Another ship of fools? More craziness about Antarctic Ice

RACookPE1978,

They would do better to admit “We do not know” and approach the problem with no biases.

What, like you and Bill Murphy have? Newspeak for “Publish or Perish” == “Publish the Pravda or Perish”
Or: Based on, you got it, a model…Smell test –> Fail.
Right … no bias here. None whatsoever. Not demonstrating the first clue about the utility of models for hypothesis formation, which can then be followed up with directed observation. To wit —
Greenbaum, et al. (2015), “Ocean access to a cavity beneath Totten Glacier in East Antarctica”: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2388.html
Abstract
Totten Glacier, the primary outlet of the Aurora Subglacial Basin, has the largest thinning rate in East Antarctica1, 2. Thinning may be driven by enhanced basal melting due to ocean processes3, modulated by polynya activity4, 5. Warm modified Circumpolar Deep Water, which has been linked to glacier retreat in West Antarctica6, has been observed in summer and winter on the nearby continental shelf beneath 400 to 500 m of cool Antarctic Surface Water7, 8. Here we derive the bathymetry of the sea floor in the region from gravity9 and magnetics10 data as well as ice-thickness measurements11. We identify entrances to the ice-shelf cavity below depths of 400 to 500 m that could allow intrusions of warm water if the vertical structure of inflow is similar to nearby observations. Radar sounding reveals a previously unknown inland trough that connects the main ice-shelf cavity to the ocean. If thinning trends continue, a larger water body over the trough could potentially allow more warm water into the cavity, which may, eventually, lead to destabilization of the low-lying region between Totten Glacier and the similarly deep glacier flowing into the Reynolds Trough. We estimate that at least 3.5 m of eustatic sea level potential drains through Totten Glacier, so coastal processes in this area could have global consequences.
The only thing they don’t caveat is the observed rate of thinning. Their suppositions don’t seem at all unreasonable to me. At the very least, they’re out in the field observing and trying to figure out what’s going on, unlike your buddy Bill with his apparently bottomless supply of personal incredulity and rhetorical questions:
Where is the data on melt water and precip? Looking around for icecap delta, you can find values from +20 GT/YR to -200 GT/YR (or more) So is the continental ice growing slowly, shrinking fast or maybe holding its own? How much actual melt water runoff is reaching the ocean (as opposed to loss by sublimation or evap) Is there really enough additional precip plus runoff to freshen the S. ocean enough to allow millions of KM^2 of sea ice to form 400, 500, 600 miles out to sea from the continent?
From KNMI — GRACE data processed by Ernst Schrama, TU Delft., mass [Gt] mass of Antarctica, interpolated single undefined anomalies linearly:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/idata_ant.png
Basal melt doesn’t have a chance to evaporate or sublime — a ridiculous thought at such low temperatures to begin with. One may as well ask why the Nile doesn’t evaporate or sublime before reaching its own delta and thence draining into the Mediterranean.
As for ice formation 600 miles out to sea away from presumably fresher coastal waters, my read is yes; that’s still somewhat a mystery, but Zhang (2006) has some ideas: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf
Abstract
Estimates of sea ice extent based on satellite observations show an increasing Antarctic sea ice cover from 1979 to 2004 even though in situ observations show a prevailing warming trend in both the atmosphere and the ocean. This riddle is explored here using a global multicategory thickness and enthalpy distribution sea ice model coupled to an ocean model. Forced by the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data, the model simulates an increase of 0.20×10^12m^3yr-1 (1.0% yr^-1) in total Antarctic sea ice volume and 0.084×10^12 m^2 yr^-1 (0.6% yr^-1) in sea ice extent from 1979 to 2004 when the satellite observations show an increase of 0.027×10^12 m^2 yr^-1 (0.2% yr^-1) in sea ice extent during the same period. The model shows that an increase in surface air temperature and downward longwave radiation results in an increase in the upper-ocean temperature and a decrease in sea ice growth, leading to a decrease in salt rejection from ice, in the upper-ocean salinity, and in the upper-ocean density. The reduced salt rejection and upper-ocean density and the enhanced thermohaline stratification tend to suppress convective overturning, leading to a decrease in the upward ocean heat transport and the ocean heat flux available to melt sea ice. The ice melting from ocean heat flux decreases faster than the ice growth does in the weakly stratified Southern Ocean, leading to an increase in the net ice production and hence an increase in ice mass. This mechanism is the main reason why the Antarctic sea ice has increased in spite of warming conditions both above and below during the period 1979–2004 and the extended period 1948–2004.
Perhaps a bit strong of a conclusion for a model-based study, OTOH the physics are somewhat more sensible — and arguably quite a bit more informed by expertise — than Mr. Murphy’s evaporation/sublimation “theory” above. Do you see the irony? Probably not.
In the concluding remarks, Zhang writes: Thus, this study has identified a possible mechanism that explains the increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice under warming conditions. Note, however, that there may be other mechanisms that can be used to explain the paradox.
Personally, I would have written the concluding statement of the Abstract as: We propose that this is one plausible mechanism explaining why the Antarctic sea ice has increased in spite of warming conditions both above and below … yadda yadda yadda.
Moving on, Turner, et al. (2009) have some ideas about the role of “ozone hole”-driven circumpolar wind changes leading to polynya-enhanced sea ice augmentation: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL037524/full
[13] The spatial pattern of sea ice concentration trend in autumn (Figure 2) indicates that the greatest increase has been in the northern Ross Sea. The southwest Ross Sea is a region of strong sea ice production and export, as a result of the persistent polynyas. The trend in autumn sea ice motion for this region as derived from passive microwave data (not shown) indicates that there has been greater transport of ice out of the Ross Sea at this time of year, suggesting an increase in southerly near-surface winds since 1979. We find this to be consistent with changes in the MSLP gradient across the edge of the shelf between McMurdo station and the ‘Gill’ automatic weather station (AWS) on the eastern side. The Gill-McMurdo MSLP difference has increased by about 4 hPa over 1985–2000, with a greater drop of pressure at the AWS site compared to McMurdo, implying stronger flow off the ice shelf.
[14] The increase in southerly flow will give lower air temperatures, and will help maintain the polynyas along the coast. Combined, these will lead to greater ice production [Comiso, 2000] and also promote enhanced ice advection northwards.
Kind of counterintuitive at first, until one considers that a persistent polynya near the coast will tend to keep chunks of ice calving off glaciers and ice shelves from getting welded back together, hence more likely to get blown out to sea in autumn where they serve as nuclei for sea ice formation away from the coast in winter.
The paper ends with: However, the long control run of a coupled climate model does suggest that the recent increase in SIE might still be within the bounds of natural climate variability.
Demonstrating yet again that these authors at least have more objectivity than you or Bill give them credit for, don’t mindlessly put too much faith in their own models as you both allege, and very much allow for the possibility that they and their models are wrong — because that’s what honest researchers who are in touch with their own limits of human perception and cognition do when they know that they don’t know all there is to know …

Their reasoning fails. It’s logical perhaps, but it fails to replicate what is happening.

… unlike some people who think that they’re omniscient, infallible, and that sea ice dynamics can be figured out by looking at a few charts on the Internet.

Brandon Gates:

What, like you and Bill Murphy have? Newspeak for “Publish or Perish” == “Publish the Pravda or Perish”
Or: Based on, you got it, a model…Smell test –> Fail.
Right … no bias here. None whatsoever. Not demonstrating the first clue about the utility of models for hypothesis formation, which can then be followed up with directed observation. To wit —

Exactly like I did, Brandon. If you bother to read my comment you will see that most of it was a lament — “Where is the data…” and “Is there really enough…” and “So is the continental ice growing slowly, shrinking fast or maybe holding its own? How much actual melt water runoff is reaching the ocean (as opposed to loss by sublimation or evap)” I do not know and want to find out. The literature is all over the map on this issue, and you are well aware of that.
As for your statement: Bill with his apparently bottomless supply of personal incredulity and rhetorical questions:
Why, Thank You, Brandon. Personal incredulity, or perhaps its synonym “skepticism” is the Sine qua non of a responsible and informed citizen and the hallmark of a good scientist. While I’m no scientist I do consider myself a responsible and informed citizen. You should try it. Beats tilting at windmills. By the way, how is it possible to form a “rhetorical question” by asking which of the only 3 possibilities is the correct one? Maybe read a book on rhetoric before tossing about such big words.
As for the models, I’ve been using the output of various models for about 40 years, and even assisted in coding a few, way back in the 8 bit days. The first requirement is that the model demonstrates the ability to predict/simulate something with reasonable accuracy, That has not been demonstrated in climate science yet, as you also well know. Also the word “Model” does not appear anywhere in the abstract of the paper you quoted (Greenbaum, et al.) so what is your point? (That IS a rhetorical question)
Quickly (since this is too long already)
* Sublimation: http://www.igsoc.org:8080/journal/57/204/t10J220.pdf
* Evap on the continent is trivial, agreed. Once it spreads out over the ocean (since the lower density and consequent stratification is a core part of the sea-ice-due-to-fresh-water hypothesis) it may or may not be significant. I don’t know and have yet to find a paper that addresses that.
* As for: “…think that they’re omniscient, infallible, and that sea ice dynamics can be figured out by looking at a few charts on the Internet.” Is that not what you just did, too? Is that not, excluding the few professionals here, what most are trying to do here? I read and post here because after following this discussion since 1973 when “Ice Age” and “Runaway Greenhouse” were the terms de jour, and having been on BOTH SIDES of the discussion in those 42 years, I resent where certain political groups have taken it and I have concluded, based on reading a lot, that the physical effects of AGW are minor and far less catastrophic than the political, societal, economic and humanitarian cost of some of the solutions being bandied about. I’m here because I know I am fallible. Why are you here?

Which windmills would those be, exactly? That the preponderance of available data point toward a warming globe with human activities contributing to it significantly?

Yes. Leave off the word “significantly” and we might have a discussion. If humanity went extinct tonight, or had in 1900, can you or anyone else say with any certainty that the climate would remain as it is, or would it go into another MWP or RWP or Holocene optimum or fall into another LIA or perhaps leave the relatively stable recent climate entirely and move to a full blown ice age or even an Eocene maximum?
If CO2 could doom the planet, the Chicxulub Impact Event would have done it a long time ago, releasing more CO2 in a few minutes than all humanity has done in all human history, and starting with about 4X the current CO2 to begin with. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/impacts97/pdf/6095.pdf
Regardless, this exchange is not worth my time (and probably not yours either) and is highly unlikely to change the outcome of the greater debate. So enjoy your windmills and I’ll enjoy mine.

Flashman:

I don’t know of anyone who thinks human-generated greenhouse gases are going to doom the planet, just human civilization in its current form. Which the Chicxulub Impact Event would have done handily, had we been around to see it.

“To destroy our planet with malice aforethought, with only the most immediate profits on the brain, with only your own comfort and wellbeing (and those of your shareholders) in mind: Isn’t that the ultimate crime? Isn’t that terracide?” Tom Engelhardt, American Empire Project
“There is enough oil in the ground to deep-fry the lot of us, and no obvious means to prevail upon governments and industry to leave it in the ground.” George Monbiot
Hi Harry. Back with more misdirection again I see. There are two for starters. And in case you missed it, all this started in the ’70s with the runaway greenhouse hypothesis that would totally destroy the biosphere, a la Venus. The catastrophe predictions have been in a steady decline in the intensity of their predictions ever since, to the point where they are, from a total global perspective, more like annoyances than catastrophes.
Obviously Chicxulub would have wiped out humanity, or very close to it. But not from CO2. The paleo climate record shows hardly a blip from all that CO2. Peer reviewed papers actually suggest that the huge release of CO2 (estimated at 1X to 5X total human CO2 to date) aided the biosphere in recovery from that disaster, just as current CO2 is aiding reforestation and agriculture. (Lomax et al. (2001))
if you want to worry about something that will doom “human civilization in its current form” then I suggest worrying about a renewed nuclear arms race, another Chicxulub, global pandemic, global food production without cheap energy………….
CO2 is not the elephant in the room, it’s the mouse.

Bill Murphy,

Back with more misdirection again I see. There are two for starters.

Find an IPCC report which says, “We’re allllll going to diiieeeeeee” and you’ll have my attention. I suppose fair is fair; SHF’s statement was indeed formally incorrect.

And in case you missed it, all this started in the ’70s with the runaway greenhouse hypothesis that would totally destroy the biosphere, a la Venus. The catastrophe predictions have been in a steady decline in the intensity of their predictions ever since, to the point where they are, from a total global perspective, more like annoyances than catastrophes.

Ruling out runaway warming looks like nothing more than good scientific practice to me. Annoyance vs. catastrophe seems a matter of opinion, not just for the qualitative subjectivity but for the remaining uncertainty about more quantitative things like magnitude and timing of effects.

Obviously Chicxulub would have wiped out humanity, or very close to it. But not from CO2. The paleo climate record shows hardly a blip from all that CO2. Peer reviewed papers actually suggest that the huge release of CO2 (estimated at 1X to 5X total human CO2 to date) aided the biosphere in recovery from that disaster, just as current CO2 is aiding reforestation and agriculture. (Lomax et al. (2001))

I didn’t find Lomax (2001), but in my search did happen upon Beerling et al. (2002), which has one B. H. Lomax listed as a co-author. Dunno if it’s the same Lomax, but here’s the full paper, with an excerpt from the abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7836.full
Abstract
The end-Cretaceous mass extinctions, 65 million years ago, profoundly influenced the course of biotic evolution. These extinctions coincided with a major extraterrestrial impact event and massive volcanism in India. Determining the relative importance of each event as a driver of environmental and biotic change across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) crucially depends on constraining the mass of CO2 injected into the atmospheric carbon reservoir. Using the inverse relationship between atmospheric CO2 and the stomatal index of land plant leaves, we reconstruct Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary atmospheric CO2 concentration (pCO2) levels with special emphasis on providing a pCO2 estimate directly above the KTB. Our record shows stable Late Cretaceous/Early Tertiary background pCO2 levels of 350–500 ppm by volume, but with a marked increase to at least 2,300 ppm by volume within 10,000 years of the KTB. Numerical simulations with a global biogeochemical carbon cycle model indicate that CO2 outgassing during the eruption of the Deccan Trap basalts fails to fully account for the inferred pCO2 increase. Instead, we calculate that the postboundary pCO2 rise is most consistent with the instantaneous transfer of ≈4,600 Gt C from the lithic to the atmospheric reservoir by a large extraterrestrial bolide impact. A resultant climatic forcing of +12 W⋅m−2 would have been sufficient to warm the Earth’s surface by ≈7.5°C, in the absence of counter forcing by sulfate aerosols. This finding reinforces previous evidence for major climatic warming after the KTB impact and implies that severe and abrupt global warming during the earliest Paleocene was an important factor in biotic extinction at the KTB.
If Lomax is the same author he sure changed his mind quickly if your reading of the 2001 paper is correct … ah. Yes he is, this time with Beerling as a co-author: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barry_Lomax/publication/222700904_Rapid_(10-yr)_recovery_of_terrestrial_productivity_in_a_simulation_study_of_the_terminal_Cretaceous_impact_event/links/02bfe50eee4a3f2cae000000.pdf
Our results suggest that terrestrial primary productivity initially collapsed and then recovered to pre-impact levels within a decade. Global terrestrial carbon storage in vegetation biomass exhibited a similar collapse but complete recovery took place on a 60-80 yr timescale. The recovery of both terrestrial net primary productivity and vegetation biomass was largely mediated by the high CO 2 concentration stimulating ecosystem photosynthetic productivity in the warm low latitudes.
Yup, there’s the good news, and yes it looks like a bit of a self-contradiction …
An apparently rapid recovery of terrestrial ecosystem function stands in marked contrast to the situation for the marine realm, where the organic carbon flux to the deep ocean was suppressed for up to 3 million years.
… until one reads the rest of the abstract. Figure 4 at the very bottom of the paper shows some pretty serious warming 50 years post-impact as well. Lastly, the abstract also says:
Here, we have evaluated this environmental influence on terrestrial ecosystems using a process-based dynamic global vegetation model forced with post-impact global climates, derived by modification of the GENESIS atmospheric climate model simulation for the latest Cretaceous.
How is it that you put it?

Based on, you got it, a model… Smell test –> Fail.

Um …..