By P Gosselin
Forgotten aerial photos from 1937 have given researchers at the University of Copenhagen the most detailed picture of the ice evolution in East Antarctica to date.
The results of a comprehensive analysis: The ice has remained stable and even grown slightly over almost a century.
Hat-tip: Klimanachrichten
Photo: Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø
The area covers approximately 2000 kilometers of coastline and contains as much ice as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet.
Using hundreds of old aerial photographs dating back to 1937, combined with modern computer technology, the researchers from the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen have tracked the evolution of glaciers in East Antarctica and have been able to determine whether the glaciers have retreated or advanced and whether they have thickened or thinned.
The study reveals that the ice has not only remained stable but grown slightly over the last 85 years, partly due to increasing snowfall.
“We constantly hear about climate change and new melt records, so it’s refreshing to observe an area of glaciers that has remained stable for almost a century,” says PhD student Mads Dømgaard, the study’s lead author.
Solid historical photographic record
Out of 2200 images photographed from seaplanes in 1937, 130 were selected for the analysis. The researchers combined the historical photos with modern satellite data to create 3D reconstructions of the glaciers. Moreover, the Norwegian aerial images were supplemented with 165 aerial images of the same glaciers from Australian surveys conducted between 1950 and 1974. This allowed the researchers to examine the evolution of the glaciers over different periods and calculate historical ice flow speeds for selected glaciers.
Compared to modern data, the ice flow speeds are unchanged, the researchers found. While some glaciers have thinned over shorter intermediate periods of 10-20 years, they have remained stable or grown slightly in the long term, indicating a system in balance.
Bummer. Was so looking forward to the Great Extinguishing.
I am surprised this was published. Stability of ice in Antarctica? Gaia forbid!
But . . ., but . . ., but . . . .
This reminds me of the 120 year old pictures of the La Jolla cove and 90+ year old pictures of the NYC Battery both showing no distinguishable sea level rise.
Daily tidal variations are still larger than one hundred years of sea level rise of a few mm per year.
Only in the Trump era. This work would not get past peer review pre Trump II.
It will be fun to watch the money tilt toward positive spin about Climate Change™.
Anyone at NOAA wanting to keep their job needs to start reporting all the cooling trends and re-adjkusting the data back to measured values.
Published: 25 May 2024
Submitted many months before the publication date
Perhaps they saw what the rest of us saw, and instinctively knew that there was no way that Biden or Harris could win 😉.
I wasn’t so sure, given what likely happened in 2020.
Could just report the ADVANTAGES of increasing temperatures!
Full disclosure: I’m Canadian.
Archiving data for long term retrieval is critical avoids its permanent loss and allows later analysis to be performed. How often has the preservation of primary data been ignored and the data lost? No one knows, of course. But, examples such as the loss of the data from which the hockey stick was supposedly derived are well known.
Once again, weather/climate history debunks Climate Alarmist claims that CO2 is drastically changing the Earth’s atmosphere and weather.
How very inconvenient for the climate crazies although it will probably get ignored or explained away as the ice sheets from the Northern hemisphere hiding so they don’t melt during “climate boiling”!
FWIW
Below is an extract from H.H. Lamb’s 1977 masterpiece in unbiassed scientific reporting – Climatic History and the Future.
Not much detail is known about the variations of the Antarctic ice on the Southern Ocean. Nevertheless several useful analyses and collections of observations from the voyages of the 1770’s onwards exist.
The regions south of about latitude 40 south do not seem to have fully shared the cold epoch of about 1550-1800 or after, which was so marked in the northern hemisphere. The farthest south positions reached by the early voyagers between Cook’s expedition in 1773 and Briscoe’s in 1831 in various sectors were all 1-2 deg of latitude south of the normal limit of pack-ice at the end of the melting season in recent years (1960’s that is).
When the frailty of the wooden ships of those times is allowed for, it seems clear that the southern sea ice tended to be somewhat less extensive than since. A deterioration followed, the ice increasing on the whole until 1900 or rather later, with some recession since. There were several groups of extraordinary bad years (for shipping), 1832-4, 1840, 1844, 1854-7, 1888-90, 1892-6, 1898-9, 1904-7,1929-31, with large numbers of great icebergs in temperate latitudes in many sectors – in extreme cases reaching the latitude of the River Plate in the western South Atlantic and to near the Cape of Good Hope. It seems probable that most of the years 1888 – 1907 were bad ice years around Cape Horn and that reports are sometimes lacking because ships avoided the risk by keeping to Magellan Strait. Accounts are known to exist of ships about the turn of the century (1900) finding only 100 sea miles of sailing room south of the Horn.
Another period of severe ice conditions, primarily in the Bellingshausen Sea, in 1958-60 was of a different order and produced no more than a slight advance of pack-ice north of the South Shetlands.
Some years when most of the Weddell Sea was clear of ice in the summers followed in the 1960s (as it had been in 1823).
A stunning look at a 4-masted barque rounding Cape Horn from east to west at the following link.
Sailors were super tough back then.
“Accounts are known to exist of ships about the turn of the century (1900) finding only 100 sea miles of sailing room south of the Horn.”
Here is the U.S. regional chart, Hansen 1999. You can see the cold around the early 1900’s, and you can see the equally cold period around the late 1970’s, when some climate scientists were thinking another Ice Age might be coming along. You can see why they thought so, because the temperatures had gotten just as cold as they were in the early 1900’s. If they got any colder, then look out!
Charts like the regional chart below were the only charts available at the time. There were no “global” temperature charts back then. Hansen 1999, and other charts were what climate scientists were looking at then.
2000 km ? That’s peanuts, Antarctica coastline is about 20,000 km.
And CO2 is 400 ppm. Seems 10% is more significant than 0.04%.
130 photos selected out of 2200. Not sayin’ they were cherry picking, but it’s something naysayers are going to pick on….
Maybe someone looking at the 2200 saw things unrelated and discarded those.
If naysayers are going to pick on that point, merely publish all 2200.
Well, it is good that those photos don’t show kilometers of retreat as is so often reported in lamestream media.
The region of the Antarctic coast that these photos are of loses almost all of its seaice in the summer.
Here’s the current situation:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=432310;image