From Bloomberg.com,
Antarctica's Annual Melt Equals Water in Lake Tahoe, Study Says
Excerpt,
March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Antarctica is melting at an annual rate equal to dumping Lake Tahoe into the ocean, causing global seawater to rise as much as 0.6 millimeters (0.02 inches) a year, according to a study published by Science.
Researchers used two NASA satellites to measure the loss of the ice sheet on the Earth's fifth-largest continent between April 2002 and August 2005. The findings contradict an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment in 2001, which predicted the ice sheet would gain mass in the 21st century.
``We can now see Antarctica melting,'' said Isabella Velicogna, a member of the University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research Environmental Sciences. ``We have a number for the ice sheet. It's a big step toward understanding how the sea level is going to change.''
Antarctica's annual loss of 152 cubic kilometers of mass is 36 times the amount of freshwater used by Los Angeles annually, said Velicogna, chief author of the report. The melting slowed in the last two years of the study, although the researcher said she didn't see this as an indication the warming of the ocean had stopped.
Snip:
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=635 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>The satellites, launched by NASA and Germany in 2002, circle 310 miles above the Earth 16 times a day. They measure changes in mass based on gravitational pull.
Most of the loss was from the West Antarctic ice sheet, which Velicogna said has less land and more ice shelf than the eastern side of the continent.
The peninsula, which juts northward off the western part of the continent, warmed by an average of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 60 years, causing it to lose 5,200 square miles in the past three years, according to a 2004 study by CIRES researchers.
``Both these ice sheets appear to have lost mass at higher rates during 2002-2004 than during 2004-2005; this is even more evident in the total Antarctic results,'' today's study said.
The oceans would rise more than 20 feet if the West Antarctic ice sheet melted, British Arctic Survey researchers said.
</TD></TR><TR><TD>
To contact the reporter on this story:Nancy Kercheval in Washington at nkercheval@bloomberg.net.
</PRE>Last Updated: March 2, 2006 14:01 EST </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></P>
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=alhThE.8tud0&refer=canada
Notice the usual worst time scenario mentioned?
Now I will include the Junkmans response to this poorly written article.
Ooh! Bad headlines! Is Antarctica 'melting'? The definitive answer is 'No, not currently'.
How do we know this? Since 1979 we have had satellite coverage of the frozen continent and the UAH MSU data (http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt) for the Southern Polar Region (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUSPol.csv), displayed graphically here (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUSPol.htm), shows a slight cooling trend of -0.01 °C/decade.
'Aha!' cry the hand-wringers, '"Unproven" satellite data must be wrong!'. Fair enough, ignoring the fact these headlines are generated from, ahem, just 3 years, 5 months satellite data, let's compare the MSU data with Goddard Institute of Space Studies (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/ZonAnn.Ts.txt) (a.k.a. the "House of Hansen") data (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/GISS90S-64S-an.csv), displayed here (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/GISS90S-64S-an.htm). Their trend is different from that of the UAH MSU, indicating greater Antarctic cooling at -0.04 °C/decade for the period 1979-2005.
GHCN-ERSST plotted here (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcag/GCAGdealtem?dat=BLEND&mon1=1&monb1=1&mone1=12&bye1=1979&eye1=2005&graph=Lineplot&mon2=0&eye2=0&bye2=0&mon3=0&ye=0&begX=0&begY=30&endX=71&endY=35¶m=Temperature&non=0&klu=1&proce=80&puzo=0&nzi=99&ts=6&sbeX=-180.0&sbeY=-66.33&senX=180.0&senY=-90.0) for the region 66.33S - 90.00S over the same period gives a trend of -0.02 °C/decade.
The cooperative effort by the UK Met. Office's Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit dataset known as HadCRUT2v (http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Monthly/HadCRUG.txt) also provides regional splits and their data (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/AntAexPenan.csv), shown here (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/AntAexPenan.htm), for the Antarctic not including the peninsula protruding north of the Antarctic Circle, shows no trend (0.0 °C/decade) for the period 1979-2004 while the Antarctic Peninsula (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/AntAPenan.csv), here (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/AntAPenan.htm), shows an anomalous trend of +0.5 °C/decade. Their combined 65S - 90S (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/AntA65-90an.csv) (including part of the Southern Ocean), here (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/AntA65-90an.htm), gives a trend of +0.1 °C/decade.
The Antarctic is not exactly over-serviced with historical temperature data and some extraordinary gyrations appear in what record we do have - probably as a result of measurement changes but possibly not. During the period of global cooling worry the Antarctic appears to have been warming although we cannot determine whether the changes around the 1950s are the result of some sort of phase shift or alterations in temperature recording and calculation. What we don't have is any indication of a warming trend within the Antarctic Circle during the period of allegedly alarming anthropogenic global warming (our so-called 'hottest decades' of the 'hottest century' for a millennium). And if the sub-zero south is not warming then it is not melting, is it?
Continental ice egress is not a smooth and steady procedure but seems to happen in fits and starts. Some of the reason for this is ice sheets adding significant resistance as they slowly grow out to sea until eventually stalling ice flow. Eventually tide and currents break off these extruded sheets, releasing back pressure and allowing temporary 'sprints' of ice streams to sea, slowly rebuilding the blocking sheets until the cycle repeats. Over the last decade we have seen ice shelves in several regions around Antarctica breaking back to levels last seen in the 1950s so if there is a net transient loss in progress no one would (or should) really be surprised.
What is perhaps more surprising is the number of distribution points utilised by NASA putting out their press release regarding just 3 years and 5 months data (April 2002 to August 2005), which is one reason the 'trend' confidence is ±50% - another is that 'corrections' of unknown efficacy have had to be applied to the signal in an attempt to use this technique to derive ice shield mass balance. What do you suppose would be the response if we used the same period of UAH MSU data to claim a global temperature 'trend'? For those who might be interested, under comparable trend guidelines as used by NASA above, the world is heading into a chill, with global cooling 'trend' of -0.013 °C/decade (can I get a place in Igloo Building 101?).
What an absurd beat up from almost non-extant data! Maybe NASA is getting in very early for April 1? And what an appalling media response with no one yet observed treating these claims with any degree of scepticism. Sheesh!
Update: 22:50 GMT - Pretty sad state of general media, so far we've only noted London Telegraph's Roger Highfield (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/03/nantarc03.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/03/ixhome.html) adding any caveat to this story while most of the majors have uncritically regurgitated this pap. On the plus side of the ledger TCS Daily (http://www.tcsdaily.com/) is hosting Pat Michael's response: Antarctic Ice: The Cold Truth (http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=030306H) while The Commons Blog (http://commonsblog.org/) has Long Term Policy, Short Term Data — A Poor Fit (http://commonsblog.org/archives/000634.php).
If NASA proliferated somewhat suspect virtual snapshot data* as a test of the media's scientific literacy - and we sincerely hope that was NASA's motivation for swamping the PR networks with their breathless blurt - then the media failed the test and failed it big. If NASA has seriously released and promoted this as a conclusion securely based on thorough observation and robust science then we fear the instructions for the Shuttle's replacement may be something akin to "Ignite blue touch paper and stand clear..." Make no mistake, the underlying science is dazzling and may prove extraordinarily useful in time but the difference between a snapshot and a trend, at least in terms of planetary climate, is at least thirty years, something of which NASA is well aware.* so labelled because it contradicts other longer-term satellite analyses with a 'series' so short it is analogous to having a child tell you whether a flashing light is working: "Yes it is, no it isn't, yes it is...".
http://www.junkscience.com/
The weather reporting stations makes it clear that most of Antartica in a neutral to cooling period.