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.
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Dr. Strangelove, you say “Sea ice melts on summer and grows on winter. If winter is colder than previous season, sea ice coverage increases. The melting on Antarctic land ice occurs mostly below sea level. Deep water is warmer than Antarctic sea surface. That’s why the sea surface is frozen but underneath is liquid.”
I still don’t get how a colder winter ensures more sea ice if the starting point is well below freezing. Don’t you give some credence to the premise of the ozone hole letting in space cold air above Antarctica that increases the wind speed around the continent, churning the sea ice up and outward, opening up new surface water than can freeze over. With this hypothesis, it is colder; but it is not the cold expanding the sea ice, but the increased wind. Point being, there could be more than one hypothesis to explain the phenomena and it doesn’t have to automatically negate AGW.
Chris R,
What do you say to the premise that the oceans have been absorbing heat during the “pause” and that top-of-atmosphere measurements still show the trend of more energy coming into the system than is leaving.
Don’t write off modeling just yet. All professional fields use them now to help make sense of their metadata. Like computer programing, every generation of models is better than the one before. Models may be wrong, but they get us closer to right quicker than wading thru reams of tables. When a model proves wrong, you learn why it was wrong and that helps you make a better model next time. A model is a tool, just a tool; nothing inherently bad about them.
When you can’t win the war, you can at least create the illusion of victory by recruiting an army of straw men and dressing them as the enemy before taking them down. http://www.businessinsider.com/five-biggest-myths-about-antarctic-ice-2014-5
Bill Illis says:
May 14, 2014 at 9:52 pm
With all that very cold water flowing away from the ice, I guess the resulting vacuum produced must be growing.
(Hint: when the cold water drops to the bottom, something actually replaces it which tends to be “warmer” )
Bill Illis, check out this paper which characterizes Upper Circumpolar Deep Water (UCDW) intrusions onto the continental shelf in WA. UCDW temperatures were observed “well above 1.7 C”.
http://www.ocean-sci.net/8/433/2012/os-8-433-2012.pdf
Very clever analysis which attributes the intrusions to eddy shedding off the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC).
My two cents on the warmer water may be dated, but back in 2006, NASA scientist Robert Bindschadler had a study in Science arguing that slightly warmer water (just a few tenths of a degree) from higher latitudes reaches the base of Antarctic glaciers at the grounding line. The immense weight of the glaciers puts pressure on the base, lowering the melting point of the ice. In Bindschadler’s words: “Increased pressure at these greater depths lowers the melting point of this ice, increasing the melting efficiency of the warmer water. Rapid melting results.”
One implication of the study seems to be that grounding line retreat would occur with or without global warming (although warming could accelerate it). Another implication: Once begun, the process cannot be stopped: “Retreating glaciers lengthen the distance warmer water must travel from any sill to the grounding line, and eventually tidewater glaciers retreat to beds above sea level. This might limit the retreat in Greenland but will save neither West Antarctica, nor the equally
large subglacial basin in East Antarctica where submarine beds extend to the center of the
ice sheet.”
Here’s the reference: Bindschadler, R. 2006. Hitting the Ice Sheets Where It Hurts. Science 311: 1720-1721
@Marlo Lewis: If the process is irreversible, how did the grounding line get so far out to begin with?
“””””…..daveburton says:
May 13, 2014 at 8:55 pm
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……”””””
Not true.
The “heat” energy to melt the ice, (latent heat, 80 calories per gram) comes from the ocean water that the shelf is floating on; not from the atmosphere (which is colder than the water).
Since salt water increases in density, right down to its freezing point, then extracting all that energy, COOLS THE OCEAN. Why else would you put ice cubes in you Pepsi ??
So when the floating sea ice melts, the sea level GOES DOWN !!
It might cool one gram of water, by 80 deg C (not bloody likely) or perhaps 80 grams of water by one degree C.
If both the Tc and the specific heat are roughly constant over that temperature range, then the way the heat distributes in the ocean is irrelevant; the sea level fall is first order independent of where in the ocean that latent heat comes from.
Minor quibble: “ongoing” and “mainstream” are single words. A “black board” is something different to a “blackboard”, the most obvious characteristic of the latter being that they are rarely black 🙂
matayaya (May 14, 2014 at 10:49 pm) “Maybe you can also help me understand how the increased Antarctic sea ice extent proves the global trend is toward cooling and not warming.”
Red herring. There is nobody saying that.
matayaya (May 14, 2014 at 11:07 pm) “Don’t you give some credence to the premise of the ozone hole letting in space cold air above Antarctica that increases the wind speed around the continent, churning the sea ice up and outward, opening up new surface water than can freeze over. ”
Ridiculous pile of crap. The ozone hole doesn’t affect surface weather. The Katabatic winds are simply cold air flowing downhill. The ice forming 700 or 800 miles out at sea in winter is simply from locally colder weather and winter storms. In no way is it from ice moving outward.
matayaya (May 14, 2014 at 11:39 pm) “Like computer programing, every generation of models is better than the one before.”
More crap. The problem in computer programming is bad programs written by morons. Programs generally get worse over time until something comes along to replace the entire structure. With the modelers it is an even bigger problem because nobody is allowed to fix them without first joining the bad model club.
Studies predicting things – and now – oh my oh my, – TWO studies saying the same thing so it must be true, should at least have some connection to measured data to see if they are valid. If the authors believe this slow collapse has been happening for some time and is not unstoppable, then you would think we’d see an increase in sea level rise. Yet the best data I’ve seen is that sea level rise has remained relatively constant since the temps started this newest and least peak since the end of the last ice age a couple of hundred years ago. In fact, in the last 1/2 decade, like the temps there even seems to be a slight decrease in the rate of this natural sea level rise. Certainly nothing in the data points to a problem adaptation cannot handle. Obviously long lived glaciers flow out and build back up like a river. This thing could be ‘collapsing’ forever and been ‘collapsing’ forever at a rate matching it’s build-up at the other end. I understand the study thinks this isn’t happening, but even with their stated rate of collapse, the local weather patterns that created the glacier in the first place ebb and flow and the glacier represents the average of this.
Oh, just to throw it out there, as most people know, most glaciers around the planet at more normal latitudes are young. Glacier National Park’s are about 3000 years old. Once people start getting their facts together related to paleo-climate including since the last ice age, this current increasing level of panic just looks sillier and sillier.