West Antarctica Warming Faster Than Thought 247
New submitter dgrobinson writes "NY Times reports that West Antarctica has warmed more over the last half century than was first thought. A paper released Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience (abstract) found that the temperature at a research station in the middle of West Antarctica has warmed by 4.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958. That is roughly twice as much as scientists previously thought and three times the overall rate of global warming, making central West Antarctica one of the fastest-warming regions on earth."
Last post (Score:5, Funny)
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You must live in North Antarctica.
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Time to buy some beachfront property?
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Re:Last post (Score:5, Informative)
Re: 2.4 +- 1.2C ?! (Score:5, Informative)
The error margin is 50%? So the 2.4 was twice what was expected BUT with the margin of error, it actually could be what was expected?
What is satisfying is seeing someone actually included the error margin. The climate models never seem to. The best you can say is that they reflect their assumptions very precisely, you just never know how bad the assumptions are.
Re:Last post (Score:5, Insightful)
The authors of TFA probably live in North America. This would explain the comment that the warming was "twice as much as previously thought".
Why is this marked insightful???? It is in essence accusing without grounds PhD scientists who spend their lives studying these things with basing the entire thesis of a paper on grade school math errors. The author isn't supplying any quotations from the article supporting his assertion, other than a single number. It seems to me that the writer of this article is a peddler of misinformation. In the relatively recent past, he would be opening himself a libel suit. In the more distant past, the author would possibly in need of practicing his pistol aim and would need to find a second for his duelling appointment.
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It's the interwebs. You don't need to cite references to incite people to action. (as long as that action is limited to clicking {like})
Study shows anything can happen (Score:4, Informative)
The 2009 study questioned the assumption that WA was neither warming or cooling. This new study extends and refines the first, it has a steeper trend and better confidence levels.
This is good old fashioned, plodding, science that evolved something like this....
Stage 1 - "That's odd" - why is everywhere warming except WA?
Stage 2 - We looked more closely at the numbers for WA, it is warming so the assumption is incorrect.
Stage 3 - We looked again in a different way with cleaner data, we now have a better estimate of how fast it's warming that is at the upper bound of the previous error bars (error bars that IIRC were mercilessly ridiculed by anti-science types as "study shows anything can happen").
Speaking of climate trends, I've personally noticed (as opposed to measured
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I consider Nature well known for publishing incomplete, sloppy papers. This may not be true for climate science, but in other fields nature articles are a step above news articles.
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Why is this marked insightful???? It is in essence accusing without grounds PhD scientists who spend their lives studying these things with basing the entire thesis of a paper on grade school math errors. The author isn't supplying any quotations from the article supporting his assertion, other than a single number. It seems to me that the writer of this article is a peddler of misinformation. In the relatively recent past, he would be opening himself a libel suit. In the more distant past, the author would possibly in need of practicing his pistol aim and would need to find a second for his duelling appointment.
What I always enjoy about facts that we know of now will most assuredly be proven inaccurate in the future. At least if history is any indication.
A single weather station? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, why is this single weather station suddenly getting a paper? It's been there since 1958, there is nothing here we didn't know.
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slow news day at the NY Times I guess.....
Re:A single weather station? (Score:4, Insightful)
Single weather station indicates climate too - local climate.
The difference is not spatial, it is temporal. Weather is short duration. Climate is average over long period of time.
Single weather station measures local climate over decades. It also measures local weather.
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Fair enough, but nobody is very interested in local climate in the immediate vicinity of one weather station.
If AGW is real and causing the Earth to warm at 1C per 10 years, what is the effect near your house? It seems everyone is interested in weather in vicinity of one and only one station, it's just not the same for everyone, so learning the effects at a selection of them will help them tell you what to expect at your house, and that's really all most people care about.
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And every time normal people wake up to pretty much normal weather, that will lower confidence in AGW.
Normal weather???
What rock have you been living under the past couple of years?
Re:A single weather station? (Score:5, Insightful)
You cannot tell with a single coin flip whether the coin is fair (50% probability of heads) or not. You cannot predict any particular flip of the coin. But if you flip a coin 1000 times and it comes up heads 659 times, you can say with a high degree of confidence that the coin is not fair. You still cannot predict any particular flip, but we can predict that we would see about 66 heads if we flipped the coin 100 times. If tomorrow we flip the coin 1000 times and it comes up head 831 times you have a high degree of confidence that the distribution of heads and tails changed since yesterday.
Weather is like a single coin flip. You cannot tell in advance easily whether it will rain or not or exactly what temperature it will be. But we can make statements about the average temperature in January or the average number of rainy days in April. If we see those values change over time, as we have all over the Earth, you can say that the climate is changing. With enough measurements over a long enough period of time, you can see the climate change at only one weather station. If we also see the same thing happen at thousands of other weather stations over decades, and we observe the ice sheets melting and the humidity increasing, then that's clear evidence of the climate changing.
That's the difference between weather and climate. Weather determines what you wear on a particular day. Climate determines what clothes you have in your closet.
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http://phys.org/news/2012-12-rapid-west-antarctic-ice-sheet.html [phys.org], look at the picture...
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But if you flip a coin 1000 times and it comes up heads 659 times, you can say with a high degree of confidence that the coin is not fair.
It may also be that you are reporting a number of tails as heads. Or didn't record a number of flips and are guessing at what those flips were from what you do have.
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With enough measurements over a long enough period of time, you can see the climate change at only one weather station.
From observing weather stations across the globe, we can be certain that the time since 1958 isn't enough to discern any trend from a single weather station.
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It's no use, you know. You can explain these things over and over again, but at this point you can be almost sure that anyone who needs it explained to them is going to answer your carefully reasoned mathematical and scientific explanation with the irrefutable counter-argument, "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEEEEAR YOOOOU ..."
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And perhaps counter this one:
Assuming temperature is a monotonically increasing function of CO2 in the atmosphere, you cannot construct a Lyapunov function. Thus the system is unstable, and we are fucked anyway.
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What specific "natural influence" is causing the Earth to warm, and where is the evidence that supports this idea?
There are many natural influences: precession of the earth's axis, precession of the earth's orbit, ocean currents which change due to continental drift, massive volcanic eruptions, meteor impact etc. There is an established record of global temperature variations thousands, if not millions, of years before humans burnt fossil fuels from e.g. O16/O18 isotope ratios. The causes of some are believed to be known and understood but others are not but it is very clear that the climate has fluctuated by itself b
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There are many natural influences: precession of the earth's axis: nonsense. GPS satellites would show that. Even a hobby astronomer would notice it when a star rises not over the "expected" spot over the horizon. ,ocean currents which change due to continental drift this is also nonsense. Continental drift is measured in inches per year or less. Also
precession of the earth's orbit: that is nonsense. As above, even a hobby astronomer would realize that easily.
Both would have been in the news long time ago.
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You argue that subtle changes can have no large effect, but I bet you'd be the first to argue that a few degrees can cause a tipping point in global warming, right? Pick one. As far as precession goes, no one "notices" this, as if we wake up one day and the Earth shifted a few degrees. We know it happens about a degree every 72 years, full cycle every 26,000. And no, GPS satellites would not be affected because their measurements are relative to Earth, whereas precession is measured relative to stars.
Also i
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I haven't personally received compelling evidence that the world is round, made up of atoms and over four billion years old. But since most scientists who have spent their lives studying these fields agree that this is the case, I have no reason to doubt it.
Same with global warming. That the detractors are often right wing and heavily influenced by either god botherers or fossil fuel lobby groups only makes me more comfortable with believing the science.
If you don't think that humans are the cause, as well
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You completely misunderstand the mechanism of AGW.
It has nothing to do with how much energy we consume. It has to do with the ever-accumulating by products of some of that energy production. These by products alter the earth's thermal balance by orders of magnitude more than the amount of energy we directly harness. This is possible because, as you mention, the earth receives staggering amounts of energy from the sun.
In particular, mankind harnesses about 1.5e13 watts of power overall. The earth receives ab
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We can have a very high degree of certainty that the Earth is warming but the degree to which this is due to human influence vs. natural influences is not yet very clear (at least that's what my colleagues in geophysics tell me).
Then ask them to name one single (possible?) natural cause. As I for my part I'm not aware there could be one. And as far as I can tell I never heard about one. Would be very interesting to get some shown.
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Re:...alternatively (Score:4, Insightful)
no one with half a brain cell cares whether or not the cause of warming over time is due to burning of fossil fuels or some yet undiscovered natural process...the only important question is whether or not there is anything we as a people could conceivably do to mitigate the environmental changes
Fortunately those of us with more than half a brain cell realize that the two are very closely linked. If the current rise in temperature is driven by natural cycles then stopping the burning of fossil fuel will have little, if any impact. So how do you know what to do to mitigate the impact if we are not certain what is causing it? Reducing fossil fuel use is probably a good idea but when I talk to scientists active in the field of climate research they themselves say that the jury is still out on how much is human driven vs. natural but reducing fossil fuel consumption is probably a good idea while we figure it out.
so in summary shut the fuck up and deal with consensus reality for once
What an enlightened attitude. I suppose a few thousand years ago you would have been arguing that the Earth is flat because that was the consensus? I'm a scientist so actual reality, rather than a group consensus of reality, is what I'm interested in. If you want to convince be I am wrong provide evidence and reasoned argument. Swearing about a consensus will help be form an opinion about you but will do little to persuade me that I'm wrong especially when I've spoken with colleagues in climate research and they say the same: it is not yet clear how much of the recent climate change is due to humans.
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True, one station's data over time is a climate anecdote for the larger region, but you need only skim the article to determine that the scientists who did the study are well aware of the lack of historical data for the Antarctic mai
Re:A single weather station? (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazing. I have now seen the AGW skeptic equivalent of "there are no fossils of fish turning into humans."
Most data has gaps of some kind. That's why you use statistical analysis and correction. Once again the need to deny AGW means having to deny methodologies used in vast and diverse areas of science.
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Most data has gaps of some kind.
At least with fossils, they look for new fossils to fill in the gaps between existing ones rather than interpolate and hope they got it right.
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Please stop propagating statistical myths. That is not the only thing that matters. What matters is how well the model fits the data relative to competing models.
I can't be sure but I suspect you are also falling into the trap of thinking at just because there is statistical significance it means that the research hypothesis is true.
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What? In engineering we normaly fit continuous data with a finite number of points. What means we fit a curve with exactly 0% of the points, and often quite sucessfully. Physics also used to work this way, astronomy is still there.
The number of points you need has no relation at all to the size of your universe.
Re:A single weather station? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it is that bad (outright fraud). It is just bias run rampant along with financial incentive to underestimate uncertainty combined with widespread failure of science education in statistics.
Re:A single weather station? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more important, you don't know when it happened, or if it all happened in one change or in several small changes. Unless you know that, any corrections you make are going to be honest guesses at best.
Re:A single weather station? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:A single weather station? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. No need to retract your PhD, your whole domain is a sham.
Yes. That's why we produce the same structural data as the X-ray crystallography guys do with a completely different method.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the above was only the digital processing. Before the raw data - i.e. the signal of the receiver coils - get digitized, they run through a preamp, a couple of analog filters, the main amp and the a/d-converter, each component, even the cables in between, adding artifacts and distortions to the signal.
In summary, every non-trivial measurement yields heavily processed data. You just need to be aware how exactly you processed them. Science, it works, bitches.
Re:A single weather station? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't recalibrate a sensor and apply the correction after the fact as you don't know why the sensor lost calibration
Sure you can, you just need to know how far out it is and for how long it has been wrong, simple instruments usually suffer from simple systematic errors, a thermometer does not normally output totally random data. Another common method (that can handle random as well as systematic errors is using weighted records of nearby stations to fill in or adjust known bad/missing data. They have probably used a sophisticated version of the second technique here since that is how both NASA and the MET office treat their global data sets.
This sounds like really bad science, but it may just be really bad reporting.
It's neither, it's your ignorance of common statistical methods combined with the paranoia displayed in your sig..
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I am quite familiar with statistical methods, and I did not accuse anyone of bias. For you to have assumed my criticism held a bias shows your own bias. I said their methodology as described appeared to be faulty. How variations of about 2:1 in the estimated temperature rise constitutes "good agreement" is the part of the story I'm not familiar with. And please note this study lowers, not raises, the estimate for the current rate of change from the previous study.
They substituted data from other source
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Well not even scientists are saying this. That is just the news. Go read what the scientists are saying then come back informed.
Why is that in Fahrenheit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is 4.4 much? Or is it not so much? ... disgusting.
Scientific articles that suddenly use Fahrenheit are
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Same reason you weight yourself in stone [wikipedia.org] when you are on a diet. It makes the numbers sound better.
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He he he ...
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Fahrenheit below freezing?! (Score:2)
From the article "[..] average annual temperatures in the center of the ice sheet that are nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing." What is that, -50F or -18F?
"Celcius below freezing" I can understand, but not Fahrenheit or Kelvin. Well I suppose Kelvin could make sense, "Kelvin below freezing" would mean exactly the same as "Celcius below freezing".
Re:Fahrenheit below freezing?! (Score:4, Informative)
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Its all part of those in science who are evil and want to confuse you. I've also wondered the same thing, but if your just measuring a differential temperature 1K is the same as 1C when talking relative temperature.
don't tell me you've never heard of hyperfreeze (Score:5, Funny)
It's how Geordi solved the locked intercooler problem in season 7 episode 14 - the Ferengi warp coils had damaged the nydomium lines to the point where crystalline anti-pores were building up inside the reaction chamber. He had to redirect the hauser inverters to counterfeed through their own backup loop just to keep the Marfa separators from clogging.
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Kelvins below freezing would not make any sense. (...) One degree Fahrenheit below freezing is 31 degrees Fahrenheit.
Negative Kelvins would make no sense, but as long as the freezing point is 0 C = 32 F = 273.15 K then one degree Kelvin below freezing would be 272.15 K. Why should it be any different for Kelvins than for Fahrenheit?
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Kelvins below freezing would not make any sense. Kelvins are absolute units. 0 K is absolute zero.
-50K makes no sense, but 50K below freezing (assuming pure water at STP) would not have ambiguous meaning, as the only two options, 273-50, and 0-50, one of which is "normal" and the other is not, so we take the only one with meaning. 50 below freezing in F is silly. 32-50 is more complicated than -18F, and there's no reason to prefer 32-50 over -18F.
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From the article "[..] average annual temperatures in the center of the ice sheet that are nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing." What is that, -50F or -18F?
"Celcius below freezing" I can understand, but not Fahrenheit or Kelvin. Well I suppose Kelvin could make sense, "Kelvin below freezing" would mean exactly the same as "Celcius below freezing".
When you say "degrees C below freezing" it would be reasonable to assume that by "freezing" you mean the freezing point of water, because that is what Celcius is calibrated to.
Fahrenheit is calibrated to the temperature of an salt + icy water solution (I think - or at least something like that), so if you said "degrees F below freezing" it could be a little ambiguous as to what you mean, at least to someone from a country that no longer uses the older measures. (My first guess would be "degrees F below the
Isn't this great? (Score:3)
West Antarctica... (Score:5, Informative)
A few years back scientists discovered at least a bunch of sub-oceanic volcanoes with at least one merrily bubbling away. They remarked on how warm the waters were and how this had caused unique "oases" of lifeforms all along the extent. (http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=1541}
These and the unusual "surrounded by water" nature of this area are more likely contributors to localized melting.
Ferret
Meh. (Score:2, Funny)
Call me when Greenland is warm enough to support agriculture.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Informative)
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Potatoes and Grains are growing in Greenland quite fine, since a decade or so ... (after 1500 years of coverage). Last time Greenland was green (hence the name) was roughly around 500 AC.
Nevermind, figured it out... (Score:5, Informative)
This is a better link, and has more info: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-rapid-west-antarctic-ice-sheet.html [phys.org]
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You know this map says to me that Antarctica has warmed up 0.3C (or K) and quite possibly that one station in antartica is out of sync... And since this data is only from the last ~50 years, I don't feel the need to get worked up about it. By the way isn't the global average in the past higher than the 0.3C shown here?
WEST Antarctica? (Score:3)
I'm having a little trouble visualizing this concept.
I can imagine North, or South Antarctica, but those don't seem very useful either.
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The right side would be the east side I guess.
And where do you guess the wrong side to be ?
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I'm having a little trouble visualizing this concept.
I can imagine North, or South Antarctica, but those don't seem very useful either.
And here I thought the cardinal directions for that continent were North, South, More South, and Suddenly North Again.
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Well, if you look at a map with a "coordinate system" that means longitude and latitude, you will see the 0 meridian (latitude) goes straight through the pole. So left of this meridian is west, right from it is east.
OTOH everything towards the pole (in this case) is south and everything away from the pole is north, so this might be confusing ;D
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Why is this comment attached to WEST Antarctica?
An intrepid outdoorsman went exploring for the day. From his cabin he walked south five miles, then turned west and walked another 8 miles. He saw nothing of interest until then when he discovered a big scary bear. He paused long enough to take some pictures from a safe distance with his new Nikon camera with a 300mm lens. He walked the five miles back to the cabin to edit the new photos on his Mac PowerBook.
What color was the bear?
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Pepsi?
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No weirder than the western hemisphere of the earth when you think about it. Which is exactly where it is. Of course you Americans make it harder for yourselves if you insist on putting the US in the centre of the map. Or should that be center?
Re:WEST Antarctica? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a reference to the Western/Eastern Hemisphere, not magnetic or rotational west.
"West Antarctica" is the bit that's south of South America. "East Antarctica" is the bit that south of southern Asia. The dividing line is the Prime Meridian (ie, from Greenwich around the International Date Line, through both poles.)
Wrong naming (Score:4, Funny)
Melting Antartica (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if we manage to melt Antartica, we are in hot waters!
Here is the sea rise interactive map [firetree.net]. You can choose how much sea level rise and see if you still live on land. I recall melting the whole Antartica would cause a sea rise of 70 meters. I do not know if it includes water thermal dilatation, but I hope it does.
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" I do not know if it includes water thermal dilatation, but I hope it does."
I'm not sure, but if you add all the rest of the ice that could melt, apparently it's 80 meters.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/ [usgs.gov]
I live far inland and a couple of hundred meters above sea level, so I figure I'm safe in any case. But the lake I can see from my house is only 70 meters above sea level. The land of the fjords is going to get a lot more fjords, I think.
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I wouldn't mind living for a few centuries, if technology and medicine made that a pleasant experience.
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Fresh penguin of Antartica (Score:2)
On an iceberg is where I spent most of my days...
Chilling out maxin' relaxin' all cool
And shooting some icicles outside the school...
I'll spare you poor folks the rest...
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Re:West Antarctica? (Score:4, Interesting)
Thats only at the South Pole
Antarctica is BIG
Bigger than the 48 states
Re:West Antarctica? (Score:4, Funny)
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I just looked at Antartica in Google Maps. According to Google, it's bigger than the rest of the continents combined! Forget about raising ocean level. That fucker's gonna extinguish the sun if it melts.
On the internet, nobody knows if you're stupid or actually making a joke about distortions in size due to mapping projections.
Re:West? (Score:5, Funny)
Which way is west in antarctica?
Face north, then turn left.
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That still doesn't correct any ambiguity. The "western half" of Antarctica is the part to your left if you are standing at the pole facing along the prime meridian towards Greenwich.
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Whoosh.
Strange Name (Score:2)
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north.
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I'm guessing the portion west of the prime meridian and east of the international date line. Just a guess.
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Which way is west in antarctica?
It's in the greatest hemisphere on earth - the western hemisphere!
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I certainly hope not [wikipedia.org].
Re:And in a other news (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:How about the rest of Antartica? (Score:4, Informative)
http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx?d=CLINO [un.org]
About 5 minutes on google, didn't really check for much else being that i don't really care, but that should give you a starter point at the minimum.
Re:and some areas in Russia... (Score:5, Informative)
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