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Stronger Winds Explain Puzzling Growth of Sea Ice In Antarctica
vinces99 writes "As NOAA announces a new record for the extent of sea ice in Antarctica, a new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even when Earth's overall climate is getting warmer. The study (abstract) by Jinlun Zhang, a University of Washington oceanographer, shows that stronger westerly winds swirling around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in Antarctic sea ice volume during the past three decades. The polar vortex that swirls around the South Pole is not just stronger than it was when satellite records began in the 1970s, it also shoves the sea ice together to cause ridging. Stronger winds also drive ice faster, which leads to still more deformation and ridging. This creates thicker, longer-lasting ice, while exposing surrounding water and thin ice to the blistering cold winds that cause more ice growth. A computer simulation that includes detailed interactions between wind and sea shows that thick ice — more than 6 feet deep — increased by about 1 percent per year from 1979 to 2010, while the amount of thin ice stayed fairly constant. The end result is a thicker, slightly larger ice pack that lasts longer into the summer."
So it's still code as buggery down there?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I really did believe in global warming, but now even I am beginning to wonder about the way every event that seems to discount climate change predictions is attributed to an outlying event, while everything that seems to prove climate change is attributed to human caused global warming...
This isn't the northern sea ice. The Antarctic sea ice has been trending slowly upwards, overall. With strong loss near the peninsular.
No it's real my friend. You just need to believe.
Now put these flowers in your hair and come dance with us.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Look up the meaning of variation. Prediction. Accuracy.
Both the weather and climate are vary and fluctuate greatly. Both are unpredictable. Both have a habit of showing mankind's predictions to always be wrong.
Sure, but with this article we should admit there is still a lot of climate phenomena we do not understand, and therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?
Quite a few "inconvienent truths" seem to be getting in the GW peoples' way. Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is stupid to treat it that way - unless you are a politician, who wants to tax the very air we beathe.
How was this modded insightful? None of those have been disproved. Look at any of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere for example. Not 1 of them is even as large as it was 25, 50, 75, or 100+ years ago. Many of them don't even exist anymore. Same in South America and anywhere along the equator. If you are trying to say this Antarctic ice difference makes up the total difference for a net 0 result, then you need to check your facts.
While I agree with you that trying to stop the change is foolish, I don't disputing that global warming exists. I just don't think we can do anything about it (even if Americans change their ways drastically China and India will compensate as their standard of living improves). Adapt or perish. That's how life has always worked on Earth.
I work in a government remote-sensing role, where we generate a lot of derived data (backed up by ground truth data we collect in the real world to compare against).
We've got a bit of an unspoken law about models: they're shit.
No matter how hard you try, when you attempt to model/simulate large-scale natural phenomena - where you have so many different systems affecting one another, and so much to keep track of - you end up with a realistic workload of dozens of man years of scientific development just to come up with the mathematical model (ignoring the software side to actually simulate it on a computer).
The end result of this is: People simplify, and then simplify again - to take what should take the better part of a couple years, and do it in 6 months to get reviewed and presented at their next conference of choice; ultimately coming up with useless results - which on the surface if they're lucky may look valid, but just end up proving to be horribly incorrect in a different spatial or temporal domain (eg: on another continent, or in your case - a year later...)
There's are of course a few exceptions to this rule (typically around radiative transfer models, and flood plain modeling - and a few other places where you're either working at such a low level and scale or an incredibly well studied field (eg: radiation/light physics has centuries of scientific backing)).
Needless to say though, 'climate change' is a worst case scenario here - large scale, many complicated systems, and in aggregate everything needed to model this accurately doesn't have the solid scientific understanding.
I predict humans will observe the earth warming, then cooling, then warming, etc.. in a cycle that repeats itself over and over again with varying frequencies and amplitudes until such time humans become extinct and are replaced by a more evolved species that lacks the pretense of understanding a system as complex as the earth's macro climate.
So the ocean pH is going down, thus in the direction of acidity, but still waaaaaay alkaline?
It isn't whether the ocean is alkaline, but whether it's alkaline enough. Do you really want to see sea life reduced to algae, brittle stars, and squid?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is a lot of active research in climate science.
... The number date a bit, and you can argue the discount rate, but the orders of magnitude are pretty robust)
But this article doesn't discuss what they all are. It shows that with better modelling of wind-sea interactions in the southern ocean, we can get a much better handle on what is happening to the southern sea ice.
I might be hypersensitive to the climate conspiracy theorists on the internet, but I read "therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future", as the common wrong argument that therefore trying to reduce emissions is not justified, and this is why you try to hit this point despite its irrelevance to the article?
Higher uncertainty of the regional effects of global warming is not a good argument for not taking action, unless those regional effects have a very significant effect on global costs of adjustment. The CBR is running at about $10 in benefit for each $1 in emission reduction costs at the moment. With the developing world bearing most of the disbenefit of inaction, and that coupled with the least ability to finance. (You may remember the Stern Review
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking
No, this is not cherry-picking. There's not question that the earth is warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. The oceans are expanding. The surface temperatures are increasing.
This paper looks at the response in the Antarctic Sea Ice, and has found a possible improvement to its understanding.
No cherry picking involved.
Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!".
It was always suspected that global warming would increase extreme weather events because hurricane intensity is highly related to sea surface temperature when they form, and more energy in the atmosphere gives more evaporation so heavier rainfall.
But the theories are thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and optics. They are not challenged if warming is only 0.1C per decade for a decade instead of the long term trend of 0.16C per decade.
When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?
The northern sea ice is in steep decline. The Antarctic Ice Sheet and Greenland Ice Sheet are in accelerating decline.
How on god's green earth do you manage to get to "THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself" for there?
Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is stupid to treat it that way.
You've not heard of the greenhouse effect then?
actually. no. Please find 1 - just one - study that claimed that the polar ice was going to increase. What you will find is that study after study explains why what has already happened does not match what was predicted. Plain and simple - find the "om the good news side" part of the study. The weather is better in some plain in Chile. Some small part of Africa gets better... But you won't find it. All worse everywhere. All the time. Oh - those record hurricanes, both in frequency and size... well, actually now the models predict decreased hurricanes .....
The reason for this mess is that some climatologists fail to distinguish between their personal beliefs or gut feeling and what the scientific method really allows them to state with precision. They regularly claim that their observations "prove" their preferred interpretation despite the absence of any validly predictive theories in this area yet. All we have today are piecemeal components for some future theory.
The GCMs of climatology are helpful and fun, but they're just extremely rough approximations and full of known kludges (generously called 'shortcuts') to make the extraordinarily complex natural systems computable this side of eternity. The GCMs are certainly not accurate physical simulations of Earth's systems. The unknowns in our models are utterly vast.
It'll require many hundreds of years of further research before we have a deep understanding of how the biosphere and many circulatory systems operate and interact, not to mention the similarly complex effects introduced by humans. We're barely on the first rung of the ladder at the moment.
Right now climatologists are just handwaving, and can't be expected to do more than just handwave. Their observed data is very valuable as input, but any interpretations they might make are totally unsafe in a scientific sense, because the necessary foundation of a predictive Theory of Climatology that combines all the parts of the puzzle in a valid scientific way just doesn't exist yet.
Making conclusions in advance of predictive theory is not how the scientific method works. The honest scientists in the field know that, and they don't pretend otherwise.
Any time "experts" flawlessly explain occurances after the fact, even when it contradicts their predictions, it makes me believe they have no idea what they are talking about
Correcting your theories after they've been proven incomplete or incorrect is part of the scientific process. The alternative, declaring reality wrong if it disagrees with you, would be religion.
I guess this is why people seem to listen to religious experts more often than scientific experts.
To all the idiots who modded this up: just one key mistake from the last few weeks is that there are no record ice caps, just that the growth from summer minimum has been going at an unusually high pace. We're still way below average ice coverage and volume.
And this is how you lie to ignorant people and make them believe whatever you want: tell them something that is close enough to the truth that they sort of remember something like it and that tells them they are going to be alright. They won't catch the error, happily repeat it to everyone, and then wonder why WW2 broke out.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
So the stuff that's been predicted for years by climatologists is happening, and yet, for some reason, the core mechanism for it is wrong.
You are one piece of work.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I think all the warming/no-warming climate-change/no-change argument misses an important point. There may be controversy and uncertainty, but it's got to be to our advantage to act prudently and reduce emissions. In other words, do we dare take a chance? It's a shame this has been reduced to politics instead of objective science.
They aren't correcting anything. They are making up new ones: A causes B. OK, except when it doesn't because C is happening...maybe.
This was the same "logic" that parent used when they refused to give their kids vaccines. Now their kids are dying of preventable diseases. Do we dare take a chance? FUCK YES! Reducing CO2 emissions is a huge waste of money, and hurts everyone. We absolutely should not make policies based on fear-mongering and bullshit pseudoscience.
Truth Quark was just examining one of the arguments between inaction and action in a logical way. Put explicitly, climate change is a sufficient condition for reducing emissions, but not a necessary one. If an Oracle appeared and told you climate change was definitely not happening, would you stop trying to reduce pollution?
Slashdot likes car analogies, so here's one: When your mechanic says he can't find a problem, it doesn't necessarily mean your car is fine.
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Despite the obvious fallacy of comparing the two, he does make a valid point. Every time you see something that discounts global warming impacts EG: Growth of ice in Antarctica increasing. It rapidly gets dismissed as "oh that is just natural variation" but you get the opposite EG: Loss of ice in the Arctic and it is end of the world global warming doom all the way down.
This kind of reporting is really very troublesome for both sides of the argument. Pro-AGW folks get painted as biased alarmists and Anti-AGW folks have any evidence they might use immediately dismissed.
I know enough to know I don't have the truth one way or the other about the whole AGW issue, but I sure as hell can tell when people are putting spin on things and everyone on both sides is doing that.
When a theory cannot be falsified because ad hoc adjustments explain every discrepency, it has become a belief.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Hmm... I guess y'all want a more serious answer.
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories,
While the slope of temperature increase in the atmosphere is lower than it was in the 1980's and 1990's, the 2000's was still the hottest decade in the modern temperature records and 2005 & 2010 are tied for the hottest year in most of them (1998 still is hottest in HADCRUT3). The oceans are still warming and the ice is still melting. None of this is a surprise to climate scientists who realize that natural variability can overcome the forcing of greenhouse gases for a decade or more. The oceans, where over 90% of the heat of global warming goes anyway are still warming and the next time we get a moderately strong El NIno (which reduces the heat going into the ocean) you can bet we will set a new global temperature record (unless we coincidentally get a large volcanic eruption).
it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven,
You've got a little bit of truth in this because global warming doesn't cause any kind of weather in and of itself. What is does is affect the context within which weather occurs. So for instance if the climate is warming then the high temperature events will be a little warmer and the peaks a little higher. There is more energy in the system to drive weather. There is more water vapor in the atmosphere to drive precipitation.
it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself,
When you look at natural ice on the Earth it can be divided into a number of categories. The ice sheets (Greenland & Antarctica), the lesser ice fields and glaciers, the ice shelves (the tongues of glaciers floating on the sea) and sea ice in the Arctic and in the Antarctic. Of all of those kinds of ice the only one that has had a net increase is the Antarctic sea ice which is a very small portion of all of that ice. The net volume of all of the ice taken together is on a strong downward path.
So what you are saying is they change the models to fit what happens? But that is science! You've stumbled onto the scientific method.
Flamebait??!!
When did slashdot become a stronghold of science-denialist crackpots?
There are about ZERO scientific organizations: (as of 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement, no scientific body of national or international standing rejected the findings of human-induced effects on climate change), and about ZERO scholarly papers (Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position ) that support your denialist bullshit.
The OP is a perfectly scientific discussion of a finding about the changes in Antarctic Sea Ice. How the hell did the average IQ in here drop so far that this became a George-C-Marshall deniomatic thread.
Have you actually sat down and talked with an actual scientist in the field?
Instead of only reading laymans interpretations of what they say?
You might be surprised that they can actually answer all of the dumb questions.
Deniers usually attack a simplified view made to explain extremely complex things to layman and then find some holes in the simplificiation and then deny everything based on it.
They aren't correcting anything. They are making up new ones: A causes B. OK, except when it doesn't because C is happening...maybe.
This works out just fine when C leads to predictions and can be tested.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next geek, but blaming global cooling on Oracle and MS Access is going a bit too far don't you think?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Congratulations, you've won climate myths #5, #9, and #16 (for starters).
[FUCK BETA]
To add to that, real scientists are almost never on the tee vee talking about their research because they fail to give answers that can fit in the weakest link's attention span.
Edit: I realize, looking back at my original post, that I'm a bit of a hypocrite here... Sorry for the cheekiness. I shouldn't have said "THE alternative." Jesus, I'm an arrogant prick.
Not so unmeasured since the advent of the the ARGO Floats.
Any time "experts" flawlessly explain occurances after the fact, even when it contradicts their predictions, it makes me believe they have no idea what they are talking about.
This is the same kind of bellyaching people do about "revisionist history". It's actually the job of historians to revise history; history isn't what happened, which of course is fixed; it's the set of *our beliefs* about what happened, which ought to change as we learn more. Likewise it is the job of scientists to incorporate new data into the scientific consensus, either by retracting part of that consensus, or elaborating part of that consensus.
This case called for elaboration, since that was the explanation that fit the facts best. Your beef seems to be that the explanation fits the facts too well.
By the way you are confusing arctic and antarctic ice caps. This year's *arctic* (northern) ice cap had a greater minimum extent than last year's, but still very low by historic standards. If you are using *last year's* minimum arctic ice extent as a baseline, that's disingenuous because last year was a historic low. This is like the way denialists try to prove climate is not warming by choosing 1998 as their baseline; that's dishonest because '98 was a record high year (it has since dropped to third place).
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