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.
Nick Davis says:
June 30, 2010 at 11:54 am
They removed a number of atmospheric, oceanic, and geologic signals from the GRACE measurements, and took into account post-glacial rebound of bedrock, among other things…
AKA free variables or fudge factors, all which are tuned to provide the desired results. not a sign of solid science IMHO.
Chris Noble
Your grain silo analogy is incorrect for quite a few reasons. The glacial sheet is 700 km wide by 3 km high. It is like a sheet of thin glass residing on a gentle slope. In Europe you can see windows which have flowed downwards over hundreds of years.
Antarctic ice (particularly at temperatures lower than -30C) is similar to glass, in that it is a very high viscosity liquid which flows slowly. Grain on the other hand behaves as a very low viscosity fluid. Every geology student understands the fundamentals of glacial movement..
The task for you is to stop appealing to authority, and start using your brain.
jeff brown
Downslope winds compress and warm. If it is cold enough to form sea ice at 70S, then it is certainly cold enough to keep freshwater ice at 10,000 feet at 80S.
The map shows this quite clearly.
http://climateinsiders.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/800px-antarctic_surface_temperature.png
“I also have an engineering degree and have a good solid understanding of material behaviour.”
Do you have anything other than your “good solid understanding of material behaviour” to support your claims?
Are you really trying to argue that it will take thousands of years before the effects of increased calving propagate upstream?
Chris Noble
BTW – I have cited two papers on this thread, which Robert chose to blow off
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050516/full/news050516-10.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080113/full/news.2008.438.html
Steve, do you not understand that at the bedrock it may be above 0C because the pressure of the ice causes temperatures to rise? Thus, your statement that it’s too cold for the ice to flow is entirely incorrect…
Steve, I looked at your links to Chris Noble, so now you’re talking about the entire ice sheet and not just the East Antarctic? Did you notice the map of where the ice is thickening and also the regions where it is thinning? So tell me, what is causing those regions of thinning you link to? yes we know temperatures are too cold for surface melting, so what is it?
Robert, in response to an enquiry from Smokey, you wrote:
Basically, she was pointing out that the Earths rock surface is dynamic but not “visible” under the Antarctic ice, or if you like, that there are more unknowns in gravitational and altimetry net values than there were available in the data or with technology at the time of various studies cited to date.
At the time of me writing this, you have not responded, so in order to assist you, here is her comment link:
Robert & David
Would you both please comment on this.
BTW; 1) Greenland is an interesting example of isostasy. It is depressed in the centre some 1,000m (?) below sea level under the weight of ice and the shoreline areas are still rising after the ice age. Antarctica appears to have much tectonic and volcanic activity, and notice in particular the geography of the peninsular aligned with similar in Patagonia; clearly a linked region of complex tectonics that is visible from space, including undersea.
BTW; 2) The ESA’s Cryosat2 launched last April is claimed to have the sophistication to give altimetry of ice surface and layers below. (replacing Cryosat1; failed on launch 4 years ago)
jeff brown
I did not say that it is too cold for the ice to flow. It is really bad form to misquote the author in the comments section.
chis noble,
What part of this is difficult to understand?
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050516/full/news050516-10.html
jeff brown
My point is that places where GRACE supposedly shows thinning away from the coast, are probably misinterpretations of the gravity data.
Chris Noble
Good scientists have to be able to think for themselves.
stevengoddard says:
June 30, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Chris Noble
Your grain silo analogy is incorrect for quite a few reasons. The glacial sheet is 700 km wide by 3 km high. It is like a sheet of thin glass residing on a gentle slope. In Europe you can see windows which have flowed downwards over hundreds of years.
_____________________________________________________________
Your analogy with old window glass is incorrect.
Old glass is not what is called today as float glass.
The old glass was never flat to begin with due to the older less accurate glass making processes.
Glass exhibits no viscoelastic properties at STP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_glass
This gets back to similar nonsensical rhetoric by Gore and others regarding Mt. Kilimanjaro.
They tried to say that ACGW was responsible for the beautiful snows of Mt. KJ etc etc.
Then it was found out that trees were over harvested and that allowed wind storms like never before and the wind melted the ice over the last 20 years in basic parlance.
I don’t know how the snows and ice of MT. KJ could have possibly been melted by ACGW evil beasts that we are since the ice line was never once above the freezing mark.
EFS_Junior
Your 7:58 comment was both pointless and incorrect.
Glass is a very viscous liquid, somewhat similar to ice at very cold temperatures. Do you think that glaciers are perfectly flat?
Chris Noble says,
Can you find a single qualified expert who agrees with your claims? A single paper? If you are going to contradict 100% of working glaciologists you should produce something other than your ‘common sense’ to support your claims.
100% of working glaciologists? oh please. A single paper? sigh.
Mr. Noble I’ll say this much for you, to come into someone else’s house and accuse a guest writer who has often proven himself in his writings as arrogant and ignorant you’ve got some courage.
By the way. Other than your sorry tired and well used red herrings and ad hominyms I didn’t see you refute a thing Mr. Goddard stated.
Mr Watts and Goddard are far more patient with foolish behavior than some of us, but if you are going to insult someone with Mr. Goddards background would you please bring more than your sandbox toys and your petty childish insults and use some real science please.
I didn’t see one piece of scientific evidence or scientific method in your comments, two things long forgotten by ACGW crowd along with manners and integrity.
stevengoddard says:
June 30, 2010 at 7:42 pm
jeff brown
I did not say that it is too cold for the ice to flow. It is really bad form to misquote the author in the comments section.
Mr Goddard you forgot slinging insults and slapping the author with red herrings, thanks to our ACGW visitors comments there is a certain lingering fish odor around.
I say Mr. Goddard, would you care to use some of manly vanilla spray to freshen up abit?
🙂
Chris Noble says,
Have you actually calculated how much 24 cubic miles per year would raise sea levels by?
Have you actually done any non-refutable studies that shows there is 24 cubic miles per year of ice melting from either Eastern or Western Antarcic?
Anything at all? Is there any paper anywhere on the face of the earth that has not been refuted and filled with more holes than the victims of the St Valentines day Massacre, that doesn’t have the very obvious word “probably” in it rather absolutely sure beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Are there any ACGW papers that haven’t been passed through the buddy system at Nature or Science that haven’t been shown to have numerous glaring mistakes like this issue Mr. Goddard discusses?
stevengoddard,
The glass in European windows has been shown not to flow in the way that you suggest. The bulges in the bottom are indeed due to low-tech glass-making techniques. Bryson got this wrong in his book, and then corrected himself in the online errata.
stevengoddard says:
June 30, 2010 at 8:16 pm
EFS_Junior
Your 7:58 comment was both pointless and incorrect.
Glass is a very viscous liquid, somewhat similar to ice at very cold temperatures. Do you think that glaciers are perfectly flat?
___________________________________________________________
Prove it, since you are argueing from the logical fallacy of appeal to authority.
Glass at STP is NOT a very viscous liquid!
It is a SOLID.
It is not a plastic and does NOT exhibit viscoelastic properties at STP.
I happen to be a Research Hydraulic Engineer, what are you? A blogger!
http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/mirrors/physicsfaq/General/Glass/glass.html
REPLY: Sir, you might want to reconsider your position. You are making an assumption on the person (Steve) about which you know nothing. I do, and I’ll tell you this bluntly. You are wrong. Now back to the science please and quit the personal attacks. – Anthony Watts
“BTW – I have cited two papers on this thread, which Robert chose to blow off”
Neither of which actually support your claim that it takes thousands of years for the effects of calving to propagate up glaciers.
Surely you can provide a reference for this claim. I hope you don’t expect people to believe something just because you say it is true.
stevengoddard says:
June 30, 2010 at 8:16 pm
EFS_Junior
Your 7:58 comment was both pointless and incorrect.
Glass is a very viscous liquid, somewhat similar to ice at very cold temperatures. Do you think that glaciers are perfectly flat?
___________________________________________________________
Glass is a solid at STP.
Glass is NOT a viscoelastic material at STP. Glass does not exhibit ANY viscoelastic properties at STP.
Glass is NOT a plastic.
http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/mirrors/physicsfaq/General/Glass/glass.html
“Your 7:58 comment was both pointless and incorrect.”
There is an urban myth that old glass is thicker at the bottom due to it being a high viscous liquid. This incorrect. As EFS_Junior points out the glass was never uniformly thick to begin with.
If you are going to pretend to be an authority on a wide range of subjects at least try to be correct on some of them.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1998AmJPh..66..392Z
stevengoddard says:
June 30, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Chris Noble
Good scientists have to be able to think for themselves.
Excellent point Mr. Goddard and how refreshing.
Since the explosion of science heresy being put out by numerous scientists that supposedly are working towards solving a catastrophe moving our way, real science is the victim.
Two Hundred years ago if the actions Mr. Jones, Mann, and CRU et al. were to have happened, they would not still be sitting in their vaunted leather chairs in their ethereal ivory towers of academia, they would have been flogged, tarred and sent to the penal colony in New Zealand (sorry NZ’rs for the reminder of history).
The side of ACGW are trying to pontificate that if Steven Goddard’s writings (among others here at WUWT) have never made it to peer review and gone through Nature or Science then their work is garbage and they are morons.
When did Nature and Science peer reviewed journals replace the halls of Academia and proving to your peers (all of them not just the ones you agree with or have grants at stake with or to be published articles in pending status together).
When did published authors trump real scientists? Do I have a piece of paper on my wall that says ipso facto e pluribus unum that I am the great Wizard of Oz and therefore all must bow and listen to me?
No, but I have spent many nights, barely keeping my eyes open and learning things. Learning used to be the linch pin of science, not your bedarned journals, but learning.
Pride of proving something true or wrong used to be the bedmate of learning.
Do I have a parchment that has the word SCIENTIST next to my name? Does Steven Goddard or Anthony Watts or any of a dozen highly intelligent men or women that contribute to this blog? Some yes, many no.
However we all have one thing in common, compassion for learning, compassion for the right thing to be done, humility, and I would dare say a far far better grasp of the scientific method and what it means to society than most on the side of ACGW.
What ever happened to science for the sake of education, and the betterment of civilization?
“Good scientists have to be able to think for themselves.”
Good scientists do not delude themselves that they understand something that they clearly don’t.
Seriously, if you find that you are in disagreement with the vast majority of qualified experts in a given field it is a good indication that you need to reassess your understanding of that field. Just possibly you could be mistaken. Cranks on the other hand will assert that the vast majority of qualified experts are stupid or part of a conspiracy.
All I am asking is for you to provide some references that support your claims.
More appeals to ‘common sense’ do not suffice.