From The EGU via the BBC:
When scientists looked at Antarctic snowfall over the past 200 years they found a “significant” increase, up to 10%.
In the decade 2001-2010, some 272 billion tons more snow fell on Antarctica per year compared with the decade 1801-1810.
This extra amount of snow is equivalent to twice the water volume of the Dead Sea, on a per year basis.
However, even though that huge volume of water is being locked up on land, the researchers concluded it would only “slightly slow a general trend in global sea-level rise.”
More here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43691671
The study: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2018/EGU2018-1964.pdf
Antarctic snow accumulation over the past 200 years
The Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) is the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet, even small changes in its volume could have significant impacts on global mean sea level. There is growing evidence that the AIS has been losing mass in recent decades, while mass gains are predicted under future climate warming scenarios. However, there
is little consensus on how surface mass balance (SMB) has changed in the past. Here we reconstruct Antarctic snow accumulation variability over the past 200 years based 79 ice core snow accumulation records to (i) produce regional SMB composites using a regional atmospheric climate model (RACMO2.3p2) and (ii) produce an Antarctic-wide reconstruction derived from reanalysis precipitation-minus-evaporation. Both methods reveal a significant (∼10%) increase in total Antarctic snow accumulation since 1800 AD. Our results show that SMB for the total Antarctic ice sheet (including ice shelves) has increased at a rate of 7 +/- 0.13 Gt dec-1 since 1800 AD, representing a net reduction in sea level of ∼ 0.02 mm dec-1 since 1800 and ∼0.04 mm dec-1 since 1900 AD. The
largest contribution is from the Antarctic Peninsula, where the annual average SMB during the first decade of the 21st century.
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I’m quite surprised that the egregious BBC reported such a thing? Have Shukman and Harrabin been fired?
The term ‘surface mass balance’ (SMB) as used in the paper is a little misleading to a layperson like me, since it implies that they are estimating the total mass of the glacier. Seemingly not. Their SMB appears to be derived from what they call “precipitation-minus-evaporation”; the amount of ice gained from snow accumulation minus the amount lost due to evaporation.
No account is made in this method of ‘calving’, where the snout of a glacier terminating in the ocean breaks off to form iceberg, which seems to be the main method by which Antarctic land ice mass is reducing. This may explain the apparently contradictory comments attributed to the paper’s authors re increased SMB but overall decline in glacial mass balance.
Have there been any attempts to empirically measure the total mass of water lost to evaporation and sublimation across the entire Antarctic? Are we sure the calving of a few icebergs would be more significant?
What about mass loss on the underside of the ice due to warm water currents?
Aparition42
Fair point. I understand that is also believed to be one of the main mechanisms leading to ice loss. It’s comparable to calving though, in that it’s not accounted for in the surface ‘precipitation-minus-evaporation’ model studied by this group.
[mod] The title of this article should read “increase in Antarctic” rather than “increase is Antarctic”
Rather it should read “Big increase is Antarctic Snowfall helps to [offset] sea level rise”.
That’s pretty much the (more accurate) title of a post last year on this site: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/25/increasing-antarctic-snowfall-may-offset-sea-level-rise/
Land ice in Antarctica is a net contributor to sea level rise due to loss at the glacier/ice shelf terminals. The increased snowfall in the interior is just off-setting this loss. This snow increase was also expected, as the BBC commentary states.
Okay, big increase “in” Antarctic snowfall… for the pedants.
Hmmm. Since some warmists are so concerned about the welfare of polar bears, lets transport some polar bears to Antarctic islands, and see if they can establish colonies there. They’d have seals to munch on (a staple of a polar bear’s diet), and they could adapt to dining on penguins, which appear to have a lot of body fat. And the extra snow could provide ample water for them (don’t ask me how — maybe they could eat the snow).
Are you mad?! If polar bears eat the ice cap and urinate it out as warm liquid water, that would accelerate sea-level rise by an immeasurable amount!
This is probably why the polar ice caps are shrinking and polar bears are losing habitat there. Quick, somebody give me a grant to look into this.
The polar bears would eat all the 4000 researchers that are in the Antarctic now doing all that research to try to prove that Antarctica is melting. Therefore the researchers would have to import guns with them that would increase the number of suicides caused by those long cold dreary winter nights.
The RATE of increase in sea levels should be accelerating(going higher at a rate that is greater vs around the same linear rate) based on the increase in average global temperature, as well as thermal expansion of the warmer ocean and runoff from underground aquifers.
The lack of acceleration has been baffling. One element is probably the increase in evaporation from the oceans into an atmosphere that holds more moisture and the greater resulting precipitation. This falls across the planet, not just Antarctica.
The planet is massively greening up. This added vegetation holds more moisture, including more extensive root systems. Global drought has dropped a bit over the last 4 decades and it’s likely that soil moisture has increased globally.
While there are some other reasons for the lack of sea levels accelerating higher, there is no question that the weather/climate and CO2 levels during the last 4 decades have been he best for life on this greening planet since at least the Medieval Warm Period(that was probably as warm as this globally).
If CO2 levels then………….1,000 years ago were not this high, then this recent period marks the best for life in thousands of years.
Perhaps another part to that is that the ice most susceptible to melting has already melted.
Contra: You Are Here – 7
Less snow means warming.
More snow means warming.
What would cooling look like?
Aaah Chimp – that’s just apocryphal – a little bit of research and you would have turned up the unexpurgated version, the real story, the truth.
https://www.suffolkgazette.com/news/four-and-twenty-virgins/
grins edi
I’d thought sea level rise were due to freshwater reservoirs being emptied and nothing else to do with climate change. I suppose access to freshwater snow in Antarctica would alleviate those fresh water reservoirs.
Someone would need to push the penguins out of the way to get at it though.