Antarctic sea ice today from the University of Bremen, on track for a new record high this year:
From Georgia Tech’s Judith Curry:
“Our finding raises some interesting possibilities about what we might see in the future. We may see, on a time scale of decades, a switch in the Antarctic, where the sea ice extent begins to decrease…”
Resolving the paradox of the Antarctic sea ice
While Arctic sea ice has been diminishing in recent decades, the Antarctic sea ice extent has been increasing slightly. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology provide an explanation for the seeming paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice in a warming climate. The paper appears in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the week of August 16, 2010.
“We wanted to understand this apparent paradox so that we can better understand what might happen to the Antarctic sea ice in the coming century with increased greenhouse warming,” said Jiping Liu, a research scientist in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
For the last half of the 20th Century, as the atmosphere warmed, the hydrological cycle accelerated and there was more precipitation in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. This increased precipitation, mostly in the form of snow, stabilized the upper ocean and insulated it from the ocean heat below. This insulating effect reduced the amount of melting occurring below the sea ice. In addition, snow has a tendency to reflect atmospheric heat away from the sea ice, which reduced melting from above.
However, the climate models predict an accelerated warming exceeding natural variability with increased loading of greenhouse gases in the 21st century. This will likely result in the sea ice melting at a faster rate from both above and below. Here’s how it works. Increased warming of the atmosphere is expected to heat the upper ocean, which will increase the melting of the sea ice from below. In addition, increased warming will also result in a reduced level of snowfall, but more rain. Because rain doesn’t reflect heat back the way snow does, this will enhance the melting of the Antarctic sea ice from above.
“Our finding raises some interesting possibilities about what we might see in the future. We may see, on a time scale of decades, a switch in the Antarctic, where the sea ice extent begins to decrease,” said Judith A. Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech.
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“climate models predict” blah blah blah
This basically says “it will get hotter and the Antarctic will obviously have to melt” and completely ignores the fact that supposedly it’s already gotten hotter and it’s not melting.
“…a switch in the Antarctic, where the sea ice extent begins to decrease…”
About the same time the Arctic sea ice extent begins to increase?
So first the warming caused more ice. But soon it will cause less ice. Makes perfect sense, and I am glad that they took the time to explain it.
One little thing, though. When will the warming know that it is time to stop causing more ice and start causing less ice? Is there a “tipping point”? I am dying to read predictions of tipping points, and this would be as good an example as any.
How much does it rain in Antarctica?
“We may”, “It might”, “there is a possibility” …
How fascinating climate science have become. No need for substantial data, no need for proof, just wild imagination and many “maybe s”.
So sad.
Ahh, a scientist that actually uses the term “may”. How refreshing!
Increased warming of the atmosphere is expected to heat the upper ocean
Air heating water… challenging. Fellow ought to try warming his bath water with a hair dryer (take care not to drop it). Then try the reverse, fill a tub with warm water to heat the bathroom. Which do you suppose will change the temperature of the other 1 C first?
Well! There’s your problem!
Alleged scientists have blindly accepted the climate models and then make forecasts based on them.
But to be fair. Maybe the study grant probably stated that a forecast be made on the acceptance of the “accepted” climate models.
‘The most resilient parasite is an idea planted in the unconscious mind’
– Inception
We see that constantly with people who have been infected by fear of CO2.
The comment about the increase in the hydrological cycle interested me. Nice to see an admission that a warmer climate means more precipitation. While the world obsesses about sea ice levels in places almost nobody ever goes, the sahara continues to green.
One of the more charitable figures for this comparison, climate models predict ~3.2C of warming. We have seen ~0.8C. One quarter of that figure. CO2 has a logarithmic effect. If Trenberth doesn’t find that missing heat soon, we may be undoomed!!! What do the models look like when sensitivity is multiplied by 0.25?
Sorry… Out of topic, but I read absurdity from http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/16aug_vco/
A scientist declares:
“In so many ways, Venus is similar to Earth. It has about the same mass, is approximately the same distance from the sun, and is made of the same basic materials,” says Imamura. “Yet the two worlds ended up so different. We want to know why.”
Approximately the same distance from the Sun? You want to know why the two worlds ended up so different? Quite obvious, huh? Venus has not a magnetic field, has not oceans, its surface is so hot that it melts lead, is the nearest planet to the Sun except Mercury, Venus is losing its atmosphere due to the solar wind, Venus receives 2687.6 J of energy while the Earth receives 1364.5 J, etc. Take those many “abouts” off and the conclusion is that both planets are not similar in any way!
The scientist adds:
“By comparing Venus’s unique meteorology to Earth’s, we’ll learn more about the universal principles of meteorology and improve the climate models we use to predict our planet’s future.”
How could we compare a “unique” meteorology with another “unique” meteorology? Venus has not oceans of water! Why to go to another planet with a “unique” meteorology to study the meteorology of the planet where we live on? Was Venus a kind of Earth in the past such that we can study its current conditions for knowing the future of our planet? What’s this?
personally, i’m still awaiting the first description of an experiment where IR heating from above is used to boil water.
Considering that only visible light – incoming solar – can penetrate the surface of the water and that more cloud cover is going to reduce this incoming power, one really has to contort their views to believe it’s going to warm. More ghgs in the atmosphere means more downward radiation which doesn’t penetrate – what can it do but evaporate more water, causing more convection and creating more cloud cover?
There could be another explanation – the additional CO2 is cooling Antarctica.
Yes, cooling.
See:
http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookhwk7-1.gif
In the tropics and mid lat(top two plots), CO2 presents a ‘dip’ in the emissions.
CO2 emits to space from the stratosphere at a lower temp than the surface, thus reducing loss to space.
In the Antarctic ( bottom plot ), CO2 presents as a ‘bump’ up in emissions.
CO2 emits to space from the stratosphere at a higher temp than the cold Antarctic
surface, thus INCREASING the loss to space – cooling the Antarctic.
Incidentally, the same principal pertains to high clouds:
http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~folkins/Cloud-LWspectrum.jpg
Cooling from high clouds and the Antarctic may be what’s limiting heating elsewhere.
Is Antarctica melting?
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=242
“For the last half of the 20th Century, as the atmosphere warmed, the hydrological cycle accelerated and there was more precipitation in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. This increased precipitation, mostly in the form of snow, stabilized the upper ocean and insulated it from the ocean heat below. This insulating effect reduced the amount of melting occurring below the sea ice. In addition, snow has a tendency to reflect atmospheric heat away from the sea ice, which reduced melting from above.”
The first sentence sounds exactly like a negative feedback, which obviously exists in the real world but does not exist in the models. Therefore, the real world must be ignored in determining future trends. (This follow’s Woody Allen’s example of reasoning when he stated: Socrates was a man. Socrates was gay. Therefore, all men are Socrates.)
The second sentence makes absolutely no sense at all. How does snow falling on the ocean surface stabilize it, and how does it insulate the upper-ocean from the ‘heat below’, which, by the way, is colder, not warmer. It is like proclaiming that the insulation between the refrigerator and freezer compartments keeps the milk from getting heated up by the frozen ice cream!
The third sentence is no better. There is, by definition, only water below the sea ice. Water can not melt. There is no melting below the sea ice…ever. Perhaps they meant that this magical ‘snow insulation’ reduced the amount of sea ice melting FROM below. I will assume that is what they meant, but it is awfully poor writin for a collage graduit.
The last sentence makes sense…describing another well known negative feed back to global warming.
These folks keep providing us with compelling evidence that there is no crisis in AGW, rationally describing negative feedbacks that help keep the climate in check. To get the crisis back, they have to make up some pretty irrational stuff and then write about it very poorly!
“We wanted to understand this apparent paradox so that we can better understand what might happen to the Antarctic sea ice in the coming century with increased greenhouse warming,”
When a model fails to reflect the data it is not a paradox. A paradox is when to two equally true things are mutually exclusive. There is no paradox for a broken model to exist right along with contradictory data.
it’s election time in australia so we have the big guns out:
17 Aug: SMH: Scientists say global warming is undeniable
Deborah Smith SCIENCE EDITOR
THE world will be hotter by 2100 than at any time in the past few million years if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, the Australian Academy of Science warns in a new report…
Produced and reviewed by two expert panels, the 24-page report, The Science of Climate Change, Questions and Answers, acknowledges there are still scientific uncertainties about some of the details of climate change…
A former academy president, Kurt Lambeck, said the report was aimed at clarifying often contradictory comments from non-scientific ”instant experts”….
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/climate/scientists-say-global-warming-is-undeniable-20100816-12701.html
pdf: Academy of Science: The Science of Climate Change, Questions and Answers
http://www.science.org.au/reports/climatechange2010.pdf
from Lambeck’s Foreword:
“The Academy also thanks the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency for providing financial support to
prepare this document.”
Austn Academy of Science: The membership of the Working Group who prepared these questions and answers was as follows:
• Dr lan Allison (Co-Chair)
• Professor Michael Bird
• Dr John Church
• Professor Matthew England
• Professor lan Enting
• Professor David Karoly
• Dr Mike Raupach (Co-Chair)
• Professor Jean Palutikof
• Professor Steven Sherwood
The draft answers to the questions were reviewed by an Oversight Committee of Academy Fellows and other experts including:
• Professor Graham Farquhar
• Dr Roger Gifford
• Professor Andrew Gleadow
• Dr Trevor McDougall
• Dr Graeme Pearman
• Dr Steve Rintoul
• Professor John Zillman
pat
Temperatures in Australia have been running well below normal.
At least the alarmists in this country have finally learned to pick a hot week when they present their case.
Mike
You asked “Is Antarctica melting?”
Unless they use ice which melts at -30C, I’m guessing that the answer is “no.”
Haven’t these people bothered to even LOOK at the temperature???
South Pole Anomaly 1957 – 2007
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/south-pole-temp-1957-2007.jpg
Deviations from minus 55.5C at Vostok
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SsVwd55PJ8I/AAAAAAAABKY/52SrhXN4C3c/s1600-h/Vostok-10Kd.jpg
Statistics: http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/weather/index.shtml
” Temperatures on the Polar Plateau range from -115°F to +6°F; the mean temperature is -56°F. Winter wind-chills can plummet to -148°F.
Coldest Temp:
-129°F (-89°C) on July 21, 1983
Location: Vostok Station
Warmest Temp:
+59°F (+15°C) on Jan 5, 1974
Location: Vanda Station
Mean Temps:
Winter: -40 to -94°F (-40 to -70°C)
Summer: -5 to -31°F (-15 to -35°C)”
Funny that the Antarctic sea ice has been increasing only “slightly”, while in the Arctic, the ice has been “diminishing” for “decades”.
Plenty of charts and graphs presented here show that Antarctic sea ice has increased as much as the Arctic has declined, and since we know that the Arctic is in a Death Spiral, the sea ice at the other pole must be undergoing what…? An Explosion? maybe an Eruption Ever More Out of Control? Perhaps a Tipping Point that will send freezing air masses to the sub-tropical parts of South America? (Like that would ever happen).
“For the last half of the 20th Century, as the atmosphere warmed, the hydrological cycle accelerated and there was more precipitation in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. This increased precipitation, mostly in the form of snow, stabilized the upper ocean and insulated it from the ocean heat below. This insulating effect reduced the amount of melting occurring below the sea ice. In addition, snow has a tendency to reflect atmospheric heat away from the sea ice, which reduced melting from above.”
Is this really what happens in the Antarctic? Although it might make sense in the Arctic, the Antarctic is a different animal, in that the sea ice is forming around a land mass and extending northward each winter, and then melting (in most cases nearly back to the land mass) in the summer. The dynamics of sea ice being pushed around by winds and growing thicker year by year, as happens in the Arctic, doesn’t really occur in the Antarctic to an appreciable extent, does it? The idea that the little bit of snow that falls in the winter somehow insulates the sea ice at the outer fringes so that doesn’t melt “below the sea ice” doesn’t seem to make much sense. We’re not talking about multi-year ice in the vast majority of the Antarctic, and an increase in thickness in those areas that do have multi-year ice would have no meaningful effect on the single year ice that freezes and melts every year.
Also, how does snow falling on top of the ocean “stabilize it from the ocean heat below”?
Something isn’t adding up in the way they describe the processes. Might just be a problem with the press release as I assume the Antarctic is faithfully modeled in their actual work . . . ?
It is interesting to reflect on the possibility that a direct statement may perhaps, at some future date, be uttered without equivocation by Judith Curry. Contingent upon certain other factors and conditions, this projected eventuality would conceivably, at least in some measure, negate the apparent perception occasionally arising in certain quarters…
…that the woman is shifty!
Mike says:
August 16, 2010 at 8:53 pm
“Is Antarctica melting?”
Sure is, Mike. In a few years it’ll be like Hawaii. And I’ve got a couple islands down there for sale if you are interested. The only catch is that you have to wear lead boots in the low grav conditions, but that shouldn’t affect any plans you might have to build or farm, gravity should be back to normal around 2012. Then you can plant your first palm tree!
Contact me for terms of sale through “theresafoolborneveryminute.com”. Discounts on all summer swimwear and suntain oil available as well for a limited time only.