NASA Study Says Ice Caps Melting At A Much Faster Rate

Aol News:

A new NASA study says the ice caps are melting at a much faster rate.

Read the whole story: Aol News

Comments

[dragonmaster]

08:35 AM on 04/10/2011

Ice at the north pole, in the arctic ocean could be gone as early as 2012, and probably before 2020, in late summer. The amplifying feed- backs to this will prove troublesome immediately causing more instability in the arctic -and more melting- plus erratic weather events at mid latitudes. As Betty Davis said, 'fasten your seat-belts, its going to be a bumpy ride.....'

[Richard2]

02:10 PM on 04/04/2011

Local sea level has dropped since 1990s
Wind, temperature and pressure are pushing water away from the coast
By Sherry Seethaler

Monday, April 4, 2011 at 12:01 a.m.

"While global sea level continues to rise, sea level rise along the California coast tapered off in the early 1980s. According to Reinhard Flick, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who studies tides, sea level and coastal impacts, the average sea level at La Jolla measured with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography tide gauge was 81.8 centimeters for the 1980s (1980-1989), 84.6 cm for the 1990s and 82.9 cm for the 2000s (relative to mean lower low water, the point of reference used on tide tables).


Therefore, local sea level was 1.7 centimeters lower on average in the decade of the 2000s than during the decade of the 1990s....." from the San Diego Union-Tribune

[absolument]

02:17 PM on 04/04/2011

We care about global, not local sea level.

[Richard2]

08:05 PM on 04/04/2011

1.7 centimeters over a decade is equal to 17 millimeters. The average sea level at La Jolla in California during the decade of the 2000s was 17 millimeters LOWER than during the decade of 1990s.

The millions of residents of California, the local governments and the California state government should all care about whether or not the sea level rose during the past decade.
As the sea level previously had increased over many decades, it is noteworthy that the last decade has exhibited a slowdown, rather than an acceleration, in the rate of sea level rise. This slowdown was significant in that there was actually a decline in sea level, in contrast to the normal modest increases experienced in earlier decades.

An open discussion of the many possible reasons for this surprising event is needed to increase the public's understanding of what has occurred.

[absolument]

11:14 PM on 04/04/2011

I disagree.

#2: "An open discussion of the many possible reasons for this surprising event is needed to increase the public's understand­ing of what has occurred."

The kind of "open discussion" you like does not "increase the public's understand­ing" of anything, ever. What is more helpful is to look up the findings of actual scientists, and then discuss those. Why don't you go look up why real scientists think that has happened, by searching scholar.google.com?

[Richard2]

04:11 PM on 04/05/2011

So you can only appeal to the authority of a few "real scientists," rather than checking the data, the actual observations of nature, for yourself, or seeking out a variety of perspectives from a wider circle of scientists?

Rather than open, public discussion, we must bow down to the handful of scientists who push climate alarmism?

[StephenBP]

09:14 PM on 03/21/2011

It seems as though the climate change denialists like to use anecdotal evidence from one small part of the globe or one short time period, and use this evidence to deny the possibility that armies of honest, hard working scientists have discovered that the entire planet is on average warming up.

The earth's surface is retaining more heat than it used to in the fairly recent past, while the carbon dioxide level in the earth's atmosphere is rising, and while the radiant output of the sun has stayed within its normal cyclical range.

Freedom of speech allows anyone, no matter how little intelligence, ethics, or education they have, to spout pretty much whatever they want to. It is up to the audience to these spoutings to determine whether what is being spouted is right or wrong, trivial or profound, honest or dishonest. This process is always complicated by the willingness of some to deceive others, and of still others to deceive themselves.

Nature is going to prove one side right and one side wrong on this issue. The extractors, refiners, and manufacturers of all things energy wasteful want you to decide one way on the issue of climate change, and that way is at variance with the expert opinion of the majority of the world's climate scientists.

When the dust settles, we will see who, if anyone, is left standing.

[Richard2]

01:15 PM on 03/23/2011

Yet the oceans are not warming as projected, the sea level rise is slowing rather than accelerating, the winters are growing longer, not shorter. It is hard to ignore the reality that the accelerated heating of the earth that was projected only in computer models is not actually happening in the real world. How much longer can educated people deny that the "projections" have not come true?
How much longer can educated people deny that science has been corrupted for political purposes?

[StephenBP]

04:32 PM on 03/23/2011

Richard2, you are a really unreliable information source. You make statements without any backup data. You continually bring information from the trough of the fossil fuel misinformers, whether you know it or not. I wish you were right. But you are not.

1. Sea level rise slowing? Current Sea Level Rise has occurred at a mean rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past century,and more recently, during the satellite altimetry era of sea level measurement, at rates in the range of 2.9-3.4 ± 0.4-0.6 mm per year from 1993–2010.

2. Growing seasons are growing longer, astronomical winters are not changing, sorry.

3. Increased heating is not only projected in computer models, it is being experienced in decadal temperatures.

4. Science has not been corrupted for political purposes on my side of the fence. You may think so, but it has not been. But it certainly seems to have been on yours.

Nature and Nature's God is going to prove one side right, and one side wrong on this issue.

When the dust settles, we will see who, if anyone, is left standing.

[alteredstory]

08:58 AM on 03/24/2011

And actually by far the majority of warming HAS been in the oceans. They ARE warming as predicted, and as far as I can tell, you're lying. Why are you doing that?

[Richard2]

10:36 AM on 03/21/2011

From ETN. By Apolinari Tairo, eTN | Mar 15, 2011

TANZANIA, Africa (eTN) - Standing as the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro is slowly regaining its snow after several years of drought in East Africa and the effects of climate change in African continent.

The snow is slowly mounting on the top point of the mountain, giving new hopes to Mount Kilimanjaro environmental watchdogs and tourists that the mountain may not lose its beautiful ice cap as scientists predicted.

Covered in mist most of the day, Mount Kilimanjaro is the most tourist attractive site in Tanzania, pulling in tens of thousands of tourists each year. The snow, which once disappeared in some parts of the mountain is mounting slowly, giving a beautiful view of the Kibo peak.

[DocSkull]

10:40 AM on 03/21/2011

"The snow is slowly mounting on the top point of the mountain, giving new hopes to Mount Kilimanjar­o environmen­tal watchdogs and tourists that the mountain may not lose its beautiful ice cap as scientists predicted."

It is definitely good news, but one has to look at the long-term pattern rather than allowing your hopes to rise and fall with the seasons.

[Publicola]

11:50 AM on 03/21/2011

Meanwhile, the overall global trend has been and continues to be glaciers melting:

http://nsidc.org/sotc/glacier_balance.html

[StephenBP]

08:14 PM on 03/19/2011

Time to review the Deny-a-list Check List that some of my colleagues and I have put together…
It's purpose is to examine some of the evidence for global warming, and see if anything has changed since we last put it up. Here goes.

Growing seasons, lengthening…… check
USDA planting zones moving towards the pole….. check
Neolithic human artifacts falling out of melting glaciers….. check
Global temperature trend for the past century, up ……. check
Arctic ice extent and volume on significant downward trend….. check Note: Record lows in Jan and Feb.
Stratosphere cooling….. check
Troposphere warming… check
Carbon dioxide still obeying the laws of physics and absorbing infrared….. check
Humankind still putting billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year… check
Ocean levels rising…. Check
Tropical diseases moving closer to the poles......check
Coral reef die offs and temperature-sensitive species decline.....check
Changes in animal migratory routes and timing........check
Catastrophic erosion of arctic beaches.........check
Thawing permafrost and increasing methane emissions......check
Insect pests surviving winters and moving closer to the poles.......check
Each succeeding decade of the last several contains a record for number of above average temperatures…. Check
Ecological niches moving higher up mountains…. check

Summary: There is more evidence for global warming than the last time we put up this list.

To the denialists out there..... deal with it.

Have a wonderful evening.

[alteredstory]

10:08 AM on 03/20/2011

One small correction, in the spirit of scientific nit-pickery: Some niches are moving up mountains, but there are also mountain ranges where changes in precipitation are causing species to move DOWNhill because it's too dry higher up (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110120142400.htm).

Where water is not a concern, things ARE moving up, but this is one of those things that could easily be mis-quoted to make it look like the uphill predictions were wrong. They're not, it's just that water availability seems to trump temperature changes.

[Junksciencecutecritters]

04:55 PM on 03/20/2011

"temperatur­es…. Check"

If you only use rural temperature data, there is no warming over the last hundred years.

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_Part3_UrbanHeat.htm

You can "uncheck" temperatures. Kind of a big one...

[jimboy71]

07:11 PM on 03/20/2011

The only "big one" here is the lie that rural temperatures are not also rising. It's not the case. Appinsys is an unscientific site with no credible reputation. Just like anyone who uses it to argue science.

[alteredstory]

09:05 AM on 03/21/2011

Analysis of data comparing urban and rural temperature sets.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect-intermediate.htm

It's not urban heat islands, sorry. It'd be nice if that's all it was, but it's not. In addition to the data (all cited) in the above link, if the warming is all simulated by skewed recording stations, why is the ice melting?

[ZeraLee]

05:20 PM on 03/16/2011

Every time I read one of these 'short quote/follow the link' articles, I feel a little cheated, in the journalistic sense. :-(

[Scott Connery]

02:38 PM on 03/15/2011

NASA has been caught lying before about climate change. Why should we trust them now?

http://www.rationalpublicradio.com/more-environmentalist-lies-exposed.html

[chrisd3]

02:57 PM on 03/15/2011

There isn't a single actual fact in that page, sorry.

The monitoring stations have been thoroughly analyzed and there is NO problem. The temp trends they produce match satellite trends almost perfectly, and there's no blacktop in orbit that I'm aware of.

The only scandal in "climategate" was perpetrated by whoever hacked and released private data. Six separate investigations have found zero evidence of any scientific misconduct.

There was no cooling trend in the 2000s (see http://bit.ly/f61V6N). It was warmer than the 1990s, which was warmer than the 19802, which was warmer than the 1970s. See the trend there?

A blink comparison by someone with no credentials whatsoever in climate science, posted on a notorious antiscience web site, is evidence of nothing whatsoever, and most certainly not of any lying by NASA.

In short, the page is a complete load of tripe, written by someone who either has an ax to grind or hasn't spent any time studying the science.

[Robco1]

01:07 PM on 03/16/2011

Great Post, Chris.

[leftcoastindy]

05:49 PM on 04/21/2011

Thanks. Fanned

[ILoveFiction]

03:00 PM on 03/15/2011

Go visit Greenland and check it out for yourself. Tell us all about it when you get back. (send me a postcard)

[sunsetter]

12:41 PM on 03/15/2011

For those whom feel that skeptics equate to believing the earth is flat, please consider this - which is relevant to what is happening in Japan - Plate Tectonics - not accepted by the elite science community until 1960 - please read below.

Way back in 1912 a scientist by the name of Alfred Wegener came up with a crazy idea. He noticed that all of the continents seemed to fit together like the pieces of a giant puzzle. He thought, "Maybe they were once all joined together in a single, giant landmass that broke up and drifted apart over time?". He decided to give this supercontinent a name and called it Pangea, meaning, "all lands". At the time he presented his idea to the scientific community it came to be known as continental drift theory. Wegener was unable to find solid evidence to support his theory, so the other scientists laughed him off as a crackpot. One of his suggestions for the cause of continental drift was that centrifugal force from the rotation of the earth caused the continents to slide into each other and move around on the surface. They all calculated that there wasn't enough force generated by the earth's rotation to cause shifting of the crust and nobody took him seriously. They were all convinced the earth was rock-solid and immovable.

The point being, we don't know what we don't know! The science is settle argument precluded Wegener from convincing anyone in 1912.

[BlackbirdHighway]

03:20 PM on 03/15/2011

"Wegener was unable to find solid evidence to support his theory"

So all this little story really shows is that scientists are hesitant to believe in anything until there is solid evidence to back it up. It took until the 60's to discover the evidence to back up the theory of plate tectonics. Once the evidence was found, most scientists were willing to accept plate tectonics.

The whole process actually disproves the accusations from deniers that scientists believe in global warming without sufficient evidence.

[chrisd3]

03:36 PM on 03/15/2011

"Way back in 1912 a scientist by the name of Alfred Wegener ..."

That's a great story. It reminds a lot of me of how most scientists scoffed at the idea that human-injected CO2 could affect Earth's climate, and how it was many years before sufficient evidence was gathered to convince them that it could really happen.

[gallon]

06:01 PM on 03/15/2011

True story. CO2 based AGW was dismissed in the early decades after the theory was developed in 1896. It took until the late 1930's when a guy named Callendar took long term data on CO2 concentrations. He noticed the increasing trend and took his data to meteorologists. From that point, the theory gained acceptance from Scientists until today when some 98% of climatologists believe the AGW theory is accurate.

Since 1896, numerous alternate theories of AGW have been forwarded. One by one, they have been eliminated based upon science, until only the CO2 theory remains.

[DeathByModeration]

12:33 PM on 03/15/2011

Meanwhile, in Finland, almost 100 ships are stuck in ice the worst since 1992.

[Shan Wells]

01:16 PM on 03/15/2011

Climate change means climate becomes more chaotic.

[Scott Connery]

02:42 PM on 03/15/2011

Climate change means that no matter what happens Al Gore gets to smugly pat himself on the back.

Global Warming didn't pan out, so they switched to the non-scientific "climate change" idea.

[DeathByModeration]

03:00 PM on 03/15/2011

"Climate Change" means whatever the alarmists want it to. No matter what happens it's "Climate Change".

Climate changes, weather patterns change, it's nature. How much "man" ads to it or how nature is capable of rolling with the changes is highly debatable ... except for those who have an agenda.

[BlackbirdHighway]

03:24 PM on 03/15/2011

Global.

GLOBAL

G-L-O-B-A-L

It is called global warming, not Finland warming.

The global temperature is the average temperature over the entire globe, not the temperature in Finland. Why do all deniers seem to think that everywhere on the Earth is at exactly the same temperature all the time? Different places on the Earth are at different temperatures. The global temperature is the average of everywhere on the Earth.

[ClimateHawk]

07:19 PM on 03/14/2011

ouch. Accelerating ice melt is not a good trend.

[SoSad1969]

03:59 PM on 03/14/2011

I love reading some of these horrifically dumb comments by the denier group. But nothing anyone says or does will make any difference. They'll believe everything that the koch brothers spreads around there. They can't seem to put two and two together. The number ONE contributor to anti climate change groups and research is by a prolific oil and gas company. Every scrap of data used to refute climate change has a direct line to the koch brothers and their shadow organizations. So, how is it that the number one contributor would profit the most from anti climate change legislation?

[sunsetter]

12:54 PM on 03/15/2011

I have exchanged emails with Dr. Walt Meier of the NSIDC for several years regarding his study of the Arctic Ice. The satellite record of Sea Ice only dates back to 1979. The "average" they use for reference is 1979-2000 - they do not include any following years, he can't explain why. They had no error on their average (standard deviations) up until two years ago.

Sea ice is measured as a unit area containing 15% ice - you see, Sea Ice breaks up and floats around with wind and currents. So, on a given day, has the ice all melted? No, perhaps just disbursed. When winds drive the ice together, the area reduces.

By the way, there a few physical measurements taken in either the arctic or antarctic. Great liberties are taken extrapolating data due to the vast areas involved.

I submit to you that we know precious little about the arctic and antarctic. ANyone proclaiming they know what will happen next year, much less in 20 years is not worth listening to. Their may be some trends, but there are cyclical trends in nature that go beyond 30 years, and many we do not even know yet.

The vanity and arrogance of man is a serious issue we must come to grips with.

[Robco1]

01:37 PM on 03/15/2011

But we know a great deal about two things: climate science and PR disinformation from the industry threatened by these scientific findings. Uber-hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, a self-described “die hard contrarian,” tells it like it is in his blunt 2Q 2010 letter:

"Why are we arguing the issue? Challenging vested interests as powerful as the oil and coal lobbies was never going to be easy. Scientists are not naturally aggressive defenders of arguments. In short, they are conservatives by training: never, ever risk overstating your ideas. The skeptics are far, far more determined and expert propagandists to boot. They are also well funded. That smoking caused cancer was obfuscated deliberately and effectively for 20 years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of extra deaths.

We know that for certain now, yet those who caused this fatal delay have never been held accountable. The profits of the oil and coal industry make tobacco’s resources look like a rounding error. In some notable cases, the obfuscators of global warming actually use the same “experts” as the tobacco industry did! The obfuscators’ simple and direct motivation – making money in the near term, which anyone can relate to – combined with their resources and, as it turns out, propaganda talents, have meant that we are arguing the science long after it has been nailed down. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”

[chrisd3]

02:37 PM on 03/15/2011

"The "average" they use for reference is 1979-2000 - they do not include any following years, he can't explain why."

What do you mean, "He can't explain why"? I pretty sure I can explain that, and I'm not even a scientist.

What did you ask him, and what did he say?

"The vanity and arrogance of man is a serious issue we must come to grips with. "

Yes. Especially the arrogance that allows us to dump 30 billion tons of heat-trapping waste product year after year into the only atmosphere we have, and do nothing about it.

[realpolitic]

01:08 AM on 03/14/2011

"More importantly, for the purpose of establishing a temperature trend, the relative level of single readings is less important than whether the pattern of all readings from all stations taken together is increasing, decreasing or staying the same from year to year. Furthermore, since this question was first raised, research has established that any error that can be attributed to poor siting of weather stations is not enough to produce a significant variation in the overall warming trend being observed." http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements.htm

[ChasG]

01:26 AM on 03/14/2011

F&F for real science and skeptical inquiry.  Keep up the good work.

[realpolitic]

03:07 AM on 03/14/2011

Thanks so much for your kind words and for appreciating real science.

[MadAs]

01:00 AM on 03/14/2011

Why are serious scientists still debating with science armatures and sci-o-politico thugs?

Forget it. The wee-brained dumkoffs haven't got a soap box to stand on, yet you are letting them steal yours?

Fokus them, and instead focus on the solutions -- not arguing over whether the problem is real.

[realpolitic]

01:00 AM on 03/14/2011

A new study by Matthew Menne and other scientists at the National Climatic Data Center, the federal office charged with tracking climate trends, directly challenges the underpinnings of arguments that Bad Weather Stati

[realpolitic]

12:57 AM on 03/14/2011

"There’s been an ongoing attack on the credibility of federal climate monitoring efforts that has been partly inspired by Anthony Watts." "Now, though, a new study by Matthew Menne and other scientists at the National Climatic Data Center, the federal office charged with tracking climate trends, directly challenges the underpinnings of arguments that Bad Weather Stati http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/on-weather-stations-and-climate-trends/

[ChasG]

01:36 AM on 03/14/2011

Faved.
 
Thanks for the excellent link.  How did your posts get truncation twice at the exact same spot?  I'll try completing that quote for you: 
 
"Now, though, a new study by Matthew Menne and other scientists at the National Climatic Data Center, the federal office charged with tracking climate trends, directly challenges the underpinnings of arguments that Bad Weather Stati>cool bias, not a warm one."
 
__________________
 
Keep up the good work!

[realpolitic]

03:10 AM on 03/14/2011

Yes, thanks.  I don't know how my post got truncated.  Few may bother to follow the link then, but I am glad you did and copied it below.  It is interesting that urban temperature reading sites would have a cooling bias, but the study explains it well.  Thanks again.

[ChasG]

01:39 AM on 03/14/2011

That is totally weird.  Again:
 
"Now, though, a new study by Matthew Menne and other scientists at the National Climatic Data Center, the federal office charged with tracking climate trends, directly challenges the underpinnings of arguments that Bad Weather Stations (equal) Faulty Climate Conclusions. In essence, the paper, On the Reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record (PDF), concludes that the instrument issues, as long acknowledged, are real, but the poor stations tend to have a slight cool bias, not a warm one."

[syllepsis]

12:29 PM on 03/14/2011

That's amusing, but predictable- after all they are producing spurious data.