From a University of Leeds press release, comes this scary headline that seems to be picked up by the MSM. A Google search yields 16,400 hits on the title below.
Melting icebergs causing sea level rise
(Note: Be sure to see the reality punch line at the end of the article)
Scientists have discovered that changes in the amount of ice floating in the polar oceans are causing sea levels to rise.
The research, published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, is the first assessment of how quickly floating ice is being lost today.
According to Archimedes’ principle, any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid. For example, an ice cube in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow as it melts.
But because sea water is warmer and more salty than floating ice, changes in the amount of this ice are having an effect on global sea levels.
The loss of floating ice is equivalent to 1.5 million Titanic-sized icebergs each year. However, the study shows that spread across the global oceans, recent losses of floating ice amount to a sea level rise of just 49 micrometers per year – about a hair’s breadth.
According to lead author Professor Andrew Shepherd, of the University of Leeds, it would be unwise to discount this signal. “Over recent decades there have been dramatic reductions in the quantity of Earth’s floating ice, including collapses of Antarctic ice shelves and the retreat of Arctic sea ice,” said Prof Shepherd.
“These changes have had major impacts on regional climate and, because oceans are expected to warm considerably over the course of the 21st century, the melting of floating ice should be considered in future assessments of sea level rise.”
Professor Shepherd and his team used a combination of satellite observations and a computer model to make their assessment. They looked at changes in the area and thickness of sea ice and ice shelves, and found that the overall signal amounts to a 742 cubic kilometres per year reduction in the volume of floating.
Because of differences in the density and temperature of ice and sea water, the net effect is to increase sea level by 2.6% of this volume, equivalent to 49 micrometers per year spread across the global oceans.
The greatest losses were due to the rapid retreat of Arctic Sea ice and to the collapse and thinning of ice shelves at the Antarctic Peninsula and in the Amundsen Sea.
For more information
To arrange an interview with Prof Andy Shepherd, contact Hannah Isom in the University of Leeds press office on 0113 343 4031 or email h.isom@leeds.ac.uk
Notes to editors
“Recent loss of floating ice and the consequent sea level contribution” by Andrew Shepherd, Duncan Wingham, David Wallis, Katharine Giles, Seymour Laxon, and Aud Venke Sundal is published this week in Geophysical Research Letters (doi:10.1029/2010GL042496).
ICE SHELVES are thick, floating platforms of ice that form where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are found mainly in Antarctica , and range from about 100 to 1000 metres in thickness.
SEA ICE is formed on the surface of sea water as the ocean freezes, and is typically less than 3 metres in thickness. It is found extensively in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and it’s extent varies considerably over the seasons.
This study was funded by the UK National Centre for Earth Observation and the Philip Leverhulme Trust.
==========================================
OK here’s the reality punch line:
Assuming their theory of 49 micrometers per year rise (this conversion equals 0.0019 inch or 0.00016 feet ) due to the differences is salty and fresh water holds true, then we can assess the threat level.
At this rate, to see an inch of sea level rise from melting icebergs we’d need:
1 inch/0.0019 inch/yr = 526 years
Yeah, I’m worried about that.
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Nice to see our local university getting the headlines. I occasionally walk through their grounds on a shortcut. Maybe I should pay this department a visit to see when they are going to do some real work?
Floating ice will not raise sea level one iota if it melts.
How do they get funding for such rubbish.
This amounts to 1342.465753 Angstrom units per day. This is scary stuff!
Or a waste of calculator batteries.
Even though Professor Shepherd comments were tainted to the alarmist side, we need to thank him for one, being accurate, I checked the 2.6% effect and that is correct, even though I never, never would have believed it yesterday. Archimedes did only claim it was the mass displaced, not necessary the volume. Beacause of some of it’s bizarre properties, that’s another weird thing that water does do. 🙂
Two, it’s not his fault that MSM went bonkers over an article that makes CAGW alarmists look totally foolish if they place any weight on this particular subject.
Three, this has bolstered the skeptical view of this on-going discussion around the world, remember, most of the world is metric and they do get the correct gist.
Thank you Professor Shepherd even though your 49 µm/year is not going to happen any time soon, the global sea-ice is increasing and your effect does, in fact, also work in reverse. The sea level is now dropping some N µm per year from your effect. I honestly learned some real physics from you today!
Somewhat OT, but can someone help me, please, with figures for polar bear numbers. After publishing a brief “sceptic” view in a local magazine a response has just been published saying polar bear numbers are “not only dropping, but they are dropping faster”. This was apparently on the basis of a 2009 survey of 19 sub-populations (with 2005 numbers in brackets) saying: increasing 1(2), stable 3(5), decreasing 8(5).
I am sure I have seen figures somewhere recently showing that at least as many sub-populations are increasing as decreasing. Can anyone point me at relevant figures or articles, please.
We are to be saved!
The combined dredging operations worldwide are lowering the sealevel.
Suppose they dredge 5 kubic km per year – 102.000.000 m3 at Jurong II as an example and thats only one project.
5 km3 equals 0,015 mm of sea level change.
Al Gore’s Weather (AGW) : Free m and m.
More “mangled” more “moribund”.
C’monna to mah Tower of Babel.
It’s a dialogue, the “Petersberg Climate Dialogue”, “More than three dozen environment ministers” = +36. A dialogue?
AGW’s Tower Of Babel.
…-
“Environment ministers gather in Bonn to save climate talks”
“More than three dozen environment ministers are to meet near Bonn this weekend in a bid to revive global climate talks left mangled and moribund after the UN summit in Copenhagen.”
It will be the highest-level political meeting on climate since the much-criticised December conference fell spectacularly short of delivering the binding treaty that nearly all nations say is needed to spare the planet from the worst ravages of global warming.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, host to the next UN conference in Cancun at year’s end, will kick things off late Sunday, setting the tone for the two-and-a-half-day closed-door brainstorming session.
“It is the return of the ministers, who are there to give political guidance to (technical) negotiators,” said Brice Lalonde, France’s climate ambassador. “What counts at this point is political initiative.”
One avowed aim of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue – named for the castle where it is to be held – is confidence building.”
http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20100430-26903.html
So Al Gore’s new home in Cal is safe! Whew!
Tom in Florida says:
April 30, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I wonder how much water is taken out for desalinization world wide.
I don’t know, but another comparison is the amount of irrigation water pumped from the earth is a volume equal to 2mm/yr sea level rise, or about 2/3rds of the total 3.2mm/yr current rate. This may be totally off as I used UN guesstimates, but is an interesting perspective, IMHO.
I’m getting 21,000 hits.
This one is going strong!
Err, solid H2O is of greater volume than liquid H2O. Melting an iceberg lowers, not raises the sea level. Of course since the amount of ice in the Arctic is increasing we should in general thus see a sea level decrease from ice, rather than the reverse. In either case, the effect is horrifically small.
Dartmoor Resident says:
May 1, 2010 at 5:06 am
Somewhat OT, but can someone help me, please, with figures for polar bear numbers.
__________________________________________________________________
Try this article: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/12/oh-no-not-this-rubbish-again-recent-projections-suggest-polar-bears-could-be-extinct-within-70-years/
You can do a search using the search feature in the top right corner. Willis Eschenbach may have some answers for you if you can get his attention. (ask the question on his most recent article )
While we are on climate craziness, some time back I did a pixel count of the images CT uses when they added snow coverage to their image in late 2004. It appeared the snow impinged on the shoreline, reducing the sea area some .5 X 10^6 Km^2, coincidentally equal to the step function in their anomaly graph at 2005 on. This year they have expanded the diameter of the earth, but managed to shrink the arctic sea even more on a bigger earth. This is getting just too silly.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrwuae.jpg
In the above image, I created a two pixel wide shoreline on the 1979 image, no it isn’t perfect, but plenty close for examining gov’t work. I then transferred the same shoreline to the 2010 image, scaling it to the larger diameter of the recent image. The image speaks for itself.
I do not care if seawater is saltier than the ice.
Floating ice already displaces water. Melting of this ice does nothing. In fact, melting the entire Arctic ice cap would do NOTHING!
In fact, sea ice has been unchanging, totaling Arctic and Antarctic, over the years and has been increasing lately as the Arctic has been rebounding nicely – currently at perfectly average area. for the last month.
The laws of physics still apply, but since it has been politicized, it appears that the politicians’ lacky scientists can write it to be anything they desire.
“According to Archimedes’ principle, any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid. For example, an ice cube in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow as it melts.
But because sea water is warmer and more salty than floating ice, changes in the amount of this ice are having an effect on global sea levels.”
What? This doesn’t make any sense. The ice will displace it’s own weight, and what is this ‘ effect’?
“The loss of floating ice is equivalent to 1.5 million Titanic-sized icebergs each year. However, the study shows that spread across the global oceans, recent losses of floating ice amount to a sea level rise of just 49 micrometers per year – about a hair’s breadth”.
This is an absurd level of precision considering the scale of what is being measured, unless this is a big joke.
“These changes have had major impacts on regional climate …”
What are the major impacts?
“Professor Shepherd and his team used a combination of satellite observations and a computer model to make their assessment”.
So we have satellites that can measure in single microns? I thought GPS, for example, can achieve at best an accuracy or around 1.5 meters. If a computer model is giving this accuracy then what are the real world inputs and to what accuracy?
“Because of differences in the density and temperature of ice and sea water, the net effect is to increase sea level by 2.6% of this volume, equivalent to 49 micrometers per year spread across the global oceans”.
Again. The ice will displace it’s own weight so it doesn’t matter if temperature or density changes as this will be reflected in how much ice sticks up above sea level, which will change accordingly.
Ref: Dartmoor resident 21 May 5.06
I haven’t seen, but would like to, the 2009 polar bear figures. The 2005 figures showed that increase/decrease was largely linked to hunting.
http://www.climatedata.info/Impacts/Impacts/polarbears.html
The Atlantic is expanding do that the US and Europe move away from each other at around 4cm per year or around 30/40 meters in the last thousand years. This is a lot of extra ocean that must have an effect on weather, temps etc., and the wedge of Atlantic that cuts into the Arctic is only getting bigger.
4cm is a bigger number than 49microns.
Steve Keohane says:
May 1, 2010 at 6:47 am
While we are on climate craziness, some time back I did a pixel count of the images….
________________________
Thank you Steve, I was wondering about that when I noticed the inlets on the coastlines had changed. Now we know the satellite ice data has “problems” SIGHhhhh….
Arethere any data collections Not compromised by this politically motivated scientists???
Precipitation probably adds more to sea level rise than 1 micron. Better include that! Oh, and maybe there could be a super-saturated air mass with like 101% RH, better include the condensation of water vapor into the ocean until equilibrium is reached – that nanometer/decade rise is really important for long term projections and planning!
49 micrometers per yrear an 526 years to get a reduction of one inch? My….the horror….the horror…
Steve Keohane says:
May 1, 2010 at 6:47 am
“… This is getting just too silly.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrwuae.jpg
In the above image, I created a two pixel wide shoreline on the 1979 image, no it isn’t perfect, but plenty close for examining gov’t work. I then transferred the same shoreline to the 2010 image, scaling it to the larger diameter of the recent image. The image speaks for itself.”
Well, the had to do something to hide the increase! Well spotted Steve, another landmark event in climate pseudo-science.
At this rate of sea level rise a vulnerable city like Miami will be completely under water in 69,432 years. No laughing matter.
Al Gore’s Weather (AGW): Ah always shower after Ah have a record low “cold snap”.
““In more than 30 years of harvesting I haven’t seen anything like it,”.
“Thursday’s high in Seoul, 7.8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit), was a record low for that date. The previous record for a cold day in April was 10.1 degrees in 1962.”
…-
“S. Korea: Cold snap wilts crops, inflates market prices
JoongAng Daily
Baby, it’s cold outside. And that’s why you’re spending more at the fruit, vegetable and fish markets.
Although the temperature yesterday was up a bit, Thursday’s high in Seoul, 7.8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit), was a record low for that date. The previous record for a cold day in April was 10.1 degrees in 1962.
It even snowed in Gangwon yesterday.
The Korea Meteorological Administration said the recent temperature drop was largely due to cold air (below 30 degrees Celsius) blowing in from Siberia, and that temperatures will likely return to normal levels by this weekend.
“In more than 30 years of harvesting I haven’t seen anything like it, and we’ve been through numerous natural disasters like storms and hail,” said Kim Joong-bong, 51, a persimmon and pear farmer who represents the farming community in Sangju, North Gyeongsang. According to the Korea Advanced Farmers Federation, North Gyeonsgang is the area most affected by the recent cold snap.
“Some of the pear farms have suffered tremendously,” said Kim, “with more than 90 percent of their trees dying.”
According to the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, damage to onion and Korean black raspberry crops in March totaled 2.6 billion won ($2.3 million). More damage estimates will be made in May.
“It’s hard to tell how much of the agricultural goods have been affected by the recent temperature drop since we need to wait until the flowers blossom,” said an official with the agriculture ministry, requesting anonymity. “But one thing for sure is that the damage will be enormous compared to previous years.” Farmers have been having trouble with bad weather and lack of sunshine since last December.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2504539/posts
Could it be they are telling us “Don’t worry about ice melting, you won’t even notice it” in a way that doesn’t take away all their grants for being anti-AGW?