Record ice melt at the Antarctic Peninsula? Scientists overlooked fluctuations in snowfall
By Dr. Sebastian Lüning / Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(Condensed, summarized by P Gosselin)
German journalists, e.g. the Stuttgarter Zeitung’s Roland Knauer, recently reported that ice at the Antarctic peninsula was “melting more rapidly than first thought“, and that “climate change was making its way further south“.
But this seems to be a rather strange claim, especially in light of the fact that the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) recently claimed that ice on the continent would grow over the coming decades as a result of global warming. Somehow Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Knauer never got around to mentioning that.
Instead the Stuttgarter Zeitung (SZ) journalist prefers to narrowly focus on a small region that is melting. In the article he quotes scientist Veit Helm of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany, who says that at the Antarctic peninsula we are dealing with “small amounts of ice” here.
Moreover the SZ’s Knauer compares the year 2010 to the beginning of the 2000s, a climatically insignificant period. In the same article he also quotes the AWI’s Veit Helm, who claims that the temperature at the northern part of the Antarctic peninsula “is rising rapidly because of climate change“.
Rapidly? We decided to take a closer look at the Antarctic’s Faraday-Station, and here indeed we find a big surprise: Over the last 30 years there has been no noticeable warming (Figure 1). Here we see that Knauer tends to make things up instead of looking at real data.
Figure 1: Temperature record at the Antarctic peninsula, measured at the Faraday Station. Source: GISS.
Also the Stuttgarter Zeitung’s Knauer failed to mention that the post ice age temperature at the Antarctic peninsula was at today’s level for some 7000 years. Surprised?
Criticism of the AWI paper claiming a more rapidly melting Antarctic Peninsula has recently been mounting, for example by IPCC-author Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, who points out that the AWI authors oversaw the snowfall. In the Irish RTE News:
“But Andy Shepherd, a director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, said their calculations might have overlooked shifts in snowfall. ‘I think the new estimates of ice loss computed (from the thinning of the ice) are far too high, because the glaciers in this sector just haven’t speeded up that much,’ he said.”
Also see the article at the Examiner.
All the stations on the Antarctic Peninsula have been cooling since 1998. I just checked Esperanz and Marambio, as well as Faraday. There was a step warming at the El Niño of 1998, then cooling set in at rates from 0.5°C/decade to 1.3°C/decade for each. Faraday is actually the worst example, as it was warming the most before the step. Esperanz was cooling before the step.
Hi Ed
No surprise here. I’d gladly Post a short analysis on this if you’re up to writing one (before Giss adjusts).
Working on it.
Vahrenholt and Luning are polite as the beginning of their article shows again that the AGW theory predicts everything. This feature is even more devastating than having 97 percent of the models wrong. You can always try to twist the facts or their impact. Predicting everything means false for analytical reasons. This makes the theory stone dead but also versatile. It predicts that at the end of this year the first alligators will be observed in the Amsterdam canals as well as that they will not. The true prediction is always there. The AGW theory is a giant rotting corpse, surrounded by scavengers, who can take their pick and sell it to the Pope and public. At least till the end of this year when Paris is done.
yes but it rakes time to prove a prediction false, and then it is already half forgotten . The half that people remember is some catastrophy will happen.
Also, when you remind the people of the bullcrap scientists predicted, the Cultural Left will call you a liar and say it never happened. Like with the extremely well-documented ice age scare of the 70ies.
The Cultural Left must start regular newspaper archive burning.
Herr Gosselin, the word in the original article was overlooked, as in failed to notice. Oversaw is an out of tune literalism.
Agreed. Thanks for catching that.
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