It is graphs like this pair that make the global warming story so difficult to tell in the mainstream media:
The northern hemisphere fits in easily enough with the simple truth. Ice in the Arctic is declining at 3.5% per decade. It is the southern hemisphere that provided the ammunition for doubter Christopher Monckton when he wrote recently in The Australian. The quantity of sea ice has been increasing at 1.4% per decade.
Graham Readfearn had a go at rebutting Monckton statement that “a largely unreported gain in Antarctic sea ice since 1979 almost matches the widely reported loss of Arctic sea ice”. “Does it?” wrote Readfearn for the Crikey blog Rooted. “No, it doesn’t. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center states there has been a slight gain in Antarctic sea-ice cover of 0.9 per cent since 1979, the equivalent of about 100,000 sq km per decade. But the loss of ice in the Arctic over the same period is 500,000 sq km per decade.”
That’s true enough but perhaps more important – but less easy to illustrate in a non-technical way – is evidence that in the Antarctic the ice is being attacked from the bottom. In a paper presented recently to the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, oceanographer Doug Martinson of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory says new analyses of the heat content of the waters off Western Antarctic Peninsula are now showing a clear and exponential increase in warming waters undermining the sea ice, raising air temperatures, melting glaciers and wiping out entire penguin colonies.
“In the area I work there is the highest increase in temperatures of anywhere on Earth,” said Martinson to the Discovery News website. Martinson has been collecting ocean water heat content data for more than 18 years at Palmer Island, on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula.
“Eighty-seven percent of the alpine glaciers are in retreat,” said Martinson of the Western Antarctic Peninsula. “Some of the Adele penguin colonies have already gone extinct.”
Martinson and his colleagues looked not only at their very detailed and mapped water heat data from the last two decades, but compared them with sketchier data from the past and deep ocean heat content measurements worldwide. All show the same rising trend that is being seen in Antarctica.
“When I saw that my jaw just dropped,” said Martinson. The most dramatic rise has happened since 1960, he said.
What the rising water heat means, he said, is that even if humanity got organized and soon stopped emitting greenhouse gases, there is already too much heat in the oceans to stop a lot of impacts — like the melting of a huge amount of Antarctic ice.
“There’s the potential that we’re locked into long term sea level rise for a long time,” Martinson told Discovery News. Martinson presented his latest ocean heat results on Monday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
As for how fast the ice will melt and in what locations, that depends largely on whether the upwelling warm water comes in contact with the thick ice shelf that crowds the coast and holds the block the glaciers from reaching the sea.
That, in turn, depends on the winds which drive away the surface waters and make it possible for the deeper waters to rise to the surface, said senior researcher Robert Bindschadler of NASA’s Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
“It can destroy the ice shelf if that heat can get to it,” said Bindschadler, who at the same meeting presented his work from the melting Pine Island Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
18 Comments
Thanks for presenting these, given how the climate change deniers manipulate graphs – and how this is rebutted, I think this can be explained- not by the media though.
Every US President since Carter, (Bush I and II included), have said the US must cut their dependence on oil – well climate change mitigation and reducing oil dependence involve the same processes.
30 years of satellite data, with the last 15 showing a decline is not a long term trend nor most especially evidence in scientific support of the theory of AGW.
But Farmer is no more unscientific and unreasoning as his beloved New York Times has been for over a century:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/eternal_melting/
What a stupid thing to say James, thanks for that. The last 15 showing a decline? Link please?
Richard, isn’t there a sea-ice volume plot done, which would capture this?
JamesK
Then why do 16 years of satellite data from NASA show an average 3mm per year rise in average sea levels throughout the world? Where is the extra water coming from?
http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/
And yes, I know that much of this rise is due to “thermal expansion” but that only happens if the water temperature is increasing doesn’t it?
@Epon
Well duh….. look at the the Northern Hemisphere graph.
Again apparently the MSM have no difficulty painting the catastrophists message and 15 years give or take sigificant decrease in Arctic ice is somehow evidence of catostrophic man made gflobal warming!!! But….well…… how exactly?
It is an indictment of your wildly catostrophist political agenda that that you call my critique “stupid” on essentially small detail.
Why’s that?
No significant intelligent point to make Epon?
Wow!!!!!
3mm/year.
Why at that rate well all drown…… in a few millennia….. assuming it doesn’t cycle back like most all things in Nature…..
Quick….run for the hills!!!!!!!!!!!!…….
The good news is all the flooding will force closure of all the coal mines………
‘Peace in our time’?
Oh goodie JamesK is back.
Great to see that distinctive denialist style of rambling inchoate statements pretending to go somewhere. Although JamesK I’m sorry to say that your alter-ego MPM does (did?) it even better.
I see Rohan sounding self-righteously censorious as is the wont of so many lefty airheads.
But note….. apart from the ad hominem slime, there is not a single point made and nary an argument made ………. let alone an intelligently argued one.
C’mon Slimeboy…. have you but a single thoughful remark to make?
A bit too telegraphed there James my boy.
I so rarely post on Crikey you have no idea whether I’m to your left or right.
But I’m stoked that right on cue you just spouted another denialist classic – the ad hominem whinge. It’s so transparent to everyone else but the denialist clowns that the more they keep losing on facts the more they ramp up their persecution narrative.
Pretty soon if a reply to a denialist contains the word “you” they’ll be bitching and moaning about personal attacks.
JamesK, get help for your punctuation tourettes.
The best part of reading this article was trying to figure out where exactly the west side of Antarctica is. Thanks for that.
Martinson reveals the truth about arctic and antarctic ice extent. It’s due to winds and currents.
Global air and sea temperatures are quite cool at the moment.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssa&inv=0&t=cur
Punctuation Tourettes, MmMMmmmmpphhwwahahahahahhaa!
Awesome.
JamesK
I am still waiting to hear what you think is making sea levels rise. I am genuinely interested.
Richard Farmer is correct. The case for climate change is difficult to tell in the mainstream media. The hoi polloi appear not to be able to grasp the importance. How fortunate for us all that we have someone with the incisiveness and intellectual rigour of Richard Farmer to explain. AND the Northern and Southern hemisphere charts just could not be more useful.
Well Rocker, because ur a lefty you choose to focus on the peripheral and inconsequential.
Your question does not go to AGW let alone whether it is or will be catastrophic.
But as you are so remarkably and “genuinely interested”…….
“Current sea level rise is suggested to be due significantly to global warming….” says alarmist Wikipedia….. that’s “suggested”….geddit?
Apparentltly “suggested” doesn’t extend to man-made and catastrophic either……
A recent paper suggests over a quater of it is due to global depletion of groundwater resources:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044571.shtml
What do you think Rocket?
Admittedly ‘tho……… I’m really not “genuinely interested”.
Honestly, these comment threads are just like the ones on gay marriage, abortion and voluntary euthanasia! There’s more emotion than discussion.
JamesK, I suggest you look at the whole body of peer-reviewed scientific literature on this topic (and I mean by people actually qualified in the field). There is no doubt that human pollution is damaging our environment. Try leaving your garbage around the house for a month.
We need to clean up.
That’s definitely hard to define. But, the graphs shows how it was neglected by concern authorities.
Regards,
Darren @ brand names
I’m coming to this blog rather late, but the issues raised in the comments are so common I find them too frustrating to ignore. So, a few fundamental points:
(1) whether or not climate is changing and why is not a political issue, it is a scientific issue. One should get their information from credible science journals or IPCC overview documents, not from news commentators or politicians.
(2) Sea level IS rising and the oceans ARE warming (dramatically), and unless things change (which they might), sea level will continue to rise, and THAT is a political issue.
(3) Changes in sea ice have nothing to do with sea level (they are just freezing of ocean water). The decrease in summer Arctic sea ice far exceeds even the most dire forecasts of how fast it would decrease. This is but ONE piece of evidence for AGW. The other straws that broke that camels back about this argument are so numerous that you can’t even see the camel. Argue away any one point and it doesn’t change the bottom line.
(4) Bitterly denying AGW without actual knowledge of the depth of the science is not helping anyone or anything.