Which of these states is closest to 20,000 square kilometers in area?
UPDATE: USGS has issued a statement, see below.
WUWT reader “DC” points us to this Gore-esque pronouncement from a USGS scientist about “Antarctic ice loss”.
Jane Ferrigno of the U.S. Geological Survey in a National Public Radio interview
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124178690 (Audio clip available)
Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It’s affecting first the area that’s towards the north, that’s slightly warmer, but the effect of the warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the southern part of the peninsula, where it’s colder.
…
“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.
Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.
RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years. ”
It gets better.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.
RAZ: I mean, it sounds so dramatic, the size of Texas, right?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. FERRIGNO: It is. It is very dramatic, and it is larger than the size of Texas, but when you consider the entire Antarctic ice sheet, it’s still a fairly minimal amount. But the thing that we’re really interested in seeing is that this is a sort of a red flag because if the warming continues, if the retreat continues, if the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, then there will be substantial impact to the sea level.
RAZ: That’s Jane Ferrigno. She is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Jane Ferrigno, thanks for coming in.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Thank you.
Ms. Ferrigno might do well to have a look at this map of the USA and Antarctica compared at Texas A&M University’s Polar Science program to get a sense of scale.
Here’s the story on all the Southern hemisphere sea ice, which includes all Antarctic sea ice, from Cryosphere today:
Maybe Ms. Ferrigno will be embarrassed enough by her geographic ineptitude and will heed Gavin Schmidt’s advice and stop trying to “persuade the public“.
======================================
UPDATE:
Statement from USGS:
The comment by Jane in the NPR interview was an honest mistake. We are sorry for the delay in responding to your email, but Jane has been out of the office. Below is an apology and clarification statement that will be posted on the NPR site soon. Jane will be in the office later today, and if you have any questions, please let me or her know.
From Jane …
I want to apologize to NPR and the listening audience for my misstatement last Sunday, February 28. During the last 20 years, an area more than 20,000 sq. km. (comparable to the size of New Jersey) has broken off the ice shelves of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is the Antarctic Peninsula, the source of the ice loss, that I meant to say was larger than the state of Texas but smaller than the state of Alaska.
Thank you,
Jessica Robertson
Public Affairs Specialist
Office of Communications
U.S. Geological Survey
(703) 648-6624
It’s depressing how science in the US has become more like,
“this is what you can do to be a better human being.”
NPR science fridays and many other outlets tend to follow this line. I call it more some strange mixture between policy and religion.
It’s time to teach again what science actually is.
Turboblocke (11:09:42) :
You do realise that she’s talking about ice on the Antarctic penisular , not sea ice.
Perhaps it’s time to assess the state of disarray on this site first? 😉
This article on USGS research by Ms. Ferrigno says otherwise:
The melting of ice shelves won’t directly lead to sea level rise, since ice shelves already rest in the ocean
This is ice around the peninsula, not on it
Robert L (12:00:34) :
Even if it were a square 20,000 km per side that is still less than Texas!
————–
Reply:
Sorry, Robert, but as a THINKING geologist I’m going to have to offer a correction on that. 20,000 squared is 400 million sq km, which is about 575 times bigger than Texas and 233 times bigger than Alaska.
Think of it this way: 20,000 km is about 12,427 miles, which about half way around the equator (40,724 km). Or compare it to Earths entire surface area, which is 510,072,000 km², just a quarter larger than a square 20,000 km on a side.
Drew>> Well… 20000 km2 lost in 20 years…
1000 km2/year…
So it will take about 13000 years for all the Antarctic ice to dissapear at the current rate?
Are we in a hurry?
Greenland Ice Volume approx 5 million cubic kms
Antarctica ice volume approx 30 million cubic kms
and 1 cubic km of ice weighs 1 gigatonne
Greenland therefore has approx 5 million gigatonnes of ice
Antarctica therefore nhas 30 million gigatonnes of ice
Greenland’s low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, while the high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall….so net loss is 100 gigatonnes per year…this would therefore create a global sea level rise of about 0.3 mm per year
Therefore combining Greenland and Antarctica we are at the moment looking at a global sea level rise about 1 mm per year.
” . . at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.”
In addition Ms. Ferrigno forgot to remind the audience that the Earth’s temperature below the crust was millions of degrees.
Viv Evans 11:38:08 . . . . ..
REPLY: Save the Wales
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wales says thank you.
………………….
England doesn’t!
For years and years we English have been learning of global disasters destroying “an area the size of Wales”, but why is it never actually Wales itself? Still, perhaps one day!
P.S. Actually the English are just a teeny bit sorry for the Welsh at the moment because vast tracts of their best wild landscape have been vandalised on the altar of AGW by the erection of useless wind turbines that do nothing but slice up birds and drive the tourists away.
Size of Texas, and few millions degree warm.
Cut the lady some slack. She’s a government employee so “Close enough for government work” applies.
Believe me, if a chunk of ice the size of Texas were to break off, the world would know because us Texans would be beating a path to the ice with a boat loads of tequila and margarita fixin’s. 🙂
homo sapiens (13:03:47) :
Viv Evans 11:38:08 . . . . ..
REPLY: Save the Wales
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wales says thank you.
………………….
“England doesn’t!
For years and years we English have been learning of global disasters destroying “an area the size of Wales”, but why is it never actually Wales itself? Still, perhaps one day!”
Amen to that!
I’m ¼ Welsh, so even in PC terms I am allowed to insult them, just so long as I insult the English pro rata.
Reminds me of when my daughter was 4 and came home from pre-school saying “Texas is bigger than the United States – right?” I responded “as long as we live here (in Houston) you can’t go wrong with that answer.”
homo sapiens (13:03:47)
For years and years we English have been learning of global disasters destroying “an area the size of Wales”, but why is it never actually Wales itself? Still, perhaps one day!
Very good.
I was in a pub deep in Welsh Wales some years ago and asked what I was doing there. I replied that we English had won a war a few hundred years back that allowed us to visit Wales without a passport and I was just exercising my rights! The entire pub fell silent except for the sound of my shoes running across the flagstones. My humour was not appreciated.
To NickB. (12:48:03) : Quote from above”“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.
Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.”
My mistake, I didn’t realise that in the Antarctic a penisula could include an area of sea.
Maybe some people just aren’t impressed by Texas.
Wondered for a few seconds why Anthony would have finished the blog with a video of Baby Spice presenting at a London radio station 8-))
snowmaneasy (12:50:15) :
Therefore combining Greenland and Antarctica we are at the moment looking at a global sea level rise about 1 mm per year.
The Antarctic ice Ferrigno is talking about was not on land – it was shelf ice over water next to the peninsula. That would mean, if the sea level measurements are trusted, up to 220 cubic km of water mysteriously appearing in our oceans(?)
If I know my Consensus well enough, there is also thermal expansion and I wouldn’t doubt somewhere someone is saying that the 220 cubic km is coming from other areas of the Antarctic… but please clarify! Where is the 220 Antarctic gigatons of ice loss coming from?
The area of Texas is (drum roll)…696,241 sq km.
The area of Alaska (ditto)…1,717,854 sq km.
(1 minute with Wikipedia).
Error is between 34 and 85.
Poor girl.
“”” Turboblocke (11:09:42) :
You do realise that she’s talking about ice on the Antarctic penisular , not sea ice.
Perhaps it’s time to assess the state of disarray on this site first? 😉 “””
Starting with the meaning of the adjective “peninsular”.
Lubos was harsh but accurate. As I said earlier, these types of mistakes are too numerous to simply be slips of the tongue or brain freezes. They are reasoning from what they want the result to be. This is reasoning of children (and utopians), not scientists.
Far too many warmists just don’t have a clue!
Witness this article in the Globe and Mail last week:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/lets-not-fret-over-climate-migration/article1483245/
In it the author, one Doug Saunders, states:
“If the predictions were true, the people of Ivalo would be gone, the first wave of refugees in a human tide caused by climate change.
Their river valley Arctic village in northeastern Finland is the first really unambiguous victim of melting polar caps. Starting around 2005, much of the village was suddenly below sea level.
There’s no question that global warming is having its way with Ivalo.”
Interesting commentary given that Ivalo is notably inland, UP a river flowing into Lake Inari which has an elevation of 119 metres above sea level! A quick check of the facts reveals that Ivalo has notable flooding in 2005 due to the river overflowing its banks due to excessive snowmelt!
Facts never matter to the warmists! Just ask Al Gore!
NickB. (14:27:40)
Here is the abstract…
Nature Geoscience
Published online: 22 November 2009 | doi:10.1038/ngeo694
Accelerated Antarctic ice loss from satellite gravity measurements
J. L. Chen1, C. R. Wilson1,2, D. Blankenship3 & B. D. Tapley1
________________________________________
Abstract
Accurate quantification of Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance and its contribution to global sea-level rise remains challenging, because in situ measurements over both space and time are sparse. Satellite remote-sensing data of ice elevations and ice motion show significant ice loss in the range of -31 to -196 Gt yr-1 in West Antarctica in recent years1, 2, 3, 4, whereas East Antarctica seems to remain in balance or slightly gain mass1, 2, 4, with estimated rates of mass change in the range of -4 to 22 Gt yr-1. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment5 (GRACE) offers the opportunity of quantifying polar ice-sheet mass balance from a different perspective6, 7. Here we use an extended record of GRACE data spanning the period April 2002 to January 2009 to quantify the rates of Antarctic ice loss. In agreement with an independent earlier assessment4, we estimate a total loss of 190 77 Gt yr-1, with 132 26 Gt yr-1 coming from West Antarctica. However, in contrast with previous GRACE estimates, our data suggest that East Antarctica is losing mass, mostly in coastal regions, at a rate of -57 52 Gt yr-1, apparently caused by increased ice loss since the year 2006.
NickB. (14:27:40) …
This is ice on the continent…
D. King (09:50:21) :
I blame Mr. FERRIGNO for her size comparison errors.
LOL – My wife might agree with that statement
Peter Miller (09:22:28)
Miskolczi has derived formulae to give the cooling effect of water vapour.
A very readable explanation of Miskolczi’s ideas can be found here [19 pages – best to print it first!] :
http://www.landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction