by Jordan Wilkerson
figures by Michael Gerhardt
When someone asks you to consider the impacts of climate change, what do you think of? There’s a good chance that melting ice sheets comes to mind pretty quickly. For that reason, a recent finding regarding the trend in Antarctic ice is quite perplexing; the ice sheet is reportedly increasing in size! This is according to a research study conducted by a NASA team and published in Journal of Glaciology in October 2015 [1].
What’s the Evidence that the Antarctic is Getting Larger?
Antarctica is a colossal landmass far from human civilization. How was this research team able to determine changes in the amount of ice each year? Well, they used a nifty device called a LIDAR altimeter (Figure 1). Using this, they were able to determine the ice trend by measuring the changes in surface height over time.
A LIDAR, a portmanteau of light and radar, altimeter is just like a radar. A RAdio Detection And Ranging (radar) device emits radio waves that then bounce back once they hit some sort of physical barrier – such as a big rock. Because we know how fast radio waves move, if we measure how long they take to bounce off that big rock and come back to us, we can determine how far away the rock is [2].
Placed on a satellite orbiting Earth, the LIDAR altimeter instead sends ultraviolet and visible light waves down to the Antarctic surface and patiently waits for their return. Using LIDAR measurements recorded over time, the research team determined that from 1992-2001, the Antarctic ice sheets gained an average of 112 billion tons of ice each year. From 2003-2008, this number decreased to 82 billion tons [1].
How can the planet be experiencing a warming trend and have regions that are accumulating ice? This is a fair question. Another tempting question to ask is this: is the planet even experiencing a warming trend if the Antarctic ice sheet is getting bigger? Let’s address that question first.
So is Climate Change Even Happening?
Yes, it is. But before we go over the evidence supporting climate change’s existence, we should keep something in mind: the notion that there’s net ice gain in the Antarctic is still being debated among top scientists. For example, many esteemed glaciologists, such as University of Washington’s Dr. Ben Smith, have pointed out that the LIDAR altimeter used in the study might register snowpack as increased surface height even though that’s not really a permanent component of the ice sheet (Figure 1). Across large swaths of land surface, this small contribution could propagate into an apparent enormous gain in ice mass that’s not really there [3]. But unlike this study’s conclusions, the notion that humans are causing climate change is well established by a portfolio of lab experiments, theoretical models, and observational data [4].
First, there’s the rising temperature and its relationship with carbon dioxide. Gases in our atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), largely dictate the temperature of our planet. How this happens has been known for over a century – this is not recent stuff [5]. In short, CO2 acts as a heat-trapping blanket that envelops the planet. This blanket gets thicker and thicker as we emit more of this greenhouse gas into the atmosphere [6].
The effect of CO2 on Earth’s surface temperature isn’t just based on a collection of calculations and lab experiments (an extensive collection, mind you). Scientists have assessed hundreds of thousands of years of temperature and CO2 records. While there are some subtleties to the data, one clear trend emerges: the more CO2 there is in the air, the hotter our planet becomes [7,8,9]. This relationship is still true today. Temperature elevations over the past century match well with the rising CO2 levels since the Industrial Revolution [7].
Furthermore, while the Antarctic ice sheet is indeed increasing in size, this is not true for its northern counterpart, the Arctic. And the ice gain in the Antarctic doesn’t cancel out the ice loss in the Arctic. The Antarctic has gained about 7,300 square miles of ice each year since the late 1970s. The Arctic, on the other hand, has lost about 20,800 square miles of ice each year in that same period [10]. Global ice loss is still occurring on a significant scale.
Then What is Going On in Antarctica?
The measuring technique mentioned earlier gives us more than just what the ice gain is; it tells us where the ice is building up and where it’s receding. Using this insight, the NASA team concluded the culprit behind the net ice gain is East Antarctica. It is there and the interior of the West Antarctic ice sheet where gains are occurring. There is ice loss still occurring at the periphery of West Antarctica; it’s simply that the ice gains in the other regions are greater in magnitude [1] (Figure 2).
According to the authors of the study, the ice loss and ice gain have different causes. The ice gains in the East Antarctic are not a new trend. Its cause is essentially the change in climate at the end of the last ice age – around 10,000 years ago. When the ice age ended, the planet overall became warmer. With increasing warmth comes increasing ability of air to retain moisture.
The warmer, thus wetter, air provided the Antarctic with additional snowfall. This snowpack has been accumulating and compacting for thousands of years on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing a build up of ice [1]. The West Antarctic ice loss trend is new, abrupt, and began after the Industrial Revolution. Its tie to human activity has been demonstrated through a large number of both observations and theoretical models [11].
An important thing to note is that the ice gains in the East Antarctic have been constant. Every year, the region gains around 200 billion tons according to the NASA study [1]. This is a steady ice gain. Yet, if you recall, the net ice gain cited in that study went down from 112 billion tons to 82 billion tons per year. What’s causing the decrease? As the map of the Antarctic shows, while the East Antarctic ice gains have remained relatively steady, the ice loss in the West Antarctic is accelerating each year. By this, I mean the amount of ice lost each year is typically greater than the year before.
An important clarification to make: this trend in ice loss in the West Antarctic is one conclusion of the NASA study not being debated. “We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” Jay Zwally, lead author of the study said. Therefore, if the increasing rates of ice loss in the West Antarctic continue, it’ll be only a few decades before they outweigh the ice gain in the East [12].
In this respect, there is no dispute. Antarctic ice is soon going to behave how we’d expect it to on a warming Earth – if it isn’t already. And when you’re considering how this study fits in with climate change, that is the important conclusion to keep in mind.
Jordan Wilkerson is a third year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University.
References
[1] Zwally, J., et. al., 2015. Mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet exceed losses. Journal of Glaciology 61:1019-1036.
[2] Brit Lab. How does RADAR Work? (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywDE57CtaTM
[3] Howard, Brian Clark. What Antarctica’s Incredible “Growing” Icepack Really Means. National Geographic. (2015). http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151103-antarctic-ice-growing-shrinking-glaciers-climate-change/
[4] Scientific consensus: Earth’s climate is warming. NASA. http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
[5] The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect. The Discovery of Global Warming. https://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
[6] A Blanket Around the Earth. NASA. http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
[7] Understanding Climate Change: A Primer. Woods Hole Research Center. http://whrc.org/publications-data/understanding-climate-change-a-primer/
[8] Temperature Change and Carbon Dioxide Change. NOAA. (2008). https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html
[9] CO2 lags temperature – what does it mean? Skeptical Science. http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-basic.htm
[10] Ramsayer, K. Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum
[11] Oppenheimer, M, Alley, RB. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Long Term Climate Policy. Climatic Change. 64: 1–10, 2004. https://www.princeton.edu/step/people/faculty/michael-oppenheimer/research/Oppenheimer-Alley-04.pdf
[12] Mass gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet greater than losses. Science Daily News. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151030220523.htm
Cover image from Andreas Kambanis and licensed under Creative Commons.
Gases in our atmosphere… Largely dictate temperatures… Are you serious? Are you really a scientist? I am certainly not, but I propose that I could find many scientists that would differ with your ridiculous statement and insist that the sun plays the largest role in dictating temperatures on earth. Shame on you “sky is falling” climate change nazis! Coming Ice Age in the 70s, global warming in the 90s and now a ridiculous & meaningless phrase like- climate change – you guys need to get out of your labs and off your computers and into reality.
If the farms in Greenland are under several feet of ice how do you know that they are there? Radar?
Mr. Wilkerson’s statement that:
“Scientists have assessed hundreds of thousands of years of temperature and CO2 records. While there are some subtleties to the data, one clear trend emerges: the more CO2 there is in the air, the hotter our planet becomes…. This relationship is still true today. Temperature elevations over the past century match well with the rising CO2 levels since the Industrial Revolution,”
Is disingenuous, to say the least. The “some subtleties to the data,” in truth amounts to a negative correlation the vast majority of the time, between rising CO2 and rising temps.
The oldest proxy data clearly demonstrates that temps rose as much as 800 years BEFORE CO2 began rising, and we have seen negative correlation happen repeatedly in our era too. While CO2 continued to rise, earth’s temps declined for a significant number of years. You cannot prove cause and effect, if the preceding correlation is NEGATIVE most of the time. It is obvious that other, much more powerful factors are responsible for global warming, which is more closely aligned with the Sun’s Spot Cycles, than it is with varying levels of atmospheric CO2.
Further, the scientific models, upon which the AGW religion relies so much, ignore the most comprehensive greenhouse gas of all: Water Vapor, which constitutes almost 95% of all the GHGs. No wonder those models have always been wrong in their predictions.
The idea of future disaster with warmer temps is absurd. The earth was significantly warmer in the past (Roman times and the MWP) when the Vikings had prosperous farms in areas of Greenland, that are now under many feet of ice. The greatest absurdity of all, however, is the idea that CO2 is a pollutant. No reputable biologist can support that idiotic idea.
The very small percentage of CO2 that is put into the atmosphere by man, would not change anything if it were possible to eliminate that source entirely. But, the Leftists don’t care because this is not about Science at all; it is about controlling the masses by the elite few with the power of taxation. Those true believers who adamantly support this AGW scam, expect to be on the receiving end of that bargain. It’s Political Science, not legitimate physical Science, according to the best traditions of the Scientific Method.
Well said, and spot on. Always interesting to see the cult of AGW forget to mention the Titanic fireball in the sky which warms; and by its absence cools, the planet on a daily basis.
In response to Mr. Wilkerson’s statement of:
“And the ice gain in the Antarctic doesn’t cancel out the ice loss in the Arctic. The Antarctic has gained about 7,300 square miles of ice each year since the late 1970s. The Arctic, on the other hand, has lost about 20,800 square miles of ice each year in that same period [10]. Global ice loss is still occurring on a significant scale.”
———
Even if that statement is accurate (I have my doubts, but not the time to research those numbers right now), I wonder why you and other AGW True Believers fail to mention the discovery of a long, deep and very active volcanic ridge below the North Pole? The “Gakkel Ridge Rift/Fault System,” to be specific.
The Gakkel ridge is an enormous deep ridge filled with underwater volcanoes (1,100 miles long), running below the Arctic Ocean “…from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.” It is becoming painfully obvious that “..the 1999-2007 Gakkel Ridge heat and chemically charged fluid flow event was the root cause of accelerated Arctic sea ice melting rate.”
The AGW True Believer “scientists”(**) want desperately to believe that ALL of the melting of the Arctic ice is SOLELY due to rising levels of CO2, added by Man’s fossil fuel consumption. That is why most of them refuse to discuss the “1999-2007 accelerated Arctic ocean sea ice melt rate,” because it is ethically difficult to deny that underwater volcanic activity is increasing significantly and in addition to adding a vast amount of heat to the water under the Arctic ice, is releasing a large quantity of methane gas and CO2 without, the aid of Homo Sapiens.
An October 12, 2015 series of volcanic eruptions occurred under the Arctic Ocean, releasing a huge amount of heat and methane gas, along the Gakkel Ridge. It appears it was in concert with a large earthquake swarm, which may, in turn, be associated with the Earth’s changing magnetic field.
In short, NATURAL FORCES on this planet may be the only realistic explanation for the cooling and warming that has gone on for eons of time, much of it long before the activities of Homo Sapiens could be a possible explanation.
(**) I put that word in quotation marks because of the deliberate fraudulent creating of phony past proxy data by Mann, Jones, et. al., and the constant “massaging” of past Earth and Ocean temp data, to make it look like the totally erroneous models were accurate – see the CRU email scandals, I & II, and the IPCC’s allowing one AGW zealot to completely change the views and findings of IPCC scientists, in the IPCC summary, with a classic demonstration of Orwellian Newspeak.
Hi, Robert
Thank you for your comments. I’d like to briefly go through them. While temperature increase sometimes precedes atmospheric CO2 increase, it is not true that this is the case most of the time – hence why it is more accurate to describe it as a subtlety. Source [9] that I provide actually addresses this. You also assert that the Sun’s Spot Cycles explain the recent warming. However, this cycle lasts roughly 11 years. The warming we’ve been seeing outlasts that. There is also some longer-term variation in solar activity, though, which leads me to another point you made.
You’re right that the Medieval Warm Period was roughly as warm as our current climate. That being said, solar activity was higher during this time than it is now. In fact, long-term solar activity has been stagnating (of course, the 11-year Sun Spot Cycle still causes variation), yet global temperatures have been rising for decades. This indicates something else responsible for the warming; there has to be another explanation. Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations is that explanation.
(See following reference: http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/data/tsi-data/#data_files)
You also rightly point out that the Medieval Warm Period was a prosperous global climate for European regions. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for North America. California, for example, experienced severe drought – worse than the dust bowls in 1930s. Indeed, the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization and the abandonment of the pueblos of the Anasazi both coincided with the multi-year droughts in the North American region. Finally, you’re right that water vapor is the most dominant greenhouse gas. However, climate models do include water vapor in their projections. NASA discusses water vapor being the most dominant greenhouse gas on their website alongside their discussion of man-made climate change: https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
I want to conclude by clarifying something: whether current climate change is caused by humans is one discussion. What types of policies (whether they be liberal or conservative) we should employ to address climate change is another. I only discussed the former in this article. This is not political science.
When looking at the map, it appears one of the factors of accelerated loss in western areas is the proximity to the warming ocean waters. And if more moisture is in the atmosphere and increasing snow over the continent as a whole, then that would account for the increase in the greater eastern area. It would stand to reason, that with increasing ocean and air temperatures, greater snow and ice loss would result. Of course the last to be greatly affected would have to be the greater part of the landmass of central Antarctica. I’m just a layman, but that seems most rational to me.
Very interesting article. I am in the field of LiDAR technology and it’s accuracies are only becoming more prevalent. With much scientific data backing the claim I don’t doubt the evidence. I hope there are many more studies like this to come, backing the results with LiDAR technology.
@JimInAuburn – the NASA mission that was making these measurements ended in February 2010 when irreparable malfunctions in the measurement payload forced them to retire the device (known as ICESat). There will be a satellite launched in its place called ICESat-2 in 2018. As far as I know, we’ll be able to get updated information about the net rate of annual ice change once this 2018 mission is underway. This article on NASA’s website explains their ICASat measurements and includes a brief explanation of ICASat-2 in the last paragraph:
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
So what do the numbers look like since 2008? Are they higher or lower than the 82 billion tons annual average from 2003-2008?
@James Migrant – either you are a brilliant troll or a complete idiot.
Perhaps the next NASA study should look at desertification in sub-Saharan Africa and why in the United States some “hard-working taxpayers” like our previous commenter here insist on keeping their heads so deeply in the sand.
Remember a decade ago when scientists were predicting a new ice age? And now there’s this? And what is ice anyway? I don’t believe any of this claptrap from laser satellites or proving the existence of ice on some continent we’re just expected to believe exists even though no one has ever actually gone to it. This is just like the moon – a hoax! So scientists like the author can make lots of money by scamming hard working taxpayers to sit in his ivory tower and make up facts like laser satellites and different antarcticas. I don’t believe this claptrap. Thanks obama.
I was going to say you are ignorant, but that not accurate. You really willfully stupid.
Really what is YOUR proof?
Hundreds of thousands years of records show .What a load of rubbish they try to age Ice by the amount of rings , sorry thats absolutely rubbish all they’re counting is how many times its snowed. More theory that becomes unprovable fact .Just as inaccurate as carbon dating another fairy-tale.
Hundreds of thousands of years of records? Can you reference the scientific data from 50,000 years ago, please? No? Because all we have is data from the last 20 or 30 years. No one was drilling and measuring ice a thousand years ago. No one was recording this data or uploading drone and satellite images during King Richard’s reign or the Viking invasions.
Climate change is real and has been since our climate has existed. Humans are contributing to the issue. Is it an existential threat? I don’t think so. We have been living in a man-made environment indoors since air conditioning.
What stands out to me, and this ice gain seems to confirm. the vast majority of industrialized counties are in the Northern hemisphere. I think that is why the Artic is melting so fast. I also believe if all the ice melts life would still thrive.
And still, NYC and the Jersey shore were supposed to be underwater by 2000 and they’re still dry and great places to vacation. In fact, have had a house on the bay with a large boat dock. In 1992 when all this CLIMATE ALARMISM was in full swing, we believed it. So we marked high tide and low tide on the pickings in 92. Guess what? High tide and low tide are still the same. NO SEA LEVELS RISING. Plus, record low frequency and severity of hurricanes hitting the USA, along with tornadoes. In fact, after Katrina and Wilma in 05, we didn’t have a category 3+ hit the USA in 14 years. So, ALL THE ALARMISTS PREDICTIONS HAVE FAILED.