From the British Antarctic Survey
New climate history adds to understanding of recent Antarctic Peninsula warming
Results published this week by a team of polar scientists from Britain, Australia and France adds a new dimension to our understanding of Antarctic Peninsula climate change and the likely causes of the break-up of its ice shelves.
The first comprehensive reconstruction of a 15,000 year climate history from an ice core collected from James Ross Island in the Antarctic Peninsula region is reported this week in the journal Nature. The scientists reveal that the rapid warming of this region over the last 100 -years has been unprecedented and came on top of a slower natural climate warming that began around 600 years ago. These centuries of continual warming meant that by the time the unusual recent warming began, the Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves were already poised for the dramatic break-ups observed from the 1990’s onwards.
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming places on Earth – average temperatures from meteorological stations near James Ross Island have risen by nearly 2°C in the past 50 years.
Lead author Dr Robert Mulvaney OBE, from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) says,
“This is a really interesting result. One of the key questions that scientists are attempting to answer is how much of the Earth’s recently observed warming is due to natural climate variation and how much can be attributed to human activity since the industrial revolution. The only way we can do this is by looking back through time when the Earth experienced ice ages and warm periods, and ice cores are a very good method for doing this.”
Dr Mulvaney continues,
“We know that something unusual is happening in the Antarctic Peninsula. To find out more we mounted a scientific expedition to collect an ice core from James Ross Island – on the northernmost tip of the Peninsula. Within the 364m long core are layers of snow that fell every year for the last 50,000 years. Sophisticated chemical analysis – at BAS and the NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory (part of British Geological Survey) – was used to re-create a temperature record over this period.
“For this study we looked in detail at the last 15,000 years – from the time when the Earth emerged from the last ice age and entered into the current warm period. What we see in the ice core temperature record is that the Antarctic Peninsula warmed by about 6°C as it emerged from the last ice age. By 11,000 years ago the temperature had risen to about 1.3°C warmer than today’s average and other research indicates that the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet was shrinking at this time and some of the surrounding ice shelves retreated. The local climate then cooled in two stages, reaching a minimum about 600 years ago. The ice shelves on the northern Antarctic Peninsula expanded during this cooling. Approximately 600 years ago the local temperature started to warm again, followed by a more rapid warming in the last 50-100 years that coincides with present-day disintegration of ice shelves and glacier retreat.”
Co-Author Dr Nerilie Abram formerly from British Antarctic Survey and now with the Research School of Earth Sciences, at The Australian National University says,
“The centuries of ongoing warming have meant that marginal ice shelves on the northern Peninsula were poised for the succession of collapses that we have witnessed over the last two decades. And if this rapid warming that we are now seeing continues, we can expect that ice shelves further south along the Peninsula that have been stable for thousands of years will also become vulnerable.”
Olivier Alemany, from the French Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l’Environnement was part of the expedition. He says,
“The international polar science community has collected and analysed ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland as part of an effort to reconstruct the Earth’s past climate and atmosphere. Our team wanted to understand how the recent warming and the loss of ice shelves compared to the longer term climate trends in the region.”
This research makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the role that Antarctica’s ice sheets play in influencing future climate and sea-level rise. It was funded by NERC (Natural Environment Research Council).
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Regarding that rapid warming of 2C in the last 50 years, just remember that most weather stations in the Antarctic are near humanity, and humanity requires warmth to survive. For example:
The Antarctic peninsula is the most populated place in Antarctica.
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And don’t forget the huge amount of underwater volcanic just off the coast of the peninsular
“By 11,000 years ago the temperature had risen to about 1.3°C warmer than today’s average…”
That would be the effect of the industrial revolution of those pre-Incan and pre-Mayan civilisations then; couldn’t be anything else, could it?
Well, seriously!
How would YOU like to go out into the freezing Antarctic semi-night, into those howling winds and blizzards, just to get a reading from your distant weather station?
Much, much better to keep it really close to your front door, so that you can dash out, take a reading, and bolt back in.
Makes sense to me…..
Thanks Anthony, perfect timing for an Antarctic argument I’m having on another forum.
Did they get the recent measurements by ice-coring of near-surface layers, or from thermometers? If the latter, they’re comparing data from two quite different sorts of technique so they’d need to be ultra careful to rule out artefacts. Were they?
Really? the ice core is contaminated by micro site effects? Did you mention that to the Larsen B ice shelf perhaps? Oh whoops, too late!
Those flags seem to suggest that any heat from that camp has no chance of reaching the thermometer, and given the circumpolar winds experienced there they more than likely point that way most of the time. If the camp did effect the results it would only be on the rare occasion the wind comes the other way and surely that would stick out a mile in the data. Very long shot that one Anthony.
The northern half of the peninsular is north of the antarctic circle so gets winter sun. The bulk of the Larsen is included in this. warming is not ”unprecedented” because recent geological evidence shows that the peninsular was tree covered which shows at least some warming don’t you think?
The article reads: ““We know that something unusual is happening in the Antarctic Peninsula…”
Yup, it sure is unusual. The sea surface temperature anomalies for the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica aren’t warming. The long-term ERSST.v3b reconstruction shows it cooling. (We haven’t looked at one of these for a couple of years.):
http://i48.tinypic.com/339unut.jpg
And the satellite era Reynolds OI.v2 sea surface temperature anomaly data shows it cooling:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/13-southern.png
The latter graph is from my July 2012 update:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/july-2012-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/
I have always been fascinated by the ‘media/PR’ aspect of Warmism and this press release is an excellent example of the media manipulation we have come to expect. Many years I noticed that Warmist propaganda was nearly always timed to coincide with periods of warm or hot weather in much the same way as ice-cream or sun tan lotion is marketed. Well it’s Spring in the Southern Hemisphere right now or it soon will be and with the first breath of warm weather comes the inevitable stories about the Antarctic rapidly melting. The objective is simple to try and make everyone forget that we’ve just had one of the coldest SH winters for half a century. Of course sometimes the timing of these things goes awry and with a big chunk of winter remaining I fervently hope that the chilly spring will help Australian and S African people to ignore this drivel.
Abstract at Nature, with (small) figures:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11391.html
They say “the rapid warming of this region over the last 100 -years has been unprecedented“, but they can’t tell that from the ice cores, because they aren’t accurate down to that kind of time-scale.
And if “By 11,000 years ago the temperature had risen to about 1.3°C warmer than today’s average“, then today’s temperatures are not at all unprecedented.
How they manage to twist it all to sound alarming is really rather – er – alarming.
PS. I don’t trust the ice-core interpretations anyway.
Mike Jonas @ur momisugly 2:14 am
From the abstract:
Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia.
Not sure I could find the actual temps in this article. Have they risen from – 40 deg C to – 38 deg C. The water run off must be amazing?
plazaeme – thanks, well spotted. My quote was from the press release http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=1892, in which they say “the rapid warming of this region over the last 100 years has been unprecedented“, yet as you point out the paper said it was “unusual (but not unprecedented)“. Like I said, the twisting that goes on is alarming.
Dome and Vostok Ice Cores also both show the stable temps, varying within a fixed range – of the last 15,000 years.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/slides/img15.gif
“The centuries of ongoing warming have meant that marginal ice shelves on the northern Peninsula were poised for the succession of collapses that we have witnessed over the last two decades. And if this rapid warming that we are now seeing continues, we can expect that ice shelves further south along the Peninsula that have been stable for thousands of years will also become vulnerable.” ……………….
So the reason that the Northern ice shelves collapsed was that they had been made unstable by 600yrs of warming. The ”ice sheets further South along the peninsular that have been stable for thousands of years will also become vulnerable” therefore does not follow that reasoning.
I have emailed their press office as below:
I was wondering why you state in your introduction that:
“The scientists reveal that the rapid warming of this region over the last 100 years has been unprecedented and came on top of a slower natural climate warming that began around 600 years ago.”
When if you read the Abstract from the Nature paper itself is very clear states:
“Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia.”
As this Press Release is being digested by many media outlets, these two summaries just seem completely at variance to me? You changed “unusual (but not unprecedented)” from the paper to “has been unprecedented”
Regards,
Pete.
Re the met station shown on the first day cover. I wonder if the little bubble cabins have air conditioners pumping out hot air, or if by some chance the crazy loons prefer to keep the heat in?
plazaeme–your URL also includes the supplementary material in two files that can be downloaded for free. The second file is the Excel version of the data and one can make graphs of the temperature anomalies on a 10- or 100-year smoothing.
Mr Cantwell puts it perfectly into perspective! “Did the researcher freeze to death at -40°C or -38°C? This sort of information could be crucial to human survival down there!” The very idea that this is warming is pathetic. LOL! Due hat tip to Plazaeme & Mike Jones too. The minute I hear the word “unprecedented”, I feel the urge to look at what the truth really is! It’s a bit like the Royal Society spokepersons ignoring the motto Nullius in verba, to Respect the Facts! As John Brignall pointed out in Numberwatch, as soon as they say that you need to start looking for the fictions!
I do find this misuse of language quite insidious & deliberately manipulative. I do enjoy good old BBC progs that occasionally get repeated on BBC 3/4, like the one about methane clathrates melting after the 1 million year Siberian volcanic eruptions raising Earth’s temperature by 5°C, which caused melting of the clathrate which in turn caused another 5°C rise in global temps, a 10°C rise enough to cause mass extinction events, or so the theory went! They talk about what creatures on other continents might have experienced as a result, with little or no reference to the state of land masses at the time, referring to parts of South America here or Europe there, when at the time they never existed in a recognisable form today! They are barking mad at times imho!
Nick Kermode says:
“given the circumpolar winds experienced there they more than likely point that way most of the time”
I can tell right away that you have never visited the Antarctic peninsula. The weather and wind is very variable and unpredictable.
Nick Kermode says:
August 23, 2012 at 1:46 am
Those flags seem to suggest that any heat from that camp has no chance of reaching the thermometer, and given the circumpolar winds experienced there they more than likely point that way most of the time. If the camp did effect the results it would only be on the rare occasion the wind comes the other way and surely that would stick out a mile in the data. Very long shot that one Anthony.
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How about skin temperature of the fibreglass igloo nearest the weather station (together with the others) and thermal radiation? For some reason they are devoid of snow. I think Anthony’s point is that, if the weather station alone were to remain while all the rest of the camp, together with its denizens, were shipped back to Australia, the downward trend registered by the thermometer would be discernible. Thermal radiation is sensitive to proximity and line of sight–not to wind direction.
Only one thing is unprecedented. Total loss of memory, which forces everyone in the media and the establishment to see every event as brand new. That’s unprecedented.
NONE of the actual events, whether in politics or business or economics or climate, are unprecedented. It’s all happened before, and we dealt with it COMPETENTLY before. We SOLVED these problems in the past, or adapted to them if they couldn’t be solved.
And that explains the loss of memory. It’s not mass Alzheimer’s. It’s a deliberate mass lobotomy by the elite, enabling them to UNSOLVE every problem. If we were allowed to hear about past solutions and past adaptations, we’d realize that the ruling class is doing EXACTLY THE WRONG THING in EVERY SINGLE SITUATION.
Well, I got a reply already, and they have indeed now changed it!
Hello Pete
This is very well spotted and is an error on our part. The press release has now been amended to ‘very unusual’ rather than ‘unprecedented’. Many thanks for bringing my attention to this.
Kind regards,