Antarctic Ice Shelves Not Melting At All

[Annie]

Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show ? The Register

Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show
Crafty boffins got elephant seals to survey for them
By Lewis Page
Posted in Science, 25th June 2012 07:19 GMT

Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time - and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all.

"Previous ocean models ... have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place," says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years' worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica - the first ever to be taken.

According to a statement from the American Geophysical Union, announcing the new research:

It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass.

The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted ...
​

Hatterman and his colleagues, using 12 tons of hot-water drilling equipment, bored three holes more than 200m deep through the Fimbul Shelf, which spans an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey. The location of each hole was cunningly chosen so that the various pathways by which water moves beneath the ice shelf could be observed, and instruments were lowered down.

The boffins also supplemented their data craftily by harvesting info from a biology project, the Marine Mammal Exploration of the Oceans Pole to Pole (MEOP) effort, which had seen sensor packages attached to elephant seals.

"Nobody was expecting that the MEOP seals from Bouvetoya would swim straight to the Antarctic and stay along the Fimbul Ice Shelf for the entire winter," Hattermann says. "But this behaviour certainly provided an impressive and unique data set."

Normally, getting sea temperature readings along the shelf in winter would be dangerous if not impossible due to shifting pack ice - but the seals were perfectly at home among the grinding floes.

Overall, according to the team, their field data shows "steady state mass balance" on the eastern Antarctic coasts - ie, that no ice is being lost from the massive shelves there. The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

This is good news indeed, as some had thought that huge amounts of ice were melting from the region, which might mean accelerated rates of sea level rise in future. ®

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Volcanoes!

CH4 outgassing!

 

[Oddball]

As the SS Goebbels Warmercoolering takes another hit amidships....

Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time - and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all.

"Previous ocean models ... have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place," says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years' worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica - the first ever to be taken.

According to a statement from the American Geophysical Union, announcing the new research:

It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass.

The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted ...

Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show ? The Register

 

[Old Rocks]

Along with the drilling, the research also used data from group of elephant seals, outfitted with sensors that measure salinity, temperature, and depth. The scientists benefited from the seals’ lengthy migration, which provided some critical information about Antarctic melting and future sea level rise.

After crunching the numbers, they concluded that at least parts of eastern Antarctica are melting at significantly lower rates than current models predict.

Some Antarctic ice shelves not melting as fast thought « Summit County Citizens Voice

“It has been unclear, until now, how much warm deep water rises below the Fimbul Ice Shelf,” said said Tore Hattermann, a PhD student at the Norwegian Polar Institute and lead author of the study. “Previous ocean models, focusing on the circulation below the Fimbul Ice Shelf, have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place as fast as previously thought,” Hatterman said.

 

[Old Rocks]

Now let's go to the original source.

So what they are saying is that the sensors on the elephant seals confirmed what their remote sensors had been telling them. And that the warm water pulses are not presently affecting this particular ice shelf.

Now this is the Eastern Ice Shelf, not the whole of the Antarctic Ice Shelves as your title suggests, so you are in effect creating a lie with your title. But that is what one expects of the sceptics of today.

Two years of oceanic observations below the Fimbul Ice Shelf, Antarctica

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, doi:10.1029/2012GL051012

Two years of oceanic observations below the Fimbul Ice Shelf, Antarctica



Key Points•We present two years of unique observations below the Fimbul Ice Shelf
•Cold water below the ice suggests low basal melting
•Solar heated surface water and warm pulses at depth provide heat for melting

Authors:

Tore Hattermann


Ole A. Nøst


Jonathan M. Lilly


Lars Henrik Smedsrud



The mechanisms by which heat is delivered to Antarctic ice shelves are a major source of uncertainty when assessing the response of the Antarctic ice sheet to climate change. Direct observations of the ice shelf-ocean interaction are extremely scarce, and present ice shelf-ocean models struggle to predict reason able melt rates. Our two years of data during 2010-2012 from three oceanic moorings below the Fimbul Ice Shelf in the eastern Weddell Sea show cold cavity waters, with average temperatures of less than 0.1 {degree sign}C above the surface freezing point. This suggests rather low basal melt rates, consistent with remote sensing based, steady state mass balance estimates in this sector of the Antarctic coast. Oceanic heat for basal melting is found to be sup-plied by two sources of warm water that enter below the ice: (i) eddy-like bursts of Modified Warm Deep Water accesses the cavity at depth during eight months of the record; and (ii) a seasonal inflow of warm, fresh surface water flushes parts of the ice base with temperatures above freezing, during late summer and fall. This interplay of processes implies that basal melting cannot simply be parameterized by coastal deep ocean temperatures, but is directly linked to both solar forcing at the surface as well as to coastal processes controlling deep ocean heat fluxes.

 

[waltky]

Granny thinkin' `bout bookin' a vacation to the sunny shores o' Antarctica...

Antarctic Peninsula Now Almost As Warm As 12,000 Years Ago
August 22, 2012 - Rapid warming of the Antarctic Peninsula is bringing temperatures close to the warmth that followed the end of the last ice age, says lead researcher Richard Mulvaney, a paleoclimatologist with the British Antarctic Survey.

The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out about 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) from the western flank of the frozen continent, is one of the fastest warming places on Earth. In the past 50 years, the air temperature has increased by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). While this rate of warming is highly unusual, it is not unprecedented, indicates a new study. The rapid, modern warming is bringing the peninsula's temperatures close to the warmth that followed the end of the last ice age, lead researcher Richard Mulvaney, a paleoclimatologist with the British Antarctic Survey, told LiveScience. "We are now approaching the temperatures last seen 12,000 years ago," he wrote in an email.

Mulvaney and colleagues predict continued warming will have serious implications for the ice shelves that jut from the peninsula over the ocean. In recent decades, ice shelves at the northern part have begun collapsing into the sea. Continued warming puts ice shelves further south at risk, they say. The Antarctic warming is paralleled by fast-melting ice in the Arctic, as that thaw approaches a new record

Back in time

To look back at millennia of temperature history for the peninsula, a research team extracted a 1,200-foot (364-meter) ice core from the summit of an island mountain near the northern tip of the peninsula. Chemical clues in the sections of ice enabled researchers to reconstruct a record of temperature changes going back about 15,000 years, to a time when the last ice age was coming to an end. Twice before in the past 2,000 years — around A.D. 400 and A.D. 1500 — the rate of warming has approached the modern one, Mulvaney said. The current warming trend began about 600 years ago, accelerating in the past 50 to 100 years, bringing the peninsula close to its post ice-age highs.

Warmth means melt

Warming isn't just important for its own sake. While the thick layers of ice that extend from the frozen land have been stable for thousands of years, in the last 30 years rapid collapses, in which the ice shelves disintegrate into the sea, have begun, according to the U.S. Snow and Ice Data Center. In 1995, the northernmost portion of the Larsen Ice Shelf, about 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) collapsed, forming small icebergs. After retreating for some time, the nearby Prince Gustav Ice Shelf collapsed the same year. Scientists have wondered if the loss of ice shelves and rising temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula are the result of natural cycles or if humans' alterations to the environment, including the ozone hole of Antarctica, are responsible. The results of the study don't provide an answer to this question, but they do offer insight into the pre-Industrial temperature history and how it related to the state of the region's ice shelves.

MORE

 

[Katzndogz]

Of course the ice shelves in Antarctica are not melting. It's winter there.

 

[westwall]

As the SS Goebbels Warmercoolering takes another hit amidships....

Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time - and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all.

"Previous ocean models ... have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place," says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years' worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica - the first ever to be taken.

According to a statement from the American Geophysical Union, announcing the new research:

It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass.

The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted ...

Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show ? The Register

I think the SS Goebbels needs to take one in the stern! These amidships hits are fun but I want it dead in the water!

 

[westwall]

Along with the drilling, the research also used data from group of elephant seals, outfitted with sensors that measure salinity, temperature, and depth. The scientists benefited from the seals’ lengthy migration, which provided some critical information about Antarctic melting and future sea level rise.

After crunching the numbers, they concluded that at least parts of eastern Antarctica are melting at significantly lower rates than current models predict.

Some Antarctic ice shelves not melting as fast thought « Summit County Citizens Voice

“It has been unclear, until now, how much warm deep water rises below the Fimbul Ice Shelf,” said said Tore Hattermann, a PhD student at the Norwegian Polar Institute and lead author of the study. “Previous ocean models, focusing on the circulation below the Fimbul Ice Shelf, have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place as fast as previously thought,” Hatterman said.

"Models"... gotta love them eh olfraud. Have any of them ever been correct? Noooope!

 

[Old Rocks]

Ice mass loss in Antarctica, NASA;

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/416685main_20100108_Climate_1.jpg

NASA - Is Antarctica Melting?

 

[Old Rocks]

NASA - Is Antarctica Melting?

How the Ice Shelf Crumbles

The retreat of West Antarctica's glaciers is being accelerated by ice shelf collapse. Ice shelves are the part of a glacier that extends past the grounding line towards the ocean they are the most vulnerable to warming seas. A longstanding theory in glaciology is that these ice shelves tend to buttress (support the end wall of) glaciers, with their mass slowing the ice movement towards the sea, and this was confirmed by the spectacular collapse of the Rhode Island-sized Larsen B shelf along the Eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002. The disintegration, which was caught on camera by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imaging instruments on board its Terra and Aqua satellites, was dramatic: it took just three weeks to crumble a 12,000-year old ice shelf. Over the next few years, satellite radar data showed that some of the ice streams flowing behind Larsen B had accelerated significantly, while others, still supported by smaller ice shelves, had not 9. This dynamic process of ice flowing downhill to the sea is what enables Antarctica to continue losing mass even as surface melting declines

 

[skookerasbil]

lol.............more k00k losing. This kind of shit............anything counter to the prevailing view............is immediately discarded by the k00ks as false. Also makes them go mental. Which by the way is exactly why they are LOSING the pr battle big time!!!

 

[mamooth]

Denialists -- they go nuts if they think the data disagrees with their religion, and they go nutsier if they think it agrees with their religion. It's good to be part of the reason-based community. We don't have cult leaders telling us whether to cheer or boo, so we can simply appreciate good science in all forms.

This isn't big news. Scientists have known for years that that ice sheet wasn't melting. From the paper:

---
Melt rates below the [Fimbul Ice Shelf] may thus be consistent with steady state-mass balance estimates based on remote sensing (Rignot et al., 2008)
---

See? The authors of this latest paper flat out state they agree with the 2008 paper. Scientists have known since at least 2008 that this ice shelf was not melting.

Anyways, data like this adds details, and is very welcome. And the use of elephant seals hauled down to Antarctica is really cool. It's just interesting how the newspaper article basically lied by saying scientists all thought the Fimbul ice shelf was melting.

 

[skookerasbil]

Denialists -- they go nuts if they think the data disagrees with their religion, and they go nutsier if they think it agrees with their religion. It's good to be part of the reason-based community. We don't have cult leaders telling us whether to cheer or boo, so we can simply appreciate good science in all forms.

This isn't big news. Scientists have known for years that that ice sheet wasn't melting. From the paper:

---
Melt rates below the [Fimbul Ice Shelf] may thus be consistent with steady state-mass balance estimates based on remote sensing (Rignot et al., 2008)
---

See? The authors of this latest paper flat out state they agree with the 2008 paper. Scientists have known since at least 2008 that this ice shelf was not melting.

Anyways, data like this adds details, and is very welcome. And the use of elephant seals hauled down to Antarctica is really cool. It's just interesting how the newspaper article basically lied by saying scientists all thought the Fimbul ice shelf was melting.

Indeed............Ive been saying for over 12 years that this whole thing is a scam and every year, more and more evidence backs up my assertion.


But I'll admit, I'd be bummed without all the k00k bomb throwing by these meatheads. Where else can you go every day to have the opportunity to publically humiliate mental cases and get away with it?

 

[uscitizen]

Of course the ice shelves in Antarctica are not melting. It's winter there.

My thought exactly.

 

[Politico]

Jeez the anti green folks are just as bad as the tree huggers. Saying no ice is melting is just as stupid as saying not a single job has been created during the Obama administration.

 

[bripat9643]

Jeez the anti green folks are just as bad as the tree huggers. Saying no ice is melting is just as stupid as saying not a single job has been created during the Obama administration.

The later claim is obviously true, so that doesn't say much about your powers of ratiocination.

 

[waltky]

The team burned much of its fuel in a bid to connect the under-ice boreholes...

Lake Ellsworth Antarctic drilling project called off
27 December 2012 - An ambitious mission to drill through 3km (1.8 miles) of Antarctic ice to a lake that has been sealed off for thousands of years has been cut short.

The team at Lake Ellsworth decided to call off the mission in the early hours of Christmas Day UK time. They were unable to join the main borehole with a parallel hole that was to be used to recover drilling water. The team is now "weatherising" the equipment and it is unclear when they will be able to resume the project. The £8m ($13m) project, headed by the British Antarctic Survey (Bas), aimed to drill carefully down using near-boiling water to pierce the lake, which has been untouched for as much as half a million years. The hope had been to find hints of simple life forms existing in the extreme conditions of pressure and temperature, and to find a record of climate in the lake's sediments.

The programme ran into trouble last week as the main boiler used to heat drilling water broke down, with a replacement part being flown from the UK reaching the remote site last Friday. With the boiler working, the team aimed to make two parallel boreholes, intended to join 300m below the surface. A first borehole was drilled and left for 12 hours to create a hot-water cavity. This was to be used to re-circulate drilling water and to balance pressures when the sequestered lake was finally breached.

However, the team were unable to reach the cavity during the course of drilling the second, main borehole. "We kept trying for over 24 hours to reach that connection but we couldn't do it," said principal investigator of the project Martin Siegert, from the University of Bristol. "All that time we were losing fuel and water from the ice sheet surface and we got to a critical condition where our calculations showed us we simply didn't have enough fuel to continue any further down into the ice sheet to hit the top of the lake," he told BBC News. The team is now starting the long process of gathering up its equipment for eventual return to the UK, where it will be serviced.

Once back on UK soil, the team will have to develop a report on what went wrong, and only then can the thought of a return trip be considered. "It will take a season or two to get all of our equipment out of Antarctica and back to the UK, so at a minimum we're looking at three to four, maybe five years I would have thought," Prof Siegert said. But he remained hopeful about the future, and said that this year's mission was far from a complete loss. "We still want to do that testing, they were compelling scientific drivers a few years ago and they remain so. It's very important that we take stock of what we achieved here," he said. Given the long time that it may take to fund and mount another mission to Ellsworth, it may be that other nations aim for other sealed-off Antarctic lakes in the nearer term. "We have never depicted it as a race, but it may well happen that others get there first," Audrey Stevens, Bas spokesperson, told BBC News.

BBC News - Lake Ellsworth Antarctic drilling project called off

 

[IanC]

I think the most useful information about the Antarctic is how the estimates of ice loss keep going down. the claims of huge ice loss from 10 years ago have disappeared, to be replace by much smaller ones, and now there are even some estimates that put the overall levels as increasing.


and of course the sea ice levels around Antarctica are the highest in the satellite era. which doesnt get any media attention at all.

 

[Old Rocks]

I think the most useful information about the Antarctic is how the estimates of ice loss keep going down. the claims of huge ice loss from 10 years ago have disappeared, to be replace by much smaller ones, and now there are even some estimates that put the overall levels as increasing.


and of course the sea ice levels around Antarctica are the highest in the satellite era. which doesnt get any media attention at all.

Quite on the contrary, people like you are just not listening.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/envir...ctures-and-discussions-by-climatologists.html