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Antarctica Not Immune to Warming
WASHINGTON - The Earth's lone holdout to climate change, Antarctica, is actually warming, says a new study in today's edition of the journal Nature.
A 65-foot high ice cliff forming the edge of the Wilkins Ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is seen from a plane January 18, 2009. The huge Antarctic ice shelf is on the brink of collapse with just a sliver of ice holding it in place, the latest victim of global warming that is altering maps of the frozen continent. (By Alister Doyle, Reuters) Scientists had long thought that while some isolated parts of Antarctica had been warming, much of the continent had been cooling over the past 50 years. But the new analysis found that since 1957, when measured as a whole, the continent's temperature has risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit .
"The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling - and that's not the case," says study lead author Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences. "If anything, it's the reverse, but it's more complex than that. Antarctica isn't warming at the same rate everywhere."
Perhaps most troubling is that "a fairly large part of West Antarctica is warming more than we realized," says study co-author Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University.Scientists say West Antarctica is the ice sheet most susceptible to a possible collapse in the future due to warming global temperatures. If the ice sheet collapsed, it would cause cataclysmic sea-level rise around the world.
Technique questioned
Researchers in this study developed a new technique that combined data from satellites and automated weather stations in Antarctica to make what they say is the best estimate of the continent's temperature so far. However, there are very few weather stations on Antarctica, and the satellite data have been available for only the past 25 years.
This troubles some scientists.
"One must be very cautious with such results because they have no real way to be validated," says atmospheric scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville, who was not part of the study. "In other words, we will never know what the temperature was over the very large missing areas that this technique attempts to fill in so that it can be tested back through time."
Researchers had thought Antarctica was getting cooler in part because of the ozone hole over the South Pole. This break in the protective ozone layer brings cooling weather patterns across parts of Antarctica. Steig agrees that the ozone hole has contributed to cooling in East Antarctica.
"However, it seems to have been assumed that the ozone hole was affecting the entire continent, when there wasn't any evidence to support that idea, or even any theory to support it," he adds.
Contributing: Associated Press
6 Comments so far
Show All"Antarctica Not Immune to Warming"
I was going to say something like "huh? this insn't news" then I noticed its a -USA Today- article. so I guess it would be news to their readers. Better late news than no news at all.
So what exactly is a "cataclysmic sea-level rise around the world"?
according to the USGS the West Antarctic ice sheet has a sea-rise potential of 8.09 meters or 26.5 feet. the average elevation of the Sacremento valley is 20 feet.
http://www.smith.edu/libraries/research/class/idp108USGS_99.pdf
Im an Amateur Radio operator. Amateur groups will plan what is known as a "DXpedition". That is where they set up in an unusual places for a few days to a week and work as many contacts as they can. In 2006 an expedition went to Peter I Island (A small volcanic Island West of Antartica.) One of the operators mentioned that 20 years before he was on an expedition to Peter I and mentioned that the snow/ice was not as dry an powdery as 20 years before. It was more crusty/icy. That seems to result from warmer conditions.
in the same vein - there is an online petition to pressure Interior Secý Salazar to save the Polar Bear
http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/Rescue_the_Polar_Bear
Once again, we are talking about "inferred science". NOT actual temperature records, but what some think it might have or should have been.
There are a lot of holes in this paper.
what is your point? All science is inferred.
A temperature reading is not "science" it is an observation.
And what is "temperature", really?
How do you measure it?
Are you really measuring "temperature" when you look at a thermometer?
What spacial density of temperature observations is needed to create a "hole-less paper"?
what temporal density of temperature readings is necessary to create a "hole-less paper?
If you can't answer these questions, then you really don't understand the "science" do you?
This from:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Eric,
Let me first say that this is my own opinion and does not represent the agency I work for. I feel your study is absolutely wrong.
There are very few stations in Antarctica to begin with and only a hand full with 50 years of data. Satellite data is just approaching thirty years of available information. In my experience as a day to day forecaster that has to travel and do field work in Antarctica the summer seasons have been getting colder. In the late 1980s helicopters were used to take our personnel to Williams Field from McMurdo Station due to the annual receding of the Ross Ice Shelf, but in the past few years the thaw has been limited and vehicles can continue to make the transition and drive on the ice. One climate note to pass along is December 2006 was the coldest December ever for McMurdo Station. In a synoptic perspective the cooler sea surface temperatures have kept the maritime storms farther offshore in the summer season and the colder more dense air has rolled from the South Pole to the ice shelf.
There was a paper presented at the AMS Conference in New Orleans last year noting over 70% of the continent was cooling due to the ozone hole. We launch balloons into the stratosphere and the anticyclone that develops over the South Pole has been displaced and slow to establish itself over the past five seasons. The pattern in the troposphere has reflected this trend with more maritime (warmer) air around the Antarctic Peninsula which is also where most of the automated weather stations are located for West Antarctica which will give you the average warmer readings and skew the data for all of West Antarctica.
With statistics you can make numbers go to almost any conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for media coverage.
Sincerely,
Ross Hays
NASA
Colombia Balloon Facility