Reason for Antarctic Ice increase?

[socold]

The presence of volcanoes in Antarctica doesn't support wild statements like: "a peninsula that is warming apparently due to volcanism"

Your first link points out the scale problem: "Vaughan noted, however, that the hidden volcano doesn't explain widespread thinning of Antarctic glaciers. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters," he said

[icefisher]

Aug 21, 2010 1:07:40 GMT socold said:

The presence of volcanoes in Antarctica doesn't support wild statements like: "a peninsula that is warming apparently due to volcanism"

Your first link points out the scale problem: "Vaughan noted, however, that the hidden volcano doesn't explain widespread thinning of Antarctic glaciers. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters," he said

Thats just the obligatory homily to keep the Pope from cutting his balls off.

[tobyglyn]

Aug 21, 2010 1:07:40 GMT socold said:

The presence of volcanoes in Antarctica doesn't support wild statements like: "a peninsula that is warming apparently due to volcanism"

Your first link points out the scale problem: "Vaughan noted, however, that the hidden volcano doesn't explain widespread thinning of Antarctic glaciers. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters," he said

The problem with that is that the oceans are not warming.

[nautonnier]

Aug 21, 2010 1:07:40 GMT socold said:

The presence of volcanoes in Antarctica doesn't support wild statements like: "a peninsula that is warming apparently due to volcanism"

Your first link points out the scale problem: "Vaughan noted, however, that the hidden volcano doesn't explain widespread thinning of Antarctic glaciers. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters," he said

The thinning is based on GRACE metrics. Elsewhere in the world these metrics are taken to be signs of volcanism and movement of magma. In Antarctica its taken to be signs of ice thinning especially as the glaciers are moving faster. So now we have volcanic activity (which somehow you are no longer finding hilarious) and magma chambers and multiple volcanoes - but according to you its not magma it MUST be ice thinning that GRACE sees. Well its what you _want_ it to be isn't it.

This sounds more like confirmation bias to me. The oceans and the continent are actually colder - so its not your good universal causal agent CO₂ causing downwelling heat.

Given the very low temperatures and the low humidity it could just be sublimation or ablation that is causing any thinning of the ice with the lubrication below glaciers due to volcanism leading to some glacial acceleration. GRACE is seeing magma movement around the many active volcanoes.

One thing it is not is an anthropogenic greenhouse effect.

[scpg02]

Aug 21, 2010 1:17:57 GMT icefisher said:

Aug 21, 2010 1:07:40 GMT socold said:

The presence of volcanoes in Antarctica doesn't support wild statements like: "a peninsula that is warming apparently due to volcanism"

Your first link points out the scale problem: "Vaughan noted, however, that the hidden volcano doesn't explain widespread thinning of Antarctic glaciers. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters," he said

Thats just the obligatory homily to keep the Pope from cutting his balls off.

[socold]

Aug 21, 2010 1:43:18 GMT tobyglyn said:

Aug 21, 2010 1:07:40 GMT socold said:

The presence of volcanoes in Antarctica doesn't support wild statements like: "a peninsula that is warming apparently due to volcanism"

Your first link points out the scale problem: "Vaughan noted, however, that the hidden volcano doesn't explain widespread thinning of Antarctic glaciers. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters," he said

The problem with that is that the oceans are not warming.

The oceans are warming. In particular warm oceans have been linked to ice mass loss in west antarctica:
www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004.../2004GL021106.shtml

[socold]

Aug 21, 2010 2:05:47 GMT nautonnier said:

Aug 21, 2010 1:07:40 GMT socold said:

The presence of volcanoes in Antarctica doesn't support wild statements like: "a peninsula that is warming apparently due to volcanism"

Your first link points out the scale problem: "Vaughan noted, however, that the hidden volcano doesn't explain widespread thinning of Antarctic glaciers. This wider change most probably has its origin in warming ocean waters," he said

The thinning is based on GRACE metrics.

No it isn't, gravity measurements are in blue, green and red are radar:

In Antarctica its taken to be signs of ice thinning especially as the glaciers are moving faster. So now we have volcanic activity (which somehow you are no longer finding hilarious) and magma chambers and multiple volcanoes - but according to you its not magma it MUST be ice thinning that GRACE sees. Well its what you _want_ it to be isn't it.

No it's what scientists have determined by looking at the pattern of thinning and where it's happening. The gravity measurements reflecting thinning are consistent with the areas of fast moving ice and areas of ice thinning from radar.


Figure 4: Comparison of Gunter et al’s (2009) Grace map (left) and Icesat map (right) over the period 2003-2007.
www.skepticalscience.com/Part-Three-Response-to-Goddard.html

Given the very low temperatures and the low humidity it could just be sublimation or ablation that is causing any thinning of the ice with the lubrication below glaciers due to volcanism leading to some glacial acceleration. GRACE is seeing magma movement around the many active volcanoes.

One thing it is not is an anthropogenic greenhouse effect.

See the link in my last post, the western antarctic ice mass loss is associated with warm ocean currents.

[icefisher]

Aug 21, 2010 3:27:04 GMT socold said:

Figure 4: Comparison of Gunter et al’s (2009) Grace map (left) and Icesat map (right) over the period 2003-2007.
www.skepticalscience.com/Part-Three-Response-to-Goddard.html

Yeah if you pick a short enough period of time. 2003 to 2007 was a long stretch of El Nino years.

Those were the Lonnie Thompson hey days of declaring disappearing glaciers. For the past 3 years its been nothing but silence as he is trying to save his balls.

See below for the little 4 year decline in southern sea ice between 2003-2007. You get nearly a 2million sq km ice loss that was just a natural variation. . . . and you come in here like some political hoar trying to sell it as a CAGW trend. Shame on you!

[scpg02]

Aug 21, 2010 3:14:32 GMT socold said:

The oceans are warming. In particular warm oceans have been linked to ice mass loss in west antarctica:
www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004.../2004GL021106.shtml

You link says nothing of the sort and is a study by modelers.

From your link:

Appears to be? How scientific is that? Three modelers claiming something appears to be something does not make it so nor is it scientific proof of ANYTHING!

[steve]

People seem to be very good at finding excuses for why the GRACE data, the radiointerferometer data, the sea level data and the temperature data are the way they are despite the so-called cooling of the Antarctic. They also seem to be very good at looking for reasons why Arctic sea ice reductions are not related to warmth.

Yet a 0.1% per year increase in antarctic sea ice cover is regarded as strong evidence for cooling southern oceans.

[nautonnier]

Aug 21, 2010 9:00:35 GMT steve said:

People seem to be very good at finding excuses for why the GRACE data, the radiointerferometer data, the sea level data and the temperature data are the way they are despite the so-called cooling of the Antarctic. They also seem to be very good at looking for reasons why Arctic sea ice reductions are not related to warmth.

Yet a 0.1% per year increase in antarctic sea ice cover is regarded as strong evidence for cooling southern oceans.

"Yet a 0.1% per year increase in antarctic sea ice cover is regarded as strong evidence for cooling southern oceans"

You like doing maths steve - work out how much area that percentage is in terms of ice.

Sea ice is INCREASING at a rate that more than balances the lower sea ice in the Arctic (these are this year's measures)
Temperatures are WAY below freezing over the Antarctic
There are claims that ice is thinning in some areas from satellite measures that could also be tectonic shift or magma.

British Antarctic Survey (not a bunch of bloggers) report that the glaciers appear to be accelerating due to volcanic action below them.

But a some bloggers feel that its 'global warming' that is causing the ice loss.

Well OK - as you say perhaps you and SoCold started the weekend early.

[socold]

Aug 21, 2010 4:19:30 GMT icefisher said:

Aug 21, 2010 3:27:04 GMT socold said:

Figure 4: Comparison of Gunter et al’s (2009) Grace map (left) and Icesat map (right) over the period 2003-2007.
www.skepticalscience.com/Part-Three-Response-to-Goddard.html

Yeah if you pick a short enough period of time. 2003 to 2007 was a long stretch of El Nino years.

ENSO is irrelevant to these momentum like changes in an area well outside the tropics. The below graph of antarctic ice mass covers a La Nina period. Where's the rebound that your "El Nino" comment would imply should exist?


Figure 2: Ice mass changes for the Antarctic ice sheet from April 2002 to February 2009. Unfiltered data are blue crosses. Data filtered for the seasonal dependence are red crosses. The best-fitting quadratic trend is shown as the green line (Velicogna 2009).
www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

If you just rely on WUWT which feeds you the kool aid you'll misunderstand what is happening in the world.

Those were the Lonnie Thompson hey days of declaring disappearing glaciers. For the past 3 years its been nothing but silence as he is trying to save his balls.

Glaciers globally are still in decline. This from the latest data for 2007/2008:


This is contary to what skeptics claimed back in 2008 during the La Nina that glaciers were now growing. Of course the data wasn't available back then, now it is, they were just guessing and wrong.

See below for the little 4 year decline in southern sea ice between 2003-2007. You get nearly a 2million sq km ice loss that was just a natural variation. . . . and you come in here like some political hoar trying to sell it as a CAGW trend. Shame on you!

Do you see a decline in sea ice over the period 2003-2009 inline with the decline mass balance graph above? No. So clearly (and this was obvious before) the ice sheet and sea ice are unrelated.

[socold]

Aug 21, 2010 9:00:35 GMT steve said:

People seem to be very good at finding excuses for why the GRACE data, the radiointerferometer data, the sea level data and the temperature data are the way they are despite the so-called cooling of the Antarctic. They also seem to be very good at looking for reasons why Arctic sea ice reductions are not related to warmth.

Yet a 0.1% per year increase in antarctic sea ice cover is regarded as strong evidence for cooling southern oceans.

It's plain ol denial. You can tell because an honest position wouldn't shift like the tide between the extreme of denying the changes are happening, to grudgingly accepting it but thrusting out silly conjectures about why it is happening while simultaneously claiming the cause is certain not to be warming.

[socold]

Greenland has a hell of a lot of volcanoes under it too [/sarc]




Can't have anything to do with warming...move along.

[william]

Hi socold,

This is interesting. Why do ice sheets surge?

www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/323/5913/458a


2008 FALL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION:

Galloping Glaciers of Greenland Have Reined Themselves In by Richard A. Kerr
Ice loss in Greenland has had some climatologists speculating that global warming might have brought on a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and an ever-faster rise in sea level. But glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland ice's Armageddon has come to an end.

“It has come to an end,” (my comment ice surge from Greenland Ice Sheet) Murray said during a session at the meeting. "There seems to have been a synchronous switch-off " of the speed-up, she said. Based on the shape and appearance of the 14 largest outlet glaciers in southeast Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the levels of 2000 nearly everywhere. “There's a pattern of speeding up to maximum velocity and then slowing down since 2005," Murray reported. “It's amazing; they sped up and slowed down together. They're not in runaway acceleration.”

Glacial modeler Faezeh Nick of Durham University in the UK and her colleagues found similar behavior when they modeled the flow of Helheim Glacier. In their model, as they report recently in Nature Geoscience, Helheim's flow is extremely sensitive to disturbances at its margin but can quickly adjust. “Our results imply that the recent rates of mass loss in Greenland's outlet glaciers are transient,” the group writes, “and should not be extrapolated into the future.”