Uh, oh. Another talking point bites the dust.
Leif Svalgaard writes in to tell me of a significant new paper. While Gore, Hansen, Branson, and a gaggle of hangers on just finished a publicity stunt tour of Antarctica to tell us all how terrible the ice loss is there, the data says otherwise. No trend!
A new, high-resolution surface mass balance map of Antarctica
(1979–2010) based on regional atmospheric climate modeling
J. T. M. Lenaerts, M. R. van den Broeke, W. J. van de Berg, E. van Meijgaard,
and P. Kuipers Munneke
Received 17 January 2012; accepted 21 January 2012; published 21 February 2012.
Abstract: [1] A new, high resolution (27 km) surface mass balance (SMB) map of the Antarctic ice sheet is presented, based on output of a regional atmospheric climate model that includes snowdrift physics and is forced by the most recent reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), ERA-Interim (1979–2010). The SMB map confirms high accumulation zones in the western Antarctic Peninsula (>1500 mm y^-1) and coastal West Antarctica (>1000 mm y^-1), and shows low SMB values in large parts of the interior ice sheet (<25 mm y^-1). The location and extent of ablation areas are modeled realistically.
The modeled SMB is in good agreement with ±750 in-situ SMB measurements (R = 0.88), without a need for postcalibration. The average ice sheet-integrated SMB (including
ice shelves) is estimated at 2418 ± 181 Gt y^-1. Snowfall shows modest interannual variability (s = 114 Gt y^-1), but a pronounced seasonal cycle (s = 30 Gt mo-1), with a winter maximum. The main ablation process is drifting snow sublimation, which also peaks in winter but with little interannual variability (s = 9 Gt y^-1). Citation: Lenaerts, J. T. M.,
M. R. van den Broeke, W. J. van de Berg, E. van Meijgaard, and P. Kuipers Munneke (2012), A new, high-resolution surface mass balance map of Antarctica (1979–2010) based on regional atmospheric climate modeling, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L04501,
doi:10.1029/2011GL050713.
Here’s the money quote:
[15] We found no significant trend in the 1979–2010 ice
sheet integrated SMB components, which confirms the
results from Monaghan et al. [2006]. The estimated SMB
trend, integrated over the ice sheet, equals –3+/-2 Gt/y^-2
Read the full paper here
UPDATE: One of my readers emailed me today to say that I had left off a minus sign in the last paragraph where it says: 3+/-2 Gt/y^-2 which should read –3+/-2 Gt/y^-2 instead. Corrected, my apology for the error, which originated in this original email from Dr. Leif Svalgaard:
That missing minus sign doesn’t change the conclusion in the paragraph of “We found no significant trend in the 1979–2010 ice sheet integrated SMB components, “ but some alarmist types are apparently all atwitter and looking for nefarious motives. What is typical of that criticism, is that it’s just another coward saying nasty things without the courage to put his/her name behind the words of criticism.
Here’s the fun part, you can open up the PDF that Leif Svalgaard provided here. Then go to paragraph [15] and highlight the relevant text listed above that this blogger and the Tamino crowd are all upset about, and then paste it into notepad or the comments box below and watch the minus sign disappear!
Apparently it is some oddly formatted character they used, and gets stripped on copy/paste, which is why Dr. Svalgaard accidentally sent it to me that way. Another “evil and devious skeptic plot” bites the dust. – Anthony
UPDATE2: Dr. Leif Svalgaard confirms in comments here – Anthony
Gates – I don’t read every comment on WUWT as you know, I have comments approaching a million now, which is why I have a volunteer moderation staff. But somebody did email me about it this week, and after some quiet time, I finally figured out why it happened. See the update above. Try the experiment with Notepad yourself.
So much for all the nefarious motives people were ascribing to me.
And, it doesn’t change anything.
Anthony Watts says:
March 3, 2012 at 3:03 pm
I finally figured out why it happened. See the update above. Try the experiment with Notepad yourself.
Anthony is correct. The minus sign didn’t survive the copy/paste. I should have caught that. My bad. But since there is a link to the actual paper, one can just go and read it.