From the UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON comes this desperate piece from Eric Steig of RealClimate and the “Antarctica is warming but now busted” department.
Via Eurekalert:
Will more snow over Antarctica offset rising seas? Don’t count on it
Many factors related to warming will conspire to raise the planet’s oceans over coming decades — thermal expansion of the world’s oceans, melting of snow and ice worldwide, and the collapse of massive ice sheets.
But there are a few potential brakes. One was supposed to be heavier snowfall over the vast continent of Antarctica. Warmer air will hold more moisture and thus generate more snow to fall inland and slightly rebuild the glacier, according to climate model projections.
Not so fast, says a University of Washington study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The authors looked at evidence from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core to get a first clear look at how the continent’s snowfall has varied over 31,000 years.
“It’s allowed us to look at the snow accumulation back in time in much more detail than we’ve been able to do with any other deep ice core in Antarctica,” said lead author T.J. Fudge, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. “We show that warmer temperatures and snowfall sometimes go together, but often they don’t.”
For example, the record includes periods before 8,000 years ago, as Earth was coming out of its last ice age, when the air temperature went up by several degrees without any boost in the amount of snowfall.
“Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.
The plateau of East Antarctica, the site of most previous ice cores, is relatively high and dry. About 80 percent of the continent’s precipitation falls on the lower, stormier edges, like where this core was drilled in 2006-2011. (To prepare scientists for conditions during a West Antarctic snowstorm, Fudge notes, researchers had to practice navigating outside with a bucket over their heads.) The 2.1-mile, or 3.5-kilometer, ice core preserves climate history in enough detail to show individual snow years.
Many climate models predict that warming temperatures will mean more snow in Antarctica in the future. When more snow falls inland at the upper edge of the flowing ice sheet, it counteracts mass lost to melting or calving at the edges. This extra snowfall would reverse 2 to 4 centimeters, or about 1 inch, of global sea-level rise by 2100, researchers said.
“It’s not a huge component,” Fudge acknowledges, “but if you live close to sea level, centimeters certainly matter.”
The new study, however, shows that temperature is an unreliable predictor of Antarctic snowfall.
“Depending on what part of the record you look at, you can draw different conclusions,” Fudge said. “During some of the more abrupt climate changes, from when we had ice sheets to our current climate state, there’s actually no relationship between temperature and snowfall.”
The large variation seen in the historical record probably reflects shifts in atmospheric patterns and how storm tracks reach Antarctica, Fudge said. Research is increasingly showing that winds play a big role in Antarctic temperature, sea ice and weather patterns, especially on shorter timescales, and that the gale-force winds that whip around the continent are connected to weather patterns in the tropics.
“For sea-level rise, we’re not really interested in what happens over thousands of years,” Fudge said. “We’re interested in what happens over the next few hundred years. At that shorter timescale, the variability in how the storms reach the continent matters much more than a few degrees of warming.”
The snowfall record may help to understand how winds affect Antarctic weather, and how atmospheric connections with the tropics influence the amount of relatively warm ocean water that laps at the frozen continent’s edge.
“By getting models to better capture the variability in our snowfall record, we actually will get a better idea of how the warm ocean is going to interact with the ice sheets at the edge, and those will have an even bigger impact on sea level, eventually,” Fudge said.
###
The study, published online April 28, 2016 was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. Other co-authors are UW doctoral student Bradley Markle; UW faculty members Edwin Waddington, Howard Conway and Michelle Koutnik; Kurt Cuffrey at the University of California, Berkeley; Christo Buizert at Oregon State University; and Kendrick Taylor at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute.
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
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What’s this?
Antarctic temperatures at their coldest since Ice Age during LIA?
And still colder than most of the last 10000 yrs?
And is that a MWP I see?
Now I wonder why the Antarctic did not melt down during all of those thousands of years when it was much warmer?
HMMMM?
“Now I wonder why the Antarctic did not melt down during all of those thousands of years when it was much warmer?”
Yes, I always ask why the coelacanth didn’t boil during all those thousands of years when it was much warmer.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/after-400-million-years-coelacanth-at-risk-of-extinction/
To say nothing of the scalding cauldron of fish soup the oceans must have been before the Earth entered the present ice age?
Since when as any physical science been settled by models lol
Only by models.
The analog that’s needed is 100kya to 120kya when the earth was going into and ice age, not coming out of one. Temperatures may have been equivalent, but direction of the trend is critical.
“Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,”
In other words, the models are wrong.
Does this qualify as a self-goal?
Here is the correct figure:
http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a475/Knownuthing/Snowtemp_zps0jhlolay.png
I do not think it supports the authors’ conclusions. There is a very good agreement during the entire Holocene, so unless we fall into a new glacial period there is no basis to expect this relationship to break down.
The resource to break the graphic and change scales is just a cheap shot attempt at manipulating the readers.
The second big rise in the core temperature exactly matches the timing of the Younger Dryas (12,800 BP to 11,600 BP) and the first big rise corresponds to some estimates of the timing of the Older Dryas.
Yes Billy. I’m pretty sure that they have calibration problem with their bore hole model. Because of heat diffusion over the millennia, the measured temperature is a progressively changing integral of the original temperatures. You then need to work backwards to guess what the original temps were. This involves a model with several parameters. Get some of the params wrong and the timescale and/or the temp scale comes out wrong.
Back to 6000 BP, it seems to correlate quite well then it slowly starts to drift. Timescale of accumulation should be quite accurate since they are counting annual layers.
I would need a lot of persuasive arguments to convince me that the time scale of temperature model is not drifting off further back. It’s hard to believe that the accumulation shows a very similar profile of the Youger Dryas period but lagged by 800y.
They’ve also clearly got the scaling wrong since temp has more swing than accumulation. This is due to the regression which they are doing with error laden data on the x-axis, leading to regression dilution. This is also exacerbated by decorrelating effect of the spurious lag.
This is the same fundamental error which has lead to over estimation of climate sensitivity.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/on-inappropriate-use-of-ols/
An illustration of the right and wrong results from Lindzen & Choi.
When these guys learn how to do linear regression we may start to move forwards.
Lindzen addresses the problem and gets a far lower CS than anyone else.
But also note that we are very much at the cold end of the Holocene..
This graph from Eric TOTALLY DESTROYS the CAGW fairy-tale.
+ a whole big bunch
Does that not depend on the resolution of the graphic? From the climategate gate emails we know they know fxxkall about anything less then 100 years resolution in the paleo studies.
Another interesting item of note, the correlation tends to exist at temperatures above -30.5C and only falls out of correlation when temps drop below this point.
When one looks at a sensibly constructed diagram of these data there are two main conclusions:
1. During the present interglacial temperature and snow accumulation correlate quite well
2. During and at the end of the last glaciation each marked warming in the northern hemisphere was followed by a sharp peak and subsequent dropoff in accumulation a few centuries later
“2” fairly screams THERMOHALINE CIRCULATION!
Wonder how much better the models would get if the modellers were actually paid per accurate projection.
Yes I also wonder how any profession that is required to forecast the future of any variable, can sleep at night, thinking they are not worth the money. And that they really ought to be only be paid for success.
I mean that pioneers of that profession would really be inspired to take it up eh?
And that may include….
Economists
Meteorologists
Broadcast Analysts
Market Research Analysts
Polsters
IOW: What a brainless comment my friend.
Wow, the trolls get offended whenever someone insults the models and modelers.
Regardless, the modelers in those other fields do get paid based on the accuracy of their forecasts.
It must suck to be you.
Must be nice to still have a job even if your predictions are only right 50% of the time, Tone.
Would help if climate modellers could hit the side of a barn !
How many of those various modellers declare their efforts to be the final answer, as in “97% agree that the science is settled”?
Pardon, but your propaganda is showing.
If you say so….
(the only comment you merit – unless it contains pejorative).
And like I said, brainless … reacting on ideological autopilot from a badge-wearing stance of ignorance.
Yes it MUST suck to be you.
Toneb May 20, 2016 at 3:31 pm
Hi,
Well let see, first you compared Economists
Meteorologists
Broadcast Analysts
Market Research Analysts
Pollsters
to climate modelers in so far as being held accountable for their work. What is the % of climate modelers that have lost their jobs, as compared to the other Fields of employment you listed?
Heck have any climate modelers ever lost their jobs due to their models not preforming as advertised?
Come to think about it a huge class action lawsuit for false advertising is in order.
Well you were the one insinuating brainless comments on the part of others. Next time turn on brain before operating mouth or rather typing on keyboard.
michael
Being correct in 50% of their panicky-guy predictions would be about a big step up for warmistas, being as how they have almost never been correct in any of their scaremongering alarmist jackassery.
True to form, Toneb picks up the ball for the losing team and runs towards the wrong end zone with it.
As a meteorologist in the private sector, you do get fired if you regularly get forecasts wrong. Also as a meteorologist who once believed the gospel coming out of the AGW ranks, I wonder why it is that you have chose to comment on the jibes against models, but not comment on the way they have presented the graphs of the temp and snowfall data in this paper? Do you think they have done this correctly? Do you think they have deliberately mislead the readers? Do you think this should have got past peer review? I suspect that due to your utter belief in this AGW propaganda you are deliberately letting this slide with no comment. I know this happens on both sides, but you are here now, show some honesty and let’s hear your views on the validity of the paper.
Pb, excellent comment and questions. Let us see if Tony can step up.
“Well you were the one insinuating brainless comments on the part of others. ”
I did.
And what’s more to those informed on here (the very few who can out up with it).
That was self evidently the case – and nothing more than normal service.
Those who think that said brainless comments constitute constructive and informed criticism of climate science are utterly irrelevant to the *discussion* – even on WUWT.
Yep. They do get paid and hired and fired based on how good their projections are. What are you talking about Toneb?
So once again, as predicted, a complete dodge of answering my questions about this paper’s methods. Silence assumes you cant respond for fear of agreeing with people here. The same thing happens everytime.
Another example George Monbiot recently posted on twitter https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/732177104138317824
Where he was ridiculing people who dont believe the evidence of CAGW. I simply stated I am a Met Office trained Meteorologist and asked him to list non computer modelled evidence of CAGW and he responded by attacking my credentials. I provided them and asked him to answer my question repeatedly. No response. This is standard it seems because these guys, especially journalists, only regurgitate model projections without looking at the empirical data. One assumes this is either lazy or because of predetermined beliefs or a mix of both.
In 2009, Steig et al. published a controversial paper “Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year” (their reconstruction made the cover of Nature), contending that all of Antarctica was warming. Steig et al. stated that, the “Antarctic is warming up and is contributing significantly to sea level rise; and that there is strong potential for a greater contribution to sea level rise from Antarctica in the future.” Very limited surface temperature measurements from the huge East Antarctic Ice Sheet exist so Steig et al. projected temperatures from the Antarctic Peninsula and a few short records from coastal east Antarctica over all of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The Steig et al. portrayal showed warming over the entire continent. However, O’Donnell et al. (2011) showed that Steig’s methodology was badly flawed, and using the same data as Steig et al., but with better technology, they produced a map similar to previous versions, i.e., displaying cooling dominating most of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet with warming primarily constrained to the much smaller (8% of ice) Antarctica Peninsula. Thus, the Steig et al. view of warming of all of Antarctica has been totally discredited.
Satellite measurements of temperatures confirm the lack of warming over most of Antarctica. The UAH and RSS satellite records are the most comprehensive because of their extensive coverage of Antarctica. They show the same lack of warming as the limited surface temperature records. Surface temperature measurements at the South Pole and Vostock since 1957 show no warming at all in places that Steig showed as warming.
Apparently Steig didn’t learn anything from his 2009 badly flawed paper and continues to ignore data contrary to his dogmatic opinions.
ah–but this time he has a grad student to fudge the data
Did Nature place O’Donnell et al. (2011) on the cover?
“But there are a few potential brakes. One was supposed to be heavier snowfall over the vast continent of Antarctica. Warmer air will hold more moisture and thus generate more snow to fall inland and slightly rebuild the glacier, according to climate model projections.”
Garbage
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/antarctica_trends_1979-2019.png
“Garbage”
So if models model what you want then they are OK.
And that makes the other models and observation “garbage”?
“A new, high resolution (27 km) surface mass balance (SMB) map of the Antarctic ice sheet is presented, based on output of a regional atmospheric climate model that includes snowdrift physics and is forced by the most recent reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), ERA-Interim (1979–2010). The SMB map confirms high accumulation zones in the western Antarctic Peninsula (>1500 mm y^-1) and coastal West Antarctica (>1000 mm y^-1), and shows low SMB values in large parts of the interior ice sheet (<25 mm y^-1). The location and extent of ablation areas are modeled realistically. "
Hypocrisy much.
And how amusing.
On the other hand, your non-stop logical fallacies and “loose” facts are not amusing.
You can do no better with your life than to be a propagandist?
Seriously Tone!
Do you never tire of being laughably wrong in your every utterance?
“Garbage”
Actual observations (weather stations, GRACE, Icesat) do show a considerable accumulation increase, particularly in Dronning Maud Land, in recent years. I tend to believe more in actual measurements than in climate model, but then i’m not a certified climate scientist.
No Toneb, I ma saying that there is no evidence to base their claims, one model shows what has happened and their models purport to to claim to know the future
That’s why is it garbage, in case you didn’t get it, which you didn’t me auld straw man, is that their models are not based on current best guesses, and of course, concerting temperature, not validated by observations>
Not the chart runs to 2009, where as your favoured models are talking about the next few centuries.
Yes garbage, junk science
You cannot even figure out the different between modeling observation and predicting 200 years into the future.
This is essentially why many of your arguments are as flaccid as a Pron star’s member at the end of a 12 hour shift.
Hypocrisy, it has a definition and you should look it up.
The chart I posted, the data and model can be challenged. Science.
The models of Antarctica 200 years from now are not based on data, and cannot be challenged as a result
You cant fix stupid (not you, the line of thinking you are following)
“On the other hand, your non-stop logical fallacies and “loose” facts are not amusing.
You can do no better with your life than to be a propagandist?”
Yes actually.
A career in climate science. This I expect draws contempt, but it makes me “relevant” on here and only a “propagandist” only to those who are reflexively derogatory of climate science
That you find them “not amusing” pleases me greatly.
BTW: So you agree that it is indeed hypocrisy to laud model findings when they agree with your views yet constantly criticise models otherwise?
“Seriously Tone!
Do you never tire of being laughably wrong in your every utterance?”
Splendid.
I’m so pleased!
That must mean I am right.
Do you really expect me think those on here will agree with what I say/link to.
No my friend.
Just denying ignorance for the odd unfortunate who has strayed here and may yet be open to the views of the experts as available in peer-reviewed papers.
Please dont talk about logical fallacies when you’ve trapped yourself in them frequently, just as you have just above.
You deal in model preference not model validity, model dealing with 200 years from now, not based on modeled observation are anathema to understanding what is going on, in fact it is a means to an end, the end not being anything to do with science.
Sadly, you are not thinking, you are regurgitating what fits your disposition, where’s the honesty in that?
Take your Red Herrings elsewhere. I don’t care if you are 7 “climate scientists”. Your logic and reason are flawed and your actions here have caused your motivations to become highly suspect.
Damned Eureka, never manage to link to the papers they are spouting about. They copy/paste text from other sources and loose the hyper links they contain.
After some Binging around: eureka !
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068356/abstract
Bud that was only 1/2 a Natty Miami claims that year too
I had noticed that the temp data had a lot less time resolution than the accumulation plot line. So I wondered how they were measuing temperatures , d18O , I guessed.
From the S.I. at the above link:
Oh man ! Bore hole temps ???
So the 800y offset in their second graph is probably just an error in timing of borehole temperature model. It does not seem that they have analysed the ice core contents AT ALL.
I had missed that. I also presumed d18O temperatures. This makes the whole thing extremely shaky.
There is another problem too. The ice sheet in West Antarctica, in contrast to East Antarctica,has thinned quite a bit since glacial maximum, which means that d18O temperatures must be corrected for lapse rate, which is basically impossible since we have practically no idea about the detailed deglaciation history of Antarctica.
Who do I sue for copyright infringement? That’s the same drawing my 3 year old great-granddaughter did last week!
The Rising Seas head coach has called the obligatory time out to “ICE” the kicker of the McMurdo Deposition, and now we’re back from commercial break and ready to return to live action. After a brilliant last minute drive that consumed only 16 seconds, the clock is now down to 1 second, time for 1 last play. Trailing by only 2, the Deposition team is lined up for what could be a winning 52 yard field goal. Here’s the snap, the hold is good, the kick is on the way, it’s got the distance, it looks good…. but wait … CLIMATE SCIENTISTS have run out onto the field and have MOVED THE GOALPOST! OH MY! The kick is NO GOOD! The Rising Seas WIN the game.
But speaking about increased deposition around the coastal edges and on the W. Antarctic ice sheet, it does appear to be happening right now.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL065750/abstract
“We show that warmer temperatures and snowfall sometimes go together, but often they don’t.”
“Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.
“It’s not a huge component,” Fudge acknowledges, “but if you live close to sea level, centimeters certainly matter.”
“Depending on what part of the record you look at, you can draw different conclusions,” Fudge said.
============
Looks like Eurekalert is in competition with the Onion.
Don’t even want to …go into “lead author T.J. Fudge”.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmion_(poem)
Very good. Erudite even.
I see you know Sir Walter Scott.
But what does this website have to do with him/it?
Oh, yes, I get it – but I think you’re being a bit hard on WUWT (sarc).
When a scientific community spin Antarctic cooling into Antarctic warming, the poetic analogy becomes rather obvious.
Those of us living happily above 1,200 feet might get swamped by coastal Blue Staters?
GAK!
“The authors looked at evidence from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core“.
Talk about stupid. Most of the Antarctic’s ice sheet is in East Antarctica.
Nah, you’ll have to explain that one.
“Talk about stupid”
Not necessarily. Changes in accumulation are much larger in W Antarctica and along coasts of E Antarctica. Very little change near the center.
Now, using borehole temperatures rather than d18O, now that is stupid. Though quick and cheap, which is probably the reason.
He even calls is “pronounced”
It’s pronounced ” frɔːd “
Another model? Good grief! When does Steig and company do science?
Anthony
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/house-budget-provides-260-million-for-two-life-tracking-europa-missions/
With all the treeeelions spent on the climate this is peanuts! We should have orbiters and landers on as many moons as we can afford!!!!!
From the article: ““Our results make it clear that we cannot have confidence in projections of future snowfall over Antarctica under global warming,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.”
We can’t have confidence in that, or anything else related to these CAGW projections.
Here’s a piece of logic for the sea level rising worry crowd.
1. During the previous (Eemian) interglacial, the Greenland ice cap melted.
2. The Greenland ice cap hasn’t melted during this current interglacial, all 13,000 years of it, though it did recede a bit during the WMP when the Vikings lived there (and advanced back again after they left)
3. That means that it’s not as warm today as it was in the Eemian
4. The Antarctic ice cap hasn’t melted for at least 600,000 years and probably for the last 15 million years.
5. Therefor we don’t need to worry about the Antarctic ice cap melting any time soon. QED.
I suppose I could have got a grant to write a model to prove it, but it’s so bloody obvious.
Yes, I know, it’s different in the Southern Hemisphere, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, unprecedented, blah blah blah tell me all about it. There’s probably a consensus or something telling me I’m wrong.
You forgot about the big sign over the door at the entrance to the Warmista Institute of Sciency Hokum (WISH):
“Abandon All Logic, Ye Who Enter”.
You may be a smart rock, but with all that logic clinging to your thoughts, you would make a poor addition to the WISH-fully hoping for climate disaster crowd.
“During the previous (Eemian) interglacial, the Greenland ice cap melted.”
No. All deep ice cores from Greenland except one has Eemian ice near the bottom (even the rather short Renland core). The one exception is due to geothermal (volcanic) bottom melting of the ice.
Fudge (!) and Steig are contradicting themselves: if such a long core can indeed record individual snow years, it means the rate of accumulation must be quite significant, otherwise those years will be condensed in a short length and abrasion could make the record incomplete.
Besides, there is no mention of atmospheric circulation and the difference between the Peninsula and Eastern Antarctica. But since they quote Steig 2009…
…This extra snowfall would reverse 2 to 4 centimeters, or about 1 inch, of global sea-level rise by 2100, researchers said.
“It’s not a huge component,” Fudge acknowledges, “but if you live close to sea level, centimeters certainly matter”…
No, if you live close to sea level, 2-4 centimeters sure as hell does NOT matter, especially over almost 85 years. What planet is this guy on?