By Steven Goddard,
The headline reads “NASA Satellites Detect Unexpected Ice Loss in East Antarctica”
ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2009) — Using gravity measurement data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, a team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin has found that the East Antarctic ice sheet-home to about 90 percent of Earth’s solid fresh water and previously considered stable-may have begun to lose ice.
Better move to higher ground! NASA also reported :
In 2007, NASA generated this map (below) of Antarctica showing just how hot it is getting down there in the land of Penguins.
Now I am really worried! But wait……. There are a few minor problems.
Assume for a minute that we accept the GRACE numbers. The first problem is Antarctica contains a lot of ice : 30 × 10^6 km³. At 100 km³ per year, it will take 300,000 years to melt.
The next problem is with the NASA temperature map. From the NASA article “The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius.” They are claiming precision of better than 0.05°C, with an error more than an order of magnitude larger than their 25 year trend. The error bar is large enough that the same data could just as easily indicate rapid cooling and blue colors. That will get you an F in any high school science class.
And that is exactly what happened. The hot red map above was preceded by a cold blue map which showed Antarctica getting cooler. What motivation could NASA have had to change colors without mathematical justification?
NASA justified their heating up Antarctica with this comment :
This image was first published on April 27, 2006, and it was based on data from 1981-2004. A more recent version was published on November 21, 2007. The new version extended the data range through 2007, and was based on a revised analysis that included better inter-calibration among all the satellite records that are part of the time series.
As I have already pointed out, this is absurd. Their error bar is so large that they could have painted the map any color they wanted. Apparently someone at NASA wanted red.
But why are we looking at temperature trends anyway? The real issue is absolute temperatures. Some of the regions in which GRACE claims ice loss in East Antarctica average colder than -30°C during the summer, and never, ever get above freezing. How can you melt ice at those temperatures?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctic_surface_temperature.png
I overlaid the Antarctica summer temperature map on the GRACE “melt” map, below. As you can see, GRACE is showing ice loss in places that stay incredibly cold, all year round.
The problem with GRACE is that it measures gravity, not ice. Changes in gravity can be due to a lot of different things beneath the surface of the ice. Antarctica has active magma chambers. Plate tectonics and isostasy also cause gravity changes.
We should be clever enough not to be blinded by technology. The claims that ice is melting in East Antarctica don’t have a lot of justification.
RACookPE1978 Reur July 3, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Concerning glacier dynamics and ice-shelf break-up.
One of the silly things in all this is the assertion by alarmists that such things are new, and the consequence of global warming.
However, the calving and break-up of Antarctic ice shelves is clearly a mechanical failure mode resulting predominantly from tidal and wave action that is unlikely to be the result of warming. There was tourist excitement back in 2009 when icebergs approached New Zealand, but they have also been seen from the shoreline long before the invention of helicopters and CO2. I thought I read somewhere, this happened about a hundred years ago, but here is a reference for about 80 years ago that I quickly found via Google:
[EXTRACT, Nov. 2009] A fleet of more than 100 stray icebergs is approaching New Zealand.
This is the second time in 78 years that such massive ice formations have been spotted so far north of Antarctica according to CNN.
Bob_FJ says:
July 3, 2010 at 3:48 pm
RACookPE1978 Reur July 3, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Concerning glacier dynamics and ice-shelf break-up.
One of the silly things in all this is the assertion by alarmists that such things are new, and the consequence of global warming.
However, the calving and break-up of Antarctic ice shelves is clearly a mechanical failure mode resulting predominantly from tidal and wave action that is unlikely to be the result of warming. There was tourist excitement back in 2009 when icebergs approached New Zealand, but they have also been seen from the shoreline long before the invention of helicopters and CO2. I thought I read somewhere, this happened about a hundred years ago, but here is a reference for about 80 years ago that I quickly found via Google:
That reference says that it’s happened twice in the last 78 years, in 2006 and 2009.
climatepatrol says: July 2, 2010 at 7:09 pm
“You need not lecture what science is.”
It was two paragraphs of written word, clearly not a lecture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecture
“That is not the way to convince the majority of Americans.”
This particular post was not an attempt to “convince the majority of Americans”, rather it was intended for a specific audience.
A science article or a science blog is mostly ABOUT research done by scientists, and WUWT authors usually have more background than most writers of scientific articles.”
I’m really not sure what to make of this particular statement. While it is obviously critical to have well researched and written content, I think the greatest power of WUWT is the instantaneous adversarial review of whatever is posted, which is conducted by a diverse group of intelligent and knowledgeable individuals, as well as some other people. People don’t just come to WUWT to read the articles, they come to see if the articles withstand intense scrutiny.
“That is why it was awarded as the most popular science blog by definition. That’s a fact whether you like it or not.”
I’m also not really sure what to make of you, my first inclination is that you are a Warmist troll trying to confuse people on WUWT. I guess that I will have to peer review you for a bit…
Phil. Reur July 3, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Concerning Icebergs approaching New Zealand, you commented:
Oh dear! Yes the wording is a bit difficult maybe, so I decided to Google but this time including the year 1931, (= 2009 + 78), since obviously ‘78 years’ had some significance, and lo and behold, there are dozens of articles giving 1931 as the relevant year. I thought you might like this one:
[EXTRACT] Large numbers of icebergs last floated close to New Zealand in 2006, when some were visible from the coastline – the first such sighting since 1931…
…Temperatures have risen in the Antarctic Peninsula area near South America by as much as 3C in the last 60 years, and “whole ice shelves have broken up,” Young said. But he said the iceberg flotilla south of New Zealand came from the Ross Sea, a completely different area of Antarctica, and the event was unrelated to climate change.
Or how about this more official NIWA one?
[EXTRACT] Icebergs approach New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands every few years. The closest they have come to New Zealand was in November 2006 when they were off the coast of Otago and Canterbury coast for over a month. Prior to 2006 the last sighting from the mainland was off Dunedin in 1931. We know icebergs have been visiting New Zealand for a long time. NIWA has identified scour marks in the sea floor on the Chatham Rise, which were probably left by icebergs during the last Ice Age 20 000 years ago.
The 2006 icebergs originally came from one of six large icebergs that calved from the Ross Ice Shelf near New Zealand’s Scott Base, between 2000 and 2002. The largest of these, B15, was initially 295 km long by 38 km wide. On their journey to the New Zealand the icebergs will have drifted along the western coast of the Ross Sea, before spending years grounded in one of Antarctica’s “iceberg graveyards”. After escaping from the graveyards by breaking up and melting they resumed their northward journey crossing the Southern Ocean in around 7 months. Near New Zealand, the icebergs came between the Auckland Islands and Stewart Island, instead of taking the more usual path to the southeast and out in to the Pacific Ocean.
Apparently, winds and currents affect the course of the icebergs… see other articles.
Bob_FJ says:
July 3, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Phil. Reur July 3, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Concerning Icebergs approaching New Zealand, you commented:
That reference says that it’s happened twice in the last 78 years, in 2006 and 2009.
Oh dear! Yes the wording is a bit difficult maybe, so I decided to Google but this time including the year 1931, (= 2009 + 78), since obviously ‘78 years’ had some significance, and lo and behold, there are dozens of articles giving 1931 as the relevant year. I thought you might like this one:
That makes sense, the original report should have said ‘three times in 78 years’. 🙂
I was intrigued by the reference to ‘iceberg graveyards’, I’ve noticed that the cluster of icebergs released by the Wilkins icesheet breakup have just been sloshing back and forth in the same general area, it apparently takes quite a while to move them into the currents.
The paper is the very study that Steven Goddard is criticising.
If you are going to criticise a study then you should at least [post] the study rather than simply a news story about it.
REPLY: Oh puhleeze! Tell that to the people at University Press Offices worldwide that post news releases about papers not even in press yet and unavailable, or papers that are in press but sequestered behind paywalls and they provide no public access beyond the press release.
I go through this every day. Take your whining about posting [fixed your missing word above] the study to a place where it counts, the university PR’s, and get these press offices to make them available at the time of press release. THEN I’ll post them. Otherwise bugger off with your complaint. – Anthony
None. Again if you read the paper you would have noted the discussion of spatial leakage of the mass loss signal from the coastal glaciers into the surrounding sea. This is a result of the low x-y resolution of the satellite and the Gaussian filtering used.
Here is a link (thanks Anna V) to the paper that is not behind a pay wall.
ftp://ftp.csr.utexas.edu/pub/ggfc/papers/ngeo694.pdf
This whole thread has absolutely nothing to do with the science discussed in the paper.
Instead Steven Goddard has constructed one enormous straw man by referring to the GRACE data as ‘melt’ maps and going on and on about the temperatures being below freezing when the authors of the study quite clearly give ice loss via accelerated glacier flow as the mechanism for mass loss.
It is simple courtesy and intellectual honesty to address the actual paper when you attempt to criticise it.
Phil. Reur July 3, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Concerning Icebergs approaching New Zealand, you commented:
Yes indeed; it’s truly remarkable that the icebergs visible from the shore in 2006, (and maybe those of 2009, I dunno: ?) originated in 2000-2002. It adds to my point, as a mechanical engineer, concerning mechanical fracturing. Whilst the icebergs are clunking around in the so-called iceberg graveyard, they are being raised and lowered on the tide, and the bigger they are, such as B15, the more likely they are to ground on a fulcrum and be subjected to back-breaking bending stresses. Then, once fractured, the smaller pieces not only have less thermal inertia, (volume/mass), but they also have greater exposure to melting, especially underwater, in terms of ratio of their surface area to their volume.
RACookPE1978 says:
July 3, 2010 at 1:23 pm
“Your assumed “rate of information flow” – also mentioned a few posts above claiming a “speed of sound” transmission – is dead wrong. Or, more properly, correct only in a solid. Which a moving glacier is most emphatically not. Each glacier block (which is a solid) is separated by a crevasse or crack as you follow a glacier upstream. Each block changes daily and monthly as it flows – but few are more than 50 to 100 meters long. Each crack IS a “break” in the glacier. ”
Crevasses do not usually extend all the way across a glacier and all the way to the ground. If there is any continuity of the ice then information (pressure changes) can still flow through the entire glacier at the speed of sound. Furthermore, a pressure wave can still propagate between completely separate solid blocks if those blocks are in contact and pushing on one another. Think Newton’s balls (the executive toy in which an impact at one end makes the ball at the other swing out). Any glacier, however fractured, that can be treated as a more or less continuous “river of ice”, will be in sufficient contact to respond quickly to changes throughout its length.
Paul Birch Reur July 5, 2010 at 7:34 am
AND,
RACookPE1978, July 3, 2010 at 1:23 pm to whom Paul critiqued; Please excuse me for butting in.
Glaciers are actually far more complicated than you assert. For instance, see this, which shows surprisingly erratic behaviour for the iconic Jakobshavn glacier, (that I’ve not fully elaborated), but most importantly in the context here, that ice does indeed creep in glaciers. (is NOT a non-ductile solid therein).
If you have ever done any white-water canoeing, you would know that the flow of the water stream varies according to the profile of the river bed, any prominences, and any river bends, and it is possible to find quiet spots, and even short upstream eddies.
If as you say glaciers may not have mechanical fractures their full width, then all that describes is that the cracked part of the ice stream is in tension, and by inference probably moving faster than the other side, which is in compression or staionary. Furthermore, if the fractures were to stagger from side to side, then there is apparently a longer path hinging effect for your hypothesis of “speed of sound” transmission of force. (up or down)
However, you overlook the fact that the forces involved in glacier flow are slowly applied, by virtue of the low velocities involved. And, any material with creep behaviour responds with ductile deflections only when loads are slowly applied. Your hypothesis might apply if the loads were suddenly applied but clearly they are not in a slow moving glacier.
It is also difficult to conceive your hypothesis unless the ground-line were uniform in gradient and roughness, which is rather unlikely.
For further interest, see: Colored Shaded Relief Map of Subglacial Topography and Bathymetry of Antarctica
Bob_FJ says:
July 6, 2010 at 12:50 am
“Glaciers are actually far more complicated than you assert. ”
I explicitly asserted their complexity above. But even in the most complex systems, the applicable physical laws can be explained through simplified examples. Yes, there is creep in glaciers, as I stated; there is also considerable elastic distortion (what appears to be creep is often elastic distortion followed by sheer fracture, or slippage along faults). Neither of these alter the fact that pressure changes can propagate through the glacier at (or close to) the speed of sound in that medium, which for practical purposes means almost instantly. Path length, path width and path depth differences can amplify or reduce the pressure change locally in the ice, but the information still gets there very rapidly.
“However, you overlook the fact that the forces involved in glacier flow are slowly applied, by virtue of the low velocities involved.”
No, I don’t. If the applied pressure at one end is changing slowly, the pressure at the other end (and throughout the length) may also change slowly, but each infinitesimal pressure change still propagates to the other end at the speed of sound. The top always knows what the bottom’s doing. In reality, though, the pressure changes are not always slow; there are sharp discontinuities as the glacier fractures under tension or sheer. When a block calves off the bottom, there is a sudden change in pressure all the way up through the glacier, and a sudden discontinuity in acceleration. The glacier being extremely massive, it may of course take a little time for that acceleration or deceleration to become apparent. Similarly, a slow increase in tension at the seaward end, as the base is undercut, say, may induce a sudden tension fracture anywhere up the glacier, which sudden change will itself propagate as a sound wave in both directions.
Only when the glacier is literally sundered apart, with gaps of bare rock between the sections (so that it is no longer a “river of ice”), do pressure changes fail to propagate across the gap until it closes up again. And even then some of the pressure change will propagate through the underlying rock, so the head of the glacier may still respond to changes at the bottom very rapidly.
Finally, note that irregularity in the underlying terrain does not exclude these mechanisms. So long as the height difference does not exceed the tensile strength of the ice (h.g.ro<T), it is possible for the glacier to be pushed and pulled over the undulations without breaking, like a train. For steeper irregularities it would be more common for the glacier to sheer horizontally, so that the depressions are filled either with essentially stationary ice, or with melt water, with the bulk of the glacier sliding over it.
Paul Birch Reur July 6, 2010 at 3:54 am
Steve’s article discusses paradoxically claimed ice loss events that necessarily have a significant time lapse, and your mention of sudden events like calving at termination are not relevant. The problem of unmeasured dynamics in the bedrock, as repeatedly brought-up by Anna V, may adequately explain the paradox. Finally, I can’t agree with your speculation that such slow moving ice can retain significant elastic strain.
Man this Robert guy really has gotten to you, hasn’t he? I didn’t read down further than the point at which the playground insults kicked in
(June 30, 2010 at 4:56 pm). This blog is pathetic — you might as well rename it “wassup with the tea party”. These questions are debated in the science literature AND ONLY therein. Smirking on blogs doesn’t count. What a waste of bytes.
“average colder than -30°C during the summer, and never, ever get above freezing. How can you melt ice at those temperatures?” ever heard of sublimation ? , granted this is the main cause of ice loss but Ablation of glaciers .
Sublime,
Apparently I really did get to them big time. Who knew that things like fact would cause this much fuss eh? Regardless, there’s been a post at skeptical science (a 3 part series actually) which addresses most of the issues presented here by Goddard and them..