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.
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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.
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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