Here we go again -- Exaggerated new claim of Antarctic melting




As the image shows, and as we already know, virtually ALL the melting is in the margins of  the W. Antarctic sheet  -- showing that it is a quite local effect, not a global effect.  So far from being global, the effect does not even cover the whole of Antarctica.  To reinforce the point that the effect is a purely local one (probably due to vulcanism) note that there has been no GLOBAL warming for 17 years.  So the W. Antarctic warming cannot be due to something that does not exist

The Antarctic ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate in history, it has been revealed.

Three years of observations from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year – twice as much as when it was last surveyed.

The polar ice sheets are a major contributor to the rise in global sea levels, and these newly measured losses from Antarctica alone are enough to raise global sea levels by 0.45 mm each year.

These latest findings by a team of scientists from the UK’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling show that the pattern of imbalance continues to be dominated by glaciers thinning in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica.

Between 2010 and 2013, West Antarctica, East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula lost 134, 3 and 23 billion tonnes of ice each year, respectively.

The average rate of ice thinning in West Antarctica has increased compared to previous measurements, and this area’s yearly loss is now one third more than measured over the five years before CryoSat’s launch.

The data collected from 2010-2013 was compared to that from 2005-2010.

'We find that ice losses continue to be most pronounced along the fast-flowing ice streams of the Amundsen Sea sector, with thinning rates of 4-8 m per year near to the grounding lines – where the ice streams lift up off the land and begin to float out over the ocean – of the Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith Glaciers,' said Dr Malcolm McMillan from the University of Leeds, UK, and lead author of the study.

This area has long been identified as the most vulnerable to changes in climate.

SOURCE. The journal article is "Increased ice losses from Antarctica detected by CryoSat-2"

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).