Newsweek reports.
At the bottom of the article: "This article has been updated with comment from Xavier Fettweis." That makes me guess that the article originally leaned much harder into alarmism about global warming. It looks as though Newsweek picked up on a Fettweis tweet and ran with it. Here's the tweet, which doesn't talk about global warming:
MAR forced by GFS suggests that the highest melt extent over Antarctica in the modern area (>1979) has been reached on 24-Dec-2019 with ~15%. From Nov 2019 until today, the production of melt water is also a record with 230% higher than average but the melting season is not ended pic.twitter.com/MT0QKCJ47e— Xavier Fettweis (@xavierfettweis) December 27, 2019
There is a second Fettweis tweet (which makes me think Fettweis intended to raise some alarm):
For the 1st time also, the melt process explains the negative anomaly of the current Antarctica SMB. It should be noted that this process is currently missing in most of SMB estimations over Antarctica as melt has been negligible until now. But the climate is changing.... pic.twitter.com/dT5g3zl4T4— Xavier Fettweis (@xavierfettweis) December 27, 2019
I just wonder what happened before that Newsweek update.
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55 comments:
1) AGW is a myth. Civilization did not cause climate change, climate change caused civilization.
2) The level of water in the open ocean rose dramatically 12,000 to 8,000 years ago (over 400 feet) and then stopped. The levels have been static ever since.
3) The coming crisis will be global cooling, not global warming.
Suggests... Models... %15 in one day? What, pray tell, stopped the melting... a tax hike? 15 minutes of fame!
I'm trying to figure out the actual time period over which this 15% ice melt took place. I think it's 2019 through Dec 24. But I'm certain that it's not 15% in one day. That anyone could write that Newsweek item and headline, and that any editor would let it through to publication is a disgrace. It's ignorance and alarmism on stilts. That this is an updated version is all the more pathetic.
As predicted by a model ... Most be a super model to predict 15% melt in a day
Newsweek? White Punks On Dope!
"Kashmira Gander [the article's author] is a features writer at Newsweek. Her interests include health, gender, LGBTQIA+ issues, human rights, subcultures, music, and lifestyle."
Curious choice for a science article. But seems primed to unquestionly support pushing a narrative.
"...stressed the data is from a model, and not an in situ observation..."
Has the model ever been blind-tested against actual measurements?
Otherwise we pretty much have the results of someone playing a videogame.
All your global warming belong to us.
I am Laslo.
don't forget!
"The Modern Era" means, from 1979
Why does their modern era start then? For the same reason that NASCAR's modern era starts when IT does.
Things happened (like Richard Petty) that they don't want to have to consider
It's astrology but using computer modelled stars and planets instead of real ones.
Given enough melting, we will see the Antartica outlines from the 1513 Piri Reis Map itself.
I am Laslo.
Blogger Gahrie said...
1) AGW is a myth.
The theory is sound and almost certainly correct—humans are changing the chemical make-up of the atmosphere, which will change the rate of heat exchange. The problem is the activists have far outrun the data and, no matter how outrageous the claim, no one on the AGW side of the debate has been willing to step up and say, “hey, slow down there, we have no reason to think that.”
I think we are missing the point. The 15%, regardless of whether from a model, is a snapshot. It has no relevance to AGW other than it is melting. When questioned Fettweis kind of plays along. The oddity is that the rest of his data doesn't fit as nicely. This is why the AGW is played so lightly.
I am disturbed, but not surprised how much we think we know about climate change cause and effect, especially effect, when we really know so little.
"Around 15 percent of the continent's surface melted on Monday"
Math must be hard for Newsweek editors. Learning to code doesn't seem like an option for them.
""Around 15 percent of the continent's surface melted on Monday"
There is a continent under the ice.
There is science under the talk about the science.
Ice melts.
Talk melts.
Snowing in El Paso last night...
I'm melting....I'm melting. Oh...what a world, what a world.
The Earth's average temperature has been increasing 1/150 degrees C per year, according to the IPCC (1 degree C in 150 years.)
Don't have a cow.
Discuss the causative effects between these two statements:
NYT says best year ever for humanity
Donald Trump is the President of the United States
If it was 15% in one day, then by the end of the week it will essentially be all gone so we can finally confirm the models.
I wish I could care about this. But I just can't. I see nature as a larger force than our small, biased scientific community can handle. They can make a lot of guesses and try to get data to conform with their theories, but there doesn't seem to be the stomach these days to request that the theories be tested and tested again, to make sure they are viable. Always, "our models say..."
A lot of breathless headlines for the last 40 years. We're dying in 10 years, every 3 years.
I have relatives in New York who worry about my wife and I living in Florida, which they are convinced is about to go under water any year now. They are well educated, heavily degreed. It makes me wonder more about education and degrees than it does the climate, which, in my 66 years seems pretty consistently the same. A few variable years from time to time. That use to be called 'the weather' by less educated and degreed people.
So far, no one has mentioned that December 24 would have been about the longest day of Antarctic summer, so it is not exactly unexpected that a high percentage of melt would occur on that day.
My computer simulation says it's closer to 75 percent of something.
"Around 15 percent of the continent's surface melted on Monday, according to the Global Forecast System (GFS) by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)"
is contradicted by, "Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, who tweeted the data on Friday... said this is the highest melt extent in Antarctica in the modern era, since 1979..."
Mirrored, the first says: Lake Mendota was covered with 2% of ice on Dec 24th and 17% of ice on Dec 25th." It is a statement of ice growth speed.
The latter says, "On December 25th Lake Mendota was covered with 15% of ice." This is a statement of size, not speed.
It's the difference between "I drove a hundred miles in my car today" and "I drove my car at a hundred miles an hour today."
"Around 15 percent of the continent's surface melted on Monday, according to the Global Forecast System (GFS) by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)."
OK, that is simply not true. It is wrong at a profound level. I read an article earlier this year that lamented that .000076 of the total Antarctic ice had melted since 2009.
15 percent of the frozen land area had surface melt. The surface is a 2 dimensional boundary measured in square meters, 15% of the ice did not melt, 15% of the area got slushy. By my interpretation an inaccurate implication.
Prof. A: you should ask, “What does ‘melt’ mean?” There is not a horde of people all over the surface of Antarctica collecting the melted water and measuring how much volume it is, for how long, and compared to what. Let alone anyone measuring what remains of the unmelted icecap, much of it miles thick and growing thicker over the past decades. Nope, there are satellites reporting change in surface reflectance. The formation of a skin of melt-water that could be a deep lake or a very shallow puddle.
Greenland has been the subject of similar alarmist reports: every summer BILLIONS OF TONS of ice are MELTING! Running off into the ocean! Never to return (except as snow, in subsequent winters). The losses in Greenland run about 200 gigatons a year. From an icecap of about 2.7 million gigatons. Frightening: at that rate, Greenland’s ice will be gone in 10^4 years or about 100 centuries from now.
Antarctica is 10x more ice than Greenland. Unless these alarmists supply documented lost volume of melt-water of about 200,000 gigatons a year, I am not getting excited.
What they don't tell you is that the humidity is very low in Antarctica. Even during the worst heat waves there, the climate is quite comfortable.
Blogger tim maguire said . . .
Blogger Gahrie said...
1) AGW is a myth.
The theory is sound and almost certainly correct—humans are changing the chemical make-up of the atmosphere, which will change the rate of heat exchange
. . . all other conditions remaining equal. The AGW theory is not just that human-caused chemical changes in the atmosphere will affect heat-exchange rates, it is that this will result in real-world global warming. Scientists have identified chemical processes that could lead to that result, all other conditions remaining equal. But (last time I looked) their attempts to computer-model the theoretical effect in a way that accurately predicted future real-world measurements had all failed, and all in the same direction. There are apparently mitigating effects at work that have not been accounted for, and the extent of the mitigation remains to be quantified. Of course, a million failures-to-prove do not make a disproof, and further scientific effort on such a potentially large problem is certainly warranted. But so far, the assertion that "scientists understand the effect of human activity on global temperature" appears to be unsound.
The effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide on ocean life seems more straightforwardly provable, and perhaps might have been a better investment of resources from the activists' point of view.
[Fonda] wanted to invite several “voluptuous” female activists (including the environmentally minded actress Pamela Anderson) to brief Trump on the dangers of relying on fossil fuels.
You should call a doctor when melting lasts more than 4 hours.
"Data suggests" is one of those weasel terms for sketchy research.
tim maguire said...
Blogger Gahrie said...
1) AGW is a myth.
The theory is sound and almost certainly correct—humans are changing the chemical make-up of the atmosphere, which will change the rate of heat exchange.
No, human progress has accompanied mild global warming. Not causation. The Little Ice Age ended about 1850 and there has been a century of warming as a result. We are still in an interglacial period. Agriculture might have a mild effect on climate but the data has been so manipulated and falsified, we can have no idea what is going on.
Mann and the UAE people have screwed the data up so badly, it cannot be recovered. They have falsified the data, something unlikely if it supported their grant applications.
It's, uh, summertime in the southern hemisphere. Stuff melts in the summer. Frosting, crayons, ice....
AGW hysterics is similar to TDS. Modest concern and deliberate actions makes more sense than panic. At least they are against bad shit and not making excuses for profligacy, so you people need to pray to Jesus that the atheists are right.
Talk melts.
Words melt in your mouth, not in your hands.
GFS surface processes are pretty suspect IMO. It's also not clear to what it even means to have 15% of the surface to melt -- did it become ice-free? Or did some of the ice simply change phase, and re-freeze later? This is not likely something that has been routinely tracked.
Sloppy science writing by Popular Press. No surprise there.
Mmmmmmm......isn't it summer in the Southern Hemisphere? Which includes Antarctica? This explanation is so simple that it's probably wrong.
"alanc709 said...
So far, no one has mentioned that December 24 would have been about the longest day of Antarctic summer, so it is not exactly unexpected that a high percentage of melt would occur on that day.
12/29/19, 7:33 AM "
I was going to bring that up. Not to mention that at this time of year, the sun is up 100% of the time, so melting is a 24-hour-a-day phenomenon.
The good news is, if Xavier continues to put his hair on fire, he knows with high confidence that he can put it out.
Did it melt (solid to liquid) or sublimated (ice to steam)
Sublimation has little to do with temperature and occurs naturally at temps well below 0f.
Antarctica, and Greenland, Alaska etc is always sublimating.
John Henry
Some are saying...
Data suggests...
Data are a bunch of numbers. They don’t suggest or say anything.
It’s the people looking at the numbers who are saying and suggesting.
The ice is melting in December!
How many Americans know it’s summer down there?
John Henry: sublimation is a real thing. The bulk of Antarctica’s icecap is “high and dry,” many thousands of feet above sea level and with a desert climate. I wonder how much more water mass is moved out of there by sublimation than by melting? Any proper description of the mass gain/loss problem should address that, so we get a truer picture of net gain or loss over time. For some reason we aren’t being given that. Much more fun and profitable to scare us silly with disjointed snapshots, hand-waving claims based on “models,” and half-truths of all kinds.
PS, sublimation (not melting) was the culprit in snowpack loss from Kilimanjaro. It had nothing to do with air made warmer by more GHG, and everything to do with upslope winds made drier by deforestation. But that cause was not helpful to the Narrative.
Judith Curry writes about the toxic rhetoric of climate change.
Over the past century, there has been a 99% decline in the death toll from natural disasters, during the same period that the global population quadrupled.
While global economic losses from weather and climate disasters have been increasing, this is caused by increasing population and property in vulnerable locations. Global weather losses as a percent of global GDP have declined about 30% since 1990.
While the IPCC has estimated that sea level could rise by 0.6 meters by 2100, recall that the Netherlands adapted to living below sea level 400 years ago.
Crop yields continue to increase globally, surpassing what is needed to feed the world. Agricultural technology matters more than climate.
The proportion of world population living in extreme poverty declined from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015.
While many people may be unaware of this good news, they do react to each weather or climate disaster in the news. Activist scientists and the media quickly seize upon each extreme weather event as having the fingerprints of man-made climate change - ignoring the analyses of more sober scientists showing periods of even more extreme weather in the first half of the 20th century, when fossil fuel emissions were much smaller.
MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left my cake out in the rain
And I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
It's like a social hypochondria. We humans, taken as a whole, never had it so good, but, to mix metaphors, there must be deadly dark linings around all the silver clouds.
There are a lot of unknowns:
1) We don't know what global averaged temperatures will be in 50 (or even 5) years..
2) We don't know if warming is Good or Bad.
2) We don't know what portion of observed warming is due to human activity (likely > 0%, likely < 100%)
3) We don't have a consensus solution on mitigation (renewables? nuclear? geoengineering?)
4) We don't know if mitigation will change anything (too late for effective action? problem mostly natural?)
But, we just have to do something!
Bob: all good questions/points. Especially the first: “global average surface temperature.” What does that even mean? Temperature is a value in a scalar field: T = f(x, y, z, t). It pertains to a specific place and moment. There is no physical reality behind the “average temperature” of Dallas and Minneapolis, of Oslo and Cairo. It may suggest a reality —how much HEAT is present in a given area at a given time— but it is not a real picture.
A fair use of global average surface temperature would require calibrated instruments faithfully maintained over a grid of unchanging locations, over the entire globe. Everywhere. Not squat we actually have, which is just the handful of land-based stations of uncertain quality heavily biased to “developed” world urban settings, some of recent provenance, poorly audited, subject to urban heat island and other massive contaminating effects. All tended and interpreted by people who are strongly incentivized to find a warming trend. And who have been documented as willing to hide and change data if need be.
We have been fed a story. The temperature record is not nearly as good as has been claimed by such authorities as Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, Michael Mann and especially James Hansen.
In my comment above “not squat” should be “not what...”. Apologies.
In all my life of 55+ years, the left has been screaming about one climate crisis after another.
And not once have they been correct.
The headline is misleading, 1/7 of the total ice pack didn't melt in a single day.
Climate change is mostly a religious doomsday cult scam, with no accountability for past predictive failures, alarmist headlines and sound bites, that is trying to get civilization to surrender its money and technology on behalf of the planet.
Via Rantburg:
According to experts, climate change will result in “millions” of deaths, major European cities being sunken, nuclear war and global environmental riots…all within the next 5 days.
That’s because they made the prediction back in 2004 and said all that would happen by 2020, which is just 5 days away.
“Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters,” reported left-wing newspaper the Guardian on February 22, 2004.
“A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world,” the report added.
The alarmist document went on to claim that nations would resort to using nuclear weapons to protect dwindling food supplies, a situation that would “bring the planet to the edge of anarchy.”...
Ah, NewsWEAK.
Well, one might be able to argue Brexit will plunge them into a Siberian economic climate....
If all the ice in Antarctica melted, the oceans would rise by 230 feet, so if 15% melted in one day, as the model says, then the oceans would have risen by about 35 feet. I am pretty sure people would have noticed that, maybe even a half-assed magazine editor. Ergo, the model is wrong, wrong, wrong.
People -- like Greta Thunberg and Jane Fonda -- are doing plenty about climate change. They're getting all hot and bothered about it.
Owen,
Interesting short essay on temperature. I take it from the function you referenced that "z" refers to vertical location, such as height from sea level, for instance. So, I think I understand your point.
I read Roy Spencer's blog and follow his monthly UAH global temperature anomaly report. I only know that the report reflects satellite observations, and I have no idea how good or extensive the coverage is.
Seems to me it's the trend over a long time period that's meaningful for a particular x, y, z, and t value, not merely a comparison of specific values over random time periods. And, yes, I know the surface temperature record is highly suspect as suggested years ago by Roger Pielke, Sr and demonstrated by Anthony Watts.
Thanks for your informative comment.
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