Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Today I saw some scary headlines. I post them up along with snippets of the stories. First, from the BBC:
Greenland and Antarctica ice loss accelerating
Earth’s great ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica, are now losing mass six times faster than they were in the 1990s thanks to warming conditions.
“That’s not a good news story,” said Prof Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds in the UK.
Next, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Greenland, Antarctica Melting Six Times Faster Than in the 1990s
The two regions have lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice in three decades; unabated, this rate of melting could cause flooding that affects hundreds of millions of people by 2100.
Finally, from LiveScience:
Ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland increased sixfold in the last 30 years
The rapid ice loss puts the world right on track for the ‘worst case’ climate scenario.
Hmmm, sez I, the dreaded “worst-case” climate scenario … so I went to find the data. The articles are in Nature magazine, links are here (paywalled, I got the DOI and used it over at SciHub to get the papers). The study is done by a group of scientists who are part of a project called the “ice sheet mass balance inter-comparison exercise” (IMBIE).
Here is their money graph regarding Antarctica:
Figure 1. From Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017. The purple at the bottom is the overall total loss for Antarctica
And here’s the corresponding graph for Greenland:
Figure 2. From Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018. Click to expand. Dark blue is the overall total loss for Greenland
OK, both of those look scary enough.
So I downloaded the data. Kudos to the Imbie folks who did the study. The data’s all available on two Excel spreadsheets, freely available here. Figure 3 shows my graph of their data corresponding to the “Antarctica” part of Figure 1:
Figure 3. Cumulative ice mass loss, Antarctica. The photo is penguins on surreal ice.
And Figure 4 shows the corresponding data from Greenland:
Figure 4. Cumulative ice mass loss, Greenland. Note the different vertical scales. Greenland loses more ice than Antarctica.
YIKES! The ice loss looks like it’s falling off of an ice cliff …
So those agree with the IMBIE study, and they are both adequately terrifying.
Having seen that, I thought “how does this compare to the total ice mass in the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets? Their ice volumes are not exactly known but are on the order of thirty million cubic kilometres in Antarctica and a tenth of that, three million cubic kilometres, in Greenland.
Now, one cubic kilometre is about 0.95 gigatonnes of ice. Using those figures, I added the monthly Greenland ice mass loss shown in Figure 4 to the total mass of the ice in Greenland. That gives me the monthly total amount of Greenland ice. Figure 5 shows that result.
Figure 5. Monthly change in Greenland ice mass as calculated but not graphed by the IMBIE team.
See the blue/black line across the top? Yep, that’s the change in Greenland ice. The net change is so small that you can’t really see it even in a quarter century plus of data. It’s about five-thousandths of one percent (0.005%) of the total Greenland ice mass per year … be still, my beating heart.
And here’s the corresponding plot for Antarctica:
Figure 6. Change in Antarctic ice mass as calculated but not graphed by the IMBIE team.
As before, the blue/black line across the top is indeed the change in the total ice mass of Antarctica. The thing is, all of that terrifying ice loss shown in Figure 3 represents a total loss of three ten-thousandths of one percent (0.0003%) of the Antarctic ice mass per year … lost in the noise.
Next, the media, and to a lesser extent the scientists, waste a bunch of ink hyperventilating about the effect on sea-level rise. They imply, but don’t state, that this is increasing the overall rate of sea-level rise. However, what they fail to note is that in fits and starts, the polar ice caps have been melting since we came out of the last glacial period … so the effect of polar meltwater is not new. Meltwater has been included in the sea level rise data for centuries. And as I’ve shown here, we’re not seeing any acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise in the longest and best tide gauge records we have.
Finally, here’s probably the biggest thing that the studies revealed. Figure 7 shows the monthly ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica combined.
Figure 7. Total combined monthly ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland
Notice anything curious about that chart? I mean, other than the fact it has a map of Greenland, Antarctica, and the US in the background?
Yep, you’re right. In 2011, it started going the other way. The great ice caps were losing more and more ice each year from 1992 to 2011. By 2011 they were losing about fifty gigatonnes of ice each month.
In that year, something changed. Since 2011, Antarctica and Greenland have recovered to where the loss is less than half of the maximum loss of fifty gigatonnes per month. Seems to me that things are getting colder, not warmer as all the headlines are shouting. Most recently the loss is only on the order of twenty gigatonnes per month.
And why is that? Why is the rate changing? Why is even the sign of the rate changing, from more ice lost each month to less ice lost each month? And why did that change occur nine years ago, and not seven years or eleven years ago?
Simple answer. We don’t know.
Oh, they tell you in the studies that it’s from “ocean-driven melting” or the “North Atlantic Oscillation” or ” atmospheric circulation favoured cooler conditions” or that the “spatial pattern of accelerating mass changes reflects the geography of NAO-driven shifts in atmospheric forcing” … but those are just mechanistic correlations and relations. When they say “ocean-driven melting”, they’re just saying that when the water is warmer the ice melts more. Which is trivially true, and doesn’t answer the simple question—why did the trend reverse nine years ago, and not eleven years ago, or seven years ago, or not at all?
We don’t know.
My best to all,
w.
As Is My Wont: I ask people that when you are commenting please quote the exact words that you are discussing. This way, we can all understand just who and what you are referring to.
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Willis, you’re a star.
Take ten points and go to the top of the class.
Thank you.
If real (data from different methods?) the simple answer would be that the very fickle ice melts at a faster rate. The ice formed from 1959 to 1980 that had melted from 1900 to 1950 although melted is not the right word. It needs to flow to the coast.
“Dr. William S. Carlson, an Arctic expert, said to-night that the Polar icecaps were melting at anastonishingg and unexplained rate and were threatening to swamp seaports by raising the ocean levels.
February 16, 1952
More likely to be dodgy methodology. Whether Antarctica is gaining or losing ice overall depends on the method.
Great article.
The following link from the Danish Meteorological Institute shows that Arctic ice extent has remained about the same since 2007 for both annual maximums and minimums. Ignore the linear “trend of death” on the first graph, the DMI seems to think that climate is a linear process.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
The US NSIDC has two ice extent databases, SII and MASIE and both agree with the above.
For two of the last 3 years, Greenland ice accumulation has been above average and the two biggest glaciers, Petermann and Jacobshavn have been advancing for about 4 years.
i think humans are incredibly stupid and deserve what they get but their is hope after death you never know IF you never go hahahha cheers this coronavirus is just another normal flu virus bur humans are so stupid they are killing miilions (jobs money survival ) becuase they are the incredibly human stupIdity as Einstein said the virus rate is harmles its just anotjer flu coronavirus my 2 cents worthlooks atn teh statistics I think its 0,00001 death rate
Michael, I think that it was more like – Lies, damned lies, and statistics. As an old economist, I can only blush.
Tony.
If only we could report to the tax department like these guys
Nicely filleted.
These tricks are straight out of ‘How to lie with Statistics’ and are used so often by the other side that anyone with a functioning brain will lose patience with them eventually.
If their case really was ‘settled’ they wouldn’t need to resort to this type of sleight of hand, now would they?
“If their case really was ‘settled’ they wouldn’t need to resort to this type of sleight of hand, now would they?”
No, they wouldn’t.
One major point shown in Willis’ charts is the true relative size of land masses.
One could be worried looking at a Mercator projection of Earth as Greenland looks enormous from that perspective. Cumulative figures, selective graph axes and distorted land areas are all tools in the CAGW arsenal.
Using a site such as thetruesizeof.com shows a very different view of areas.
Nice Post Willis. The presentation of the data in the paper, like many climate science papers, is designed to mislead and motivate, not inform. An honest presentation would have been your year by year graphic, along with some effort to explain why the melt rate has been decelerating, not accelerating. But it is clear honesty was never the objective of the paper. I think your analysis shows (for about 50 thousandth time) that ‘climate science ‘ is mostly green/left advocacy, wrapping itself in a cloak of science to appear more legitimate. So it has always been, and likely always will be.
1. Figures 5 and 6 are misleading. They are almost certainly accurate but they are not meant to be informative – in fact the opposite. This trick is used repetitively by David Middleton with his silly thermometer graph.
It would be equally misleading and disinformative to plot sea-level change, for example, on a graph of the total average depth of the ocean (3.6km) – even a 100 metre rise would be barely be apparent; that would be just as ridiculous and just as misleading. Or to the absurd – plot the Earth’s distance from the sun as a variation of it’s distance from Alph Centauri. Apparent variation zero. Why on Earth bother unless your intent is to hide something?
Loydo March 22, 2020 at 6:16 pm
Hogwash. Loydo, let’s say you are going to graph your weight daily for a month, and your weight is quite stable. You rarely go up or down more than a pound or so. If you do NOT zero base the graph, that will be misleading. It will look like your weight is going up, down, and all over the place … when in fact it is hardly changing at all.
Sea level has no zero point. Antarctic ice mass does. Sorry, not parallel in any sense. You can only zero-base graphs that have a zero point.
I think the part you don’t understand is that anomaly graphs like Figs. 1 & 2 omit crucial information that people need to decide if the change is significant to our lives. Note that the media has all these screaming headlines designed to convince folks that a change of 2,000 gigatonnes of Antarctic ice means that the South Pole is melting away before our very eyes … when in fact, that 2,000 gigatonnes is less than one hundredth of one percent of the ice. If it continues at that rate, it will not be melted until the year 3086 … not so scary when you know that.
So me, I wouldn’t say that one graph is misleading and one graph is not. Instead, I’d say that we need both graphs in order to draw reasoned and reasonable conclusions from the data … which is why I’ve shown the data both ways. You can see that yes, it’s changing, you can investigate the changes, and you can also see that no, the ice caps are not going to melt away.
Regards, stay well,
w.
“your weight is going up, down, and all over the place … when in fact it is hardly changing at all.”
No, “hardly” is subjective. There need not be any ambuguity, if I want to know:
a. Is it going up or down?
b. Monthly rate
I need to use an appropriate scale or section of the range on the y-axis. If I design a graph the gives me a horizontal line then I’ve produced a useless graph that hides the change.
Claiming sea-level doesn’t have a zero point is splitting hairs. Go back far enough and it does. Antarctic ice’s zero point was 40+ million years ago. How far is too far and who decides?
If sea level doesn’t have a zero point then it difficult to argue temperature has any meaningful zero point either, that doesn’t stop Middleton trotting it out at every opportunity. But for the sake of the argument lets say temperature does have some zero point. If I want to track my body temperature over 24hrs for some significant medical research reason for example and I expect it to alter within < than a 0.1C range, a "zero point" scale is not only unnecessary it is completely unhelpful. I want to see a graph with a y-axis that is informative.
If "screaming" headlines are alarmist then isn't this statement:
"it will not be melted until the year 3086 … not so scary when you know that."
is equally as unhelpful given that sea level rise are likely to cause plenty of problems this century.
Producing a graph with what appears to be a horizontal line meant to communicate only one thing: zero change. If it is not true, then that is misleading. I understand you're going to cling onto this and defend it just like Middleton does. Fine, but I think it is msleading.
Loydo, I clearly said that for full understanding we need both types of graphs. You respond by defending one kind, as if I’d said it was useless. It’s not. Both kinds of graphs are needed.
Nope. It’s meant to communicate that the change is so small you can’t see it when you look at the big picture. I see your alarmism doesn’t like that … tough.
Despite being told for thirty years now that sea level rise will be going through the roof, we have no evidence at all that sea level rise is accelerating. Long term tide gauges don’t show it. Satellite data doesn’t show it. But you knew that. Re-read my post.
What you are trying to say is that crappy climate models claim that sea level rise will cause problems … and if you believe those models, you haven’t written enough computer programs.
w.
Can’t you do this without snark…
Btw over on the at the Daily Coronavirus page “I use a logarithmic scale…”
Fair enough but I think should show a linear as well because some are going to think the situation is better than it actually is. A linear graph shows that clearly. You were all for Gompertz curves a few days ago.
Loydo March 23, 2020 at 1:10 am
Loydo, you waltz in here and:
• Claim I’m being “misleading”.
• Say my graphs are “not meant to be informative – in fact the opposite”.
• State that I’m using a “trick”.
• Assert that I’m being “disinformative” …
And after all of that, you have the balls to accuse me of “snark”?
You can stuff your silly claims about your bizarre preference in graphs where the TSI is zero, and then go talk to someone else … me, I’ve taken all the unpleasant carp from you that I can stand.
Buh-bye …
w.
Hmm, you’re right. I guess I’d be a little snarky too, so I apologise.
Like they say in The Godfather, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” …
Loydo March 23, 2020 at 3:46 am
Sir, you are a gentleman. Apology gladly accepted.
w.
Hmmm, am I missing something. If both Greenland and Antarctica have separately lost ice mass since 2011, how can they be gaining mass when looked at in combination?
The different graphs Loydo, not the different land masses. You can’t show graphs that ‘only’ display cumulative losses. Add the gains and there is almost no loss.
Wait, did Lloydo just wonder aloud if he might have possibly missed anything?
*funniest darn thing I have heard in days and days*
Loydo March 24, 2020 at 1:11 am
The chart doesn’t show them gaining mass. It shows them losing less mass every year since 2011.
Regards,
w.
“Antarctic ice’s zero point was 40+ million years ago. ”
No, Loydo. The time when the East Antarctic ice cap became large enough to reach the coast was 40+ million years ago. The zero point was earlier. How much earlier we do not know.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25026?proof=trueIn
Even during the balmiest epochs of the Cretaceous and Paleogene, Antarctica might have had montane glaciers, but not a continental ice sheet.
One of the quotes at the top is:
“The rapid ice loss puts the world right on track for the ‘worst case’ climate scenario.”
So, Loydo, it seems you did not find this statement misleading.
I’m not even sure what it means. Do you?
Why do you make derogatory comments about folks that are trying to explain in a straightforward manner, but you have nothing to say about nonsense comments and headlines by activists and media?
Oh well. Here’s an idea: Stay safe and silent.
Loydo
Most interesting that you have not actually given the percentage change if the oceans gain 100m in depth.
The change is therefore 100/3600 = 1/36 = 0.0278 or +2.78%
Change in Greenland ice mass per year = -0.005%
The change you talk about is therefore 2.78/0.005 or 556 times bigger. Were the oceans to increase in depth at the same proportional rate Greenland is losing mass the increase in depth would therefore be 0.005% of 3600 or 18cm.
You clearly didn’t think this through, did you?
OK, I can officially say that I have now heard everything, now that a Warmista has complained about “deceptive” graphs or charts.
Extreme shades of Irony always make me hungry, so I am gonna have to go make breakfast.
Just like the misleading alarmist headline ”The rapid ice loss puts the world right on track for the ‘worst case’ climate scenario.” When in fact as Willis’s graphs show, its like piddling in the ocean.
The icy reality of antarctica
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/22/10684/
There are some anecdotal signs of cooling of deep ocean currents at both poles:
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/03/15/somethings-stirring-in-a-deep-atlantic-trench/
Great job Willis. Thanks
This is nothing but 100% SOP for government work.
Visit the CDC page on the flu.
They show a scary graph of flu deaths for the past 5 years or so, and note that in several of those years the death rate crossed “the threshold” and was an epidemic that year. All very worrisome. Then download the data from their link of all deaths, death by pneumonia, and death by flu. The flu deaths are almost nothing in the grand scheme of things.
We have accepted this sort of exaggeration for decades as just part of government. But, it is corruption, pure and simple. We can no longer afford it.
About the reduction in the rate of ice loss since 2011. I have noticed in doing this sort of data graphing that the Arctic ice summer minimum seems to have flattened out since about 2007. Anybody else notice this?
Yes. The summer minimum trend is sideways from 2007 and up from record low in 2012.
Low in winter maximum occurred in 2017, after Super El Nino. Max this year appears to have been 15.047 million sq km on March 5.
That record low in 2012 looks odd. That was a completely average year until the bottom fell out in June. Any ideas why that would have happened?
Over on NSIDC the comparative graph shows arctic sea ice at a six year high. I must have missed the headlines.
Day 82:
2020: 14.811 million sq. km.
2019: 14.595
2018: 14.279
2017: 14.195
2016: 14.499
2015: 14.401
2014: 14.886
1981-2010 Median: 15.455
At the 2017-20 rate, we’ll be back to the median in three more years. But short-term trends don’t usually last that long. In any case, a new 30-year median will come into effect next year, ie 1991 to 2020.
There is the oldest profession in the world…
… And there is the almost-as-old statistical trick in the world: playing with the scale.
Without actually reading the article (sorry), the mathematical lie is frequently in the choice of the denominator.
Relative changes in percentage rates will also confuse every BBC “science” journalist under the sun. On a bad day, I consider them shameless liars. On a good day, I realise they are just Arts graduates hopelessly out of their depth.
Willis
Brilliant stuff . I admire yr calm polite manner of responding .
I just wish that WUWT posts would reach a global audience .
Sure the Corona chaos should quieten the Alarmist narrative but dont be too sure .
Vested self-interest and pride have a huge stake in the panic . Governments are like sheep .
Money talks always but when the public begin to understand what all the Zero carbon targets mean they
will change politician’s minds .
What happens in China PRC is unknown , but surely corona deaths must the far more than the official figures ?
Great article, Willis!
You got my curiosity going.
Well, that and because the results smell of a model.
A model where miniscule percentages of the massive total Greenland or Antarctic ice yield alleged amounts of ice gain/loss.
Perhaps a level of ice loss/gain that is well within error bounds.
Imbie researchers obviously chose loss.
At the Imbie site there is this note:
IMBIE’s chart for Greenland:
?dl=0
IMBIE’s chart for Antarctica:
?dl=0
“MBIE is an international collaboration of polar scientists, providing improved estimates of the ice sheet contribution to sea level rise. Read more…”
I noticed they have a very slick web page showing a frozen landscape with a big melt area. They call this science.
I did notice their mission statement, pasted above.
They are going to find what they are paid to find.
What a corrupt pile of nonsense.
Simply, a Great Post Willis!!! Look, just see another way that these so called scientists (with their narrow minded agenda) try and deceive the rest of us. Yes, we only need to look closer, as Willis has done, to see how very little both Antarctica and Greenland have had ice mass changes (noise is correct). I think the track of Carbon dioxide is a very similar situation, whereby, the graphs that are touted appear to show very disconcerting increases, when in reality the increases have been extremely small, and even those are suspect, as many scientists believe that temperature actually precedes carbon dioxide changes. And yes, the graph that Willis depicts shows a turnaround is what should be expected, as again according to those wise and/or honest enough, state the climate is beginning to cool and is doing so because our Sun has been and continues to be in a quiet phase. Hold onto your snow shovels!
In that year, something changed. Since 2011, Antarctica and Greenland have recovered to where the loss is less than half of the maximum loss of fifty gigatonnes per month.
Anecdotally, some observed changes at both Greenland and Antarctica correlate with reversal of derivative of ice loss at both places.
Greenland’s biggest glacier Jacobshavn switched from thinning and retreat to thickening and advance ever since 2016. Sea temperatures in the surrounding Disko Bay have cooled by ~2 C over the same period.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0329-3
https://notrickszone.com/2020/02/24/new-study-a-massive-cooling-of-2c-in-8-years-2008-2016-has-jolted-large-regions-of-the-north-atlantic/
Secondly, strengthening cold deep outflow from Antarctic downwelling to north flowing Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) has been detected around South Georgia. Again, a previous trend of warming in AABW reversed to cooling a decade or so ago:
https://m.phys.org/news/2019-09-dense-antarctic-atlantic.html
It came as a surprise to me to learn that AABW accounts for 35% of the volume of the ocean. A lot of cold water.
Willis, it occurred to me that you’re missing an AlGore opportunity. Mimic his “Inconvenient Truth” CO2 scissor lift stunt. Start at the floor (at zero), and ride the lift up to where you’re ice loss number are. If the 1992-2017 your change in Greenland ice graph at 10″ tall, the scissor lift would need to be able to climb to 1,000 feet high to get the same (AlGore) perspective. For Antarctic ice, it would need to be 5,556 feet high. Unfortunately, the world’s tallest scissor lift only has a 123′ reach:)