While the Antarctic is making new records for more ice this week, we have another press release with “could” science in it.
Image: National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
Timing is everything I guess, but I really have to wonder how “…warming waters in the Southern Ocean are connected intimately with the movement of massive ice-sheets deep in the Antarctic interior.” Oh wait, it’s modeling, never mind.
From the University of New South Wales:
Warming ocean could start big shift of Antarctic ice
Wednesday, 19 September, 2012
Alvin Stone
Fast-flowing and narrow glaciers have the potential to trigger massive changes in the Antarctic ice sheet and contribute to rapid ice-sheet decay and sea-level rise, a new study has found.
Research results published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveal in more detail than ever before how warming waters in the Southern Ocean are connected intimately with the movement of massive ice-sheets deep in the Antarctic interior.
“It has long been known that narrow glaciers on the edge of the Antarctica act as discrete arteries termed ice streams, draining the interior of the ice sheet,” says Dr Chris Fogwill, an author of the study and an ARC Future Fellow with the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre.
“However, our results have confirmed recent observations suggesting that ocean warming can trigger increased flow of ice through these narrow corridors. This can cause inland sectors of the ice-sheet – some larger than the state of Victoria – to become thinner and flow faster.”
The researchers, led by Dr Nicholas Golledge from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, tested high-resolution model simulations against reconstructions of the Antarctic ice sheet from 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum.
They used a new model, capable of resolving responses to ice-streams and other fine- scale dynamic features that interact over the entire ice sheet. This had not previously been possible with existing models. They then used this data to analyse the effects of a warming ocean over time.
The results showed that while glacier acceleration triggered by ocean warming is relatively localized, the extent of the resultant ice-sheet thinning is far more widespread. This observation is particularly important in light of recently observed dynamic changes at the margins of Antarctica. It also highlighted areas that are more susceptible than others to changes in ocean temperatures.
The glaciers that responded most rapidly to warming oceans were found in the Weddell Sea, the Admundsen Sea, the central Ross Sea and in the Amery Trough.
The finding is important because of the enormous scale and potential impact the Antarctic ice sheets could have on sea-level rise if they shift rapidly, says Fogwill. “To get a sense of the scale, the Antarctic ice sheet is 3km deep – three times the height of the Blue Mountains in many areas – and it extends across an area that is equivalent to the distance between Perth and Sydney.
“Despite its potential impact, Antarctica’s effect on future sea level was not fully included in the last IPCC report because there was insufficient information about the behaviour of the ice sheet. This research changes that. This new, high-resolution modelling approach will be critical to improving future predictions of Antarctica’s contribution to sea level over the coming century and beyond.”
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Related – over at Bishop Hill he explains how the pooh-poohing of the current Antarctic ice surplus really doesn’t hold up when you look at past IPCC predecitions.
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Why is Alaska cooling?
“The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska”,
G. Wendler*, L. Chen and B. Moore, Alaska Climate Research Center, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toascj/articles/V006/111TOASCJ.pdf
Abstract:
“During the first decade of the 21st century most of Alaska experienced a cooling shift, modifying the long-term warming trend, which has been about twice the global change up to this time. All of Alaska cooled with the exception of Northern Regions.
This trend was caused by a change in sign of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which became dominantly negative, weakening the Aleutian Low. This weakening results in less relatively warm air being advected from the Northern Pacific. This transport is especially important in winter when the solar radiation is weak. It is during this period that the strongest cooling was observed.
In addition, the cooling was especially pronounced in Western Alaska, closest to the area of the center of the Aleutian Low. The changes seen in the reanalyzed data were confirmed from surface observations, both in the decrease of the North-South atmospheric pressure gradient, as well as the decrease in the mean wind speeds for stations located in the Bering Sea area.”
There is an interesting paper here on the PDO and ENSO:
“Understanding Alaska’s Climate Variation”, John Papineau, Ph.D NWS Anchorage, Alaska
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/climvar/climate-paper.html
Also some interesting temperature history from Sue Ann Bowling (rtd) here:
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Bowling/FANB.html
and this: “Problems with the Use of Climatological Data to Detect Climatic Change at High Latitudes” http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Bowling/AKchange.html
The PDO shift in the mid 70’s was the reason for the jump in temperature in 1976-7 and effectively is the “polar amplification” where the Arctic has supposedly warmed at twice the rate of the rest of the planet. This description from 2005 seems to have been disappeared, but is still on Wayback, the charts are similar to Sue Ann Bowling’s.
http://web.archive.org/web/20051124061828/http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/4904Change.html
“If a linear trend is taken through mean annual temperatures, the average change over the last 5 decades is 3.4°F. However, when analyzing the trends for the four seasons, it can be seen that most of the change has occurred in winter and spring, with less of a change in summer and autumn”
“Considering just a linear trend can mask some important variability characteristics in the time series. Figure 2 shows clearly that this trend is non-linear: a linear trend might have been expected from the fairly steady observed increase of CO2 during this time period. The figure shows the temperature departure from the long-term mean (1949-2004) for the average of all stations.
It can be seen that there are large variations from year to year and the 5-year moving average demonstrates cyclical behavior. The period 1949 to 1975 was substantially colder than the period from 1977 to 2004, however since 1977 little additional warming has occurred in Alaska with the exception of Barrow and a few other locations.
In 1976, a stepwise shift appears in the temperature data, which corresponds to a phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a negative phase to a positive phase. Synoptic conditions with the positive phase tend to consist of increased southerly flow and warm air advection into Alaska during the winter, resulting in positive temperature anomalies.”
It is my recollection that the Antarctic has been getting cooler for three decades and the land ice growing deeper. At this moment record sea ice, with the sun asleep where is this warm water going to come from AH! Trenberths missing heat rising from the depths and turning the Antarctic into a tropical paradise. Now I understand. Useful Idiots and I am paying for them**@ur momisugly+###@ur momisugly%%%
Antarctic sea ice coverage now 1m sq kms higher than the ‘norm’
Despite their lauded climate models predicting the exact opposite
Yet google Antarctic ice and 100 articles appear about the death of the Arctic
Odd that
Nice of Alvin to drop by and offer some comments. I did check his Facebook page, but I didn’t see much discussion with sceptics. I suspect however that he votes Labor, which would suggest he is firmly of the Left. And some of the other comments on his page suggest substantial green leanings. All of which are likely to predispose him to a belief in global warming. Funnily enough, I’ll therefore take his views with a healthy dose of scepticism…
dennisambler says:
September 21, 2012 at 3:04 am
In addition to the PDO shift you note and they emphasize, they also show a correlation to recent Solar activity. It’s too short a period to make a big deal about, but is worth noting.
Looks like I can’t cut & paste the significant paragraph, let alone the graph.
I presume you mean the new bentham science paper. I can copy text OK, some graphs will copy as an image in Word, some won’t. I use Ashampoo “Snap Ya” for niggles like that.
I find it interesting the PDO reversed in 76 and temperatures went up and it reversed again in 98 (as described in the Papineau paper) and started cooling. Will it reverse again in 2020?
Its really a question of balance, in order to combat that pesky annoying thing called observed reality the alarmist side issues on the spot models, each one supposedly far more accurate and detailed than the last, each one more able to accurately predict whatever is required so far into the future the creators would either be in a nursing home unaware of their own name or pushing up daisies. This new ‘science’ deals in ‘could/if/maybe’ its the ‘science of possibilities’ tailored to fit an evidence free narrative. Models are the Trolls under the bridge, the monster in the cupboard, the scary story told to children if they misbehave. As a child I was repeatedly informed gleefully that if I didnt behave I would be duly sold to the Gypsies that passed through our part of the world, it did the trick I can tell you.
Models are the basis of the CAGW fraud because models can adjusted to predict pretty much whatever the input team requires of them, if you can find an upward/downward trend and then project that rise on an ever increasing/decreasing trajectory. If you are preaching to the choir then models are perfect because it will be taken as evidential fact instead of supposition. The aim is to scare us, the goal is to make us frightened enough to hand over power and authority to those who desire it in order for them to enact unpopular socio economic changes. Those who peddle their models have a target audience, they are the people who would flock to buy gas masks when faced with the threat of a biological attack not realising that gas masks are worse than useless unless accompanied by full NBC suits. In effect models are targeted subliminal advertising to stimulate an unreasoning knee jerk response.
Did I miss the part where these new high resolution models are going to used to determine optimal locations for a ten year series of core samples, so they can write an actual science paper?
From the weather news here in sweden last night:
“The arctic ice sheet is now so small that it will probably cause colder winters in europe due to a weaker Gulf Stream, we got interesting times ahead.”.
Interesting times ahead indeed…
OMG. The water in Antarctic is up to -12 C!!!!
Antarctica has a lot of ice because it was a cold winter. Vostok registered less than -100F a few times. Antarctica might be less variable that Arctic, it could explain why sea ice does not change as much. Also the feedback is not a planetary constant, it is dependent on many regional factors. Knowing that, it is clear that a different distribution of heat on this planet will change the feedback and create a variation in the global temperature signal. All we know with precision is that a warmer Arctic seems to be associated with a warmer global temperature.
Couple of thoughts on this; they seem to be trying to cover for the increased sea ice by stating that a warming antarctic causes the glaciers to move faster, reducing the (landed) ice cap. Then they throw in the antarctic ocean is also warming, which doesn’t seem to be agreeable to the increased sea ice thing in their narrative, but when you’re trying to make a point about warming . . .
Anyway; Is the southern ocean really warming? I don’t think that is correct, and is one of the issues with the whole ‘cannot account for the lack of recent warming and it’s a travesty that we can’t’ comment from Keith Trenberth back in 2009. I thought it was ocean data, and specifically the Southern and Indian oceans he was referring to.
Also; if I recall correctly, the Antarctic Ice Cap was actually gaining mass; in theory the warmer air carried more moisture, resulting in more snowfall over continental Antarctica, confirming the CAGW hypothesis.
Until it wasn’t; when GRACE came along, low and behold; the Antarctic Ice Cap was losing mass at an incredible rate; some hundred or more Gigatons per year. This confirmed the CAGW theory even more!
But then they recalibrated the GRACE measurements because they had failed to take isostatic changes into account, and the rate of ice loss was cut by more than half. CONFIRMING CAGW YET ANOTHER WAY!
Finally; New borehole measurements call even that into question, suggesting that ice has actually been increasing in the last 5 to 10 years. So CAGW must be right, like they said all along!!
So their theory that increased see ice is cause by the rapid melting of the landed ice cap and the warmer oceans and confirms CAGW as a theory, works just as well when sea ice is at a record extent while ice cap volume is increasing and an average sea temperature that is definitely not warming at this time and not warmer now than the long term average.
You’ve Just Got to Love Science, Man(n?)!
Alvin Stone says:
September 20, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Thank you very much for reprinting the media release here and for those who have shown interest in it. There are a few points I would like to make to clarify a few issues.
* I intentionally used “could” because I personally don’t like making definite and dire predictions. Alarmist predictions do a service to no one. That said, if the oceans around the Antarctic continue to warm they undoubtedly would cause the ice sheets to shift dramatically. Maybe I should have been more definite.
You definitely could have revealed yourself to be a supporter of The Cause of Indefinite Science, Could Science, or Speculation, however deeply rooted in nonsense all of it is.
You imply you could prefer to make indefinite and dire predictions. The authors could no doubt upbraid you for not being definite enough. You may undoubtedly receive some applause here for standing up for indefinite but likely doom since it requires even more government intervention to cure than definite impending doom.
It appears as though you could be doing service to no one but the alarmists and totalitarians.
* While I helped write the media release – which is part of my job – it was done with one of the authors of the paper. My job is just to make the science understandable. I get a byline for it but that is all.
It could be said you were paid to parrot BS. A well done job to be sure. Could you be a BS’er and a liar? There is not any science in that drivel.
As a former editor I am long past being thrilled by bylines. I have nothing to do with the science.
We figured that out pretty quickly, even though as an honest reporter you ought to have everything to do with it. We figured out pretty quickly that your author-assistant is likely or very likely in the same position.
Even though you are paid to parrot, you are complicit in what could be termed fraud.
* As I understand it from one of the authors, the modelling was used to confirm observations already coming from the Antarctic. The model was designed to reproduce those observations as closely as possible
Thank you for explaining that the models are completely valueless in predicting the future, since they were built only to mimic the behavior of discrete observations of the past. As a reporter of science, why did it not occur to you that all of the speculatory drivel about what “could” happen should not have been part of any serious scientific paper?
in an effort to better understand the processes beneath the ice sheets. It worked remarkably well and it is very likely the processes it reproduces are likely to be close to the reality.
It is good news to hear that some observed process is close to reality. Or are you trying to imply that the models can accurately predict the future of some massive terrestrial and atmospheric processes? If so, then it would a first in the history of mankind. The UK MET would come knocking on their doors, and every knee would bow.
I doubt those pseudo-scientists have a remarkable understanding of processes beneath the ice sheets, since the vastness of their speculatory forays implies they have no idea what they are talking about. They could just as well be children for all I know.
This new, high-resolution modelling approach will be critical to improving [ours and the IPCC’s] future predictions of Antarctica’s contribution to sea level over the coming century and beyond.
In case you forgot what the whole point of the “research paper” was, and your trumpeting of the farce. In reality, you could just be another stooge for the United Nations, definitely a blathering bunch of totalitarian nincompoops.
* I regularly engage with sceptics in a polite way on a Facebook page, which I have set up to get a sense of where the doubts lie. it is fascinating to be constantly challenged by them
If you are challenged by skeptics and doubters, then you hold a personal opinion which is obviously complicit in promoting what by all appearances is fraudulent activity by government paid scientists.
I have the distinct luxury of being able to ask climate scientists about these and, where I can, I try and reproduce their answers for those who visit the page.
A true reporter would call it a responsibility, and would in no wise suck up to the fraudsters just to get a little brown nose face time. You could be doing all of us a favor, instead of doing what you do do.
Kind Regards,
Centers for Disease Control
Alvin Stone says:
* I intentionally used “could” because I personally don’t like making definite and dire predictions. Alarmist predictions do a service to no one.
Neither do self serving alarmist speculations that are oversold and misleadingly advertised. The actual science you are reporting on here is very, very weak. It is not worthy of drawing any conclusions. You are attempting to advance an agenda in the public understanding based on that weak basis. Don’t pretend that you are not, by pointing to your use of weasel words – weak caveats that you simultaneously counter with expressions of absolute certainty, such as:
That said, if the oceans around the Antarctic continue to warm they undoubtedly would cause the ice sheets to shift dramatically. Maybe I should have been more definite.
You should have been substantially less definite in that comment. “Undoubtedly”? Really. No doubt whatsoever? Based on what, exactly? A brand new model that has never made so much as a single verified prediction? That such flimsy “evidence” is presented as the basis for “undoubtedly” and similar gross overstatements of certainty is the perrennial problem with you people.
* While I helped write the media release – which is part of my job – it was done with one of the authors of the paper. My job is just to make the science understandable.
Then perhaps you should have explained the science. You didn’t.
I am a scientist heavily involved in environmental monitoring and modeling, and I can just barely discern the facts of the research you are reporting on. I believe that, from my knowledge of the field, I can fill in the gaping holes. The layman is not going to be able to do that. They are going to misunderstand the facts. But you were plenty clear on communicating the substance of the speculations. Funny how that works.
* As I understand it from one of the authors, the modelling was used to confirm observations already coming from the Antarctic.
No. They made a model. They hindcast the model against reconstructions (themselves model results) of conditions from 20,000 years ago. At least that is what you report.
The bigger problem than you not understanding what they actually did, is the fact that you believe that they did something that they cannot possibly have done: “modelling was used to confirm observations”.
No. Models do not confirm observations. They cannot. Observations may (or may not) confirm models.
This fundamental confusion between imagination (models) and reality (observations), and the concomitant misunderstanding as to which is dependent on the other for validity, is endemic in this field and it thoroughly litters this press release of yours. You persistently refer to things as “findings” and “observations” when they are in fact model outputs, and you refer to the function of those model outputs as “showing” instead of “guessing at”. You even say this …
“The glaciers that responded most rapidly to warming oceans were found in the Weddell Sea, the Admundsen Sea, the central Ross Sea and in the Amery Trough.”
… using the same tense and syntax as would have been used to describe an actual event that really had occurred. No oceans warmed, no glaciers responded, nothing was found. This is an imaginary event, that never happpened. If you want to convey an understanding of the science, you need to describe model results in speculative terms, not as the object of past tense verbs.
The model was designed to reproduce those observations as closely as possible in an effort to better understand the processes beneath the ice sheets.
It is nice that their hindcast apparently went well. No indication is given as to how well – no quantification of the skill, let alone the derived error bands. Those must be huge given the timeframes involved, the use of reconstructions, etc.
Further, this is yet a hindcast. Those are nice for helping you pick a forecast on which you might want to stake the validity of your model with a documented prediction. Hindcasts do not substitute for that hypothesis testing, however. As someone else here astutely pointed out the other day: the financial markets are littered with models that do very, very well in hindcast, but they cannot predict worth shit.
It worked remarkably well and it is very likely the processes it reproduces are likely to be close to the reality.
It is very likely that it is likely to be close? Really.
When find yourself resorting to strained constructions like that, it should be an enormous red flag indicating to you that you need to stop talking, admit to yourself and others that you don’t know what you are talking about, and stop with the wild speculations. This I say to you, and this you should be saying to the people that are feeding you lines of crap like that about their own research. If your job is truly to make the science understandable, then that would include conveying the understanding that the scientists involved are too enamoured of their own BS when they obviously are. You can tell that when they give you the “Very likely that it is likely that the reconstructed reality is close to the assertion that the potential is that it could maybe be worse than we thought…” routine.
* I regularly engage with sceptics in a polite way on a Facebook page, which I have set up to get a sense of where the doubts lie.
Perhaps you should expand your purpose.
Mods Looks like a failure to close italics error above.
And for once, it doesn’t appear that the error was mine (cue video of demons ice skating). Probably near the end of CDC’s post.
[Fixed. It is a WordPress bug that pops up occasionally. — mod.]
[Fixed. It is a WordPress bug that pops up occasionally. — mod.]
Try again. 🙂
[Found another one. Fixed. — mod.]
Nice response, JJ.. Nothing more to add. 🙂
Otter says:
September 20, 2012 at 2:04 pm
Then how do they explain that the Antarctic is gaining faster than it is losing, and that it has gained 45 meters in depth in the past few decades?
Where did you get that figure from? Seems to me that nobody measures the altitude of the ice in the middle of Antarctica. The only figure ever quoted for the altitude of the South Pole Station is 2,835m (9,301ft). Apparently 3in water equivalent accumulates every year so you would expect there to have been 4-5m of altitude change since the place was built in 1958. Where’s the record? Where are the high precision altitude records since GPS became operational in 1984?
Anyone got some figures? Is the center of the continent tending to squeeze out those glaciers faster due to the additional pressure from ice in the middle?
Why oh why oh why do skeptics continually confuse sea ice with land ice in Antarctica?
As far as we know:
Antarctic sea ice has increased (a little) over the satellite period
Antarctic land ice has decreased (a little) over a shorter period
There are uncertainties to be sure, but at least, for goodness sake, know the difference between land ice and sea ice. Sheesh!
Sorry, what records are being broken by Antarctic sea ice?
Just a general note about the University of NSW, (UNSW), as I went there for 3 years in the 1980s.
It is generally a very left-leaning institution, always has been. There were always students somewhere giving out magazines of ‘Resistance’, expounding on the glories of Marxism, and so on. I thought then, that this was possibly because teh UNSW exists in the shadow of the more recognised and generally very conservative University of Sydney down the road, the bastion of the old English conservative colonial elite. There was a sort of jealous rilvalry for power and recognition, as well as an inferiority/superiority complex going on between the 2 institutions, at least that is how I interpreted it. (Remember, Australia is still essentially a British Colony, we never had any breakaway ‘Declaration of Independance’ sort of thing-and people might be surprised just how much influence the UK still has on basic culture and identity). Fundamentalist Christians were also very prominent at UNSW, althought these were Church of England fundamentalists, which were an unusual type unlike most of those in America, who tended towards Calvinist ideas.
I had a philosophy lecturer who was a Marxist at the UNSW and suggested everyone should be paid the same wages, regardless of their job. Leftist Labour politicians were often invited to speak at rallies (I never saw a right wing politician speak there, but they could have I suppose). There were same sex toilets in some areas. The Earth Sciences department in the 1990s when I attended was strong in minerals and mining science, but went all environmental about the year 2000, and has been so ever since. I don’t think you can study minerals and mining there anymore, despite the mining boom since.
I suspect the same sort of people handing out leaflets on Marxism in the 1980s have now swapped them for climate change. It’s a crude generalisation to be sure, but it is no surprise to me at least that the climate research currently churned out at the UNSW is staunchly alarmist.
Well we have a demonstration of this theory right here in San Francisco where there are all these tall buildings sitting on the sides of steep hills that lead down into San Francisco Bay; they are just like those rivers of ice in Antarctica.. The floating sea ice shelves around Antarctica stop those ice rivers from simply running off the edge into the Southern Ocean.
In San Francisco, what stop all those buildings from sliding down the hills into SF Bay, is all of the cruise ships tied up at the piers, the buildings can’t slide down with those floating ships blocking their way. If all the ships left at the same time, we could be in trouble with all those buildings down in the bay.
Since it is clear there is no major change in Antarctic ice but there is a huge one in the Arctic surely one should at least be looking for high temperature and localised sources in the Arctic.This is even more true now that without looking for then several have been discovered and have even been misused by the AGW cult to suggest the problem with AGW is worse than thought rather than climate scientists have screwed up badly which should be the logical conclusion.
Scientists should be especially checking areas where large chunks of ice have broke off. It wont happen of course as AGW has funds so tightly sewn up on the committees.
“research” … “study” … “study results” – such a perversion of language. It’s an unproven model.
Antarctic temps have now skyrocketed to -101F…
This surely spells trouble….but not for who you think!
“Global Warming Victims in Alaska Lose Novel Suit”
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/09/21/50538.htm