[Vision2020] Ice in east Antarctica a bigger threat long term

[Ted Moffett]

Thanks for this article.

A current often heard argument against the evidence that human sourced
greenhouse gas emissions are warming Earth's climate is that the total ice
in Antarctica is increasing, or that areas of the Antarctic are showing
cooling.  While some areas of Antarctica may have ice thickening, a recent
article in "Nature" journal (read lower down) indicates overall Antarctica
is warming.

Global warming models predict increasing snowfall and rainfall, in part due
to increased evaporation loading the atmosphere with more H2O, so increasing
ice thickness in some areas, along with record snowfall events, is not a
surprise to scientists studying impacts of anthropogenic climate change.
Some argue that Greenland melting, a much more immediate concern for sea
level rise than Antarctic melting due to global warming, will not cause as
dramatic a rise in sea level as some scientists claim, because increasing
snowfall will increase the rate of ice buildup on Greenland, even as melting
increases.

Realclimate recently offered an excellent article (also referenced lower
down) on Antarctic warming that featured in depth critical discussion of the
recent "Nature" journal article.

This is how peer reviewed science proceeds, unlike what occurs at the
pseudo-scientific "Climate Change Conferences" that the "Heartland
Institute" sponsors, one of which is now under way in New York City.  Many
of the arguments at this conference regarding climate science would be
sliced and diced if published in peer reviewed scientific journals, as has
already happened to the publications on climate from many of these
scientists.

It's amazing how the same skeptics keep attending these conferences, some of
whom have been involved in scientific fraud and misrepresentation, such as
Willie Soon and Arthur Robinson, of the famed Oregon Institute of Science
and Medicine, that sponsored a petition on climate change that forced that
National Academy of Sciences to issue a rejection of the petition; and other
scientists whose theories on climate science have been thoroughly examined
by the climate science community, and have been found to be dubious, such as
Richard Lindzen, Lord Monckton, Roy Spencer, Don Easterbrook and S. Fred
Singer.

The following two URLs demonstrate how professional peer review deconstructs
the climate science assertions of Lord Monckton that climate sensitivity
(global temperature change resulting from doubling atmospheric CO2) is
negligible:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/once-more-unto-the-bray/#more-583

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/cuckoo-science/
---------------------
Information on the "Heartland Institutes's" Climate Change conference now
under way:

http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html

http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/PDFs/NationalReviewAd.pdf
----------------------
Realclimate discussion on the "Nature" journal article on Antarctic warming:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/02/antarctic-warming-is-robust/#more-651

Antarctic warming is robust

So it is with the Steig et al
paper<http://faculty.washington.edu/steig/nature09data/>published last
week. Their conclusions that West Antarctica is warming quite
strongly and that even Antarctica as a whole is warming since 1957 (the
start of systematic measurements) were based on extending the long term
manned weather station data (42 stations) using two different methodologies
(RegEM and PCA) to interpolate to undersampled regions using correlations
from two independent data sources (satellite AVHRR and the Automated Weather
Stations (AWS) ), and validations based on subsets of the stations (15 vs 42
of them) etc.

---------------------
URL to the "Nature" journal article discussed:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/abs/nature07669.html
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett


On 2/26/09, nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com> wrote:
>
> Ice in east Antarctica a bigger threat long term
> Thursday, February 26, 2009 6:02 AM EST
> The Associated Press
> By CHARLES J. HANLEY
>
> TROLL RESEARCH STATION, Antarctica (AP) — Antarctica's western ice sheet is
> pushing ever faster into the sea, but scientists know an even greater
> long-term threat lies here in the vast, little-explored whiteness of east
> Antarctica.
>
> An "absolutely titanic" store of ice that sits atop the east Antarctic
> plateau should be more closely monitored by glaciologists, the world's
> thinly spread corps of ice specialists, says Ted Scambos, a leading U.S.
> expert whose team last weekend finished a two-month scientific expedition
> across the forbidding plateau.
>
> Scambos and Tom Neumann, leader of that joint U.S.-Norwegian "traverse"
> from the South Pole to this Norwegian outpost, commented Wednesday after the
> release in Geneva of a report summarizing initial findings from the
> 2007-2009 International Polar Year (IPY), a program of intensified research
> in the polar regions.
>
> That report said west Antarctica has been warming, ice shelves floating on
> the sea fringing the west coast are weakening, and the glaciers they hold
> back are pouring ice faster into the sea.
>
> The report doesn't forecast immediate Antarctic disasters because of global
> warming. Scientists point out, however, that if the western ice sheet ever
> collapsed completely, it would add some 7 meters to sea levels worldwide.
>
> East Antarctica's ice appears more stable than the west's — "I wouldn't say
> it's stable, but more stable," said Neumann — but it has the theoretical
> potential to add some 200 feet (60 meters) to sea levels in centuries to
> come, scientists say. Even a small, more immediate shift here could raise
> oceans significantly.
>
> Concerned Norwegian researchers plan to investigate the state of the Fimbul
> Ice Shelf, a gigantic table of thick ice reaching 120 miles into the sea at
> the coast 100 miles north of this research station, which sits in a stony
> mountain valley hemmed in by glaciers rumbling in slow motion toward the
> far-off southern Atlantic.
>
> Kim Holmen, research director for the Norwegian Polar Institute, which
> operates Troll, took note of the melting ice shelves of the west.
>
> "This is something we think is happening to the ice shelves in Dronning
> Maud Land," he said, referring to this Norwegian-claimed sector of east
> Antarctica. "The water coming in under the shelves is 1-degree (Celsius)
> warmer" — almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
>
> Scambos, lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center at
> the University of Colorado, pointed out that a recently published research
> paper in the journal Nature indicated that east Antarctica, contrary to
> earlier scientific belief, has been warming in recent decades.
>
> "Our preliminary results support that," he said of the traverse
> expedition's research. "The temperature measurements we were able to make
> looks like there was a very slight warming."
>
> The 12-member U.S.-Norwegian team drilled deep cores into the eastern ice
> sheet to assess recent and historical climate trends, checked ice thickness
> with radar, and made other measurements. They drove the 1,400 miles (2,300
> kilometers) in a caravan of snow tractors pulling research, kitchen and
> sleeping modules on giant skis.
>
> The interior of east Antarctica is almost entirely unexplored. "The area we
> traveled through had not been visited by a scientific traverse since the
> 1960s," said NASA glaciologist Neumann.
>
> "This part of Antarctica is approximately the same size as Greenland and we
> don't know very much about it," he said. "But I hope our data on the ground
> will allow us to make a much better assessment of how this area is
> changing."
>
> That will take months of follow-up analysis. Meantime, Scambos said,
> Wednesday's IPY report "gives us an idea of what sort of trouble we are
> getting ourselves into if we don't begin to turn around the impact of
> greenhouse gases on climate."
>
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