Thursday, October 09, 2014

NOAA:  Record Antarctic Sea Ice Growth Linked to Its Staggering Loss of Land Ice

Antarctica’s seasonal sea ice extent reached a new high in September even though the Southern Ocean continues to warm. (Credit: NOAA) Click to enlarge.
NOAA said in a news release Tuesday that “as counterintuitive as expanding winter Antarctic sea ice may appear on a warming planet, it may actually be a manifestation of recent warming.”

The most important thing to know about Antarctica and ice is that a large part of the South Pole’s great sheet of land ice is close to or at a point of no return for irreversible collapse.  The rate of loss of that ice has reached record levels, tripling in the last five years alone.  Only immediate action to sharply reverse carbon pollution could stop or significantly slow that.

And that really matters since 90 percent of Earth’s ice is in the Antarctic ice sheet, and even its partial collapse could raise sea levels by tens of feet (over a period of centuries) and force coastal cities to be abandoned.

So you can imagine why the people who don’t want to take any action on climate change focus on floating seasonal Antarctic sea ice, whose winter maximum has been increasing (unlike Arctic sea ice, which has sharply declined).  In September, the extent of seasonal Antarctic sea ice reached a new record.

For the dwindling number of people who seriously deny the objective reality of man-made warming, this is “proof” that their anti-scientific views are right.  For the 97 percent of climate scientists (and world governments and others) who understand the reality of human-caused climate change, this is an intriguing puzzle to be solved.

In the reality camp, Skeptical Science reviews the scientific literature (here), explaining that “Antarctic sea ice has been growing over the last few decades but it certainly is not due to cooling — the Southern Ocean has shown warming over same period.”

NOAA:  Record Antarctic Sea Ice Growth Linked to Its Staggering Loss of Land Ice

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