The ice shelves surrounding Antarctica grew in overall size during the 11 years to 2019, according to dramatic new evidence published by three climate scientists from the University of Leeds. The growth was significant with overall shelf area increasing by 5,305 km2, adding 0.4% to the total shelf area in the 11 years under review. The paper has just been published by the influential European Geosciences Union, but it raises questions within the ‘settled’ climate science narrative, so it is highly unlikely to be covered by mainstream media
The Leeds researchers looked at satellite data to measure the annual calving position and area of 34 ice sheets accounting for 80% of the Antarctica coastline. They found reductions in the area on the Antarctica Peninsula and West Antarctica of 6,693 km2 and 5,563 km2 respectively were outweighed by growth in East Antarctica of 3,532 km2 and 14,028 km2 in the large Ross and Ronne-Filchner ice shelves. The largest retreat occurred on the Larsen C shelf when 5,917 km2 was lost in a single calving event that made alarmist headlines around the world. The largest increase, noted in slightly less media detail, was the 5,889 km2 advance on the Ronne platform.
Ice shelves around the coast of Antarctica play an important role in the cycle of ice production since they often buttress the glaciers behind them. Remove the plug and glaciers can move at a faster rate towards the coast. The shelves show considerable natural variation allowing alarmists to cherry-pick significant collapses into the sea to promote a hypothesis that the overall climate is breaking down. Typical of this coverage was an article by BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos in 2021 under a ‘climate change’ heading, noting, “The Antarctic ice shelf in the line of fire.” In 2017, i News reported comments broadcast by Sir David Attenborough said to warn that “Antarctica’s melting ice sheets could flood London by end of century”.
The above map displays the ice shelf areas in blue that have increased in size and colours in red those that have decreased. The two large blue areas are the Ross and Ronne-Filchner areas. Little loss is shown over the east of the continent with deficits concentrated in the West. In total, 18 ice shelves are said to have retreated and 16 larger platforms have grown in area. Overall, the shelves gained 661 giga tonnes of mass over the decade. The scientists note that using a ‘steady’ state process, by which they mean no change in any variable, would produce an estimate of substantial loss over the period. They argue their work demonstrates the importance of using “time-variable calving flux observations to measure change”.
In short, and in less scientific terms, check actual observations, and ignore make-believe computer models, and the resulting stories published by climate alarmists promoting the collectivist Net Zero project.
It is not a surprise that ice shelves are currently thinning in parts of West Antarctica. The area is riddled with buried volcanos, with the recent discovery of another 91 bringing the known total to 138. Across the West Antarctica Rift System, their heights range from 300-12,600 ft. In addition, areas around the Thwaites-Pine Island-Pope glacier have a thin Earth crust causing one group of scientists to note that the “elevated geothermal heat flow band” is exerting a “profound influence on the flow dynamics of the Western Antarctica Ice Sheet”.
On a number of occasions, the Daily Sceptic has referenced the recent work of Singh and Polvani that shows current warming only in that part of the continent. Over the last seven decades, warming across Antarctica has been “nearly non-existent”, they point out. The surrounding sea ice extent has “modestly expanded”. Over at NASA, scientists have estimated any overall sheet ice loss at 0.0005% a year.
Last year, Adjunct Professor J. Ray Bates at the University College Dublin wrote a paper entitled ‘Polar Sea Ice and the Climate Catastrophe Narrative’. In the Antarctic, the meteorologist observed, there has been “no significant” change in the annual mean sea ice extent since reliable satellite measurements began. This is despite climate model predictions of a decline.
He published the above graph which showed the extent of sea ice from 1979 to 2021 along the horizontal axis. Contrary to what the models projected, the trend during this period at the September late-winter maximum is in the direction of a slightly increasing Antarctica sea ice extent. Professor Bates concludes that climate models failed to predict the growth in Antarctica sea ice, and they have missed the recent marked slowdown of sea ice decline in the Arctic. “It would be unwarranted to think they are going to get it right over the next 30 years,” he said.
He concludes: “These facts deserve to be recognised when the notion of a climate emergency, requiring the most drastic and immediate changes to the world’s economy, is being put forward. Some concern might also be shown among those involved for the increasing eco-anxiety being inflicted on the younger generation.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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STOP——–These scientists are clearly not “reputable”. They must be working for oil companies. BBC must ensure that these scientists of ill repute who are clearly mavericks out with the groupthink scientific consensus (politics) never appear on any program or station. Guardian and Independent journalists must try and dig up some dirt on them so they may be exposed as charlatans who are trying to dispense misinformation about the emergency we face. Infact isn’t it time we had a climate denier gulag for these insidious spreaders of fossil fuel propaganda? Maybe Ed Miliband and Ed Davey can form an Ed pincer movement and draw up some legislation to make it illegal to question everything from temperature data to heat pumps, as we must become “world leaders” in something at least, right?
For the kids: varmint is being sarcastic
I often assume most people spot the irony or sarcasm, but clearly I might have to settle for 97% (oops that’s me being sarcastic again)
Good to see that ice volume/tonnage was also included.
Climate cultists switch back and forth between area and volume depending on which statistic supports their assertions.
The cultists also switch hemispheres, and between sea-ice, glaciers, ice-shelves and icebergs depending on which graph is moving in the direction they like to promote. For example, they focus on Arctic Sea Ice decline but ignore Antarctic Sea Ice increase.
Notice how when talking of ice loss, proponents of global warming will compare ice to something big, like Manhattan Island, rather than a percentage. Because they know a tiny number like 0.0000025 % won’t scare anyone, and ofcourse the whole idea is to SCARE, otherwise no one will accept heat pumps, wind turbines and a trebling of electricity prices.
Does it matter? The “Climate Emergency” narrative has created a welter of new jobs, indeed a whole new industry. This includes the public sector. For example, in one authority there are a number of “Climate Emergency Project Officers” (£33,000 pa) who report to the “Environment and Climate Change Lead Officer”. Presumably their job includes countering “disinformation” in the local press and liaising with The Counter-Disinformation Unit to produce scary forecasts of local sea-level rise. So long as the make-believe narrative creates make-believe jobs everyone is happy, for a time.
Yep but digging holes and filling them in again creates jobs as well. But what does it actually achieve? —–Nothing.
“ignore make-believe computer models”
Do you mean ignore models or do you mean the implementation of the model didn’t have a fine enough grid or that the solution didn’t converge?
I think he means ignore models that are designed to make people believe an outcome already determined in advance of the model being designed.
‘There is tremendous pressure to produce “good” results to keep the funding stream alive, as those in the field well know. Just as reported in medically related fields, replication efforts for CFD have often been unsuccessful, but almost always go unpublished because of the lack of incentives to do so. It is sad to have to add that in some cases, senior people in the field can suppress negative results. Some way needs to be found to provide incentives for honest and objective replication efforts and publishing those findings regardless of the opinions of the authors of the method.’
‘Computational Fluid Dynamics, Models, and The “Laws of Physics” David Young Dec 2022
“Computer modeling,” Prof. Koonin explained in Unsettled, “is central to climate science,” as their “results underpin the reports of the other UN working groups that assess the impact of a changing climate on ecosystems and society.” Id. p. 78.
Computer modeling is also central to theory that fossil fuel CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming and, therefore, to every present and future “Net Zero” regulation pursued by the Biden Administration and others.
The dominant model is the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), now in its 6th version.
To illustrate, the CSSR of the 4th National Climate Assessment has more than 250 citations to the CMIP model.
The CSSR explains:
“Here, the primary resource for this assessment is more recent global model results and associated downscaled products from CMIP5.” Id. p. 5.
To be used as science, the models must pass the simple and profound test of the scientific method:
Do they work?
Do they reliability predict temperatures and other climate variables or not?
As demonstrated next, they do not.
Thus CMIP and dependent models should not be used in support of any present or future government regulation or action intended to reduce fossil fuels and CO2 to “Net Zero.”
‘Challenging ‘Net Zero’ with Science’ Lindzen, Happer, CO2 Coalition 23 Feb 2023
The polite word is “kriging“. In the right circumstances, such extrapolation of “data” to cover regions for which there is no actual data (or problematic data, or coarse gridding) is justified, so long as there is no blurring between “data” and “models”. However, “climate science” has a long track record of blurring the distinction, arguably in order to get the model to predict the “right” outcome. In particular, climate monitoring stations in the polar regions are notably sparse. This is especially problematic when guessing temperatures i the 1800s in order to show “warming” over a timescale of a century.
Now that I’ve had some caffeine I should point out that too fine a grid causes issues as does using elements of the too low an order to capture the physics. As to numerical stability I’ve come to believe that if the analog computer that is the universe can solve the equations and yet your digital computer solution doesn’t converge then your model is wrong in some way.
An inconvenient truth!
Ice ages occur when the oceans are warm and the continents are cold => more ice.
The only reason for climate models appears to be as fund raisers.
They are not otherwise needed
‘….there’s very good agreement between all of the various ice cores, ice core analysis groups, and ice core CO2 measurement methods. And the ice core measurements agree with the Mauna Loa CO2 observations quite well.
Another thing that can be calculated from the isotopes in the air trapped in the ice-core bubbles are the temperatures back in the day.
The Vostok ice core data, one of the longest datasets, recorded four glaciated intervals and five “interglacials” including our current interglacial, the Holocene.’
‘…..people keep saying that a slight global warming is an “existential crisis”.
But in both of the previous interglacials, temperatures were up to 2°C warmer than today.
That’s 3.6°C warmer than the “preindustrial temperature”, far above the impending terror temperature of 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial that they keep scaring us with.
There were modern humans around for both of those hot spells, along with most modern life forms.
It wasn’t an “existential crisis”.
It wasn’t a crisis at all.
It was a warm time.’
Willis Eschenbach Apr 2023
That’s the problem with fascism:
‘Fascism……does not believe in the possibility of “happiness” on earth’
‘The Doctrine of Fascism’ Benito Mussolini 1932
The warming around West Antarctica could well be due to increased volcanic activity, or it could be due to an as yet unknown natural ocean cycle. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation are now accepted as fact, although this has only been the case for less than 50 years, and climate scientists who don’t agree with the IPCC consensus realise that they affect regional climate and global temperature anomalies. The Southern Ocean is much less studied and there’s very little data from before the 1980’s so it’s possible that there’s a cycle of warming and cooling in some areas that has yet to be identified and may have recently undergone a phase change. Looking at sea ice extent in more detail using data from NSIDC there’s a slight upward trend until 2015 then a slight downward trend, but at a much lower level, from 2017 onwards. I think that this kind of step change supports the idea of a phase change in ocean cycles, or maybe weather patterns and wind direction. I agree that what’s happening in Antarctica isn’t the result of slightly more CO2 in the atmosphere but think that changes in volcanic activity are at best only a small part of the explanation.
you know you’re dealing with a coercive control murder suicide death cult when they tell you the world is going to end if you don’t do exactly what they say, and you had better hold on tight to your wallet
You’re dealing in FACTS Chris.
Those pushing the climate change crisis narrative are dealing with emotions – as evidenced by the (invariably young) brainwashed nutters who are occasionally interviewed on GB News and TalkTV.
Our pathetic MPs also don’t deal in FACTS. They just know that refusing to go along with the climate change narrative will have a severely negative effect on their careers.
When the bodies pile up in winter – frozen to death because of the lunacy – THEN we may see the lunacy being challenged by the MSM, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
The dynamic duo of climate grifting, Al Gore and John Kerry, predicted that the polar ice caps would be gone by 2014.
How many times in succession do the climate apocalypse-mongers have to be wrong before people realise that they’re deliberately trying to frighten everyone, in order to advance various globalist political agendas?
None of it has anything to do with the climate, or “saving the planet”, and everything to do with wielding totalitarian control over every aspect of your life.
@WideAwakeMedia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1665691922181046273
Why are you discussing Antarctica when the climate alarmists are using the Arctic ice to make their claims?