Antarctic icebergs still exist today where 1700-era sailors spotted and tracked them

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

Probably not the result that was expected from this study. Captain Cook’s descriptions of iceberg sightings still seem valid. Is saying ‘large icebergs…are not as sensitive to climate change’ enough to avoid raising questions about modern global warming theories?
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A new study comparing observations of large Antarctic icebergs from the 1700s with modern satellite datasets shows the massive icebergs are found in the same areas where they were pinpointed three centuries ago, reports Phys.org.

The study shows that despite their rudimentary tools, the old explorers truly knew their craft, and it confirms that the icebergs have behaved consistently for more than 300 years.

Using primarily the journal records of Captain James Cook’s 1772–1775 Antarctic circumnavigation on the HMS Resolution (where he noted the positions of hundreds of icebergs), a trio of researchers from Brigham Young University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Washington’s School of Oceanography made comparisons with the two largest modern datasets available today: the BYU/National Ice Center and Alfred Wegener Institute datasets.

They found that Cook’s description of the iceberg plume east of Antarctica’s Amery Ice Shelf, along with iceberg distributions in the Weddell, Ross and Amundsen Seas, agree with modern data.

Fieldwork starts on Thwaites Glacier – British Antarctic Survey

Thwaites glacier has its own complexities, including proximity to dozens of underwater volcanoes. Wikipedia says it’s ‘nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier’ and ‘The Thwaites Ice Shelf, a floating ice shelf which braces and restrains the eastern portion of Thwaites Glacier, is likely to collapse within a decade from 2021’. Statements like ‘computer models show’, ‘how soon a transition to more rapid ice retreat might occur’ and ‘collapse of the glacier’ (the size of Florida) arouse a certain amount of scepticism. More than a whiff of climate alarm enthusiasm here.
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Nearly 60 scientists and support staff are on their way to Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, says the British Antarctic Survey.

It’s part of an ambitious international effort to understand the glacier and surrounding ocean system to determine its future contributions to global sea-level rise.

This season represents the fourth of five planned field seasons.

Fresh understanding of ice age frequency – Otago study

Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

By saying, of Antarctica’s ice sheets, “this research shows they actually advanced and retreated much more often – every 41,000 years – until at least 400,000 years ago”, the research adds a new twist to the longstanding 100,000 year problem of ice ages. It puts obliquity firmly back in the frame.
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A chance find of an unstudied Antarctic sediment core has led University of Otago researchers to flip our understanding of how often ice ages occurred in Antarctica, says Eurekalert.

Lead author Dr Christian Ohneiser, of the Department of Geology, says it turns out they were much more frequent than previously assumed.

“Until this research, it was common knowledge that over the last million years global ice volume, which includes Antarctica’s ice sheets, expanded and retreated every 100,000 years.

“However, this research shows they actually advanced and retreated much more often – every 41,000 years – until at least 400,000 years ago,” he says.

Scientists discovered a river longer than Thames beneath the Antarctic ice sheet

Antarctica’s George VI Ice Shelf [image credit: CIRES Colorado Univ.]

Interesting, but too many uncertainties at this time to reach any firm conclusions. The river system is ‘beneath kilometers of thick ice’.
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Scientists at Imperial College London, the University of Waterloo, Canada, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, and Newcastle University have discovered an unexpected river under the Antarctic ice sheet, says Tech Explorist.

The discovery of this 460km-long river shows the ice sheet’s base has more active water flow than previously thought, which could make it more susceptible to changes in climate.

The river is believed to affect the flow and melting of ice, contributing to the acceleration of ice loss during climate warming.

Seasonal change in Antarctic ice sheet movement observed for first time – but what does it mean?

Antarctica’s George VI Ice Shelf [image credit: CIRES Colorado Univ.]

Assumptions challenged by new data. Talk of “potentially important implications for global sea-level rise estimates”.
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Some estimates of Antarctica’s total contribution to sea-level rise may be over- or underestimated, after researchers detected a previously unknown source of ice loss variability, says Phys.org.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Austrian engineering company ENVEO, identified distinct, seasonal movements in the flow of land-based ice draining into George VI Ice Shelf—a floating platform of ice roughly the size of Wales—on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Using imagery from the Copernicus/European Space Agency Sentinel-1 satellites, the researchers found that the glaciers feeding the ice shelf speed up by approximately 15% during the Antarctic summer.

Record of Antarctic ice sheet response to climate cycles found in rock samples

Antarctica

Climate cycles and natural variability do exist then?! No need to re-visit those discussions. Quote: “One of the key findings is that the ice sheet was responding to temperature changes in the Southern Ocean”. The study says: ‘Our findings imply that oscillating Southern Ocean temperatures drive a dynamic response in the Antarctic ice sheet on millennial timescales, regardless of the background climate state.’
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By analyzing unusual rock samples collected years ago in Antarctica, scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have discovered a remarkable record of how the East Antarctic Ice Sheet has responded to changes in climate over a period of 100,000 years during the Late Pleistocene, says Phys.org.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is the world’s largest ice mass. Understanding its sensitivity to climate change is crucial for efforts to project how much sea level will rise as global temperatures increase.

Recent studies suggest it may be more vulnerable to ice loss than previously thought.

Faster in the Past: New seafloor images of West Antarctic Ice Sheet upend understanding of Thwaites Glacier retreat

Some like to call it the Doomsday Glacier. The research results are probably open to a variety of interpretations, in terms of predictions. But we’re told that whatever is being observed at present is by no means exceptional, making attempts at attribution of its ever-changing condition to human activity even more problematic. Volcanic activity is an obvious confounding factor here.
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The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica — about the size of Florida — has been an elephant in the room for scientists trying to make global sea level rise predictions, says Science Daily.

This massive ice stream is already in a phase of fast retreat (a “collapse” when viewed on geological timescales) leading to widespread concern about exactly how much, or how fast, it may give up its ice to the ocean.

The potential impact of Thwaites’ retreat is spine-chilling: a total loss of the glacier and surrounding icy basins could raise sea level from three to 10 feet.

Some Antarctic ice shelves grew in area over the last 20 years – study

Credit: British Antarctic Survey

Much ado about sea ice in recent times, but usually in terms of promoting climate alarm. On closer inspection East Antarctica (2/3rds of the continent) tells a somewhat different story.
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Some ice shelves in the eastern Antarctic have grown in the last 20 years despite global warming, a study suggests.

Researchers say that sea ice, pushed against the ice shelves by a change in regional wind patterns, may have helped to protect the ice shelves from losses, reports Yahoo News.

Ice shelves are floating sections of ice attached to land-based ice sheets and they help guard against the uncontrolled release of inland ice into the ocean.

Antarctic sea-ice expansion in a warming climate confounds model predictions

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

The obvious conclusion would be that the climate models are wrong, due to application of incorrect climate theory. As usual, researchers cast around desperately for other alternatives, only to find natural variation preventing warming from being global.
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Antarctic sea-ice has expanded over the period of continuous satellite monitoring, which seemingly contradicts ongoing global warming resulting from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses, says Phys.org.

In a study, published in Nature Climate Change, an international team of scientists from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and South Korea shows that a multi-decadal swing of the tropical sea surface temperatures and its ability to change the atmospheric circulation across large distances is in large part responsible for the observed sea-ice expansion since the late 1970s.

Ice shards in Antarctic clouds let more solar energy reach Earth’s surface

Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

It’s noted that ‘Getting clouds right…is important for calculating how much solar radiation reaches Earth.’ A difference of 10 watts per square metre could be involved in some zones, the researchers found.
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Clouds come in myriad shapes, sizes and types, which control their effects on climate, says Phys.org.

New research led by the University of Washington shows that splintering of frozen liquid droplets to form ice shards inside Southern Ocean clouds dramatically affects the clouds’ ability to reflect sunlight back to space.

The paper, published March 4 in the open-access journal AGU Advances, shows that including this ice-splintering process improves the ability of high-resolution global models to simulate clouds over the Southern Ocean—and thus the models’ ability to simulate Earth’s climate.

A ‘heat wave’ and snowfall: Why researchers are puzzled by Antarctica’s recent weather

Antarctica

The alarmist Guardian’s ‘climate disaster’ turns out to be ‘climate mitigation’, due to the massive snowfall. A so-called heatwave where temperatures reached a chilly 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 Celsius), seems to have fooled a lot of people. The Guardian speculates that ‘climate breakdown could be accelerating’, but seeing what you wanted to see doesn’t always work.
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While researchers say it’s too early to know what role, if any, climate change plays here, the event has their attention because it’s so extreme, says NBC News.

It’s been a strange stretch for the icy desert at the bottom of the world.

In mid-March, temperatures in parts of East Antarctica soared 70 degrees Fahrenheit above average. It was high enough for researchers living there to brave the elements for a bare-chested group photo.

The comparatively balmy temperatures, which reached around 10 degrees Fahrenheit, arrived courtesy of a history-making atmospheric river — a plume of concentrated moisture that flows through the sky.

This one brought an incredible dump of snow in the inner reaches of the ice sheet, something quite rare for the area.

Endurance: Shackleton’s lost ship is found in Antarctic

The Endurance

After the search vessel nearly suffered the same fate, what was one of the world’s greatest undiscovered shipwrecks is identified on the Antarctic seafloor.
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Scientists have found and filmed one of the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks 107 years after it sank, reports BBC News.

The Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

The ship was crushed by sea-ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats.

Video of the remains show Endurance to be in remarkable condition.

Antarctica: Expedition to find Ernest Shackleton’s sunken ship narrowly escapes same fate

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

There’s a pattern here. How often do these gung-ho sea trips to polar regions by climate botherers — sorry, researchers — run into sea ice trouble, usually sooner rather than later?
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When Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, became trapped in Antarctic sea ice in 1915, the crew had no choice but to drift helplessly for nine months before their ship finally sank, says The Telegraph (via MSN News).

The expedition to find the Endurance’s wreck came close to the same fate late on Sunday.

But where Shackleton’s men could rely only on patience, the Agulhas II has 16,000 horsepower of propulsion, movable ballast, and a container full of aviation fuel.

Ocean eddies could explain Antarctic sea-ice paradox, say climate modellers

Opposite sea ice trends? [Credits: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng]

Climate modellers need yet more and bigger computers to stand a chance of eradicating faulty sea ice projections in the polar regions, apparently. Meanwhile, they believe there must be some ‘delay’ in their long-predicted but not (yet?) happening Antarctic sea ice decline. Quote: “Our study supports the hypothesis that climate models and projections of the Antarctic sea ice will be far more reliable as soon as they are capable of realistically simulating a high-resolution ocean, complete with eddies”.
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Despite global warming and the sea-ice loss in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea-ice extent has remained largely unchanged since 1979, says Eurekalert.

However, existing climate model-based simulations indicate significant sea-ice loss, contrary to actual observations.

As experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now shown, the ocean may weaken warming around Antarctica and delay sea-ice retreat.

Southern Ocean storms cause outgassing of carbon dioxide

Antarctica

A key sentence to note in this report says: ‘Half of all carbon dioxide bound in the world’s oceans is found in the Southern Ocean.’ What impact does the outgassing have on the total carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, which we’re expected to believe is a matter of huge climate concern requiring drastic and expensive measures for decades to come?
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Storms over the waters around Antarctica drive an outgassing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to a new international study with researchers from the University of Gothenburg. — Phys.org reporting.

The research group used advanced ocean robots for the study, which provides a better understanding of climate change and can lead to better global climate models.

The world’s southernmost ocean, the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica, plays an important role in the global climate because its waters contain large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Study looks at Antarctic sea ice changes since the early 20th century, increases since 1979

Antarctica

The article says ‘The satellite measurements start in 1979’, but the USGS Landsat satellite project has been ‘imaging the Earth since 1972’. The researchers say in the abstract of their paper: ‘In stark contrast to the Arctic, there have been statistically significant positive trends in total Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979. However, the short and highly variable nature of observed Antarctic sea ice extent limits the ability to fully understand the historical context of these recent changes.’ The UK Met Office reported in October 2021: ‘Antarctic sea ice reached a maximum extent (to date) of 18.75 million sq km on 1st September 2021 (Figure 7), which is very close to the 1981-2010 average maximum extent of 18.70 million sq km.’
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A study led by Ohio University researchers shows that the increase of sea ice surrounding Antarctica since 1979 is a unique feature of Antarctic climate since 1905—an observation that paints a dramatic first-ever picture for weather and climate implications on the world’s southernmost continent, says Phys.org.

Dr. Ryan Fogt’s study, published today in Nature Climate Change, is the first to detail sea ice extent surrounding the entire continent though all four seasons over the last century.

Weather, especially winds and temperatures, contribute to sea ice changes. Fogt is professor of Geography in OHIO’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Quest begins to drill Antarctica’s oldest ice – again

Ice core sample [image credit: Discovering Antarctica]

Previous studies indicated temperature change preceded CO2 change, but the BBC says they occurred ‘in parallel’ or ‘in lockstep’, obscuring the key role of insolation while waffling about supposedly ‘heat trapping’ gases.
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Efforts are about to get under way to drill a core of ice in Antarctica that contains a record of Earth’s climate stretching back 1.5 million years, says BBC News.

A European team will set up its equipment at one of the highest locations on the White Continent, for an operation likely to take four years.

The project aims to recover a near-3km-long cylinder of frozen material.

Scientists hope this ice can help them explain why Earth’s ice ages flipped in frequency in the deep past.

South Pole froze over in coldest winter on record

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

We’re asked to believe this is just a blip in the relentless march of supposedly human-caused global warming, but let’s give it a few more years to see how things progress.
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Antarctica’s frigid winter temperatures are in contrast to trends in the rest of the world, which overall recorded its fourth hottest summer, says LiveScience.

Between April and September, a research station sitting on a high plateau in Antarctica, registered an average temperature of minus 78 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 61 degrees Celsius).

That’s the coldest temperature recorded since record keeping began in 1957, and about 4.5 F (2.5 C) lower than the most recent 30-year average, according to The Washington Post.

BBC: Climate reporting reaches melting point

Antarctica

More meltdown than melting. The author reckons ‘Tackling global warming will be the central project of the 21st Century’, but the NSIDC graphic below doesn’t suggest anything alarming. No doubt the BBC will be offsetting all those supposedly wicked ‘carbon emissions’ from flying a reporter round the world. Sadly the trip only extended to West Antarctica, parts of which are close to a significant volcanic region, whereas the majority of the ice is in East Antarctica. See: Scientists discover 91 volcanoes below Antarctic ice sheet. In 2015 a NASA study reported ice gains exceeding losses in Antarctica as a whole, with the net losses being in the west and the net gains in the east.
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A trip to a melting glacier will shape how the BBC’s new climate editor reports on climate change, says the BBC.

You cannot help but be awed by the scale of Antarctica, the great white continent.

I visited just before the pandemic struck and it is impossible not to feel humbled in the presence of something that seems so much bigger and more powerful than you.

NASA: Antarctic sea ice is growing, but we don’t know why

Antarctic sea ice [image credit: BBC]

Warming, but not global – is the polar see-saw hypothesis in play here? In any case, it seems climate models are falling short again.
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Sea ice in the Southern Ocean defies predictions.

Observations show that ice extent in the Antarctic has been growing slightly, reports The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

Paul Holland, a climate modeler with the British Antarctic Survey, has spent the last ten years studying Antarctica’s sea ice and the Southern Ocean.

Lately, he has been scrutinizing the seasons of Antarctica and how fast the ice comes and goes.

Holland thinks these seasons may be a key to a conundrum: If Earth’s temperatures are getting warmer and sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking fast, why then is sea ice in the Antarctic slowly increasing?

Opposite poles

Sea ice is simply frozen seawater. Although found only in the Arctic and the Antarctic, it influences Earth’s climate in big ways. Its bright surface reflects sunlight back into space. Icy areas absorb less solar energy and remain relatively cool.

When temperatures warm over time and more sea ice melts, fewer bright surfaces reflect sunlight back into space. The ice and exposed seawater absorb more solar energy and this causes more melting and more warming.

Scientists have been watching this feedback loop of warming and melting in the Arctic. To them, Arctic sea ice is a reliable indicator of a changing global climate. They pay the most attention in September when Arctic sea ice shrinks to its smallest extent each year. Measured by satellites since 1979, this minimum extent has been decreasing by as much as 13.7 percent per decade.

Antarctic sea ice, on the other hand, has not been considered a climate change indicator. Whereas Arctic sea ice mostly sits in the middle of land-locked ocean—which is more sensitive to sunlight and warming air—Antarctic sea ice surrounds land and is constantly exposed to high winds and waves.

According to climate models, rising global temperatures should cause sea ice in both regions to shrink. But observations show that ice extent in the Arctic has shrunk faster than models predicted, and in the Antarctic it has been growing slightly.

Researchers are looking much closer at Antarctica, saying, “Wait, what is going on down there?” Holland is one of those intrigued.

“The Antarctic case is as interesting as the Arctic case,” Holland said. “You can’t understand one without understanding the other.”

Minding the models

To Holland, the discrepancy calls parts of the climate models into question.

Continued here.

NASA pdf: https://cdn.earthdata.nasa.gov/conduit/upload/756/NASA_SOP_2014_unexpected_ice.pdf