WUWT readers may recall the Nature cover with this picture of Antarctica at left, followed by the subsequent falsification of the Antarctic warming claims made by Steig et al using the dicey Mannomatic math employed. We owe thanks to O’Donnell et al and Jeff Id for doing the work showing that the warming was mainly in the Peninsula, and the Mannomatic smeared the data over the rest of the continent.
Now, from the University of Washington press office, comes this press release from Dr. Eric Steig on Antarctica that is really quite interesting. Bolding below is mine.
Tropical sea temperatures influence melting in Antarctica
Accelerated melting of two fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely the result, in part, of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new University of Washington research.
Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.
“This part of Antarctica is affected by what’s happening on the rest of the planet, in particular the tropical Pacific,” he said.
The research involves the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, two of the five largest glaciers in Antarctica. Those two glaciers are important because they drain a large portion of the ice sheet. As they melt from below, they also gain speed, draining the ice sheet faster and contributing to sea level rise. Eventually that could lead to global sea level rise of as much as 6 feet, though that would take hundreds to thousands of years, Steig said.
NASA scientists recently documented that a section of the Pine Island Glacier the size of New York City had begun breaking off into a huge iceberg. Steig noted that such an event is normal and scientists were fortunate to be on hand to record it on film. Neither that event nor the new UW findings clearly link thinning Antarctic ice to human causes.
But Steig’s research shows that unusual winds in this area are linked to changes far away, in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Warmer-than-usual sea-surface temperatures, especially in the central tropics, lead to changes in atmospheric circulation that influence conditions near the Antarctic coast line. Recent decades have been exceptionally warm in the tropics, he said, and to whatever extent unusual conditions in the tropical Pacific can be attributed to human activities, unusual conditions in Antarctica also can be attributed to those causes.
He noted that sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific last showed significant warming in the 1940s, and the impact in the Amundsen Sea area then was probably comparable to what has been observed recently. That suggests that the 1940s tropical warming could have started the changes in the Amundsen Sea ice shelves that are being observed now, he said.
Steig presents his findings Tuesday (Dec. 6) at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In another presentation Wednesday, he will discuss evidence from ice cores on the history of Antarctic climate in the last century.
He emphasized that natural variations in tropical sea-surface temperatures associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation play a significant role. The 1990s were notably different from all other decades in the tropics, with two major El Niño events offset by only minor La Niña events.
“The point is that if you want to predict what’s going to happen in the next fifty, one-hundred, one-thousand years in Antarctica, you have to pay attention to what’s happening elsewhere,” he said. “The tropics are where there is a large source of uncertainty.”
Other researchers involved with the work are Qinghua Ding and David Battisti of the UW and Adrian Jenkins of the British Antarctic Survey. The research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the United Kingdom’s Natural Environment Research Council and the UW Quaternary Research Center.
For more information, contact Steig at 206-685-3715, 206-543-6327 or steig@uw.edu.
To view a NASA video of the crack in the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, see: http://bit.ly/uPFruW
In October, 2011, NASA’s Operation IceBridge discovered a major rift in the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica. This crack, which extends at least 18 miles and is 50 meters deep, could produce an iceberg more than 800 square kilometers in size. IceBridge scientists returned soon after to make the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/Jefferson Beck)
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In October, 2011, NASA’s Operation IceBridge discovered a major rift in the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica. This crack, which extends at least 18 miles and is 50 meters deep, could produce an iceberg more than 800 square kilometers in size.
Excellent. Then a small fleet of tugboats can easily transport it off the shores of Australia, where it can be mined for fresh solid water to alleviate Australia’s CAGW-caused continent-wide drought that could well exist for over a millennium even after the total cessation of all of mankind’s callous unwarranted unneeded carbon emissions.
This makes far more sense than the daft building of massive desalinization plants that will undoubtedly consume voluminous quantities of dirty fossil fuels yielding even more planet-destroying carbon emissions, to merely “create” what Mother Nature has already provided in copious amounts, held in storage just to the south of Australia. Using mankind’s dirty technology to gain what Gaia has already freely given to us, what sort of abject moron would dare propose such insanity?
re: Alan the Brit
As best I know (far from an authority on this), San Francisco is the wrong part of Cal. for “sunny California.” It’s always been notorious for heavy fog and chilly weather – including right thru the summer. The sunny California you always hear about really refers to southern California, along the coast. Get inland very far at all and you’re into rank desert and ungawdly hot summers. Death Valley ring any bells? Well, ok, it’s quite a bit inland, but I think for the most part, drive an hour inland (or less) and you’re over the foothills and into rank desert and very very oppressive heat in the summer (e.g., 110 common, and a good bit higher not that unusual).
But San Fran. misses out on that wonderful temperate sunny clime that you get further south in California (which is a massively long state – for those not familiar with it, the following from visitcalifornia.com: “California is big – real big. If you were to drive the length of the state along Interstate 5, it would take you an estimated 15 hours, with little or no traffic, to get from Oregon to Mexico. At the end of your road trip, you’d have driven nearly 1,287 kilometers (800 miles). Downtown San Diego is just less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the Mexican border and about 130 miles (210 kilometers) south of Los Angeles. From Los Angeles, it’s 385 miles (620 kilometers) north to San Francisco….”)
” Last year, British Antarctic Submarine Researchers took samples from underneath PINE ISLAND GLACIERS. They found HOT WATER, but not analysis. Same time I send one page letter to printed Medias & copy posted to Facebook’s all Environmental Groups, Climate Change Groups in their discussion boards.Neither of the printed Media publish it nor Groups commented it or contacted me.
During Hurricane seasons the Ocean circulations bringing lot of Conc: Deicers from Heavy Duty DESALTERS. After Hurricane seasons these are deiceing Glaciers & Iceshelves near both POLES. By capturing these at emissions points, ie HEAVY DUTY DESALTERS, by erecting. ZERO DISCHARGE SYSTEMS ( ZDS ) Collapsing of Iceshelves can be eleminated. More Icemases near Poles will bring down Global temperatures. THAT IS AIR CONDITIONING OF MOTHER EARTH.
re post by: Walt Meier says: December 6, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Thanks for both your original post and this follow-up after you’d seen part of Steig’s talk. I couldn’t agree more with your final paragraph:
I suppose it’s human nature to try to boil things down to answers that are often far too simple. That innate tendency is grossly compounded – along the spectrum from quite honestly to quite dishonestly – in any communications with a time or size constraint, or worse, by parties with an agenda desiring one extreme or the other. We’re all ‘guilty’ of this to varying degrees at various times. Even assuming a serious intent to accurately and honestly convey information, the difficulty increases exponentially with the intricacy or complexity of the subject matter, and as the schism in knowledge levels increases between subject matter experts and audience. (ok, I confess, I don’t have data to prove an exponential increase 😉 ).
We all expect oversimplification too. The problem occurs, of course, when we feel that we’ve been given an incorrect impression that goes beyond a little understandable oversimplification – when the perception implies agenda, or dishonesty… and is compounded all the more the greater significance or impact the issue holds for people. By the time it rises to the level of major effects on the lives of many people, and large impacts on their wallets…. well, we see the results in the current battle over ‘climate science’ and AGW. Frankly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been far more push back by people who initially assumed that AGW was probably true, then dig into the issue a bit and become skeptics – but suspect that there will be more and more over the next few years. Especially if economic hard times continue, and as more and more of these large solar, wind, ‘green,’ and ‘alternative’ projects tied into tax money or taxpayer energy costs fail.
Rational Debate says:
December 6, 2011 at 3:32 pm
re: Alan the Brit
California is big – real big. If you were to drive the length of the state along Interstate 5, it would take you an estimated 15 hours, with little or no traffic, to get from Oregon to Mexico. At the end of your road trip, you’d have driven nearly 1,287 kilometers (800 miles).
Can’t help myself :-}
Try “Western Australia”. Western mainland state;
Australia is the same sized continent as the USA;
Total “Western Australia” south to north road mileage;
ie Albany > Kunamurra = 3355 kms
Yep! Western Australia is big, real BIG.
In fact if it was a country it would rank tenth in the world in total size and area.
Look at the Antarctic sea ice extent below and you see large areas of ice free water along the edge of the continent and extensive areas of sea ice beyond the ice free areas.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_bm_extent_hires.png
This is clear evidence that ocean upwelling is a major cause of sea ice melt.
Any contribution from post 1970 warming is moot, because of the long delays in heat transport from the tropics by deep ocean currents.
Steig may well have found a correlation with tropical SSTs, but until someone presents a plausible ocean transport mechanism for this heat to reach Antarctica in the required timeframe, the correlation doesn’t mean much.
Walt Meier says:
December 6, 2011 at 2:25 pm
In this talk (and the press release) on his research, Eric focused on the natural variability. Just because the focus here was on natural variability, doesn’t mean he’s walking back from AGW.
Perish the thought! Perish the funding!! But perish the OHC increase, the SLR rate of increase, the Hot Spot and any mid-tropospheric warming, the atmospheric humidity increase, the Antarctic Sea Ice decrease, the temp./CO2 increase, etc…..> Perish the CO2 = CAGW “hypotheses”. The End.
It’s the oceans???? Who knew!
“Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.”
Poor Eric Steig, he is discovering what Marcel Leroux has established for a long time, that the exclusive warming of the Peninsula is coming from the renewed dynamics of MPHs -the high pressures- and the associated advection of warm, moist air along the peninsula where high snowfall rates have been observed and a rise of temperature too, concomittent with increased frequency of deeper -lower pressure- depressions. Hardly a sign of global warming…
But Steig is not finished
“(…) Steig’s research shows that unusual winds in this area are linked to changes far away, in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Warmer-than-usual sea-surface temperatures, especially in the central tropics, lead to changes in atmospheric circulation that influence conditions near the Antarctic coast line.”
LOL, atmospheric circulation of denser colder air masses in Antarctica is changed by warmer temperatures in tropical Pacific now… Another case of warm air will push denser colder air! Tail wags dog!
Don’t be like Eric Steig, read Leroux!
Leroux, Marcel. “Dynamic Analysis of Weather and Climate Atmospheric Circulation, Perturbations, Climatic Evolution”, Springer-Praxis books in Environmental Sciences, 2nd ed., 2010, 440p., ISBN 978-3-642-04679-7
re post by: Mike Jonas says: December 6, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Hi Mike,
Actually, that bit by Schneider pretty much demonstrates exactly what I was suggesting – there he gets nailed, as you put it, regarding his diametrically opposed current views versus 14 years ago (e.g., not yesterday or even last year). So what’s his reply? ‘nothing to see here, move along’ e.g., ‘it’s a complex issue, I based my earlier views on the best science of the time, we’ve learned more since then and now know better so I’ve no reason to be ashamed of believing we were facing the ice age apocalypse then but the heat wave apocalypse now.’
I’d bet that whatever research he wrote in the interim shifted over time from the one view to the other, e.g., he didn’t ‘convert’ overnight, but he sure will use every bit of wiggle room possible to make himself out to be totally reasonable in holding both of those diametrically opposed catastrophic viewpoints. The tragedy and irony is that the actual science over the entire time period, including going sufficiently prior to his earlier view, almost certainly never supported either extreme.
Now, obviously, there are at times situations where it is eminently reasonable for scientists to radically change their views on a particular issue – but of course that’s when some major discovery is made that really turns things upside down, and their views are reasonably in line with what the science of the day has found. I don’t believe either of those caveats applies to AGW, however. Not even close, unfortunately.
An aside; I actually thought the bit of squirming by the fellow at about 44:15 or 20 was pretty entertaining (not the most mature of me, I know). I’m not sure who that is, but the narrow faced bearded fellow who sure as heck doesn’t want to give anything approaching a direct answer to the question he’s asked (I’d guess because he clearly doesn’t think that a straight answer would be very palatable). Anyhow, he does some quite notable literal chair squirming while in the process of coming up with some spin, rather than a come out with the real answer. Clearly he sure felt he was in the hot seat on that one!
RD – “the fellow at about 44:15 or 20” was Tom Wigley of UEA.
My guess is that what you have here is a case of someone with a thirty year mortgage that cannot be paid-off from the proceeds of research in support of a theory that has only a couple of years of its useful life left.
How does this… “That suggests that the 1940s tropical warming could have started the changes in the Amundsen Sea ice shelves that are being observed now, he said“… work with this?
…“Recent decades have been exceptionally warm in the tropics, he said, and to whatever extent unusual conditions in the tropical Pacific can be attributed to human activities, unusual conditions in Antarctica also can be attributed to those causes…” or with this “…Eventually that could lead to global sea level rise of as much as 6 feet, though that would take hundreds to thousands of years,”
The two contrtadict each other, and a decade or two of warmth in the 30s and 40s cannot be human caused and cannot cause meters of sea level rise over hundreeds or thousands of years, especially if floating sea ice is melting. Does CAGW cause mental illness?
I see lots of stories that talk about melting of glaciers at the coastline, and the same basic logical flaw is repeated in every single one. I have my doubts about whether this is unintentional at this point.
The problem is that they keep claiming that melting due to warmer sea surface temperatures will speed up the flow of the ice sheets toward the coast.
This may or may not be true, but it is completely irrelevant.
Here’s the two points I would like to make in re glacial flow on the Antarctic peninsula:
1) The primary mechanism that controls the speed of glacier flow is how thick the glacier is upstream. They slow down when there’s less weight pushing them down hill. The magnitude of this force is so large compared to any effect from melting at the coast that it makes the effect of melting moot and/or immeasurable.
2) Even if you want to dispute #1, this second point is even more damning in regard to Steig’s theory of melting causing a change in sea level rise. The rate of calving exceedes the rate of melt by so much that it makes melt rate irrelevant. The only effect of faster melting is that you end up with smaller icebergs, but the difference in size due to melting is so small compared to the overall volume of ice which normally calves off at the coast that this difference is also so small that is moot and/or immeasurable.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Re: the idea that glaciers “slide”, of course some can. Glaciers are all over the place. But,
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Glacier?topic=54335
“Cold glaciers are frozen to their bed and tend to move very slowly because there is no basal sliding, and cold ice is harder and deforms more slowly than warm ice. Movement in these glaciers takes place mainly due to internal deformation of the ice.”
okay, that’s not all I had to say:
I should clarify, before someone throws out the obvious straw man argument to me post.
The Steig article and my comment only apply to the special case of glaciers which terminate at the sea with a floating ice toung. Glaciers which terminate at a glacial lake or on dry land, glaciers which terminate at the sea but are grounded on the sea floor, will behave in different manners and must be discusses individually. The profile of topography under the iceberg, including slope, width and depth of the glacial channel must also be taken into account on a case by case basis. Generalizations are difficult, but Steig is talking about two specific cases. My comments are intended to apply to those two specific cases.
Do Climate Scientists ever use the word “hypothesis”, instead of “could”? Apparently in doing Postnormal Science you must take the correct “precautions” at all steps, eh?
Another RealClimate “communicator” (Gavin Schmidt) has just been awarded the AGU $25K Climate Communications Prize.
“Walking the walk, talking the talk
NASA climate scientist honored for communication November 1, 2011
posted by Dr. Amber Jenkins
11:51 PST
Comments (0)
Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist based at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, has received the inaugural Climate Communications Prize from the American Geophysical Union, the largest association of Earth and planetary scientists in the world. The $25,000 prize will be awarded at the group’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco this December.
Despite the rancor that often surrounds public discussions of climate change science, Schmidt has become one of NASA’s most valued and relentless scientific communicators. He is regularly quoted by leading newspaper and magazine journalists, frequently offers his time and expertise at public events, and has appeared on numerous television programs. In his spare time, he writes for the widely read blog RealClimate and has published a popular book about climate change.
“The value of science is only fully realized when it has been effectively communicated,” said NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati, an Earth scientist who specializes in studying the frozen regions of the planet. “For years, Gavin has been committed to communicating facts about an area of science that is of enormous societal importance. In an environment that is often laden with inaccurate and hyperbolic claims, Gavin has been a clear, consistent, and honest voice.”
Schmidt’s research centers on understanding what drives variability in the climate system. He often uses large-scale models of the atmosphere and ocean to simulate past and future climate conditions.”
Posted at
http://climate.nasa.gov/blogs/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowBlog&NewsID=611
re post by: Mike Jonas says: December 7, 2011 at 12:06 am
Mike, thanks for identifying him for me. Interesting to see who some of these various players are, and even how they respond to real questions, rather than just reading about them.
crosspatch says:
December 6, 2011 at 8:37 am
Oh, yuck! Does that mean that all the rain we’ve gotten up here in North Texas (for about four days in a row last weekend) isn’t coming back? Lol! Of course, I don’t think the rest of Texas was quite as lucky (other than West Texas, that is – they got some snow, I understand).