From the “no matter what happens it is climate change” department. So, according to this, when the Arctic loses ice it is due to climate change ‘global warming’ when the Antarctic gains ice it is due to ‘climate change’ and is just as bad. WUWT readers may recall that a few years ago NASA concluded that wind patterns were a major factor in Arctic sea ice loss, pushing the mobile sea ice further south where it melted. Here’s their press release form 2007. Now from the British Antarctic Survey and NASA JPL comes a similar but opposite conclusion for the Antarctic.
I’ve downloaded the time lapse and converted it to YouTube for everybody’s benefit since all the folks at BAS offer is an FTP link with this press release that few will visit. See the video I inserted below.
Why Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change
The first direct evidence that marked changes to Antarctic sea ice drift have occurred over the last 20 years, in response to changing winds, is published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. Scientists from NERC’s British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena California explain why, unlike the dramatic losses reported in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change (they neglected to mention natural variation here – Anthony).
Maps created by JPL using over 5 million individual daily ice motion measurements captured over a period of 19 years by four US Defense Meteorological satellites show, for the first time, the long-term changes in sea ice drift around Antarctica.
Lead author, Dr Paul Holland of BAS says: “Until now these changes in ice drift were only speculated upon, using computer models of Antarctic winds. This study of direct satellite observations shows the complexity of climate change. The total Antarctic sea-ice cover is increasing slowly, but individual regions are actually experiencing much larger gains and losses that are almost offsetting each other overall. We now know that these regional changes are caused by changes in the winds, which in turn affect the ice cover through changes in both ice drift and air temperature. The changes in ice drift also suggest large changes in the ocean surrounding Antarctica, which is very sensitive to the cold and salty water produced by sea-ice growth.”
“Sea ice is constantly on the move; around Antarctica the ice is blown away from the continent by strong northward winds. Since 1992 this ice drift has changed. In some areas the export of ice away from Antarctica has doubled, while in others it has decreased significantly.”
Sea ice plays a key role in the global environment – reflecting heat from the sun and providing a habitat for marine life. At both poles sea ice cover is at its minimum during late summer. However, during the winter freeze in Antarctica this ice cover expands to an area roughly twice the size of Europe. Ranging in thickness from less than a metre to several metres, the ice insulates the warm ocean from the frigid atmosphere above.
The new research also helps explain why observed changes in the amount of sea-ice cover are so different in the two Polar Regions. The Arctic has experienced dramatic ice losses in recent decades while the overall ice extent in the Antarctic has increased slightly. However, this small Antarctic increase is actually the result of much larger regional increases and decreases, which are now shown to be caused by wind-driven changes. In places, increased northward winds have caused the sea-ice cover to expand outwards from Antarctica. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by land, so changed winds cannot cause Arctic ice to expand in the same way.
Dr Ron Kwok, JPL says, “The Antarctic sea ice cover interacts with the global climate system very differently than that of the Arctic, and these results highlight the sensitivity of the Antarctic ice coverage to changes in the strength of the winds around the continent.”
There has been contrasting climate change observed across the Antarctic in recent decades. The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed as much as anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere, while East Antarctica has shown little change or even a small cooling around the coast. The new research improves understanding of present and future climate change. It is important to distinguish between the Antarctic Ice Sheet – glacial ice – which is losing volume, and Antarctic sea ice – frozen seawater – which is expanding.
This research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The paper ‘Wind-driven trends in Antarctic sea ice motion’ by Paul R. Holland of British Antarctic Survey and Ron Kwok of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, USA is published in Nature Geoscience this week.
Issued by British Antarctic Survey
h/t to WUWT reader “Forrest”
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LazyTeenager says:
November 12, 2012 at 12:22 pm
LT – ah! that might explain some of your posts appearing as comedy? or should that be a comedy of errors! 😉 (No insult intended!)
I don’t accept the idea that wind will cause the Antarctic sea ice to expand but not the Arctic sea ice.,there is loads of room for the Arctic sea ice to be pushed out by the wind.The Antarctic sea ice is further from the pole than the arctic sea ice is and would melt more if it was being pushed out by the wind.
OK, so we need to worry about Antartica shrinking because a lot of the ice is not floating but on rock and could cause sea levels to rise whereas we don’t need to worry about the Arctic shrinking because most of it is floating and can’t cause sea levels to rise. But Antartica is growing and the Arctic is shrinking, so we don’t need to worry and can all go back to sleep, right?
Monty: For whatever reasons, poeple like you have a difficult time in your minds distinguishing between what is essentially a pseudo-religious ideology masquerading as science on one hand and what is true science on the other. And you are certainly not alone in the world. Many people can’t.
Those who have created and led the way in religious cults and movements (which includes CAGW here) throughout history have demonstrated clever and skillful ways in which they can manipulate science, facts and reasoning to take advantage of the vulnerable masses who do not have the education, understanding, proper mindset, life experiences and wisdom that comes with age to question their cult leaders (try Googling Stalin and Lysenkoism) . These gullible masses are so easily brainwashed that starting a cult-like, pseudo-religious movement like CAGW becomes both very tempting and profitable to those with with the skills, the knowledge and the gaul to do it. The cult leaders know that they need to acquire some degree of control over people, money and political power to pursue their ends, whatever those ends may be. And a cult is the perfect path to take in pursuit of those ends.
I don’t know how old you are Monty. If you are young though, you need to undertand that you are one of those vulnerable people I’m talking about here precisely because of your youth. The young are the most vulnerable of all to cults.
With regards to Anthony’s post here, it would appear that NASA is contradicting itself. One does not need to be a scientist here (and I am not one) to see it. CAGW-induced wind patterns causing ice melting in the Arctic, but then causing MORE ice in the Antartctic? Really? Monty, a contradictory snafu like this from the cult leaders (if it can be called a snafu) should raise a red flag that triggers a desire among the cult followers to begin questioning the religion.
Today’s CAGW cult leaders, including Hanson, Mann, McKibben and others, are losing their grip on (and concern for) the difference between right from wrong, between the moral and immoral, between the ethical and the unethical. They have gone horribly astray by the lack of a conscience, questionable values (which does not necessarily include climate and/or environmental protection), and giant egos that demand regular feedings of the belief that they are gifts to humanity. These all serve to explain their behavior. This is not to say that the Earth’s climate and environment do not require our attention and protection (when shown conclusively to be necessary). They certainly do. With that said, the problem here does not necessarily lie with the the ends of the CAGW cultists, but with the MEANS to those ends. The actions we take on climate and/or environmental protection (if any) must be based on what sound, provable science tells us, and nothing else.
Hanson, Mann and the others are of the false belief that thay have a license to perpetrate fraud because of the ends they are pursuing. They do not. The sooner that they are exposed to the whole world for their fraudulence, the better.
Juice says:
November 12, 2012 at 7:08 am
But aren’t Antarctic temperatures also decreasing?
… leading to stronger katabatic winds.
Quelle surprise!
In an interesting, if unintended, experiment, the Australian government managed to create Arctic like conditions in Antarctica, and to their surprise the ice melted.
AUSTRALIA’S $46 million Antarctic airstrip is melting, leaving the government scrambling to find a new air link to the frozen continent.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/antarctic-airstrip-melting-away-20121023-283kx.html#ixzz2C3IOObEV
Those planes will deposit a layer of black carbon on the airstrip causing it to melt. Of course no one is admitting this, as none of the climate scientists predicted this, and it will lead to the (correct) conclusion Arctic ice melt is due to black carbon, rather than AGW.
A wrongly worded sentence in my last post. Should have said: “This is not to say that the Earth’s climate and environment do not require our attention and protection. They certainly do when it is shown by science to be conclusively necessary”. The essay applies to both Monty and LazyTeenager. Thanks.
“If Monty did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”.
Apologies to Voltaire.
I posit that Lazy T is as good at comedy as he is at climate science. He has no discernible sense of humour.
“Sea ice plays a key role in the global environment – reflecting heat from the sun and providing a habitat for marine life.” One problem I have with these statements about the massive effect of the change in albedo at high latitudes when sea is is present or absent is that for half the year these regions receive no light at all and for the other half the sun is at such a oblique angle to the surface that the amount of solar radiation per square metre must be almost negligible. How can these small surface areas (relative to the entire planet’s surface area) be so important when they receive such a small amount of direct sunlight?
the sun is at such a oblique angle to the surface that the amount of solar radiation per square metre must be almost negligible.
This is a common misunderstanding. In fact, high latitudes receive more solar radiation in mid-summer than the tropics.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page3.php
Note, I don’t believe these numbers take clouds and atmospheric scattering into account.
Perfect title – Bipolar Disorder – ALL OF YOU GUYS ARE SUFFERING one way or another; from the regular polar crap ====you have being avoiding your medicine, your medicine is on my blog
1] common brainwashing for the last 20years: ”ice is white, reflects sunlight – minus ice = GLOBAL warming” WOW! and another WOW! (assault on the ice started by the Warmist ”scientist / bias media = with ice crusher ships – making lots of corridors – ruff water smashes the rest… I have given the name of that ice in my book: ” the Whale’s White Greenhouse” Warmist scientist and bias media = Vandals
1B} my real proofs, that both camps avoid for the last few years:: a] on individual polar cap, there is NO sunlight to reflect for 6 months – but lots of unlimited coldness the water to accumulate, without ice as shield / insulator. Everybody is scared from my real proofs and runs for cover – apart of few; tried to point that is no such a thing as coldness, only heat (ridiculing me for not using Kalvin – instead of facing the truth) Here is now sentence on this post: ” the ice insulates the warm ocean from the frigid atmosphere above” Hallelujah = NASA and time for all of you to start plagiarizing me; instead of admitting that I was correct all the time and you were ALL wrong all the time. ”Gentleman’s genes deformed on both sides of the sandpit”
2] water has mirror effect , reflects lots of sunlight – go in the morning on the east coast / evening on the western – look in the horizon -> you will start sneezing, same as if you look directly at the sun
3] ice on tera-firma is melted from below, day and night / summer and winter – by the geothermal heat!!! b] needs replenishing that deficit ===== when is El Nino, more ice is added on part of Antarctic that gets winds from S/E Pacific / but less on the side that gets winds from Australia and south Africa === Warmist select the side that has less ice and scare the people === fake Skeptics select the opposite side and ridicule the Warmist… Then changes to La Nina = the noise changes for short period – until each mob discovers suitable place on antarctic to be advertised…
REALITY: ice ”starts” melting, when temp gets above ZERO centigrade!!!!!. In your cool-box if you have 2-3kg of ice; starts melting earlier, than if you have 7kg of ice. (antarctic has more than 14kg of ice… b] temp on average is ”TWICE AS COLD than in your deep freezer” Hello Hansen’s zombies, from both camps!
If you would like to EXPOSE the crimes in progress; because ice on the polar caps is melted for different reasons, not heat === needs replenishing every season, by ”freeze-drying moisture from the air” If you are not suffering from ”TRUTH-PHOBIA” here: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/midi-ice-age-can-be-avoided/
Juice says: ”But aren’t Antarctic temperatures also decreasing?”
Juice, temp is not increasing, or decreasing. b] the amount of ice has nothing to do with the phony GLOBAL warming. c] the planet needs to warm up by 30C,, ice on antarctic to ”START” melting because of heat.
2] there is PERMANENT ice thousands of km north (closer to the equator) in New Zealand, Patagonia. The amount of ice depends on the amount of ”raw material” available to renew the ice that is melted by the geothermal heat on land – and by speeding / slowing currents of salty water below the ice, on the sea http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/midi-ice-age-can-be-avoided/
The long term temperature trend in the Antarctic is declining.
Another view. And another.
The Arctic has much less than one-tenth the ice of Antarctica. Greenland has much more ice than the Arctic. If all the Arctic ice completely melted yeear-round, it would be a net benefit. There really is no downside to less Arctic ice. Of course, complete melting will not happen. But it is about the only thing the alarmist crowd has to scare people with.
Philip Bradley says: ”This is a common misunderstanding. In fact, high latitudes receive more solar radiation in mid-summer than the tropics”
Phil, this statement of yours; shows that you can use your brains – that is dangerous thing in the blogosphere = where everybody is parroting only what Hansen said, or didn’t say.
Are you trying to be the ” the white sheep in the family”? if yes, join me.
Monty,
3 things.
1). Anthony didn’t actually show any disagreement with the science. Go read it again. He observed politically convenient paradoxical results between two papers. So…why do you think he even disagrees with the science of this paper? What exactly are you insisting he rebut?
He’s made an observation, and put it out there for discussion, and someone may even be able to shed some light on the issue…but it apparently won’t be you.
2). Your confusion is about the nature of the piece. This is a news piece about science and the politics of science and CAGW, not a piece of science.
Scientists publish reports and papers to impart knowledge; interested parties who may or may not be scientists read and learn; if they then observe that the science is contradictory, they can publicize that fact.
It’s not up to the readers to do the science; it’s now up to the scientists, who have been challenged by the spotlight put upon the paradox, to work together and do the science to resolve the contradictions.
It is very strange that you want to require the reporter to do the science; do you require police reporters to do policework and autopsies? Political reporters to run for office? Nonsense. There is no magical geas put upon the reporter to then participate in what they report. Arguably the opposite, actually.
Some of the greatest journalistic revelations of all time occurred because someone noticed a paradox or a contradiction. I think maybe that’s why you’re so desperate to keep Anthony from highlighting one.
3). We all know your requirement that Anthony do some science in order to have credibility criticizing papers is something you don’t even believe in. Why? Because following your same logic, you should do the hard work of running a huge blog before criticizing the blog.
Let’s get this right – the northerly winds blow very cold air off the melting ice sheet across the ice already forming on the “warm ocean” and freeze the “leads” so created, thus extending the ice extent. The “warm ocean” is thus insulated from the cold air and warms up the continent during the Antarctic summer, melting more of the ice sheet – presumably when the winds blow southward again. There’s a logic disconnect here, but I can’t quite put my finger on it……..
Perhaps it’s a new meaning of “warm” which I find hard to grasp. Perhaps it’s a lack of understanding where all the cold northerly-streaming air comes from, and where the presumed warmer southerly summer winds go to. Perhaps the “hollow-Earth” theory has something to commend it after all. What does sound hollow is this rash of “we didn’t understand it before but now it’s all clear, and it doesn’t falsify climate change/global warming” papers and articles, including “the lack of ozone causes the cold, and the cold causes the lack of ozone”. Circular argument anyone?
I found the phrase “the northward winds are spreading the ice” some what problematic.
If you are at the south pole and do a full 360 turn you are facing north the entire time.
This would mean that CO2 is causing a 360 degree north wind from the south pole to spread the ice. The down draught at the south pole must be a killer.
Clutching at straws comes to mind with this non sense, do these so called scientists actually use facts or real data or do they just run with the vibe of AGW and project conclusions.
Then along comes Monty, Monty you are full of it, Thus you are the full Monty. Good Grief.
Hi RDC11
My argument with those at WUWT is that they tend to have a very superficial view of what science means. It seems to me that it is incredibly naieve to say: AGW cannot be happening because Antarctic sea ice is increasing. This is unbelievably simplistic. There are lots of reasons why sea ice in the Antarctic could increase and be caused by AGW at the same time that Arctic sea ice is decreasing and this be caused by AGW. The influence of meltwater, wind directions and strength, the effects of wind regimes and temperature, decreasing salinity caused by sea ice production all contribute to the picture we see. It’s only when recognising the complexity of this that we get a better understanding of climate change. This is why I said earlier that ‘climate change is complicated’. Childish assertions by lots of people here along the lines of ‘how can AGW be causing Arctic ice reduction and Antarctic ice increase’ just shows that most posters here have a low level of interatction with how science works.
Science is complicated and sometimes counter-intuitive. If WUWT wants to be taken seriously then it needs to submit some analysis to the peer-reviewed litearture. Clearly WUWT doesn’t want to be taken seriously, except to those who have already made their minds up because of their ideological blinkers.
This looks like the beginnings of the bipolar seesaw that marks both the beginning and the end of interglacials – see Tzedakis et al 2012. The full blown seesaw occurs 3kyrs after glacial inception but it is probable that it begins thousands of years previously and builds up to full strength during glacial inception.
Two other important points from this paper:
1) Glacial inception always takes place when obliquity is decreasing and never after the obliquity minimum.
2) Glacial inception occurs approximately 10 kyr after peak interglacial conditions in temperature
and CO2.
In regard to (1), it seems possible that decreasing obliquity somehow destabilises the N-S inter-hemisphere symmetry of ocean circulation, leading to the bipolar seesaw.
In regard to (2) it is curious that over the last 8-9000 years since the Holocene peak, temperature has fallen but CO2 has steadily risen. WUWT?
In any case all this indicates glacial inception within the next 1-2000 years.
What a lot of winter sea ice north of the Antarctic Circle where it does get some sun all winter.
And here is some bull[snip] from Indian MSM:
“In summer this year, the Arctic Ocean ice melt reached a record high level. Now, with the southern hemisphere summer approaching, scientists’ attention is focused on climate change effects on the Antarctic Ocean.”
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/will-antarcticas-biodiversity-be-saved/article4051549.ece
Monty:
Your post at November 13, 2012 at 3:26 am begins by saying
The remainder of your post continues in similar vein; i.e. it consists of statements which are the opposite of the truth.
Your view of “what science means” is mistaken, and “those at WUWT” have a complete and sophisticated understanding of science. But you refuse to learn from replies to your superficial and mistaken posts.
Nobody says;
“AGW cannot be happening because Antarctic sea ice is increasing”.
If you had read the replies to you then you would have seen that people are pointing out
(a) the increase to Antarctic sea ice is the opposite of a prediction from the AGW hypothesis.
and
(b) there is no evidence that AGW is happening
and
(c) it is the responsibility of those advocating the AGW hypothesis to provide evidence that AGW is happening
and
(d) until there is evidence that AGW is happening then there is no reason to suppose it is.
The remainder of your post could be dissected in similar manner. Please stop posting erroneous assertions and, instead, learn from the information in the archives of WUWT.
Richard
I see that Monty STILL cannot provide us with his explanation of the “basic settled science”…
Typical CAGW believer…
Since the average depth of the Arctic Ocean is 1000m, why don’t we just dredge and fill it to create a land mass for the ice to hold on to? It seems that if you slow the movement, you can significantly limit the ice loss. I realize the forced involved are monumental, however with the proper engineering it might be possible. Dubai uses interconnecting concrete blocks as a base, and the water flow around the features are engineered. It could be that several small islands is all it takes to hold the ice back from drifting too far south. Just a little drag might be all it takes…
Then the albedo of the [now permanent] north pole might keep temperatures down and reverse the ice loss.