How do they account for the changes in weather and the melting glaciers?
1. Natural cycle. In some parts of the world its even colder, and in other parts of the world its hotter
2. Did you not hear that the Antartic ice increased by 34%?
No, the Anarctic ice did not increase by 34%. In fact, the Anarctic is losing ice by the megaton every year. The sea ice covered a bigger area, however, it melts off every summer, so there is no net gain.
Is Antarctica losing or gaining ice?
The skeptic argument...The amount of ice surrounding Antarctica is now at the highest level ever measured for this time of the year, since satellites first began to monitor it almost 30 years ago. All of the IPCCÂ’s models of Antarctica in the twenty-first century forecast a gain in ice, as a warmer surrounding ocean evaporates more water, which subsequently falls in the form of snow when it hits the continent. Other studies, such as Peter DoranÂ’s in Nature in 2003, show actual cooling in recent decades. ItÂ’s simply too cold for rain in Antarctica, and itÂ’ll stay that way for a very long time. The bottom line is that there is more ice than ever surrounding Antarctica (source: Patrick Michaels).
What the science says...
Overall, Antarctic land ice is falling. Antarctic sea ice is growing despite a warming Southern Ocean.
It's important to distinguish between Antarctic land ice and sea ice which are two separate phenomenon.
Antarctic Land Ice
Measuring changes in Antarctic land ice mass has been a difficult process due to the ice sheet's size and complexity. However, over the last few years, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites have been able to comprehensively survey the entire ice sheet. Using measurements of time-variable gravity, Velicogna 2007 determined mass variations of the entire Antarctic ice sheet from 2002 to 2005. They found the overall mass of the ice sheet decreased significantly, at a rate of 152 ± 80 cubic kilometers of ice per year (equivalent to 0.4 ± 0.2 millimeters of global sea-level rise per year). Most of this mass loss came from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Figure 1 displays Antarctica's ice mass from 2002 to 2005 - the red crosses is their best estimate with the dotted linehttp://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm the linear tre
