By P Gosselin
Four new studies in prestigious journals show Antarctic ice shelf as stable as ever.
Hat-tip: EIKE Klimaschau
Andreasen et al (2023) finds net gain
A study by Julia R. Andreasen and colleagues looked at the changes in ice shelves, Antarctic-wide, using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellite data from 2009 to 2019.
Image: Andreasen et al (2023)
They found that over the period 2009-2019, overall Antarctic ice shelf area grew by 5305 km2.
18 ice shelves retreated somewhat and 16 larger shelves grew in terms of area. “Our observations show that Antarctic ice shelves gained 661 Gt of ice mass over the past decade,” the scientists summarized.
Banwell et al (2023) meltwater volume dropped
Another new paper by Banwell et al published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters looked at the duration and amount of surface ice melting on Antarctica’s ice shelves from 1980 to 2021, using microwave satellite data the snow model SNOWPACK.
Result: They found that the highest meltwater volumes were produced on the Peninsula, reaching a peak in the 1992/1993 and 1994/1995, and that SNOWPACK calculated “a small, but significant, decreasing trend in both annual melt days and meltwater production volume over the 41 years.”
Frazer et al (2023)
Another study published in Nature authored by Frazer et al (2023) found that although West Antarctica – particularly from Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers – has seen dramatic ice losses in recent decades, projections of their future rate are confounded by limited observations.
Also, looking at the period 2003 and 2015, they found rates of glacier retreat and acceleration to be extensive along the Bellingshausen Sea coastline, but slowed along the Amundsen Sea.
The authors conclude: Our results provide direct observations that the pace, magnitude and extent of ice destabilization around West Antarctica vary by location, with the Amundsen Sea response most sensitive to interdecadal atmosphere-ocean variability.
Baico et al (2023) 35 meters thinner thousands of years ago
Finally, in yet another new published paper by Baico et al (2023), the authors looked at subglacial bedrock cores show that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) between Thwaites and Pope glaciers and found it “was at least 35 m thinner than present in the past several thousand years and then subsequently thickened.”
Moreover: “A past episode of ice sheet thinning that took place in a similar, although not identical, climate was not irreversible. We propose that the past thinning–thickening cycle was due to a glacioisostatic rebound feedback, similar to that invoked as a possible stabilizing mechanism for current grounding line retreat, in which isostatic uplift caused by Early Holocene thinning led to relative sea level fall favoring grounding line advance.”
There is a simple way to confirm these new Antarctic ice studies. If Antarctica were losing more ice, then sea level rise would be accelerating. It isn’t.
Not a single ‘major’ alarmist prediction has proven true over the past four decades.
But a lot of peripheral climate alarms have been proven to be clearcut academic misconduct. Among those exposed in ebook Blowing Smoke are:
Plus the book exposes a lot of amplified MSM alarm based on dodgy papers that do not meet the definition of academic misconduct. Classic examples include essays ‘Last Cup of Coffee’ and ‘Greenhouse Effects’.
A side note. There are two definitions of Uni level academic misconduct, for students, and for faculty.
For students, the single simple definition is ‘cheating’. Examples include having someone else write your term paper, or taking a crib sheet into an exam.
For faculty, it is just three things:
All four of the enumerated faculty examples above are #2. Harvard’s former President Gay is #3. #1 is hard if you have co-authors not your grad students, easy if you don’t. The infamous climate reef fish behavior studies in Australia are a classic example of #1 in re climate. And the grad student went on to be caught separately as a tenure track Prof by her new Uni in Scandinavia.
“Not a single ‘major’ alarmist prediction has proven true over the past four decades.” True, and you’d think the public would notice. Maybe they have but the MSM hasn’t, or more accurately, won’t.
And along that line we have this from Tony Heller:
https://realclimatescience.com/2024/01/theres-no-sea-ice-at-all/#gsc.tab=0
Well, Rud, in fairness, if Antarctica was losing more ice (on land, that is) per unit of time, it might not be reflected in accelerating global sea level rise rate. For instance, that extra liquid water released into the hydrological cycle could be tied up in increasing global atmospheric humidity (i.e., TPW), or perhaps in additional “permanent” snow coverage or glacial mass around the planet.
LOL! Not according to the alarmist “experts” who have been predicting catastrophic SLR for all of those 40 years and continually moving the goal posts further and further into the future when it doesn’t happen.
My question is that if all the sea ice melts because of warming oceans there should be little or no effect on SLR.
When all that sea ice is gone the continental mass is exposed with cliff faces the non rising sea levels can’t overcome to reach the land-bound ice.
Being that Scott died in a temperature estimated to be -44ºC during the Antarctic summer, it strikes me as somewhat unlikely that ice will melt thanks to a rise in global air temperatures of 1.5ºC.
There is, of course, the question of the 91 volcanoes under the western ice sheet which lay undiscovered until around 2018. Obviously nothing to do with ‘climate’. I think I read somewhere that those volcanoes, although plugged with ice, would be emitting heat which caused a layer of melting ice which allowed the continental ice to slide toward the ocean, but continually replenished by falling snow. Again, nothing about climate could influence that.
And isn’t the Thwaites glacier progress a product of the continual pressure of snow buildup from the interior of the continent which seems to me an ongoing process, the volcanoes might also influence that as well.
Sorry if those are dumb questions.
The Antarctic Ice mass is perturbing the crustal / mantle interface and causing more geothermal activity in the region. A similar theory is evolving on how the Ice mass during each glacial epoch causes this same phenomenon across the Northern Hemisphere and accelerates and or causes the thaw. There could be a long term climatic forcing associated with glacial rebound.
You can add to the list any time a so-called researcher tries to explain calving as a sign of ice loss by using the analogy of an upside-down melting ice cream cone.
Pure BS and they know it! The centre of Antarctica is never melting, and all melting glaciers RECEDE not advance and calve-off. Antarctica is the world’s freezer, with a built-in automatic ice machine that never turns off.
> Antarctic Ice Is MORE STABLE Than Thought
That’s just another way of saying “more ominous” right? Take that smile and turn it upside down just like it was a hockey stick input.
It’s not a big deal, but the Pope Glacier, the Bellingshausen Sea, and the Amundsen Sea, all mentioned in the article are not shown on the map.
And I also suspect Antarctica the land mass may be far more complex in terms of the volcanic/ subterranean activity than warmist think.
Fun fact. The Amundson Embayment’s most worrisome WAIS glacier (Thwaites) was spotted calving into the sea with its volcanic till ash r
trapped inside. Oops.
Rud, here is another fun fact: Antarctica has the lowest recorded temperature, from 1983, at -89.4C or -125F. Then, earlier in 1974 it recorded a high of 59F or 19.8C.
Ron,
I have lived in a small coastal village where we had hot katabatic winds in winter. This was caused by warm air moving from an interior plateau across an escarpment and down to the sea. This was not climate change but simply a weather phenomenon. What would have caused the high in 1974 in Antarctica?
To tweak the idiom “one swallow does not make a summer” we can say “one weather event does not make climate change.”
That is a fascinating continent. Volcanic activity , sub ice lakes, and who knows what is crushed down there at the land mass level, what fossils from life forms and vegetation from the past. Evidence of past climate obviously too.
They found evidence of lush temperate forests in ice cores just off the coast of the continent, also fossil remains of dinosaurs on Antarctica itself, from about the same period. It hasn’t always been a bleak, icebound polar continent – 50-70 million years ago it was further towards the equator and a temperate garden spot!
Story tip – We Need to Talk About That ‘Inevitable’ Switch to Electric Vehicles – PJ Media
What??? . . . after so many years of being subjected to statements from the IPCC, the CAGW alarmists, the Biden administration, AOC, Michael Mann, and other “talking heads” in the MSM, you now expect us to consider science-based data???
Who the heck are you kidding?
/sarc
“Thwaites glaciers – has seen dramatic ice losses in recent decades, projections of their future rate are confounded by limited observations.”
There is real reliable data in this ‘tell’. Doctrinaire climate scientists invariably stop observing and reporting on phenomena when the data points in an inconvenient direction. For example, after the much anticipated launch of the CO2 satellite, which showed the hottest CO2 sources were the Congo and Amazon forests, doctrinaire science fell silent. North America and Europe are very mildly anomalous. Their huge agricultural industry gobbles up this welcome CO2, as every commercial greenhouse owner knows. This lonely satellite gets rare visitors nowadays.
In 2012, sealevel stopped rising and began to decline for many months in the midst of the biggest alarm festival on perilous global inundation. What happened? They stopped updating the graph and after many months re-issued it after adding on a crustal rebound factor (changing volume of ocean basins). This had the silly artifact of real sealevel lying somehere above the sealeve product from NOAA. So they launched a sealevel satellite with an accuracy of a few centimeters (instrument, variation in waviness, tidal stuff… This is the perfect type of metric for data fiddlers and the first ‘data’ stream showed the Holy Grail of acceleration in sealevel, which met with derision. Now another several hundred million buck piece of
equipment wends its loney way through the
heavens!
And what about the global greening satellite? A doctrinaire climateer’s nightmare! Incontrovertible proof that carbon is many orders of magnitude net positve benefit. They tried to spin it into a negative without success. Global burgeoning harvests. World forests expand 20%. Tiger numbers increase 38% in India and 10% in the Ganges delta….
Yeah, no news from Thwaites is good news for realists.
Gary, this is an interesting bit of information.
Where is the primary source for this CO2 satellite measurements?
https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/
Most, if not all, of the early maps and animations have been removed from the site. One must look elsewhere to find the original, early material, such as the very fist map exhibited at the 2014 AGU meeting.
The site retains a computer model animation (A Year in the Life of CO2) that runs from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2006. Interestingly, the first and last dates look very different from each other! They should be very similar. This was developed 8 years before the launch of OCO-2. Apparently no one at NASA has noticed that it doesn’t reflect reality, but they keep the computer model on the site, while removing the maps made from the actual data. I always get suspicious about whether someone is playing with an honest deck when 5 aces show up.
Excuse me for asking, but– What is the real-world, practical effect of a polar climate that “warms” (??) from an average of -48*C to -47*C?
The practical effect is research grants that transfer government tax monies into academia’s pockets. This also has the added effect of transferring government tax monies into industry pockets as politicians strive to “fight climate change” using dollars as a weapon.
Remember, you cannot achieve “climate justice” without dollars.
And:
“Just yesterday, Jan 3, Concordia dipped to -42.2C which set a new continental low for the burgeoning year, beating the -41.8C set on Jan 1 atJASE2007 AWS. It’s summer at the bottom of the world, remember — these are the hottest days of the year yet the continent isn’t getting a reprieve: sub -40C readings have been commonplace, and the ice… is stable/growing.”
I don’t think the climate is doing what the climate alarmists think it is doing.
But the Arctic and Antarctic are the places where climate global change warming will be felt first! Mostly because those are places that the normal person can’t go have a look see for themselves. The greening of Africa simply doesn’t count, nor does the idea that sea level at the Statue of Liberty is the same as it was 100 years ago.
It only appears more stable because melting is filling in the natural cracks (a disaster in itself). </sarc>
move Antarctic ice to Venus
Mars gets Greenland