A January 12, 2010 Earth Observatory article warns that AntarcticaGo look at the whole article because it backs up the skepticism with lots of data presented via graphs. It is a real eye-opener.
“has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002” and that “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet).“
If sea level rose 60 meters, that would wipe out most of the world’s population – which would no doubt make some environmentalists happy. Sadly for them though, Antarctica contains 30 × 10^6 km3 of ice which means that it will take 300,000 years for all the ice to melt at NASA’s claimed current rate of 100 km3 per year. (Chances are that we will run out of fossil fuels long before then.) The surface area of Antarctica is 14.2 million km2 which would indicate an average melt of less than 7 millimeters per year across the continent. (Is NASA claiming that they can measure changes in Antarctic ice thickness within 7 millimeters?) But even more problematic is that UAH satellite data shows no increase in temperatures in Antarctica, rather a small decline.
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Temperatures in Vostok, Antarctica average -85F in the winter, and warm all the way up to -25F in the summer. If global warming raises the temperature there by a mere fifty-seven degrees, we may seem some melting occurring in the summer.
Difficult to see what NASA is worried about.
My favourite data source for tracking the "disappearing" ice is on The Cryophere Today web site by the Polar Research Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. If you look at their monitoring of Antactica for ice extent anomalies, you will find that this year's ice is right at normal for the 30 years it has been monitored. So much for "disappearing ice". Also they have a nice graph that combines the artic and antarctic ice extent over thirty years that shows a modest decline this year but no clear trend.
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