John Kerry lands in Antarctica, highest US official to visit
Update: ‘Bad weather’ cancels part of Antarctic tour – taken instead ‘to one of the few parts of Antarctica that are largely free of ice year-round’ Earlier, a planned visit to the South Pole was scrapped because of bad weather. Instead, Kerry and members of his entourage were taken on a helicopter tour of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, one of the few parts of Antarctica that are largely free of ice year-round.
State Department spokesman John Kirby on the cost to taxpayers of Secretary Kerry’s trip to the South Pole:
“I– I– will see if I can get you– uh– an estimate. I don’t have that, but– uh– uh– I think– you know– eh– any basic understanding or attempt to understand climate change you have to understand what’s going on in the Arctic and the Antarctic, especially with melting glaciers and ice and the sea level rise that can come from that. […] He wanted to go down there and see that for himself.”
Reporter asks if the trip is “basically that the Sec. wants to knock Antarctica off his bucket list and he is doing it sort of on the taxpayer.”
US State Department
November 4, 2016
Daily Caller: A reporter grilled Kerry’s staff on why the secretary of state was going to Antarctica if there was no “real technically diplomatic component” to the trip, and another asked how much it would cost taxpayers for him to “go look around” the continent. “I will see if I can get you an estimate,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a recent press conference. “I don’t have that, but I think any basic understanding or attempt to understand climate change you have to understand what’s going on in the Arctic and the Antarctic, especially with melting glaciers and ice and the sea level rise that can come from that.” “He wanted to go down there and see that for himself,” Kirby said. One reporter said there was concern this trip was simply for Kerry to “knock Antarctica off his bucket list” on the taxpayer’s dime.
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Despite widespread scientific agreement climate change is not affecting Antarctica, Secretary Kerry flew there anyways for a two-day visit.
Climate Depot’s Scientific Round Up of Data & Studies On Antarctica:
NASA Study: ‘Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise’ – …
…
Arctic sea ice extent for 2016 is up nearly 25 percent over 2012 levels as polar temperatures continue to drop. The information comes from satellite imagery provided by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which has been tracking Arctic ice extent since satellitemeasurements began in 1979.
Mid-September is when Arctic ice is at its lowest and prior to 1979#Climate Change experts have had to rely on ship reports, #News articles, and other less scientific means to approximate earlier sea ice coverage. The good news is that the polar ice is growing faster in September than at previous times, indicating a quick recovery for winter.
Summertime in the Arctic
Ice melt in the Artic summertime is normal, but by how much has only been measured with any accuracy with the advent of satellites. Without melting ice, polar bears would starve to death. They eat the plump baby seals that pop up for air through ice holes in the thinning Arctic ice.
The NSIDC shows that 2016 is about the same as 2007 and better than 2012 through 2015 levels. Based on the most recent compiled data from last week, Arctic ice covered 2.5 million square miles (4.1 million square km) of sea water, up from its low of 1.3 million square miles in 2012.
Antarctica continues to grow
On the other end of the planet, Antarctica is actually growing year over year. It also goes through sea ice withdrawal during its summertime months (which is ourwinter) and hasn’t varied since 1979. The continent has …
Somewhere between 115K and 130K years ago the Earth went through a warming spell so severe that 65% of the Antarctic Ice melted. Which means among other things, that unless the Flintstones lied to us and they used a carbon-based fuel instead of foot power, global warming can happen without any help from mankind.
Winter sea ice around Antarctica shrank 65 per cent in a natural warm period between Ice Ages about 128,000 years ago, when temperatures were slightly warmer than now, according to the new report in the journal Nature Communications.
The way the scientists drew their conclusion was an analysis ancient ice cores drilled from deep in the Antarctic ice sheet. Based on the chemistry of those cores the scientists were able to figure out how far the snow got blown from the ocean before it landed and got compressed into ice. From that data they concluded that “reduction in winter sea ice area of 65±7% fully explains the ice core evidence from 128K years ago.”
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/27/an-inconvenient-truth-few-signs-of-global-warming-in-antarctica/…
Climate skeptics have been accused over and over again of fabricating the climate warming hiatus of the past 15 years. A poor argument because the hiatus has been established as an area of research on which a number of scientific groups are working.
The latest study on the subject comes from a group of the British Antarctic Survey (Turner et al. 2016) that was published on July 21, 2016, in the journal Nature. It is a study on the warming hiatus of the Antarctic Peninsula. Yes, you heard it correctly – also here it appears there has been a hiatus.
The surprise is justified – as the German media and authorities claim on a regular basis that the Antarctic Peninsula is among the most rapidly warming regions on earth.
For example on the website of the German Environment Office Umweltbundesamtes (UBA) of July 23, 2013:
The climate of Antarctica
Antarctica is the driest and coldest continent on earth. Temperatures reach the freezing point in the west during the warmest month of January, otherwise they are far below the mean temperature of -55°C. Also Antarctica is impacted by global climate change and it is foremost warming at the Antarctic Peninsula more than the rest of the world. […] Only a few areas of the Antarctic Peninsula reach temperatures above the freezing point on a regular basis during the summer. However, it is the Antarctic Peninsula on the west side of the continent that is strongly hit by global climate change. No region on earth is currently warming faster. The temperature data of a research station on the Antarctic Peninsula run by Oak Ridge National Laboratory shows an annual mean warming of up to 2°C over the past 50 years. For the entire continent a warming of about 0.12°C per decade has been shown.”
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2016/08/23/global-warming-pushing-media-governments-refuted-antarctic-peninsula-is-in-fact-cooling-study-finds/#sthash.LfzGnBNe.ffC4UwYX.dpuf…
West Antarctic coastal snow accumulation rose 30 percent during 20th century
- Date:
- November 4, 2015
- Source:
- American Geophysical Union
- Summary:
- Annual snow accumulation on West Antarctica’s coastal ice sheet increased dramatically during the 20th century, according to a new study. The research gives scientists new insight into Antarctica’s blanket of ice. Understanding how the ice sheet grows and shrinks over time enhances scientists’ understanding of the processes that impact global sea levels.
- Share:
Many of the glaciers in Ellsworth Land, West Antarctica, are thinning quickly, adding to sea level rise.
Credit: British Antarctic Survey
Annual snow accumulation on West Antarctica’s coastal ice sheet increased dramatically during the 20th century, according to a new study published in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The research gives scientists new insight into Antarctica’s blanket of ice. Understanding how the ice sheet grows and shrinks over time enhances scientists’ understanding of the processes that impact global sea levels, according to the study’s authors.
The new study used ice cores to estimate annual snow accumulation from 1712 to 2010 along West Antarctica’s coast. Until 1899, annual snow accumulation remained steady, averaging 33 and 40 centimeters (13 and 16 inches) of water, or melted snow, each year at two locations.
Annual snow accumulation increased in the early 20th century, rising 30 percent between 1900 and 2010, according to the new study. The study’s authors found that in the last 30 years of the study, the ice sheet gained nearly 5 meters (16 feet) more water than it did during the first 30 years of the studied time period.
“Since the record is 300 years long, we can see that the amount of snow that has been accumulating in this region since the 1990s is the highest we have seen in the last 300 years. The 20th century increases look unusual,” said Elizabeth Thomas, a paleoclimatologist with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and lead author of the new study.
Thomas attributes the higher annual snow accumulation over the last 30 years in part to an intensification of a regional low pressure system and more storms in the region. The study’s authors said these storms could increase with climate change, possibly leading to further increases in snow accumulation.
Snow accumulation builds up the ice sheet, but the extra flakes have not acted as a life raft for West Antarctica’s ice sheet, which
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Stay Frosty Antarctica
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Wed, 08/17/2016 – 15:28
There is a constant stream of scientific studies that report on
melting ice in various parts of the world. Some from mountain
glaciers, some from the arctic pack ice, some from Greenland,
and some from the mother-load of glacial ice, Antarctica.
Antarctica, the continent that covers Earth’s south pole,
contains more frozen water than all other deposits of glacial
ice on the planet combined. The collapse of the Antarctic ice
shelves, causing oceans to rise and all sorts of climate mayhem,
is a favorite theme of climate alarmists everywhere.
Unfortunately for them, new reports tell a different story. It
seems that the Antarctic Peninsula has actually cooled over the
past two decades. Moreover, all the hoopla about this being the
hottest year ever is contradicted by findings from Antarctic ice
cores that during the Eemian, the last interglacial (LIG;
130,000–115,000 years ago), global climate was warmer than today
and global mean sea level was 6-9 m higher. Sorry to dampen the
hysteria with actual science.…
http://lidblog.com/study-shows-global-warming-thawed-antarctica-128k-years-ago-before-fossil-fuels/…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/12/only-0-18-of-antarctica-isnt-covered-by-snow-and-ice-study-finds/
Antarctica has way fewer rocky outcroppings than scientists previously estimated, according to a new study that found less than half a percent of the South Pole is not covered by snow and ice.
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) found “a 21,745 km2 total area of rock outcrop, equivalent to 0.18 ± 0.05% of the continent’s land area and 48% of the previous estimate.” Previous estimates put rocky outcroppings at 0.37 percent of the continent.
“This is a significant decrease and highlights an overestimation in the current predictions of rock outcrop extent in Antarctica,” BAS scientists wrote in their new study.
BAS researchers wanted to establish a more accurate baseline to measure how global warming impacts the frozen continent. Unsurprisingly, Antarctica still has tons of snow and only small areas of it aren’t covered with ice and snow.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/12/only-0-18-of-antarctica-isnt-covered-by-snow-and-ice-study-finds/#ixzz4HPPqRsxj…
