Jan
CICERO: No Antarctic melt proven
New Norwegian research has proved that there is no evidence of warming in Antarctica’s deep waters. The climatologists working on behalf of the Research Council of Norway on the Center for Environmental Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo (CICERO) project have been conducting research at the Fimbul Ice Shelf located in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica since November 2009. On the Norwegian Polar Institute’s homepage the scientists now confirm the unexpected result in a project of major international interest. The results show the Antarctic sea water is still around freezing and not at the higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent in West Antarctica.
The significance was not lost on the CICERO project director, Mr. Prestrud, who like the philosopher namesake for the project, showed self-control through adversity and gritted teeth to appear on Norwegian TV and humbly conceded that this was not what anyone had expected. Prestrud confirmed to his audience that sensors had been lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf to accurately gauge temperatures. The Norwegians as a nation have often been labeled very pro-warmist, being that the country has a long tradition of socialist values that fits in neatly with the environmentalists’ position. So it came as a bolt from the deep blue of Antarctica to see that, contrary to warmist expectations, Norwegian climatologist Ole Anders Nøst admitted to have found “no trace of the relatively warm deep water that upwells over the continental slope was found.”
The interactions between the ocean and the ice in Antarctica are important processes for the understanding of the global climate. The Norwegian team has been studying the mass balance of the Shelf and also the melting and circulation in the ocean underneath the floating ice. However, until now these processes have not been understood well enough for their inclusion in the climate models used to predict the climate in the near future.
Over at that superb climate science website WUWT, Anthony Watts was quick to pick up on this latest set back for the pro-warmist lobby. Here, scientific commentators have being agreeing that the Antarctic waters are colder than everyone thought.
“The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point,” Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote after drilling through the Fimbul, which is between 250m and 400m thick. We’ve noted before that the largest Antarctic ice extent on record last September was completely ignored by the mainstream media. Our guess is that they’ll try to bury this story, too.
“This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase,” he wrote of the first drilling cores.
But some skeptics are not quite so surprised as they point to other data, such as the Southern Ocean SST anomalies that have been dropping since the early 1990s. Alarmists have long cited the Antarctic in media propaganda as a “canary in the coalmine” of global warming. The subsequent debunking of dubious guesstimates about the ice melt in the region have been thoroughly debunked by Steve Mckintyre, but also ignored by the mainstream press. Although, in Britain the conservative Daily Mail has run the story:
Click for a closer look at the ERSST.v3b Southern Ocean Data
The findings add a small bit to a puzzle about how Antarctica is responding to climate change, blamed largely on human use of fossil fuels. Antarctica holds enough water to raise world sea levels by 57m if it ever all melted, but all that the temperature of the continent would have to rise by a further 30 degrees if this were to be remotely feasible.
Possibly related posts:
OK warming beleivers…..lets conjure up some more websites that are rife with factoids and altered “scientific” date to counter-act reality. I am waiting….I will be out but I am anticipating having a good laugh when I return. I mean you guys are better than Conan, Leno and Letterman combined! Thanks in advance!!! Have a nice global cooling day all!
Spotted this on Monday. The Daily Mail and Telegraph are leading the way. The ‘warmist’ camp are so in bed with all the money it will take many years before the obvious happens. But.. then the money (tax) will shift to a new tax model. They are going to look very silly eventually, but the trillions of dollars lost by all this scaremongering
will never be recovered.
Mr. Prestrud: Is this the move away from the “artsy crafty” crowd who brought the frightening news about our weather and piled on guilty feelings on all of us.Let us hope this man proves to be a pioneer of truth and honesty in the otherwise criminal infested world of climatefrightologists.Prestrud just blew-dynamited- his chance of the Peace Prize.
This was posted on the NASA site just yesterday (Australian time)
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html
Apparently Antarctica is not melting, but is “losing mass” (as ice can “flow” without melting). I haven’t had time to digest it all.
Any comment?
antarctica is gaining mass. look up the cryosphere and learn
I’m not claiming either way.. just trying to work out why there is apparently conflicting information. Where abouts on Cryosphere do I look?
Interesting that Cryosphere’s data comes from NOAA. I guess NOAA and NASA are at odds