The results of ICEsat measurements are in for Antarctica, and it seems those claims of ice mass loss in Antarctica have melted now that a continent wide tally has been made. This was presented in the SCAR ISMASS Workshop in Portland, OR, July 14, 2012 and was added to NASA’s Technical Reports server on September 7th, 2012. H/T to WUWT reader “Brad”. What’s interesting (besides the result) is that the report was prepared by Jay Zwally, whose “ice free Arctic by the end of summer 2012” prediction is about to be tested in 12 days. It also puts the kibosh on GRACE studies that suggested a net loss in Antarctica. Note there’s the mention of the “climate warming, consistent with model predictions” at the end of the report. They’d say the same thing if ICEsat had measured loss instead of gain, because as we’ve seen before, almost everything is consistent with warming and models no matter which direction it goes.
Here’s the video presentation. The report abstract follows.
Mass Balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet 1992-2008 from ERS and ICESat: Gains exceed losses – Presented by Jay Zwally, NASA Goddard, USA ISMASS 2012 is an activity of the renewed SCAR/IASC ISMASS expert group, which focuses on the mass balance of ice-sheets and their contribution to sea level changes. The workshop is sponsored by ICSU, SCAR, IASC, WCRP, IGS, and IACS with support from CliC and APECS. Video recording and editing provided by Kristin Poinar, Mai Winstrup, and Jenny Baeseman
Mass Gains of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Exceed Losses
Zwally, H. Jay; Li, Jun; Robbins, John; Saba, Jack L.; Yi, Donghui; Brenner, Anita; Bromwich, David
Abstract:
During 2003 to 2008, the mass gain of the Antarctic ice sheet from snow accumulation exceeded the mass loss from ice discharge by 49 Gt/yr (2.5% of input), as derived from ICESat laser measurements of elevation change. The net gain (86 Gt/yr) over the West Antarctic (WA) and East Antarctic ice sheets (WA and EA) is essentially unchanged from revised results for 1992 to 2001 from ERS radar altimetry.
Imbalances in individual drainage systems (DS) are large (-68% to +103% of input), as are temporal changes (-39% to +44%). The recent 90 Gt/yr loss from three DS (Pine Island, Thwaites-Smith, and Marie-Bryd Coast) of WA exceeds the earlier 61 Gt/yr loss, consistent with reports of accelerating ice flow and dynamic thinning. Similarly, the recent 24 Gt/yr loss from three DS in the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) is consistent with glacier accelerations following breakup of the Larsen B and other ice shelves. In contrast, net increases in the five other DS of WA and AP and three of the 16 DS in East Antarctica (EA) exceed the increased losses.
Alternate interpretations of the mass changes driven by accumulation variations are given using results from atmospheric-model re-analysis and a parameterization based on 5% change in accumulation per degree of observed surface temperature change. A slow increase in snowfall with climate warming, consistent with model predictions, may be offsetting increased dynamic losses.
Click to View PDF File [PDF Size: 256 KB]
Looks like “Skeptical Science” will have to update their reliance on the “Cophagen Diagnosis” as well as their claim of “Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly.”:
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Figure 2: Estimates of Total Antarctic Land Ice Changes and approximate sea level contributions using many different measurement techniques. Adapted from The Copenhagen Diagnosis. (CH= Chen et al. 2006, WH= Wingham et al. 2006, R= Rignot et al. 2008b, CZ= Cazenave et al. 2009 and V=Velicogna 2009)
Estimates of recent changes in Antarctic land ice (Figure 2) range from losing 100 Gt/year to over 300 Gt/year. Because 360 Gt/year represents an annual sea level rise of 1 mm/year, recent estimates indicate a contribution of between 0.27 mm/year and 0.83 mm/year coming from Antarctica. There is of course uncertainty in the estimations methods but multiple different types of measurement techniques (explained here) all show the same thing, Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly.
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I’m glad that’s finally settled.
Related articles
- RC’s Dr. Eric Steig boreholes himself on Antarctica (wattsupwiththat.com)
- GRACE’s warts – new peer reviewed paper suggests errors and adjustments may be large
- West Antarctic ice sheet may not be losing ice as fast as once thought – GRACE readings overestimated
stefanthedenier says:
September 10, 2012 at 4:14 pm
May I humbly suggest that phrases like “twice as cold” should refer only to temperatures in Kelvins and not Celcius or Fahrenheit?
In Fahrenheit, you’d be talking about something like -20°F and +10°F. Would you say Antarctica is minus three times as cold as my freezer?
Ric Werme complained: ”May I humbly suggest that phrases like “twice as cold” should refer only to temperatures in Kelvins and not Celcius or Fahrenheit? In Fahrenheit, you’d be talking about something like -20°F and +10°F. Would you say Antarctica is minus three times as cold as my freezer?”
Ric Werme; – my fridge, freezer and oven are honest. They have temp engraved in Celsius. Calvin is for Swindlers, desperate to complicate / confuse the ignorant – because they only thrive on people’s ignorance and deceits.
Rest of you guys: cross the IRRELEVANT zeroes, cut the crap, cut the dead wood, until you get to the solid stuff. Engineers making white goods don’t start from ”ultimate zero” because they have useful products to sell. On the other hand, the Bullshine Merchants use every trick they can think off, to con. Sorry Ric, if you want real proofs, facts and formulas; on my blog. You won’t find there galactic dust, sunspots and other bodies in the zodiac affecting the climate. From Florida to California – there are 50 different climates – are all those places different ‘star signs”? Is the sun creating different sunspots for all those places?! Why Amazon has the ”lucky stars” but on SAME latitude in Australia; birds, animals and trees get mummified and burned in intensive bushfires – because of the COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CLIMATE?! Ask Anthony to explain to you; see where he is coming from. He is scared obviously from my proofs and facts, he must screen / censorship on my comments… ha, haaa, haaaa!!!
Models predicted initial mass gain of Antarctc ice sheet because of increased precipitation (snow) due to warming. Check IPCC III and IV, projections chapters.
AR4 10.6 (projection chapter)
Reported mass gains at Antarctica have been a little surprising in that context, but if ICESat values are robust, the IPCC models will have been verified. OTOH, Antarctica is one of the more difficult regions to predict (a non-intuitive conclusion), so all projections should be handled with care.
An important corrollary of these results is the effect on sea level projections, which have in part been revised upwards since AR4 because of the apparent declining mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. At the very least these results should intensify scrutiny of the issue. They don’t “put the kibosh” on the issue, as the top post states. That would only be true if we treated this paper as perfect. Hardly a skeptical position.
barry,
Sea level ‘projections’ don’t matter. The raw Envisat data does matter [and I don’t agree with Envisat detractors. Like this ICESAT paper, Envisat was attacked because it didn’t fit the narrative].
Reblogged this on JustMEinT's General Blog and commented:
My Goodness now who would have thought that a GAIN in ice in the Antarctic Ice Sheet could still be the fault of climate change/global warming…. Tut Tut!!!
Hey, as long as Oates Coast doesn’t melt away, I’m good. 🙂
Andrejs Vanags says: ”I read somewhere that the antartic is so cold that there is almost no humidity there ”
Andrejs, there isn’t any humidity on Antarctic; because: Antarctic replenishes her ice by ”FREEZE-DRYING’ the moisture from the air. Same as the old fridges were building ice, without rainfall / snowfall in the kitchen. By opening often the fridge door -> moisture from the kitchen is freeze-dried = ice. Antarctic doesn’t have doors!
For 8-9 months in a year, those ”highs” dry / cold winds, billions of cubic kilometers are blowing from Antarctic towards Australia and south Pacific. Instantly, to avoid vacuum on Antarctic – lots of low /moist air goes from Indian ocean, over Antarctic and ”REPLENISHES” the ice deficit. Yes, the shonky ”climatologist” go there – see that is no snowfall and declared Antarctic as the driest continent…?! TRUTH: Antarctic is the wettest continent!!
Andreis, ice on Antarctic is getting melted constantly; day and night, summer and winter – from below – BY THE GEOTHERMAL HEAT – and is replenishes on the top by frieze-drying the ”water vapor” from the air; which constantly comes from the north. In El Nino year – more moist air goes to Antarctic peninsula -> the Fake Skeptics bit themselves in the chest: look, look more ice, must be colder whole planet. Then in La Nina years, more moisture goes to places on Antarctic exposed to Australia – the Warmist start making noise for panic, BOO! Both camps are dead WRONG!!! If anybody wants to learn the truth about the ice on the polar caps – here is the place:: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/midi-ice-age-can-be-avoided/
stefanthedenier;
Calvin is for Swindlers, desperate to complicate / confuse the ignorant – because they only thrive on people’s ignorance and deceits.
Rest of you guys: cross the IRRELEVANT zeroes,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When Lewondowski sought to characterize skeptics as being hopelessly uneducated in the basics of math and physics, not to mention having a couple of screws loose, did he he build some bots to answer his “survey” with complete lunacy and perhaps some of them got away?
vukcevic (September 10, 2012 at 7:41 am)
” http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PA.htm “
Good to see the following together on one page:
1. reference to Jean Dickey of NASA JPL.
2. Antarctic: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TSI-dBz.gif
3. Arctic: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AT-GMF.gif
Thanks for regularly sharing your stimulating volunteer work.
Best Regards!
Paul Vaughan says: September 10, 2012 at 10:00 pm
…………….
Thanks .
So antarctic ice is increasing, just as the IPCC said it would. Maybe they are making up these results to make the IPCC look good?
Only 11 days to go until the Arctic is ‘essentially ice free’. ヅ
stefanthedenier says:
“Rest of you guys: cross the IRRELEVANT zeroes, cut the crap, cut the dead wood, until you get to the solid stuff”
Unfortunately, your style of making assertions grates on my nerves. I like WUWT for balanced debates, with facts and formulas presented, so I can learn. BTW, may I suggest that the spelling errors on your blog undermines the credibility of your site.
The polar ice seesaw:
Increasing Antarctic ice together with decreasing Arctic ice are suggestive of the “seesawing” between north and south hemisphere polar temperatures, which was identified by Tzedakis et al (see below) as diagnostic of the inception if ice ages:
(at our current orbital configuration)
Determining the natural length of the current interglacial
P. C. Tzedakis, J. E. T. Channell, D. A. Hodell, H. F. Kleiven & L. C. Skinner
Nature Geoscience (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1358
Received 23 May 2011 Accepted 28 November 2011 Published online 09 January 2012 Corrected online 10 January 2012 Corrected again 28 Jan 2012
The current orbital configuration is characterized by a weak minimum in summer insolation. Past interglacials can be used to draw analogies with the present, provided their duration is known. Here we propose that the minimum age of a glacial inception is constrained by the onset of bipolar – seesaw climate variability, which requires ice-sheets large enough to produce iceberg discharges that disrupt the ocean circulation. We identify the bipolar seesaw in ice-core and North Atlantic marine records by the appearance of a distinct phasing of interhemispheric climate and hydrographic changes and ice-rafted debris. The glacial inception during Marine Isotope sub-Stage 19c, a close analogue for the present interglacial, occurred near the summer insolation minimum, suggesting that the interglacial was not prolonged by subdued radiative forcing7. Assuming that ice growth mainly responds to insolation forcing, this analogy suggests that the end of the current interglacial would occur within the next 1500 years.
So once again the warmists cherry pick the data and narrow the scope until they get something to run to the LSM with. I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell ya. [/sarc]
Actually I’m shocked the way they managed to grow cherry trees in Yamal.
adolfogiurfa said on September 10, 2012 at 12:45 pm:
You mean Gore? He was thinking about an Antarctic ski trip and asked about the snow bunnies, then decided against it when told there were only blubbery seals and waddling penguins.
Smokey,
Envisat had technical problems. I’m not familiar with the disparagement you mention, but it’s rare that satellite instrumentation records perfect data over the long-term.
Regardless, the graphic you displayed has 3.5 years of mean sea level data. Envisat was on line for 10 years. What possible reason could there be to excise more than half the data?
Because that allows whichever charlatan making that graph to select an extreme anomaly at one end, and an extreme anomaly at the other, and manage to make a trend line opposite in sign to even the unadjusted full data set. Classic cherry-pick, as obvious as a hammer, and no surprise that you brandish it.
If you have a yen for Envisat, you might be interested to know that its main contribution to the Antarctic ice sheet question was the recording of the disintegration of Larsen B and recession of Antarctic glaciers. The data from your favourite satellite tends to support the notion of mass loss.
From barry on September 11, 2012 at 6:54 pm:
Oh, well then, here is one of Envisat sea levels from 12/31/2003 to 6/30/2011. Linear trend would be only 3.4 inches by 2100, but as seen by the 2nd-order polynomial fit, and the Eyeball Mark I curve fitter, the curve has peaked and is heading downward.
Source page.
Enjoy.
kadaka,
We have data up to 2012, but your chart, like Smokey’s, ends on the most extreme dip in the record in 2011. And then fits a polynomial trend that I very much doubt would succeed statistical significance tests (I’d guess a quadratice function would be a better fit). How about we go to the source of your source and look at the updated adjusted and non-adjusted data?
A sharp uptick in 2012 brings the linear trend back. A 2nd order polynomial fit to this data would probably show acceleration (Eyeball Mark VI) – but I wouldn’t bother trying to show that, because it’s pretty clear just from eyeballing that a polynomial would fail statistical significance tests. I’m looking at the unadjusted data set, BTW, just so we can obviate a diversion into hollow cries of ‘fudging’. Please ignore the adjusted data to that purpose.
It’s about as daft to make claims about future sea level rise based on 10 years of observed data, as it is to make claims on that from 9 years of data. It’s not nearly enough to go on – rhetorical value only. I think you’re smarter than that.
From barry on September 11, 2012 at 8:41 pm:
Which might be related to the dating of the source page, August 22 2011. Looks like it used the newest data available at the time.
Nah, that’s not it. Source was clearly shown on the graph: http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/products-images/index.html
You linked to some note of an adjustment due to an altimeter calibration problem, which was an opportunity to also “correct for other anomalies”.
And where the heck would that be at the link you gave? Chart shows the before and after curves for the altimeter calibration correction.
After correction, the linear trend is 2.52mm/yr. This is similar to those trends available at the link on the graph, thus that site also uses the newly-adjusted data.
Smokey might want to revise his opinion on Envistat, due to the very recent “Improvement” of the data, with the note you linked to dated 28 August 2012. By the chart there, the “Improvement” has yanked the trend from 0.463mm/yr to 2.52mm/yr, multiplying the old trend by 5.44.
Given how much skeptics liked the old data, this new “Improvement” which brings Envistat into agreement with “the narrative”, and arriving just in time for the new IPCC Assessment Report, might be viewed with suspicion.
BTW, given the magnitude of the “Improvement” to the Envistat data, that “sharp uptick in 2012” really doesn’t matter much.
Although now the “curve” looks like an obvious step change, level from about 2002.5 to 2007.5 (to the record Arctic sea ice loss?), then rising to a new level from about 2009.5 to the end of data. WUWT?
The Aviso page you linked leads to a repository for the data, which is reprocessed by third parties. Aviso don’t do their own processing of Envisat altimetry data for mean sea level. The ultimate source of the data is the ESA, which launched and ran Envisat. (there is more information in the report linked at the page I gave.)
For the purposes of discussing the sign of a second order polynomial, it doesn’t matter whether we use the adjusted or unadjusted curves. The result is the same. Include all the data and you get acceleration instead of decelearation. I deliberately chose to focus on the unadjusted curve to try and avoid any moaning about adjustments, but I guess that failed.
Again, there is not enough data upon which to base claims of acceleration or deceleration, but seeing as you did anyway, I simply alerted you to the full data record.
Don’t worry about Smokey, he’ll just keep posting that linear graph of less than half the data, that manages to turn out a negative trend, and claim that Envisat’s mean sea level product is superior to anything else. There’s nothing anyone can do about that.
Marc Morano,
I propose that you do a piece on Arctic temperatures. Any increases have only been in the WINTER for decades! It gets above freezing there around June 10 each year, and drops back below freeziing August 20. Arctic temps have nothing to do with Arctic ice! It is probably soot. Asian coal plants usually do not have bag houses, do not filter particulate out of the stack. This is the untold Arctic ice story…
Don’t overlook the wind. Antarctica is the “home of the blizzard”. How much snow is blown from the continent into the ocean by those katabatic winds, whose strength will depend on the thermodynamic gradient?