The wailing today is that the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet has already begun.
It’s pretty bad when other environmental reporters start calling you out on it, such as NYT’s Andrew Revkin did today.
Awful misuse of "Collapse" in headlines on centuries-long ice loss in W. Antarctica. See rates in papers. Same as '09 http://t.co/kk48ztySvZ
— Andrew Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ (@Revkin) May 12, 2014
Yes, a slow affair indeed. Truly an abuse of the headline. Buried below the headline in the article, there is agreement with Revkin:
But the researchers said that even though such a rise could not be stopped, it is still several centuries off, and potentially up to 1,000 years away.
A lot can happen in several centuries, why even in the last couple of years Antarctic has seen record levels on Antarctic sea ice.
And the temperature isn’t cooperating either:
RSS Southern Polar Temperature Lower Troposphere (TLT) – 1979 to Present for the area where sea ice forms (60 to 70S)
Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) – Microwave Sounding Units (MSU) – Click the pic to view at source
[previous graph removed – wrong latitude span and no replacement, my mistake -Anthony]
UPDATE: Revkin gives more reasoning on “collapse” here:
Consider Clashing Scientific and Societal Meanings of ‘Collapse’ When Reading Antarctic Ice News
Here is the paper the claim is based on:
Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011.
Abstract
We measure the grounding line retreat of glaciers draining the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica using Earth Remote Sensing (ERS-1/2) satellite radar interferometry from 1992 to 2011. Pine Island Glacier retreated 31 km at its center, with most retreat in 2005–2009 when the glacier un-grounded from its ice plain. Thwaites Glacier retreated 14 km along its fast-flow core and 1 to 9 km along the sides. Haynes Glacier retreated 10 km along its flanks. Smith/Kohler glaciers retreated the most, 35 km along its ice plain, and its ice shelf pinning points are vanishing. These rapid retreats proceed along regions of retrograde bed elevation mapped at a high spatial resolution using a mass conservation technique (MC) that removes residual ambiguities from prior mappings. Upstream of the 2011 grounding line positions, we find no major bed obstacle that would prevent the glaciers from further retreat and draw down the entire basin.
And here is the press release from AGU:
New study indicates loss of West Antarctic glaciers appears unstoppable
12 May 2014
Joint Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new study finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.
The study presents multiple lines of evidence, incorporating 40 years of observations that indicate the glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica “have passed the point of no return,” according to glaciologist and lead author Eric Rignot, of the University of California Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The new study has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
These glaciers already contribute significantly to sea level rise, releasing almost as much ice into the ocean annually as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. They contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters) and are melting faster than most scientists had expected. Rignot said these findings will require an upward revision to current predictions of sea level rise.
“This sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come,” Rignot said. “A conservative estimate is it could take several centuries for all of the ice to flow into the sea.”
Three major lines of evidence point to the glaciers’ eventual demise: the changes in their flow speeds, how much of each glacier floats on seawater, and the slope of the terrain they are flowing over and its depth below sea level. In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters in April, Rignot’s research group discussed the steadily increasing flow speeds of these glaciers over the past 40 years. This new study examines the other two lines of evidence.
The glaciers flow out from land to the ocean, with their leading edges afloat on the seawater. The point on a glacier where it first loses contact with land is called the grounding line. Nearly all glacier melt occurs on the underside of the glacier beyond the grounding line, on the section floating on seawater.
Just as a grounded boat can float again on shallow water if it is made lighter, a glacier can float over an area where it used to be grounded if it becomes lighter, which it does by melting or by the thinning effects of the glacier stretching out. The Antarctic glaciers studied by Rignot’s group have thinned so much they are now floating above places where they used to sit solidly on land, which means their grounding lines are retreating inland.
“The grounding line is buried under a thousand or more meters of ice, so it is incredibly challenging for a human observer on the ice sheet surface to figure out exactly where the transition is,” Rignot said. “This analysis is best done using satellite techniques.”
The team used radar observations captured between 1992 and 2011 by the European Earth Remote Sensing (ERS-1 and -2) satellites to map the grounding lines’ retreat inland. The satellites use a technique called radar interferometry, which enables scientists to measure very precisely — within less than a quarter of an inch — how much Earth’s surface is moving. Glaciers move horizontally as they flow downstream, but their floating portions also rise and fall vertically with changes in the tides. Rignot and his team, which includes researchers from UC Irvine and JPL, mapped how far inland these vertical motions extend to locate the grounding lines.
The accelerating flow speeds and retreating grounding lines reinforce each other. As glaciers flow faster, they stretch out and thin, which reduces their weight and lifts them farther off the bedrock. As the grounding line retreats and more of the glacier becomes waterborne, there’s less resistance underneath, so the flow accelerates.
Slowing or stopping these changes requires pinning points — bumps or hills rising from the glacier bed that snag the ice from underneath. To locate these points, researchers produced a more accurate map of bed elevation that combines ice velocity data from ERS-1 and -2 and ice thickness data from NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission and other airborne campaigns. The results confirm no pinning points are present upstream of the present grounding lines in five of the six glaciers. Only Haynes Glacier has major bedrock obstructions upstream, but it drains a small sector and is retreating as rapidly as the other glaciers.
The bedrock topography is another key to the fate of the ice in this basin. All the glacier beds slope deeper below sea level as they extend farther inland. As the glaciers retreat, they cannot escape the reach of the ocean, and the warm water will keep melting them even more rapidly.
The accelerating flow rates, lack of pinning points and sloping bedrock all point to one conclusion, Rignot said.
“The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be unstoppable,” he said. “The fact that the retreat is happening simultaneously over a large sector suggests it was triggered by a common cause, such as an increase in the amount of ocean heat beneath the floating sections of the glaciers. At this point, the end of this sector appears to be inevitable.”
Because of the importance of this part of West Antarctica, NASA’s Operation IceBridge will continue to monitor its evolution closely during this year’s Antarctica deployment, which begins in October. IceBridge uses a specialized fleet of research aircraft and the most sophisticated suite of science instruments ever assembled to characterize changes in thickness of glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice.
For additional images and video related to this new finding, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/1m6YZSf
For additional information on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its potential contribution to sea level rise, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/1oIfSlO
For more information on Operation IceBridge, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge
###
Goldenberg is completely deranged.
Witness
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/08/white-men-environmental-movement-leadership?commentpage=1
“Why are so many white men trying to save the planet without the rest of us?
Climate change affects minorities and women, the elderly and the poor. But the leadership of the environmental movement is pale and male. That doesn’t look like progress”
Best pay her no heed. She’s a Guardian shill of the very worst sort. And that’s saying something.
[snip – over the top – Anthony]
@Bob Bajini says:May 12, 2014 at 7:24 pm
=====================
Bob. Look at the Goldenberg article I link to above. We rest our case. Suzanne is a propagandist. End of. And that once august newspaper, The Guardian, whose forefather, the Manchester Guardian I was brought up on, in its day a true bastion of classical Liberal* values, should hang its head in eternal shame. It’s trash now, of the worst sort.
* Ille est, not the modern Left Liberal, which, in newspeak is of course anything BUT Liberal.
The narrative works. Lie first, lie big. Just watching a BBC Breakfast item on the newspapers at 5:50am and they talked about not being able to do anything about global warming as its already here. No mention of the 1000 years, everything was couched in terms of immediacy. Even journalists don’t read the small print and are fooled by the article. Ultimate scaremongering
If you like your alarmism past the crazy tipping point look
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/melting-of-west-antarctics-glaciers-pass-point-of-no-return/27340/
Jeff in Calgary says:
May 12, 2014 at 3:22 pm
“Isn’t this about a floating ice sheet? How is a floating ice sheet melting going to raise sea levels? Am I missing something?”
I think the reasoning is this: Antarctic ice extends to high elevations but slopes down to the Ocean. The downhill moving ice gets to the ocean and while having a “grounding” comes in contact with the sea ice. As “global warming” melts the sea ice, that will remove the back-pressure and allow the sloping land ice to more rapidly move downhill. Someone has suggested this is like the cork in a bottle of bubbly – once movement has started it cannot be stopped. So into the ocean the land ice goes and the sea level rises. We are doomed.
Then again, why hasn’t this happened during any of the previous warm periods?
You will have to followup on this if you like. I’m not inclined to read much of this junk.
“No one”? Nonsense. I left a long post about the substance:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/the-guardians-suzanne-goldenberg-jumps-the-shark-again-gets-called-out-by-nyt/#comment-1634668
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=940
Guess the sea level rise has gone missing along with the missing heat.
Bob: “Both call and response are solely concerned with the language of the Guardian article. No one has evidenced any interest in pursuing a discourse concerning the substance of the papers on which the media is reporting.”
Indeed, this is an article about the stupidity of Goldberg’s pseudo-journalism, not about the papers.
Some crazy people just can’t feel ‘happy’ and ‘contented’ unless they think the world is about to end…
When the most so called “powerful” people (Obama , Putin and that gang) can stand in front of us (their employers) and blatantly lie. What the h..ll does anyone expect from a so called “journalist” at the Guardian or for that matter any MSM outlet and a guy like Carney? All they are after are money and grants (paid by you btw).
I’m with noaaprogrammer above. I think we should actually start putting out stuff just as absurd about global climate spots, stating the most dire made-up news possible that has a basis in truth. It will add to the garbage and people will start to see through it. I’ll start:
http://www.thehighesttides.com/
“Scientists are concerned about rising high tides after it was revealed that the tide in the Bay of Fundy could rise by up to 53 metres this year. Scientists point out that if global oceans rise by the same amount then 4 billion people will be displaced, and global starvation will cause the death of the rest of the world’s population. Scientists have called for more funding to study this enormous threat to mankind.”
This type of accounting probably makes sense to those more familiar to analyzing the spending habits of the one percent, but normal folks know that to find accumulation of something you consider income as well as outgo. Glaciers eventually flow into the oceans just as rivers do and rivers don’t raise the levels of the oceans without a deficit of return.
Any movement that can find an AGW link between their climate hypothesis and the kidnapping of school girls in Nigeria is not to be considered sane.
Any observers that have watched this thing from “overpopulation” to “global ice-age” to “mass famine” to “global warming” to “climate change,” and expect an apology from the wrong headed Left that has serially proposed such nonsense are equally insane.
To the Left (however it is currently manifested): The only truth is that which advances the cause and that which retards the cause is false because the cause is the ultimate truth.
Where science goes wrong is in fighting religion with facts and logic. Religion stands on different legs than science. The wrongness of these serial failures of predictions* is in suggesting that, because of their cause, “they” have some innate right to tell me what kind of light bulb, deodorant or food I can use.
* These were not failures of the movement as in all cases the serial failures (failures from a science standpoint) actually served the purposes of the movement, or cause. The motivating crises are disposable and, like shoes, wear out and need replacing from time to time.
A good indicator of a bullshit article is when there is no comments section included at the bottom. The bbc and guardian don’t allow comments on their propaganda material.
conscious1 says:
“The WAIS has disappeared completely during past interglacials.”
Actually there is almost no concrete evidence for this, and a lot against it. For example there is ice older than the last Interglacial in a number of places in West Antarctica. According to the ANDRILL core the last time the WAIS was perhaps significantly smaller than now was during MIS 31, the 14:th last Interglacial, more than a million years ago.
BBC used it as a “main” headliine this morning?? Yawnn!! nothing to see here move along LOL!
A few of the comments above refer to a lack of sceptical comment at the Guardian;there is a very good reason for that , they ban anyone who argues with the resident warmista trolls or who points out that the articles , especially by Nutticelli are essentially extraordinarily lazy “journalism”.
I have been banned for the third time by the muppets. I,m sure they can find a consensus whenever they like , just shut out the dissent.
Just have to figure out my next guise to get back in and wind them up.
Maybe we should all be grateful to her for the early warning. Ö¿Ö
Sorry if this has been said already but here’s a thought. The premise of the paper is that once the ice thins, or sea level rises, the grounding line will move south allowing the ice to be further melted from below. If this ice started off as the lower part of a glacier it is highly likely to contain a substantial quantity of ground-up rock that has been scraped of the continent. When the ice melts this rock will be deposited, until the sea bed is raised to the new level of the ice sheet and equilibrium is restored. The runaway melting that the paper claims would thus be avoided.
Based on my veranda thermometers temperature curves, my Z1 HP supercomputer and bad statistical knowledge I make the following predictions: There will be much more ice in 3125. Because there is so much water on the planet which still is not ice. And my refrigerator tells me, even when there is warm air behind it, it is very cold inside. This is based on physical principles. So global warming will cause cooling. Now, prove me wrong for my year 3125 predictions.
It’s too bad the earth surface can’t rebound IF there is less ice atop it.
Then we might have had a chance.
If only…
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Skippy darling, your logical train has slipped into the sea. One cannot reliably assess or criticize Goldenberg’s putative sensationalist presentation of the authors’ ideas without examining those ideas.The charge leveled on Goldenberg – whether accurate or not – is predicated upon the content of the scientific articles.
Thus Spoke Bajini
“Skiphil says:
May 12, 2014 at 7:37 pm
uhhhh Bob, maybe that’s because the thread IS about the Guardian article and its hyped presentation of the putative scientific facts. You are free to display your scientific prowess at any time, but spare us the sanctimonious twaddle about “jokers” who comment on the actual lead posting.”
Jimbo says:
May 12, 2014 at 4:56 pm
Captain, the ice is breaking up.
IN the last decade of the nineteenth century, between 1892 and 1897,
————————
Tying in with Jimbo’s account from another source,
19th century-
http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/Iceberg.htm
In 1893 (after arriving in Nelson in September 92), the iron sailing ship “Margaret Galbraith” was homeward bound around Cape Horn. Mr. N.H. Burgess the 2nd Officer reported that from three days north of the Falklands to about one weeks sailing north of the Falklands they were “among the ice,” which culminated with a days sailing past a single giant berg “40 to 50 miles long,” The account suggest the ship may have been only making 3 to 5 knots around this time, certainly at night one would expect them to throttle back. They had a close call on first encountering the ice north of the Falklands.
It may be partly by chance that the length of this iceberg was reported because the sailing people seemed more impressed by the height of ice encountered than the extent of any particular piece. The 40 to 50 mile long berg mentioned above was reported as being 1000 ft asl at the NE end.
[5] The 1000 ton plus iron sailing ship “Himalaya”, on a 109 day voyage from Liverpool to Wellington, departed 9, November 1894 and arrived 25, February, 1895. The captain reported seeing several icebergs off the Cape (of Good Hope) and then, “.. that from the Cape to the Crozets was a most trying time as icebergs were in sight for a distance of two thousand miles.”
Alaska glaciers have been melting for 250 years and now they are growing,
” for who is to say the snake will not turn into a dragon”
three days north of the Falklands to about one weeks sailing north of the Falklands they were “among the ice,”
so between a 150- 300 miles north of the falklands they find this massive iceberg, what size was it when it started out!!
Giant iceberg spotted south of Australia
Dec 09, 2009
http://phys.org/news179556530.html
so this one is much, much, much, smaller than the 19th century one and they say-
“Young described the icebergs as uncommon, but said they could become more frequent if sea temperatures rise through global warming”
Was the 19th century as warm as today?
Jeff in Calgary says: Isn’t this about a floating ice sheet? How is a floating ice sheet melting going to raise sea levels? Am I missing something?
John F. Hultquist says: I think the reasoning is this: Antarctic ice extends to high elevations but slopes down to the Ocean…
People seem to be missing the key point that the bedrock the ice sheet sits on is already below sea level, and as you move further into the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the bedrock only gets deeper. The more it retreats, the larger the face that can be melted from below by the ocean. The part of the ice sheet that is above sea level will add to sea level when it disappears. The part below sea level will not.
This little animation from one of the many links with further information might help clarify what’s going on:
http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/earth/antarctica-telecon20140512/