IPCC estimates of sea level rise corroborated, but large ice sheets might endure.
Richard A. Lovett
New Zealand’s mountain ranges could lose up to 85% of their glaciers by 2100. In the most comprehensive study of mountain glaciers and small ice caps to date, a team of US and Canadian scientists has projected that most of the world’s smaller glaciers will be gone by 2100.
New Zealand's mountain ranges could lose up to 85% of their glaciers by 2100. Rob Brown/Minden Pictures/FLPA
The finding confirms that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the scientific group assessing climate risk — was correct in estimating that by that date, complete or partial melting of smaller glaciers will contribute about the same amount to sea-level rise as meltwater from the giant ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. The study also confirms that the IPCC was wrong in stating that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
[…]
Radić and coauthor Regine Hock of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks conducted their study by modelling the effect of climate change on every mapped mountain glacier or ice cap, using a middle-of-the-road IPCC scenario for future emissions of greenhouse gases. They then extrapolated the results to account for the fact that while Earth’s total glaciated areas are well mapped, many sections have yet to be divided into individual glaciers.
The projected contribution of each glacier’s partial or complete melting to sea level rise ranges from 8.7 cm to 16 cm, depending on the model. The IPCC’s estimates for sea level rise by 2100 ranged from 7 to 17 centimetres in its 2007 fourth assessment report.
Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado says it is reassuring that the IPCC and the new study have independently reached the same conclusion. “Both could be wrong, but it gives more confidence that both are approximately right,” he says.
Ok… They used an IPCC emissions scenario. Presumably they used a climate sensitivity which conforms to the so-called consensus (~3.0°C per doubling of pre-industrial CO2). With the IPCC assumptions, they confirmed the IPCC’s projected sea level rise projections as well as predicting the demise of “small glaciers.”
Why is it a headline? They used the IPCC assumptions to model the IPCC results.
I wonder if they incorporated this little item into their model…
Glacier Mass Balance, Cogley 2009. Via NOAA Climate Indicators
It appears that glacier mass balance has been on the increase since 2003… What’s up with that?
The Greenland and Antarctic ice caps have been relatively permanent features throughout the Quaternary (possibly since the Oligocene). If these ice masses melted, it would be a big deal. On the other hand, small glaciers and year-round Arctic sea ice have not been permanent features. They are relatively recent and probably rare features of the Holocene. The geological evidence indicates that the presence these small ice masses is anomalous.
The “small glaciers” of Glacier National Park, Montana may have not existed during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (HCO). The geological evidence suggests that they formed about 7,000 years ago as the Earth’s climate began to cool after the HCO.
History of Glaciers in Glacier National Park
The history of glaciation within current Glacier National Park boundaries spans centuries of glacial growth and recession, carving the features we see today. Glaciers were present within current Glacier National Park boundaries as early as 7,000 years ago but may have survived an early Holocene warm period (Carrara, 1989), making them much older. These modest glaciers varied in size, tracking climatic changes, but did not grow to their Holocene maximum size until the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) around A.D. 1850. While they may not have formed in their entirety during the LIA, their maximum perimeters can be documented through mapping of lateral and terminal moraines. (Key, 2002) The extent and mass of these glaciers, as well as glaciers around the globe, has clearly decreased during the 20th century in response to warmer temperatures.
Climate reconstructions representative of the Glacier National Park region extend back multiple centuries and show numerous long-duration drought and wet periods that influenced the mass balance of glaciers (Pederson et al. 2004). Of particular note was an 80-year period (~1770-1840) of cool, wet summers and above-average winter snowfall that led to a rapid growth of glaciers just prior to the end of the LIA. Thus, in the context of the entire Holocene, the size of glaciers at the end of the LIA was an anomaly of sorts. In fact, the large extent of ice coverage removed most of the evidence of earlier glacier positions by overriding terminal and lateral moraines.
“Mapping of lateral and terminal moraines” clearly demonstrates that the maximum extent of the glaciers was reached during the Little Ice Age (LIA). If “in the context of the entire Holocene, the size of glaciers at the end of the LIA was an anomaly,” how can the current reduced extent be an anomaly? Is there some ideal extent? Something between the LIA maximum and the current extent?
The glaciers of Mt Ranier National Park may date back to the last Pleistocene glaciation, but they also exhibit a similar variability to those of Glacier National Park…
The size of glaciers on Mount Rainier has fluctuated significantly in the past. For example, during the last ice age, from about 25,000 to about 15,000 years ago, glaciers covered most of the area now within the boundaries of Mount Rainier National Park and extended to the perimeter of the present Puget Sound Basin.
Geologists can determine the former extent of glaciers on Mount Rainier by mapping the outline of glacial deposits and by noting the position of trimlines, the distinct boundaries between older and younger forests or between forests and pioneering vegetation. Geologists determine the age of some of the deposits by noting the age of the oldest trees and lichens growing on them and the degree of weatherring on boulders. Between the 14th century and AD 1850, many of the glaciers on Mount Rainier advanced to their farthest went down-valley since the last ice age. Many advances of this sort occurred worldwide during this time period known to geologists as the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the Nisqually Glacier advanced to a position 650 feet to 800 feet down-valley from the site of the Glacier Bridge, Tahoma and South Tahoma Glaciers merged at the base of Glacier Island, and the terminus of Emmons Glacier reached within 1.2 miles of the White River Campground.
Retreat of the Little Ice Age glaciers was slow until about 1920 when retreat became more rapid. Between the height of the Little Ice Age and 1950, Mount Rainier’s glaciers lost about one-quarter of their length. Beginning in 1950 and continuing through the early 1980’s, however, many of the major glaciers advanced in response to relatively cooler temperatures of the mid-century. The Carbon, Cowlitz, Emmons, and Nisqually Glaciers advanced during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s as a result of high snowfalls during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Since the early-1980’s and through 1992, however, many glaciers have been thinning and retreating and some advances have slowed, perhaps in response to drier conditions that have prevailed at Mount Rainier since 1977.
The Mt. Ranier glaciers also seem to have reached their maximum Holocene extent during the Little Ice Age.
Guess what other ice feature appears to have also reached its maximum Holocene extent during the Little Ice Age?
Fig. 7 from McKay et al., 2008.
McKay et al., 2008 demonstrated that the modern Arctic sea ice cover is anomalously high and the Arctic summer sea surface temperature is anomalously low relative to the rest of the Holocene…
Modern sea-ice cover in the study area, expressed here as the number of months/year with >50% coverage, averages 10.6 ±1.2 months/year… Present day SST and SSS in August are 1.1 ± 2.4 8C and 28.5 ±1.3, respectively… In the Holocene record of core HLY0501-05, sea-ice cover has ranged between 5.5 and 9 months/year, summer SSS has varied between 22 and 30, and summer SST has ranged from 3 to 7.5 8C (Fig. 7).
If we take the HacCRUT3 instrumental temperature record for the Northern Hemisphere and tack it on to a recent Northern Hemisphere climate reconstruction (Ljungqvist, 2009) and then scale the GISP2 climate reconstruction (Alley, 2004) to fit the instrumental record and reconstruction, we can see that the modern climate is actually rather cool relative to the rest of the Holocene…
Some may take issue with tying the GISP2 reconstruction into a hemispheric data set… But there aren’t any published Northern Hemisphere multi-proxy reconstructions that go back more than a couple of thousand years. There is a Wikipedia global reconstruction that I think was an attempt to minimise the Holocene Climatic Optimum…
The Wiki-reconstruction does attenuate the HCO a bit; but it still shows that the modern climate is down right cold in comparison to the rest of the Holocene.
DanGamma says:
March 20, 2012 at 12:31 am
The southernmost glacier in Europe is in Italy, not too far from Rome, is it melting? http://www.caputfrigoris.it/calderone.htm
#####################
Sorry, but July pictures are wothless in this discussion.
September images would be a better hint.
BR
MFKBoulder
Mickey Reno
March 20, 2012 5:43 am
Amazing phrasing… “was correct” in saying what will happen in the future? Notice the mixture of the past tense with the future tense? These people should lose their educational credentials, and be forced to take a 5 year remedial reeducation program run by the driver’s license bureau.
Argh! I wrote this about a year ago, I just now noticed that I used “geological” where I should have used “geologic.” The evidence is geologic. Interpretations of the evidence are “geological.”
Also, I think I gave the impression that glacier mass balance indicates glacial expansion. The group of glaciers used for the global GMB calculation are still cumulatively contracting, just much more slowly since ~2003. Glaciers may move at glacially slow paces; but they are always moving, always expanding away from or contracting toward their depocenters.
It’s reassuring to see that the warmist explanation for any change in GMB seems to be AGW. Any decrease in GMB is driven by AGW-induced melting. Any increase in GMB is driven by AGW-enhanced precipitation… (Ptolemaic glaciology).
Alpine or valley glaciers are rivers of ice; they are always flowing downstream. Excess precipitation at the depocenter leads to greater downstream ice flow. Most alpine glaciers in the US are located in north-facing mountain valleys. More southerly exposures are vulnerable to radiative heating, melting and ablation. When depocenter precipitation is adequate and summer temperatures at the terminus are sufficiently cool, the glaciers expand downslope. This causes GMB to increase, as it did during the Little Ice Age and during the mid-20th century cooling.
More Post Normal Science sloppiness in wording. I believe a model can “confirm” nothing. A model is a hypothesis in numerical form. Anything generated by a model is theoretical, not empirical. Science requires that only data from the real world can confirm or deny a hypothesis.
For example, all of the climate models (hypotheses) cited by the CAGW crowd in the 1980’s and 90’s predicted much higher global temps by now than we are seeing. Data from the real world has denied these hypotheses.
johanna said @ur momisugly March 20, 2012 at 12:03 am
It is about as meaningful as me doing a ‘study’ of dandelion population increases or decreases in my lawn, and linking it to CAGW.
For the record, the dandelions seem to be increasing. QED.
If you pour the remnants of the boiling water you used for making tea, or coffee onto the offending dandelions, you will kill them with the arguably anthropogenic catastrophic warming. OTOH Dicamba works well, but don’t get it on your skin. Ditto for boiling water.
I remember the start of the Holocene.
Back then Ice didn’t melt, petulent that ice was, until recently one couldn’t find melty ice on earth, anywhere!
Everything was bigger then too.
Bears were the size of small elephants, small elephants were the size of big elephants, and Big elephants were the size of Giant Bears.
When it snowed, it snowed glaciers, and when it rained sleet, the sleet was as thick as densely ice laden water – unlike today.
We use to tip mammoths for sh*ts and giggles, we gave up on tipping marmosets, those things had teeth and were the size of dire wolves back then.
Dire wolves were the size of a Prius, and Emperor penguins stalked the landscape like Christopher Walken, you know with that odd twitch.
You can get a feel for it, by watching that documentary called ‘ICE AGE’, kids love it for some reason.
Unlike now, the sea was dangerous.
Schools of Hairy Rhino Sharks trolled about like Sierra club fanatics at a Monckton debate. Giant Otter-Pus lurked in the shallows – Part Otter/Part Octopus.
None in the fossil record of course, the Rhino Sharks ate them all.
The Emperor penguins ate all the Hairy Rhino Sharks in the end, then retired to Antarctica, feigning innocence.
True Story.
johanna
March 20, 2012 3:42 pm
The Pompous Git says:
March 20, 2012 at 1:06 pm
johanna said @ur momisugly March 20, 2012 at 12:03 am
It is about as meaningful as me doing a ‘study’ of dandelion population increases or decreases in my lawn, and linking it to CAGW.
For the record, the dandelions seem to be increasing. QED.
If you pour the remnants of the boiling water you used for making tea, or coffee onto the offending dandelions, you will kill them with the arguably anthropogenic catastrophic warming. OTOH Dicamba works well, but don’t get it on your skin. Ditto for boiling water.
————————————————————————–
Sorry, using boiling water would be ‘enabling’ global warming. Can’t be doing that.
I don’t muck around. Glyphosate is my friend. Although, when I mentioned this to a greenie friend of mine, she reproved me, said I should dig them up and use them in salads. I politely declined, but gave her exclusive forage rights to come and get as many as she wanted. Still waiting …
Jeef
March 20, 2012 5:54 pm
I went to Iceland in 1984 and surveyed a glacier. Results compared to an identical survey 5 years earlier revealed no change. I was a high school student at the time. I have no idea if our results were preserved for prosperity or not, but we found regression at the tongue, thickening in the body and slight mass increase. I may have to look further into this and see if anyone has been back since.
That aside I think the article represents theory not fact. I love data, not tired old memes.
Jeef
March 20, 2012 5:56 pm
* no statistical change …
Sorry, that was an heinous mistake!
Gail Combs
March 20, 2012 6:18 pm
Philip Bradley says:
March 19, 2012 at 5:33 pm
Take a look at this graphic of Mount Ranier glaciers….
The 2 north facing glaciers haven’t retreated to any significant extent. In fact the largest north facing glacier seems to have advanced a little since 1896.
This is clearly an increased solar isolation effect, and not due to GHG AGW…..
_____________________________________
This goes along with these papers:
October 28, 2004: Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years http://www.mpg.de/495993/pressRelease20041028
An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun’s activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades
The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal “Nature” from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years…..
Solar Activity Reaches New High – Dec 2, 2003: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/18692
” Geophysicists in Finland and Germany have calculated that the Sun is more magnetically active now than it has been for over a 1000 years. Ilya Usoskin and colleagues at the University of Oulu and the Max-Planck Institute for Aeronomy say that their technique – which relies on a radioactive dating technique – is the first direct quantitative reconstruction of solar activity based on physical, rather than statistical, models (I G Usoskin et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 211101)
Temperature responses to spectral solar variability on decadal time scales
Robert F. Cahalan,1 Guoyong Wen,1,2 Jerald W. Harder,3 and Peter Pilewskie3 http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/fulltext/Cahalan_Wen_etal.pdf
Harder et al. show that on multi‐year scales the SIM observed SSI of VIS and NIR bands varies out‐of‐phase with variations in the UV and TSI. In addition, the magnitude of decrease in UV band energy at 200–400 nm during the declining phase of solar cycle 23 is nearly 10 times as large as that for the reconstructed UV irradiance. In the VIS (400–691 nm), the SIM observed SSI changes out‐ of‐phase with variations of TSI and reconstructed SSI. The magnitude of the increase of observed visible SSI is more than twice as large as the magnitude of the decrease of reconstructed SSI in the same spectral band. Similar out‐of‐ phase variation with large amplitude is also evident for observed SSI in NIR band at 972–2423 nm [see Harder et al., 2009].
[8] SORCE SIM observations span about 1 =2 of a solar 11‐year cycle so far, but already these observations suggest that it is time for a re‐examination of the impact of solar variation on climate. Here we examine the climate response to two scenarios of solar forcing. Scenario I is in‐phase SSI variation based on the reconstructed SSI [Lean, 2000]. Scenario II is out‐of‐phase SSI variation based on the SIM observations [Harder et al., 2009]. For simplicity we use simple sinusoids to describe successive 11‐year solar variations for both in‐phase and out‐of‐phase scenarios with amplitudes and phases given by Harder et al. [2009]. For both scenarios the amplitude of SSI are scaled to have 11‐year TSI peak‐to‐peak variations of 1.2 W/m2 (see identical black curves in top panels in Figure 1a and 1b). We also note that SIM covers the spectral range up to 2423 nm. SSI variations beyond SIM’s wavelength upper limit are computed from the difference between the variation in TSI and SIM’s observed SSI variations….
johanna said @ur momisugly March 20, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Sorry, using boiling water would be ‘enabling’ global warming. Can’t be doing that.
I don’t muck around. Glyphosate is my friend. Although, when I mentioned this to a greenie friend of mine, she reproved me, said I should dig them up and use them in salads. I politely declined, but gave her exclusive forage rights to come and get as many as she wanted. Still waiting …
Unfortunately, glyphosate kills grass; dicamba doesn’t so you can use a sprayer and not have to worry about overspray. That’s slightly quicker than using a wick-wiper, or shielded spraying. Personally, I’m quite in favour of a bit of “global” warming; we just don’t seem to get any down here in the Southern hemisphere.
I suspect your greenie friend doesn’t like the bitter taste of dandelion leaves; I know I don’t. The dried roots can be used as an ersatz coffee, but it’s even more diuretic than the real thing and nowhere near as tasty.
Gail,
I think the north/south facing difference in glacier retreat/advance is primarily a decreasing aerosol/cloud effect. There may be a solar irradiance contribution, but I don’t think its large. Although the GCR contribution might be large.
Brian H
March 26, 2012 6:07 am
The Pompous Git says:
March 20, 2012 at 6:28 pm
…
I suspect your greenie friend doesn’t like the bitter taste of dandelion leaves; I know I don’t.
…
You have to use the young leaves of just-sprouted dandelions. Just eat the babies!
>:)
DanGamma says:
March 20, 2012 at 12:31 am
The southernmost glacier in Europe is in Italy, not too far from Rome, is it melting?
http://www.caputfrigoris.it/calderone.htm
#####################
Sorry, but July pictures are wothless in this discussion.
September images would be a better hint.
BR
MFKBoulder
Amazing phrasing… “was correct” in saying what will happen in the future? Notice the mixture of the past tense with the future tense? These people should lose their educational credentials, and be forced to take a 5 year remedial reeducation program run by the driver’s license bureau.
Unless they can show the freeze line has gone up in altitude any melting above that will be due to something other than increase warmth.
Argh! I wrote this about a year ago, I just now noticed that I used “geological” where I should have used “geologic.” The evidence is geologic. Interpretations of the evidence are “geological.”
Also, I think I gave the impression that glacier mass balance indicates glacial expansion. The group of glaciers used for the global GMB calculation are still cumulatively contracting, just much more slowly since ~2003. Glaciers may move at glacially slow paces; but they are always moving, always expanding away from or contracting toward their depocenters.
It’s reassuring to see that the warmist explanation for any change in GMB seems to be AGW. Any decrease in GMB is driven by AGW-induced melting. Any increase in GMB is driven by AGW-enhanced precipitation… (Ptolemaic glaciology).
Alpine or valley glaciers are rivers of ice; they are always flowing downstream. Excess precipitation at the depocenter leads to greater downstream ice flow. Most alpine glaciers in the US are located in north-facing mountain valleys. More southerly exposures are vulnerable to radiative heating, melting and ablation. When depocenter precipitation is adequate and summer temperatures at the terminus are sufficiently cool, the glaciers expand downslope. This causes GMB to increase, as it did during the Little Ice Age and during the mid-20th century cooling.
More Post Normal Science sloppiness in wording. I believe a model can “confirm” nothing. A model is a hypothesis in numerical form. Anything generated by a model is theoretical, not empirical. Science requires that only data from the real world can confirm or deny a hypothesis.
For example, all of the climate models (hypotheses) cited by the CAGW crowd in the 1980’s and 90’s predicted much higher global temps by now than we are seeing. Data from the real world has denied these hypotheses.
johanna said @ur momisugly March 20, 2012 at 12:03 am
If you pour the remnants of the boiling water you used for making tea, or coffee onto the offending dandelions, you will kill them with the arguably anthropogenic catastrophic warming. OTOH Dicamba works well, but don’t get it on your skin. Ditto for boiling water.
I remember the start of the Holocene.
Back then Ice didn’t melt, petulent that ice was, until recently one couldn’t find melty ice on earth, anywhere!
Everything was bigger then too.
Bears were the size of small elephants, small elephants were the size of big elephants, and Big elephants were the size of Giant Bears.
When it snowed, it snowed glaciers, and when it rained sleet, the sleet was as thick as densely ice laden water – unlike today.
We use to tip mammoths for sh*ts and giggles, we gave up on tipping marmosets, those things had teeth and were the size of dire wolves back then.
Dire wolves were the size of a Prius, and Emperor penguins stalked the landscape like Christopher Walken, you know with that odd twitch.
You can get a feel for it, by watching that documentary called ‘ICE AGE’, kids love it for some reason.
Unlike now, the sea was dangerous.
Schools of Hairy Rhino Sharks trolled about like Sierra club fanatics at a Monckton debate. Giant Otter-Pus lurked in the shallows – Part Otter/Part Octopus.
None in the fossil record of course, the Rhino Sharks ate them all.
The Emperor penguins ate all the Hairy Rhino Sharks in the end, then retired to Antarctica, feigning innocence.
True Story.
The Pompous Git says:
March 20, 2012 at 1:06 pm
johanna said @ur momisugly March 20, 2012 at 12:03 am
It is about as meaningful as me doing a ‘study’ of dandelion population increases or decreases in my lawn, and linking it to CAGW.
For the record, the dandelions seem to be increasing. QED.
If you pour the remnants of the boiling water you used for making tea, or coffee onto the offending dandelions, you will kill them with the arguably anthropogenic catastrophic warming. OTOH Dicamba works well, but don’t get it on your skin. Ditto for boiling water.
————————————————————————–
Sorry, using boiling water would be ‘enabling’ global warming. Can’t be doing that.
I don’t muck around. Glyphosate is my friend. Although, when I mentioned this to a greenie friend of mine, she reproved me, said I should dig them up and use them in salads. I politely declined, but gave her exclusive forage rights to come and get as many as she wanted. Still waiting …
I went to Iceland in 1984 and surveyed a glacier. Results compared to an identical survey 5 years earlier revealed no change. I was a high school student at the time. I have no idea if our results were preserved for prosperity or not, but we found regression at the tongue, thickening in the body and slight mass increase. I may have to look further into this and see if anyone has been back since.
That aside I think the article represents theory not fact. I love data, not tired old memes.
* no statistical change …
Sorry, that was an heinous mistake!
Philip Bradley says:
March 19, 2012 at 5:33 pm
Take a look at this graphic of Mount Ranier glaciers….
The 2 north facing glaciers haven’t retreated to any significant extent. In fact the largest north facing glacier seems to have advanced a little since 1896.
This is clearly an increased solar isolation effect, and not due to GHG AGW…..
_____________________________________
This goes along with these papers:
johanna said @ur momisugly March 20, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Unfortunately, glyphosate kills grass; dicamba doesn’t so you can use a sprayer and not have to worry about overspray. That’s slightly quicker than using a wick-wiper, or shielded spraying. Personally, I’m quite in favour of a bit of “global” warming; we just don’t seem to get any down here in the Southern hemisphere.
I suspect your greenie friend doesn’t like the bitter taste of dandelion leaves; I know I don’t. The dried roots can be used as an ersatz coffee, but it’s even more diuretic than the real thing and nowhere near as tasty.
Gail,
I think the north/south facing difference in glacier retreat/advance is primarily a decreasing aerosol/cloud effect. There may be a solar irradiance contribution, but I don’t think its large. Although the GCR contribution might be large.
You have to use the young leaves of just-sprouted dandelions. Just eat the babies!
>:)