A remarkably silly headline appeared last week in the Daily Mail stating: ‘Shocking Antarctica discovery sends climate change deniers into mass celebration.’ It appears that 100 gigatonnes of ice has been added to the Antarctica ice sheet in a 21-month period to December 2023. Quite how joy will be unconfined in the ranks of the ‘deniers’ over an increase, or decrease, of 0.00041% is not clear. The amount is an ice sheet rounding error and it would be scientifically accurate to refer to it as zero. Even if the figure was a loss, it would take nearly half a million years for all the ice in Antarctica to melt and that does not include any allowance for glacial periods or indeed a new ice age. Unsurprising, in the haste to stick ‘denier’ into the mix, a far more important finding about Antarctica ice was missed. A recent paper undergoing peer review has calculated that around 2,546 gt of ice has been added every year since 1960 to the surface on Antarctica. This would almost certainly have been enough to stabilise any natural losses and it is possible that the ice sheet has been stable or even growing slowly over this period.
The figures for Antarctica’s overall ice mass are difficult to calculate. They must include losses from ice calving and melting and they are thought to total around 2,000 gt a year. Driving ice accumulation in Antarctica is snowfall and there is some evidence that the area is receiving more precipitation than previously thought. The paper led by Dr Christiaan van Dalum of Utrecht University suggests heavy recent accumulations of ice in Antarctica that appear to outweigh any losses at the coast. There is said to be increased precipitation in the mountains of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula.
It is not always clear in scientific papers just what the authors are comparing. The Daily Mail story arises from a Chinese group whose work on the Antarctica ice sheet appears to concentrate on just four eastern glacial basins. The Chinese findings suggest little or no change while van Dalum points to increases over the entire continent even allowing for significant losses due to natural events. Nevertheless, the key to understanding climate change lies in the length of the observations. Drawing celebratory conclusions over less than two years’ supposed growth is junk science, possibly designed to boost clicks and impress potential advertisers. Assessing results over 60 years as the Dalum paper does offers greater understanding of the dynamics of polar ice.
Hellbound and Down 