Studies do not address sea level rise projections alleged by misleading media headlines
Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
As seems to always be the case the climate fear propaganda news media have completely mislead the public once again regarding climate related issues this time by alleging claims of 4 meter high future sea level rise increases supposedly addressed in two recent studies which performed analysis of glacier melt behavior of six large glaciers in West Antarctica.
One study was published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and titled “Sustained increase in ice discharge from the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, from 1973 to 2013“. This study is available here:
http://www.ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/erignot/files/grl51433.pdf
The second study was published in Science and titled “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica“. This study is available here:
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/files/glacier-thwaites.pdf
Both studies evaluate the relatively recent melt rate history of these glaciers with one focusing on the use observed satellite data to estimate melt rate behavior while the other uses computer models to estimate melt rate behavior.
Amazingly enough and considering how the press manufactured headlines about sea level rise increases being determined from these studies neither of the studies addresses or make any claims about the impact of their research results on specific future sea level rise projections.
In fact GLC study mentions nothing specific about future sea level rise projections while the Science study clearly notes that their research models “are not coupled to a global climate model to provide forcing nor do they include an ice-shelf cavity-circulation model to derive melt rates. Few if any such fully coupled models presently exist (13). As such, our simulations do not constitute a projection of future sea level in response to projected climate forcing.”
Also unreported by the same climate alarmist propaganda focused media were the significant qualifications, limitations and cautions noted in these studies concerning their glacier melt research findings.
The GRL published study noted for example the following qualifiers regarding its analysis:
“These observations are a possible sign of the progressive collapse of this sector in response to the high melting of its buttressing ice shelves by the ocean.”
“Until numerical ice sheet models coupled with realistic oceanic forcing are able to replicate these observations, projections of the evolution of this sector of West Antarctica should be interpreted with caution.”
The Science published study contained the following similarly related qualifiers regarding its analysis:
“Although our simple melt parameterization suggests that a full-scale collapse of this sector may be inevitable, it leaves large uncertainty in the timing. Thus, ice-sheet models fully coupled to ocean/climate models are required to reduce the uncertainty in the chronology of a collapse.”
Why aren’t these significant research finding qualifiers regarding the preliminary nature of these studies results addressed by the main stream media?
The main stream media manufactured numbers alleging sea level rise projections not addressed at all in either of these studies and then compounded that alarmist portrayal by concealing very significant scientific qualifiers noted in both studies regarding their glacier melt rate research findings.
Even some of the climate media have problems with how this entire climate alarmist episode has been handled. New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin wrote an article in that paper in 2009 addressing the glacier study work underway in West Antarctica titled “Study: West Antarctic Melt a Slow Affair” where he challenged the use of the word “collapse” in describing the melt behavior of that region. This article included the following observation:
“Over all, the loss of the West Antarctic ice from warming is appearing “more likely a definite thing to worry about on a thousand-year time scale but not a hundred years,”
With latest round of speculative media climate alarmism regarding the West Antarctica region glacier research Revkin has written yet another article titled “Consider Clashing Scientific and Societal Meanings of ‘collapse’ When Reading Antarctic Ice News” again challenging the use of the word “collapse”. He offers the following observations in this article about the recent alarmist news reporting:
News articles by The Times, Time, the Associated Press and others capture the basics in two new papers, one on six West Antarctic glaciers that appear to have nothing holding back eventual disappearance, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, and the other taking a closer look at one of those ice masses, the Thwaites Glacier, posted online today by the journal Science.
Some headlines are completely overwrought — as with this NBC offering: “West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s Collapse Triggers Sea Level Warning.” This kind of coverage could be interpreted to mean there’s an imminent crisis. It’s hard to justify that conclusion given the core findings in the studies. (Am I trying to maintain a hold on reality or am I a “scold”?)
Take the Science paper: Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica. Using ice-flow models and observations, the researchers, led by Ian Joughin of the University of Washington, concluded:
“Except possibly for the lowest-melt scenario, the simulations indicate that early-stage collapse has begun. Less certain is the time scale, with the onset of rapid (>1 mm per year of sea-level rise) collapse in the different simulations within the range of 200 to 900 years.
To translate a bit, that means sometime between 200 and 900 years from now the rate of ice loss from this glacier could reach a volume sufficient to raise sea levels about 4 inches (100 millimeters) a century. At that point, according to the paper, ice loss could pick up steam, with big losses over a period of decades.* But in a phone conversation, Joughin said the modeling was not reliable enough to say how much, how soon.”
This on going West Antarctica reporting frenzy clearly establishes that the climate alarmist news media have abandoned any pretense of objectivity regarding climate reporting and become soldiers dedicated to conducting an alarmist propaganda campaign that is built on manufacturing misleading, inaccurate and erroneous headline grabbing articles unsupported by published science to support their flawed cause.
East/ West also is used in flying in Antarctica. Working in McMurdo gives some perspective on navigation. You fly South to the pole but how do you get home? Grid north is toward Greenwich and Grid South is toward the international date line. So to fly from the South Pole Station to McMurdo Station you would fly almost due grid south.
“a full-scale collapse of this sector may be inevitable”
—
So is the above comment in the Science published study the reason why NASA/headline writers are predicting a 4-meter rise in sea level? My guess is somebody must have calculated how much sea level would rise if the West Antarctica ice sheet collapsed completely. Then they ran with that estimate even though it is not to be found in either paper.
Bruce,
Or if you keep flying south you’ll fly off the planet into outer space right? so how do we know what is up and what is down? /src lol
This mess could turn into an own goal. For many years we’ve been told the melting in W. Antarctica was due to global warming. Now, these papers claim it is from warmer water upwelling. IOW, the original claims were untrue. Add to that the recent paper claim 50-80% of the warming in Greenland was due to natural processes and what is left? Skeptics should be able to use these papers to demonstrate the dishonesty of climate alarmists.
Louis,
We all know it was worked out by stevengoddard years ago, and he correctly suggested what to look out for when the devious bastards worked it out!
@ur momisugly RACookPE1978, Jerome.
Thanks for that. Now I know what they are talking about.
And the reason isn’t as stupid as I feared it might be. (I didn’t think my question was stupid.)
So the smaller bit west of the Greenwich* Meridian is what they mean by “West Antarctica”. Fair enough.
And that includes the whole lot round to 180?
I see West Antarctica as west of 0 but east of the 180 line, and if you head east from Queen Maud Land, you end up in West Antarctica without leaving Antarctica.
Hence my idea that Antarctica has a North (the coast) and a South (the pole), but not a real East ot West.
Still, if that is the convention, I now know.
(*I know Greenwich is in England, thanks.)
Thanks, Chad. Nice simple answer.
And I now know that West Antarctica isn’t the Australian bit, so I don’t have to do anything about it. It isn’t my problem.
Perhaps this active volcano is a factor:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2625583/Newly-discovered-active-volcano-erupt-underneath-ice-Antarctica-add-effects-global-warming-say-scientists.html
Revkin initially missed the point of the Science paper, that once the threshold is passed, complete collapse will be rapid (decades). He back filled this after it was pointed out. While the timing of reaching the threshold is uncertain, and could be in the far future, it could also be sooner than the 200 year lower limit that the model finds, because it assumes a slower than observed retreat of the grounding line as shown by the GRL paper.
Not a walk in the park.
The disintegration of floating ice shelves has no direct impact on global sea level. The only possible impact is by affecting the rate at which glaciers uphill from the shelves flow toward the sea.
When grounded ice melts or slides into the sea, it does affect sea level rise, but the effect is reduced if the ice is grounded below sea level (i.e., if the rock upon which it rests is below the waterline). In that case, the ice is “partially floating,” so the effect on global sea level when it melts or floats away is reduced.
Note that it takes a LOT of melted ice to significantly affect sea-level. Melting a cubic mile of grounded ice causes global sea level to increase only about 1/100-th of a millimeter.
http://sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html
@ur momisugly RoHa says, @ur momisugly RACookPE1978
As an explanation, I would have just gone with a Mercator or Kavraiskiy map projection as an explanation …
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Kavraiskiy_VII_projection_SW.jpg/800px-Kavraiskiy_VII_projection_SW.jpg[/img]
Everything on the left half of the bottom of the map is West Antarctica, everything on the right half is East Antarctica.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Kavraiskiy_VII_projection_SW.jpg/800px-Kavraiskiy_VII_projection_SW.jpg
daveburton says:
May 13, 2014 at 8:55 pm
“Melting a cubic mile of grounded ice causes global sea level to increase only about 1/100-th of a millimeter.”
Really? where did the ice come from?
Great website, Dave Burton. Thanks.
The first question is, what are the temperatures in the Antarctic. 05/14/2014
http://oi60.tinypic.com/10nyqde.jpg
If this was an ice age, “sea level rise” would be [irrelevant] due to the fact that sea levels would fall. Oh wait.. this isn’t an ice age… I wonder what it could be.
*Irrelevant
You all didn’t seem to actually read the two peer reviewed studies. If you could look away from your red meat media angle, there was some interesting science to be noted. The main reason the ice sheets and glaciers are being destabilized is that the Southern Ocean has warmed. That weakens the ice edges that reach down deep into the ocean that act as stabilizers. This ocean warming is down deep, not on the surface. The surface is cold, gladdening the hearts of you “skeptics” that get pleasure from seeing all the expansion of the sea ice extent “disproving” global warming. Surely it confounds you to take in the counter intuitive idea of warming down deep but staying cold on top. Science is more interesting than politics any day.
Making a claim that the melting of the glaciers of West Antarctica is unstoppable is a strategic mistake by the alarmists. Positing that there is actually a collapse that is inevitable puts them in Catch 22. Since forestalling doomsday is now no longer within man’s control, then why must we bother changing our hedonistic ways when it comes to fossil fuel consumption?
Here is the BBC hype on this topic. They made it the lead item, on a day when Antarctic sea ice reached their greatest ever extent. No mention of that, though. BBC reporting is straight out of the manual written by Joseph Goebbels.
The BBC (or perhaps Reuters) have obviously got hold of one of the scientists in this study, and he has added the extra info about sea level rises.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27381010
“mislead the public once again regarding climate related issues this time by alleging claims of 4 meter high future sea level rise increases supposedly addressed in two recent studies ”
for chrissakes , it’s four FEET not four metres.
You make valid points about the spin on this but at least get your numbers correct !
Another major problem with the media reporting is that it fails to point out that glacier instability is almost certainly an entirely natural process, with little or no influence from a modest warming of the climate. Such warming may actually nudge things slightly the right way, via changes in ocean currents.
If polar ice were not being continually lost all the water in the world would end up at the poles, via snowfall and direct accretion of water vapour to ice.
Reading this made it clear that the MSM had to have been briefed by a green-activist organisation, I suspected Greenpeace or WWF. Silly of me to have overlooked a government funded bunch of green activists – NASA.
matayaya says:
“You all didn’t seem to actually read the two peer reviewed studies. If you could look away from your red meat media angle, there was some interesting science to be noted. The main reason the ice sheets and glaciers are being destabilized is that the Southern Ocean has warmed.
If you had bothered to read (and understand) the two peer reviewed studies you would have learned that: “elevated melt rates on the Amundsen Coast are largely driven by increased transport of warm CDW onto the continental shelf rather than by direct warming of the CDW”.
I. e. changed ocean currents, not warming.