uphill until they ended up at my house. I don’t have a big enough teapot for all of them,
As a matter of fact isostasy is a major problem with all estimates of whether antarctica is gainin or losing ice. Measuring the altitude of the ice surface with high precision from a satellite is (relatively) straightforward. There is no way to measure the level of the rocks below the ice with equal precision is impossible.
So we know that the ice surface is sinking, say a few millimeters per year. But how much does the thickness of the ice really change? To estimate that you have to know how much the rock surface below the ice changes, with millimeter precision.
This is done by measuring how the few ice-free areas in Antarctica move by GPS, and then interpolating beneath the ice-cap based on a mathematical model, which is in turn based on very uncertain assumptions about how much ice there was in Antarctica during the last glaciation, how fast and how much it has decreased, and how the rocks beneath the ice have responded to the change. The actual GPS measurements provide some constraints, but really only in West Antarctica, there being no ice-free ground available in most of East Antarctica. In all this is so uncertain that i personally don’t think anyone can say for sure whether the ice in Antarctica is actually increasing or decreasing.
Alarmists always assume that if snow/ice decreases it must have melted into liquid water. But doesn’t snow/ice also evaporate directly into the atmosphere?
Can’t see the ice for all the snow?
Dave N (15:14:03) :
Antarctica Vacation Plans: Don’t go there.
I’m wondering – why is Antarctica losing mass (and at an accelerated rate) if it is cooling? Do they have specific areas where it is losing mass? What is causing the movement? How much is it “accelerating” by?
oops — I should have de-indented that 2nd paragraph instead of indenting it.
Steve Goddard (11:56:20) : What could possibly motivate NASA to change from the earlier map (showing cooling) to the later map (showing warming) based on data that which they acknowledge is not precise enough to determine a trend in either direction? Politics (Hansen’s earlier predictions) perhaps?
If you believe the scientists at NASA are deliberately distorting the data towards a political end, then Steve: come straight out and say that. I do not believe that.
Herman,
The claimed accuracy (0.01) is much tighter than the claimed precision (2.0-3.0) which is an error that no serious scientist should ever make. Sounds like politics to me.
(1) kwik (09:36:11) points out that since the Antarctic temperatures never get above freezing [the highest was -13.6º C on 27Dec78—http://icecube.wisc.edu/info/antarctica/weather.php ] there’s no way the ice is going to melt.
(2) michael hamnmer (13:52:10) argues convincingly that because of the continual cold the actual effect of ‘greenhouse gases’ over Antarctica will be to cool the surface, not warm it.
(3) tty (14:33:51) suggests that because of isostasy and the lack of any visible (= measurable) land under the ice that it would be virtually impossible for to know “whether the ice in Antarctica is actually increasing or decreasing.”
These three points alone would seem to give the lie to the hypothesis that, aside from a few coastal regions where ‘warm’ waters and/or undersea volcanism affect the edges of the ice sheet, the Antarctic ice cap is melting, or even diminishing.
The NASA article claims that
Since clearly there is no melting going on, what’s the explanation for this apparent loss of mass? Says Erik Conway (author of the article):
The ice, in other words, is flowing into the sea, where it dramatically breaks up. And evidently this happens at the margins in West Antarctica. But could ice flow of glaciers into the sea be a serious factor in a continent larger than the United States? It strains credulity. How much mass are we talking about?
One would expect that scientists who work for and represent a prestigious agency like NASA would be very careful to weigh all these factors and questions when making any pronouncements to the public. Yet apparently they are so eager to present ‘evidence’ of any kind for ‘global warming’ that they are willing to gloss over them.
Maybe it’s time for some of them to start reading this blog.
/Mr Lynn
It’s more than just a scam, it’s a crime.
Potentially trillions of dollars and multiple economies at stake worldwide. This is not going away and those who contributed need to be punished – period.
@Steve Goddard:
I’m confused about a few of the assertions made in your post. I’m hoping you can clear things up for me. I’ll try to keep it brief.
#1) “If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population…”
Do you have a peer-reviewed source for those numbers? A study in PNAS found the number of people within 100m of SL to be only 33% in 1994 (and only ~15% of inhabited land within that distance):
http://www.pnas.org/content/95/24/14009.full
#2) From the NASA page you cited above: “[L]ittle, if any, surface warming is occurring over East Antarctica.”
The images you include seem to show warming over East Antarctica is +- 0.1 C. Based on the images, does this seem to be an unreasonable range of values to you?
#3) Most importantly, I was hoping that you and your WUWT colleagues could provide a list of the datasets you deem to be acceptable, and your rationale for such. It is made painfully clear in some posts that data and subsequent analyses that are products of, NOAA or NASA for example, are unreliable because of issues ranging from incompetence to conspiracy to commit fraud. Then a short time later, datasets compiled by the same agencies are held up as evidence contrary to AGW. I’m sure you can see why this is extremely confusing to the casual reader.
Has there been some analysis by you and WUWT contributors that has identified what are reliable, usable data and what are not?
Thanks in advance.
@Steve Goddard:
Also, in the interest of fairness, perhaps you should have included these other images from the University of Illiois, whose data you also showed above:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
These data would seem to support the NASA conclusions, no?
I can not believe this weather prediction? 300,000 years!
They can not get it right 3 weeks out (farmers almanac excepted).
Has anyone tried a simple (?) experiment to prove CO2 is NOT a pollutant and is really plant food?
Perhaps a controlled environment with CO2 vs. an exactly duplicate controlled environment with no CO2 –
The experiment would be ideal if it could be performed in front of SCOTUS – the people who originally declared CO2 to be a pollutant.
Herman L (16:35:23) :
“If you believe the scientists at NASA are deliberately distorting the data towards a political end, then Steve: come straight out and say that. I do not believe that.”
Herman – there is no question that NASA is manipulating data for political purposes. I worked with NASA in the past and I can’t remember when political aspects did not play a part – are you kidding ? Where have you been lately ??
And this is some of the best anti-AGW evidence I’ve ever seen. But it is a work (at least partially) of the federal government. Should one believe this, or throw it out with the rest of the contaminated data?
http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/images/Vostok.jpg
Phil M,
One of the first things physical geology students learn is that CO2 solubility in seawater diminishes with increasing temperature. The Vostok cores show this quite clearly. When the temperature drops, CO2 gets absorbed into the ocean and atmospheric CO2 drops. And vice-versa.
So the Vostok cores show this very clearly. CO2 lags and follows temperature.
Phil M,
No doubt that the Arctic ice minimum has diminished significantly relative to 1980.
Notice anything interesting about temperatures in Greenland before and after 1980?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=431042500000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Herman L (16:35:23) :
If you believe the scientists at NASA are deliberately distorting the data towards a political end, then Steve: come straight out and say that. I do not believe that.
The idea! Certainly a person of James Hansen’s character would never manipulate GISS data files and reconstructions for a “political” purpose. Instead, he appears to have done it for secular “religious” purposes.
michael hamnmer (13:52:10) :
HOWEVER over the antarctic the situation is very different for two reasons. Firstly the antarctic is very cold. In fact the surface is not much warmer than the tropopause. Secondly the antarctic is covered with ice and snow. Ice and snow as has been pointed out ad nauseum is very reflective (high albedo).
At visible wavelengths but not at IR.
This means it has a very low emissivity which means it radiates far less energy than would a black body at the same temperature.
Not true at the 15μm band for CO2 where it’s about 95%.
magicjava (12:05:44) :
[quote Phil. (08:25:36) :]
What temperatures are these, MSU/AMSU doesn’t have the capability to measure Antarctic temperature?
[/quote]
Yes it does.
See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/12/how-the-uah-global-temperatures-are-produced/
http://magicjava.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-uah-and-rss-temperatures-are.html
Unfortunately the devil is in the details which aren’t addressed in those sites.
These weighting functions are for the nadir (straight-down) views of the instrument, and all increase in altitude as the instrument scans farther away from nadir. AMSU channel 5 is used for our middle tropospheric temperature (MT) estimate;
Channel 5 is the one that Steve used in this article “The graph in this article uses their readings from the lower troposphere at 14,400 ft.”, note Steve that it’s the middle troposphere according to Spencer.
For their lower tropospheric temperature they “use a weighted difference between the various view angles of channel 5 to probe lower in the atmosphere, which a fairly sharp weighting function which is for our lower-tropospheric (LT) temperature estimate.”
There’s a significant problem (basic spherical geometry) with that approach near the pole (see ref pp5). “Near the poles, cancellation does not occur for the measurements made because the satellite velocity vector is close to being east-west. In this case, the north-south part of the derivative adds instead of canceling. The residual spatial derivative, combined with a large north-south gradient in the temperature, leads to significant errors in the retrieved TLT measurements.”
According to UAH: For those channels whose weighting functions intersect the surface, a portion of the total measured microwave thermal emission signal comes from the surface. AMSU channels 1, 2, and 15 are considered “window” channels because the atmosphere is essentially clear, so virtually all of the measured microwave radiation comes from the surface. While this sounds like a good way to measure surface temperature, it turns out that the microwave ‘emissivity’ of the surface (it’s ability to emit microwave energy) is so variable that it is difficult to accurately measure surface temperatures using such measurements. The variable emissivity problem is the smallest for well-vegetated surfaces, and largest for snow-covered surfaces. emphasis mine.
Channel 5 significantly intersects the surface particularly over the Antarctic (where most of its weighting function is below the surface, the surface temperature product is even worse)!
RSS exclude such areas from their analysis “Land areas with surface height averaged over the 2.5 degree by 2.5 degree cell that exceed a threshold altitude of 1500 meters were excluded from the averages to reduce contamination from surface emission.”
So I repeat, MSU/AMSU doesn’t have a capability to measure Antarctic temperatures, which is why RSS don’t produce data beyond 70ºS.
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/support/Mears_and_Wentz_TLT_submitted.pdf
Interesting point Phil but not sure I agree. The high albedo from snow comes from the surface structure of frequenct significant change in refractive index and that should be the same for the IR as the visible. However the IRIS data from Nimbus 3 is pretty explicit. The black body equivalent temperature each side of the 14.5 micron line is 180K. There is nowhere that I know of either on the surface or in the atmosphere which is as cold as that. The only possible explanation is that one is seeing a warmer surface with low emissivity. Can’t be the atmosphere since each side of the CO2 line is in the atmospheric window and anyway a thick atmosphere will have an emissivity of 1. That only leaves the surface.
The black body equivalent temperature at the CO2 line is significantly higher – there is an emission peak at the CO2 line. That means the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere increases radiation to space at the 14.5 micron line which is the crux of my argument.
Otherwise how do you explain the IRIS data?
Dave Wendt (13:30:28) :
The elevations of mountains and other surface features are quoted from a reference MSL datum that is fixed and has only changed a couple of times in a century, 1929 and 1988 I believe. Given the incredible variability of the oceanic surface elevation across the planet, talking about sea level is essentially as meaningless as talking about average global temperature.
Not quite. According to NOAA you are talking about the “Geodetic Datums” used for North America references.
North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88):
National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29):
Otherwise, as a Tidal Datum,
MSL: Mean Sea Level:
According to this FAQ from Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory:
Reading further, MSL sounds like a wonderfully complicated thing to calculate and utilize. There doesn’t appear to be any method of directly measuring heights with regards to an absolute reference like the geographical center of the Earth, if that could even be figured. With enough learning one can better appreciate how the “solid ground” beneath us is actually a thin layer of solidified scum floating on top of a molten world, which of itself, seen over a long enough time, has quite a variable surface. Thus the best we can hope for appears to be measuring elevations in regards to a relatively small patch of the scum. See question #2 of that FAQ. There are three different reference points used just between the UK, the Netherlands, and France.
We are now getting better measurements with satellites, because they have a different frame of reference, they are not tied to the surface. Down here, all such height measurements are relative.
Phil; just to add to my previous email. Your comment about high reflectiveity in the visible and yet close to black body behaviour in the thermal IR certainly applies to clouds which are also water (as is snow of course). However in the case of clouds the average particle size is around 2 microns. This is significantly larger than the wavelength of visible light and thus causes scattering (ie: reflection) yet significantly smaller than than the wavelength of thermal IR radiation so that there is little scattering of these wavelengths. However the particle sizes in the case of snow are far larger, larger than the wavelength of thermal IR and thus will also cause scattering of these wavelengths.
Steven Goddard says:
One of the first things physical geology students learn is that CO2 solubility in seawater diminishes with increasing temperature. The Vostok cores show this quite clearly. When the temperature drops, CO2 gets absorbed into the ocean and atmospheric CO2 drops. And vice-versa.
So the Vostok cores show this very clearly. CO2 lags and follows temperature.
This proves nothing wrt AGW.
Solubility of a gas in a liquid and radiative transfer are two completly different, independent physical mechanisms. One doesn’t preclude the other. If you think otherwise does, please provide the proof.
Steve Goddard (16:48:57) : The claimed accuracy (0.01) is much tighter than the claimed precision (2.0-3.0) which is an error that no serious scientist should ever make. Sounds like politics to me.
So, when you wrote “NASA themselves appear very confused about Antarctic temperature trends” you really meant to write that you believe NASA manipulated data for political ends. Why did you not say that at the beginning? Why lead me down the path that I was reading an article about science when, at the core, you believe science was manipulated for political ends?
mkurbo (18:04:57) : Herman – there is no question that NASA is manipulating data for political purposes. I worked with NASA in the past and I can’t remember when political aspects did not play a part – are you kidding ? Where have you been lately ??
Your statement is an assertion and an accusation without evidence. I am married to a NASA scientist and know others through both her work and our community. I’ve never known a shred of “manipulating data for political purposes” in their research or what they produce. Feel free to tell me about the “politcal aspects” in the scientific research you have participated in at NASA.
kwik says
I allways have had the impression the mean tempearature there was around -40 Dec Celcius….and colder…
Meaning; If it was to warm up to over zero degrees celcius….that would be at least 40 degrees celcius warmer…
And if the antarctic is heating up 40 degrees celcius, so must the rest of the planet. Or more.
Mr Lynn already answered part of your question. I’d like to add another point.
Mainly due to the positive ice albedo feedback, it is to be expected that the polar regions will warm more than the lower latitudes (google for polar amplification). So it is contrary to what you suggest: the rest of the planet should warm less, not more.
Steven Goddard,
I have a few questions and comments on your article.
Antarctica contains 30 × 10^6 km3 of ice which means that it will take 300,000 years for all the ice to melt at NASA’s claimed current rate of 100 km3 per year.
That assumes a constant rate of 100 km3 per year. Is that the maximum melt rate or could it be 1000 km3/yr or 10,000 km3/yr? Can you constrain the maximum melt rate. And what value would that be in your opinion?
Is NASA claiming that they can measure changes in Antarctic ice thickness within 7 millimeters?
NASA can measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon with an accuracy of mm’s, so I wouldn’t accept this assertion on face value. Can you provide support for this statement?
Btw. they did not measure this by radio altimetry, but by measuring the gravity field strength. Do you have founded doubts regarding the accuracy of GRACE?
And finally, regarding the lack of warming in the Antarctic interior. Instead of keeping your readers in the dark about possible causes, you could have mentioned that it is attributed to ozone depletion. Stratospheric ozone is a greenhouse gas.
The image below is from his classic 1984 paper, and shows that Antarctica is supposed to warm up 6C after a doubling of CO2.
Hansen also predicted that sea ice would diminish around Antarctica and significantly decrease albedo. Clearly that prediction was wrong as well..
That prediction was made against a doubling of CO2. We clearly haven’t reached that point yet. And he made this prediction for the equilibrium state, which adds another couple of decades. Shouldn’t you at least wait until the CO2 has doubled and a new equilibrium has been established, before taking him to task for this?
Temperatures in Vostok, Antarctica average -85F in the winter, and warm all the way up to -25F in the summer. If global warming raises the temperature there by a mere fifty-seven degrees, we may seem some melting occurring in the summer.
Vostok is in the middle of Antarctica. Around the edges, average temperatures are much higher. And what is also important are the summer highs. That’s when the melting takes place. Once lost, this ice can only be replenished by precipitation. But precipitation over Antarctica is very low, so not much can be expected from that.
And finally, as MrLynn already pointed out, you don’t need melting to lose ice. Ice flows without melting. Through that mechanism, Antarctica can loose a lot of mass.
Phil,
You are very critical of UAH over small details, yet Hansen takes 12 or less irregular readings across a large continent, applies “adjustments” and averages them out over 1200 km.
Which method seems more accurate to you? I think UAH wins.
Anne,
The Vostok cores behave exactly as expected. The temperature moves one direction or the other- and CO2 follows due to absorption or outgassing from the oceans.
Standard modern touchy-feely propaganda techniques want us to weep over the desperate situation of the penguins being deprived of their cozy icy home. Of course, penguins like to lie in the sun on the warm sandy beaches of South Africa just as much as any area of the Antarctic coast- the link photo is from a family member’s trip to Capetown about 3 years ago: http://darktofu.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/if-i-were-a-penguin/
Steve Goddard (06:27:06) :
Phil,
You are very critical of UAH over small details, yet Hansen takes 12 or less irregular readings across a large continent, applies “adjustments” and averages them out over 1200 km.
They are details but not small details, they render the LT measurement unusable over Antarctica which is why Mears et al. don’t use it there.
Check out the UAH ‘readme’ file to see how many adjustments they make!
Which method seems more accurate to you? I think UAH wins.
Over the Antarctic, not UAH, I’d take this one:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?channel=tlt
Phil,
How can you use RSS for Antarctica? They don’t provide any data. Your choices are GISS or UAH. Which one is better? I vote UAH.
Steve Goddard (08:21:52) :
Phil,
How can you use RSS for Antarctica? They don’t provide any data. Your choices are GISS or UAH. Which one is better? I vote UAH.
That’s the point Steve, they don’t show the data because it can’t be done reliably with MSU/AMSU, which is where I came into this thread! If one accepts your scepticism about the surface measurements then the only choice is that ‘we don’t know’ which is the RSS position, which is why I made that choice.
Anne,
The claimed melt rate is 100km2 per year. That is less about 0.0003 percent of the toatl. Do you think the satellites can measure accurately within 0.0003 percent?
Glaciers advance as a result of increasing pressure (from snowfall) in the interior. Retreating glaciers are sign of ice loss, not advancing glaciers.
Phil,
So you choose GISS by default.
Steve,
The claimed melt rate is 100km2 per year. That is less about 0.0003 percent of the toatl. Do you think the satellites can measure accurately within 0.0003 percent?
GRACE is a constellation of two satellites, 220 km apart. They measure their distance in microns. That is an accuracy of 0.000000001%. So yes, that 0.0003% is very plausible.
By the way, the current Antarctic mass loss rate is 246 km3/yr. Why do you use 100 km3/yr?
Glaciers advance as a result of increasing pressure (from snowfall) in the interior. Retreating glaciers are sign of ice loss, not advancing glaciers.
Where glaciers reach the sea, they are buttressed by ice shelves. If these shelves collapse, they no longer hold back the glacier and its speed increases.
Anne,
The 100 km3 per year is from the EO publication which this article is about.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=42399
Steve,
Ok, my comment was originally about the 0.0003% accuracy that looks perfectly plausible to me. Your point now seems to be what GRACE actually measures: ice mass loss or PGR.
Indeed, Velicogna recognizes this and makes a correction for PGR to obtain the ice mass loss. Those figures, after subtraction of the PGR, are: 104 (2002-2006) and 246 (2006-2009) Gt/yr.
Apparently Michael Beavis of Ohio State University did measurements with gps receivers that were anchored on bedrock and got a ~30 Gt/yr lower PGR than Velicogna’s estimate. This would then yield new figures of 74-216 Gt/yr.
There is a notable difference between PGR and ice mass loss. PGR is a very slow and constant process that shows hardly any year-to-year variations. Short term mass fluctuations can therefore only be ice loss.
About the atmospheric mass I would say that there is no long term trend in atmospheric mass over Antarctica, only short term fluctuations.
Btw, any chance to address my comments posted at 06:26:42?
Thanks for your time.
Oops, “~30 Gt/yr lower PGR” should be “~30 Gt/yr higher PGR”.
Anne,
CO2 has not yet reached 2X pre-industrial values, but temperature and sea ice are both trending the wrong direction per Hansen’s predictions. It is not a question of magnitude, but rather the slope is wrong. Looks very bad so far for his predictions, wouldn’t you agree?
Anne,
Antarctica is a very large continent with volcanoes and there can be little doubt that isostasy is very variable. Taking bedrock readings around the coast is interesting but hardly conclusive. Can you judge the isostasy of Lake Michigan by measuring it in California?
Looks very bad so far for his predictions, wouldn’t you agree?
That is a much milder tone than what you said in your article: Clearly that prediction was wrong as well.
Let’s take the A1B scenario which predicts a 2x CO2 in ~2060. The thermal inertia of the Earth demands at least a few decades to reach a new equilibrium, so I feel safe to say that Hansen’s predictions from 1984 were for 2100. We’re now in 2010 and you already declare failure on his predictions. Don’t you think it’s fair to at least wait until the end of the century to pass a judgement on this?
Anne,
A1B assumes little growth in CO2 emissions, when in fact they have grown faster than A1FI. Wouldn’t you expect to have seen temperature rise and albedo loss by now?
People are quick to blame Arctic warming and sea ice loss on CO2 – so why isn’t it also happening in the Antarctic?
Anne van der Bom (12:44:52):
Very fair indeed. Of course, since we don’t know what 2100 will tell us, then we certainly shouldn’t spend any more money on what is very likely to be a non-problem.
I say that because Hansen has made a number of predictions, which cover most eventualities. By picking A1B you demonstrate that.
Even I could make numerous predictions, and point to the one that came closest to predicting the future. It’s called the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: shoot a hole in a barn door, then draw a circle around it and claim you’re a sharpshooter.
If Hansen had made only one prediction, he would either be credible, or not. So he made enough predictions to be a Texas sharpshooter.
Hansen made predictions for shorter periods than that. The recent flat decade or so has falsified most of them. His model assumes a more or less lockstep (with variations of no more than three years or so) linkup between rising CO2 and rising temperature. Here’s a link to his most embarrassing flub, a WUWT thread titled “A little known 20 year old climate change prediction by Dr. James Hansen – that failed badly”. (He predicted Manhattan would be awash by now.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/
.Hansford (05:20:08) :
Oliver K. Manuel (04:28:26) :
“It has been operating full time since the Apollo landing on the Moon in 1969.”
——————————————————————-
Um, I assume you are not questioning the moon landings themselves, but rather that you are refering to other aspects of research on the material that was brought back…. Yes?
————————————————————–
Oliver K. Manuel (09:23:16) :
NASA really went to the Moon in 1969 and discovered an inconvenient truth:
Under the direction of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), NASA became a propaganda machine in 1969, when analysis of the Apollo lunar samples revealed an inconvenient truth – the Sun is not a ball of Hydrogen (H) and H-fusion is not its source of heat.
———————————————————-
Ah, righto. Didn’t think you were actually denying the landings… 🙂
I’ll read the links.
Steve
A1B assumes little growth in CO2 emissions, when in fact they have grown faster than A1FI. Wouldn’t you expect to have seen temperature rise and albedo loss by now?
People are quick to blame Arctic warming and sea ice loss on CO2 – so why isn’t it also happening in the Antarctic?
I pointed this out before, but you seem to have missed it.
There is a good explanation in reduced stratospheric ozone and the southern seas buffering the heat. We still have 90 years to go, so my point still stands: it is not possible yet to declare Hansen’s prediction a failure.
Can you point me to the lower equilibrium figures than decades? I couldn’t find it.
Smokey
I say that because Hansen has made a number of predictions, which cover most eventualities. By picking A1B you demonstrate that.
It is not quite like that. Hansen is in the business of climate prediction, not politics prediction. You are accusing him of being unable to predict our future decisions.
Even I could make numerous predictions, and point to the one that came closest to predicting the future.
That is a distortion of reality. He makes a number of predictions, based on emission scenarios. You can not later pick the prediction that was closest. You have to pick the emissions path according to reality, and then check whether the related climate prediction holds up.
Like I said, you can’t blame Hansen for being unable to predict how much coal we will burn in 2040 or how much forest we chop down in 2025.
Steve,
Forget about my question to your about the time to reach equilibrium. That should not have ended up in my comment.
Roger Knights,
This article is about one particular prediction regarding the state of Antarctica around 2100. Those other predictions for shorter periods have been highlighted before. I’d rather not digress into that area.
Steve Goddard (10:24:42) :
In your response to Herman L you state the following:
The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius.” So they are trying to claim a warming trend of less than 0.1 degrees with an uncertainty 20-30 times greater than the trend.
You can not compare a trend to an absolute value in this way. A trend of 0.1 degrees per year over 26 years is a total rise of ~2.6 degrees. That is the number that you should compare the 2-3 degrees accuracy to.
Anne van der Bom: “[Hansen] makes a number of predictions, based on emission scenarios. You can not later pick the prediction that was closest.”
But that’s exactly what you’re doing.
J.Hansford (21:48:31) :
“Um, I assume you are not questioning the moon landings themselves, but rather that you are refering to other aspects of research on the material that was brought back…. Yes?”
————————————————————–
Oliver K. Manuel (09:23:16) :
“NASA really went to the Moon in 1969 and discovered an inconvenient truth:
Under the direction of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), NASA became a propaganda machine in 1969, when analysis of the Apollo lunar samples revealed an inconvenient truth – the Sun is not a ball of Hydrogen (H) and H-fusion is not its source of heat.”
———————————————————-
“Ah, righto. Didn’t think you were actually denying the landings… 🙂
I’ll read the links.”
———————————————————-
Yes, NASA definitely went to the Moon in 1969 and discovered solar-wind implanted elements in lunar samples that disproved their cherished model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.
While NASA was busy trying to limit access to lunar samples, the Allende meteorite landed with still unmixed isotopes and elements from different regions of the supernova that gave birth to the solar system:
See this summary of the findings:
“Fingerprints of a local supernova,” in SPACE EXPLORATION RESEARCH (Nova Science Publishers, Inc., Hauppauge, NY, in press, 38 pp, 2010);
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0684
Or read the story as it unfolded:
“Xenon in carbonaceous chondrites”, Nature 240, 99-101 (1972);
http://www.omatumr.com/archive/XenonInCarbonaceousChondrites.pdf
“Strange xenon, extinct super-heavy elements, and the solar neutrino puzzle”, Science 195, 208-209 (1977);
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/195/4274/208-b
“Elemental and isotopic inhomogeneities in noble gases: The case for local synthesis of the chemical elements”, Transactions Missouri Academy Sciences 9, 104-122 (1975).
“Isotopes of tellurium, xenon and krypton in the Allende meteorite retain record of nucleosynthesis”, Nature 277, 615-620 (1979);
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v277/n5698/abs/277615a0.html
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Smokey,
Anne van der Bom: “[Hansen] makes a number of predictions, based on emission scenarios. You can not later pick the prediction that was closest.”
But that’s exactly what you’re doing.
No, I am picking the emission scenario not the climate prediction.
Climate change is dependent on the emission of CO2 (and to a lesser extent CH4, NO2, soot, etc). The amount of CO2 that is going to be emitted is a choice, made by humanity. It is inherently unpredictable. The change in climate as a result of that choice is the domain of the climate scientists. The choice wrt emissions is the domain of the politicians. It is not predictable.
Anne,
The areas of East Antarctica which changed from blue to red between maps show between 0 and 0.05 degrees warming, so the total over 30 years is 0-1.5 degrees, which is considerably less than the measurement error. Hardly a basis to change the original map.
Anne,
January, 2010 was the warmest January in the satellite record, due to very warm water in the southern oceans. Yet Antarctica remains below normal temperatures and sea ice above normal. How does that jibe with the cold “southern seas buffering” idea?
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/ANIM/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.30.gif
It is always possible that Antarctica will drastically change behaviour before CO2 doubles, and ends up warming 6C – but that doesn’t seem very likely right now.
Anne,
I disagree with your assertion that fossil fuels is a “choice.”
Humanity made a “choice” to lift itself out of squalor via the industrial revolution and fossil fuels. Until there is a viable alternative to fossil fuels, there is no other choice. Our current world without massive use of fossil fuels would be intolerable. There are tens of millions of people in LA and hundreds of other cities who have to get to work and have to eat. What other options do they have? Government mandates about CO2 reduction are meaningless.
Anne van der Bom (04:50:55) :
“Climate change is dependent on the emission of CO2…”
That is a repeatedly falsified statement. It’s not worth my time to refute it again, which I have done numerous times here. Read up on the archives.
As for Hansen’s multiple sharpshooter predictions, one of them is almost in the ball park. Almost. But still a foul ball: click [chart by Lucia]
Anne,
Just wanted to thank you for your polite and thoughtful discourse.
How can you hope to secure funding for exploration and colonization of other planets if yours is way too comfy?
Snow and cold weather have remarkably improved common sense at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), NASA Headquarters, NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, and the University of Colorado.
See: The Solar Dynamics Observatory: The ‘Variable Sun’ Mission”
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2010/05feb_sdo.htm?list26348
From NAS: “According to a 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences, a century-class solar storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.”
From NASA Headquarters: “The sun,” explains Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC, “is a variable star.”
From NRL: “Understanding solar variability is crucial,” says space scientist Judith Lean of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. “Our modern way of life depends upon it.”
From NRL: “‘Solar constant’ is an oxymoron,” says Judith Lean of the Naval Research Lab. “Satellite data show that the sun’s total irradiance rises an falls with the sunspot cycle by a significant amount.”
From Boulder, CO: “If human eyes could see EUV wavelengths, no one would doubt that the sun is a variable star,” says Tom Woods of the University of Colorado in Boulder.
From Goddard Spaceflight Center: “Understanding the inner workings of the solar dynamo has long been a ‘holy grail’ of solar physics,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
Leif may soon be left alone defending the obsolete dogma of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.
Now DOE (Department of Energy) scientists need to get involved and admit or deny that N-N repulsion is the energy source that powers the Sun and generates the cycles of solar magnetic activity that are empirically linked with changes in Earth’s climate.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Studies
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Not a very scientific observation, but it seems to me that NASA et all must get seriously brassed off with you lot doing calculations to show that it would take 300000 years for the land-based ice in Antarctica to melt.
Could you all please stop it… look – the science is settled – nothing to see here, move along…