https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Very good graphics of what is going on.
Alan,
There are always some glaciers that are melting and others that are growing, whether in the Arctic, Antarctic, Himalayas, or New Zealand.
The following authoritative reference from NASA indicates what the situation was just a few years ago.
"A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008."https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-lossesHowever, I do understand that alarmists will tend to ignore this data and focus only on the bad news. From more recent times, if you scroll down the NASA page, there's an article that indicates that the accumulation of ice in the Antarctic slowed down dramatically in 2016, which was a particularly warm year.
“Operation IceBridge is particularly well suited to measure changes in polar ice: it carries probably the most innovative and precise package of instruments ever flown over Antarctica,” Newman said.
"This campaign was possibly the best Antarctic campaign IceBridge has ever had,” said John Sonntag, IceBridge mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We flew as many flights as we did in our best prior campaigns down here, and we certainly got more science return out of each flight than we have before, due to steadily improving instrumentation and also to some exceptionally good weather in the Weddell Sea that favored our sea ice flights."Antarctica is heading into austral summer, a period of rapid sea ice melt in the Southern Ocean. But this year the sea ice loss has been particularly swift and the Antarctic sea ice extent is currently at the lowest level for this time of year ever recorded in the satellite record, which began in 1979."Notice the phrase
'the lowest level for this time of year ever recorded'.
That's sounds very alarming, but is moderated by the following statement,
'in the satellite record, which began in 1979."
In other words, the melting of ice in the Antarctic during the summer of 2016 was the greatest in the past 37 years. However, the question that alarmists should also consider is 'what year was the record for the
greatest accumulation of ice in the Antarctic?'
In any period one chooses, whether 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, 1,000 years, a million years, there will always be a record rainfall, a record drought, a record glacier melt, a record sea rise, a record glacier growth, a record storm, and so on. That's weather.
Look again at my first quote,
'the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.'In that period between 1992 and 2001, the average ice gain per year was apparently 112 billion tons. That gain wouldn't have been consistent from year to year. There would have been a record high gain within that 9 year period, as well as a record low gain. The same applies to the shorter period between 2003 and 2008, so the question in my mind is 'How has the build-up of ice in the Antarctic fluctuated between 2009 and 2016?'
Has NASA stopped providing such figures? I bet they were severely criticised for revealing their earlier research which was counter-alarmist.
Here's another recent (2014) article with images showing the advancement of the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85900'Since measurements began in 1895, Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier has been thickening and steadily advancing into Disenchantment Bay. The advance runs counter to so many thinning and retreating glaciers nearby in Alaska and around the world.'Anyone who is interested in both sides of the argument, which is based upon reliable data and facts, can discover for themselves that 'alarmism' about global warming depends upon
excluding the 'good news' and mentioning only the 'bad news'.
Once the 'meme' that increased CO2 levels will have catastrophic consequences, has percolated the consciousness of the population at large, every negative reportage of extreme weather events reinforces the meme and increases the alarm, which is shamefully unscientific.
Sensible and rational people understand that the recent protest marches against the attack on science are completely misguided. No serious person has been attacking science and its methodology, but lots of rational people like myself have been attacking the biased and misleading reportage of the results of the scientific inquiry into the climate change issues. It seems to take more nous than the average person possesses, to understand the difference.
The argument that we are in a current warming period, on average, globally, seems reasonable to me. After the last Little Ice Age it is to be expected there would be some sort of change, and such change to a slightly warmer climate seems beneficial to me, especially when considering the climate in my home country, the UK, during the LIA.
For those who are interested, the following site provides an insight into past weather and climate conditions in the UK during the past 6,000 years, based upon proxy data (tree rings, ice cores, sediment analysis and so on, as well as anecdotal descriptions from historical texts). Just click on any period listed to get a detailed account.
http://www.booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/histclimat.htmThe impression I get is that our current climate during the past 150 years or so, is just as stable (or unstable) as it was during the past 6,000 years before humans began burning fossil fuels in large quantities, at least in the UK.
My advice to all you AGW alarmists, who are probably suffering from some form or degree of OCD, is to relax about the CO2 issue, and concentrate instead on the real and serious issues that confront our well-being into the future, such as world poverty, religious discrimination, terrorism, the possibility of a future world war, the real pollution of the environment due to plastic waste, release of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and environment, and the lack of rehabilitation of the environment after mining projects have run their course, and so on.