More alarmist Bs
On August 10, 2010, a new record cold was measured in Antarctica [1]: -93.2°C. Thus the previous record of -89.2°C set at the Vostok Research Station on 21 July 1983 was smashed by 4°C. The annual mean temperature in Antarctica at ice sheet at elevations of 2000 to over 4000 metres range from -30 to -50°C, and the trend is downward [2]. Now the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) has announced in a press release [3]: “A record retreat in the ice sheets“. Can ice sheets melt at such record low temperatures? Has the AWI discovered some new physical law ?
These ice sheets mainly located in Greenland and Antarctica and are mostly around 3000 meters thick. On the Greenland ice sheet the annual mean temperatures are about -20°C, and -40°C in Antarctica. Antarctica is a huge polar continent, and Greenland is an island (peninsula) with a latitude range of 10°- 30° from the Pole and borders on the Arctic ocean. This is one explanation for the considerable temperature and climate differences. While Greenland has marginally lost ice during the summer over the last 20 years, the change in ice volume in Antarctica is very much in dispute [4] and hardly measureable with the needed accuracy (Fig. 1).
The rate of loss for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has tripled for the same time period“
and
The scientists observed the most rapid elevation changes…at the Pine-Island-Glacier in Western Antarctica.”
and
But: while the glaciers in Western Antarctica and on the Antarctic peninsula are shrinking, the ice sheet of Eastern Antarctica grew– however at such a minimal amount that the growth was unable to compensate for the loss on the other side of the continent.”
West Antarctica and Antarctic Peninsula melt due to cycles
This is because the Antarctic Peninsula in located in the west wind zone of the southern hemisphere. This southern hemisphere wind belt is subject to stochastic cyclic atmospheric pressure variations, as is the case with all other global wind systems. This is analogous to the northern hemispheric North Atlantic Oscillation NAO). In the southern hemisphere it is known as the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO).
So where is the accelerated sea level rise?
Despite all the uncertainties mentioned above, the AWI still comes to the following result:
When one calculates both together, the volume of both ice sheets is shrinking by 500 cubic kilometers per year.”
This of course would have to lead to an acceleration in sea level rise which one could observe. However, there has been no detected sea level rise acceleration! A very thorough overview of the latest peer-review publications [11] in fact reaches the opposite result:
Numerous evaluations of coastal tide gauges over 200 years as well as the gravity measurements of the GRACE satellite deliver again and again a sea level rise of about 1.6 mm/yr. … Here…the trends are in agreement: The sea level rise has been linear for at least the last 100 years; there is no acceleration in sea level rise. A signal indicating man-made CO2 (AGW) is nowhere to be seen. This stands in stark contradiction to the claims and especially the alarmist prognoses of the IPCC and some climate institutes.
With the excption of the Antarctic Peninsula (<1% of the Antarctic area) there is a cooling trend in Antarctica and it also includes the surrounding sea ice [15]:
Both the UAH and the RSS datasets [16] show that the temperature surrounding Antarctica has slipped a few tenths of a degree Celsius 0.1°C from 1979 to today. The temperature anomaly in both datasets has dropped below zero, i.e. below the long-term reference mean value.”
Summary:
Measurements in Antarctica show a secular cooling trend. The exception is the Antarctic Peninsula and a part of West Antarctica (approx. 1% of the Antarctic area). In 2010 a new all-time record cold was measured: -93.2°C. The sea ice floating around Antarctica reached “100-year record” daily highs in 2014. With these observations, how anyone could conclude there has been a “record ice sheet retreat” [3] remains a secret of the AWI.
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