Record Ice Growth in Antarctic

mmasters · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 7:51 pm Post subject: Record Ice Growth in Antarctic

Northern Hemisphere:

Southern Hemisphere:

Antarctic ice grows to record levels

By EPW Blog
Saturday, August 4, 2007

Antarctic ice grows to record levels
(By Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo)

Excerpt: While the news focus has been on the lowest ice extent since satellite monitoring began in 1979 for the Arctic, the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica) has quietly set a new record for most ice extent since 1979. This can be seen on this graphic from this University of Illinois site The Cryosphere Today, which updated snow and ice extent for both hemispheres daily. The Southern Hemispheric areal coverage is the highest in the satellite record, just beating out 1995, 2001, 2005 and 2006. Since 1979, the trend has been up for the total Antarctic ice extent. While the Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed in recent years and ice near it diminished during the Southern Hemisphere summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and ice elsewhere has been more extensive and longer lasting, which explains the increase in total extent. This dichotomy was shown in this World Climate Report blog posted recently with a similar tale told in this paper by Ohio State Researcher David Bromwich, who agreed "It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now". Indeed, according the NASA GISS data, the South Pole winter (June/July/August) has cooled about 1 degree F since 1957 and the coldest year was 2004. This winter has been an especially harsh one in the Southern Hemisphere with cold and snow records set in Australia, South America and Africa. We will have recap on this hard winter shortly.

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/a_new_record_for_antartic_total_ice_extent

Former Harvard Physcist Lubos Motl Weight in on Antarctic Ice
Excerpt: Satellites began to measure the Earth's cryosphere in 1979. Because of a warm summer, the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area has reached new historic lows in 2007. Around August 28th, the new minimum of 2.99 million squared kilometers of sea ice easily surpassed the previous record of 4.01 million squared kilometers set in 2005. These numbers available at the web page of Dr William Chapman and his team at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were widely publicized. Some analysts have speculated that the new record could be evidence of global warming. But is it? Even though it may sound very complicated, it turns out that the Earth is round. At the global scale, there is not one polar region but, in fact, two. There is also sea ice on the Southern Hemisphere. It turns out that the Antarctic sea ice area reached 16.2 million squared kilometers in 2007 - a new absolute record high since the measurements started in 1979: see this graph. During the year, the Southern Hemisphere sea ice area fluctuates between 2 and 16 million squared kilometers or so while the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area fluctuates approximately between 3 and 14 million squared kilometers. The climate models predict warming in Antarctica and they are increasingly inconsistent with the observations.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/antarctic-sea-ice-at-record-high.html

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
_________________
Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destory health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality.

americandream

The seasonal ozone hole may account for the wild southern fluctuations in as much as the daily weather has been noticeably extreme ranging from torrid in the day to frosty at night.
_________________
Bugger me, I hear oil's runnin out mate!

Tanada

Tyler_JC

americandream

Heineken

This is just sea ice, which does fluctuate. Antarctica itself is warming. Some coastal areas are actually growing grass and other small plants for the first time. I saw pictures of that on a NOVA episode---incredible.
_________________
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog

"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother

billg

How about we interview the penguins?

According to some experts at the sixth International Penguin Conference, as many as 12 of the world’s 17 species of penguins are in serious trouble, the Australian reported today. The United States has considered petitions to list 10 on the endangered species list.

The March of the Penguins, Towards Extinction

Colony of Antarctica Penguins Nears Extinction

Tanada

Fishman

Damn these real world things just keep messing up those politically correct computer models! Can't they just get those scientist to quit collecting any data, or just filter out what facts that support Gore's model of the world?

Windmills

I think you mean Bush, who was the number one censor in the world regarding real facts and scientific research regarding global warming. He along with his friends in the oil business tried their best to deny global warming, but you can only say the world is flat for so long before you're proven dead wrong. They've all since withdraw their petitions against reality.

Bas

mmasters

Zardoz

This is an interesting phenomenon, that's for sure. The arctic is turning into a giant slushie, with shipping companies making plans to go over the pole perhaps as soon as next year, while sea ice on the opposite pole is growing.

Like we've said, all bets are off. Climatology is becoming a whole new ball game.
_________________
"Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen

dissident · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 08, 2006 Posts: 454

The Arctic is a confined basin so its peak ice extent doesn't vary much from year to year. The only way that the Arctic ice extent can get large is if the Barents sea freezes over and there is ice extending south of the Bering strait. In both cases there are warm currents that limit this. In contrast Antarctica is surrounded by a circumpolar circulation that isolates the continent. Even a small change in the maximal ice distance from the landmass translates into a large change in the sea ice extent (a simplistic approximation: 2*Pi*r*dr).

The trend plot for the SH is:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

the trend since 1990 is not as clear as for the NH.

Bas