Antarctic Ice Sheet Growing

By Paul Homewood

 

While we are on the subject of Antarctica, it is worth revisiting the study last year by Jay Zwally, ” Mass Gains of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Exceed Losses”.

WUWT summarised this very well at the time, but just to recap, Zwally found :-

 

• During 2003 to 2008, the mass gain of the Antarctic ice sheet from snow accumulation exceeded the mass loss from ice discharge by 49 Gt/yr (2.5% of input), as derived from ICESat laser measurements of elevation change.
• The net gain (86 Gt/yr) over the West Antarctic (WA) and East Antarctic ice sheets (WA and EA) is essentially unchanged from revised results for 1992 to 2001 from ERS radar altimetry.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120013495_2012013235.pdf

 

Zwally goes on to say that “a slow increase in snowfall with climate warming, consistent with model predictions, may be offsetting increased dynamic losses.” But, of course, we don’t know how these rates of accumulation and melting compare to previous decades, so this is pure speculation on Zwally’s part.

There is nothing to suggest that this is not a normal, natural process seen many times in the past.

 

So, in Antarctica, we have:-

• Increasing ice sheet mass
• Advancing glaciers
• Increasing sea ice

Global warming anyone?